Trump's War on Your Kids' Toys

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Welcome to Pod Save America.

I'm John Favreau.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

On today's show, Trump reacts to more bad economic news by telling Americans to stop buying our kids so many toys.

It's a real thing.

He also admits that he's not following a Supreme Court order in part because he seems to believe that a photoshopped picture of Kilmar Obrego-Garcia's knuckles is real.

We'll talk about what's going on in our elderly president's big beautiful brain.

We'll also talk about how Democrats are responding to Trump's first hundred days, including my conversation with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who told me she believes we're in the middle of a constitutional crisis just one day after she hugged the man responsible before an event where she thanked him for saving a Michigan Air Force base.

Lots going on with Gretchen Whitmer.

So tune in for that later.

But let's start with the breaking news.

Dan, we got a shakeup.

We got our first shakeup shakeup.

What's happening?

Trump announced that National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who started the world's most famous group chat, is being nominated for UM ambassador and that Secretary of State Marco Rubio will also serve as interim national security advisor.

It's been reported that Walz's deputy, Alex Wong, will also step down from his job.

The news came as a surprise to just about everyone in Washington, including Rubio's State Department spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, who found out in the middle of her briefing.

Let's listen.

The president has just written on Truth Social that Mike Waltz is going to become the new U.S.

Ambassador to the United Nations.

Well, there you go.

Fabulous.

And in addition to that, he says that in the interim, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as national security advisor while continuing his strong leadership at the State Department.

Do you know how long he's going to be serving in both roles?

It is clear that I just heard this from you.

You know, I'm no expert here, but is that what usually happens in the briefings?

The spokespeople learn news from the reporters?

When it does, it's very interesting.

So the guy who started SignalGate is now up for a job that requires a Senate confirmation hearing.

Lil Marco gets a second job and more opportunities for Trump to emasculate him in public.

And Trump's pal, Laura Loomer, the proud Islamophobe and 9-11 truther, is taking credit for Waltz and Wong's departure.

She texted a one-word message to Politico, Loomered.

What do you make of all this?

Where would you like to begin?

With loomered as a verb?

Yeah,

that's a whole thing.

Yeah, it's good.

Yeah, she loomers people.

That's great.

I feel like you should turn Favro into a verb.

Favroed?

Yeah.

What does that mean?

Whenever you beat someone in a Twitter fight, I'll just respond with Favrood, six exclamation points.

Please don't do that.

Please don't do that.

Here's what I think to make of this whole thing.

It is not unusual, although 102 days is an unusually short period of time, but it's not unusual for a president to have to make a personnel change early.

You know, you hire these people, maybe they fit in, maybe they're not the right person, you got to make a change.

So hiring the wrong person is not the sin here.

The sin is how they executed this.

Just like do the timeline of events here.

Well, Signalgate was weeks ago when everyone called for his firing.

Trump defended him, said it wasn't a big deal, sent out every Republican in America to defend him.

Then Michael Walls goes out on TV this morning to show for the administration.

Then it is leaked to disgraced right-wing journalist Mark Halperin that these firings are happening.

Then no one in the White House seems to know, so it takes a long time for anyone of consequence to be able to confirm it.

Then hours later, as you pointed out, Trump announces via True Social that Mike Wall is going to become the ambassador to the United Nations, a job that is vacant 102 days in the administration because Donald Trump had to pull the nomination of the person of Elise Stefanik because, like Mike Walls, he had nominated a bunch of people from the House during the most narrow House majority in like a century.

There's Senate confirmation for that.

It is also a job where it's bad to invite reporters to group chats involving top secret information.

He has no plan for who is going to replace Mike Walls, so he appoints the Secretary of State,

a person who has an entirely other job that requires them to travel the world, making it very hard to be the interim national security advisor, a job that largely requires you to be in the White House running a policy process.

Well, it requires you to be in the White House unless you conduct most of your job over signal.

That is true.

That is a good point.

And so,

and then the Tammy Bruce, that he points Marco Rubio that, but no one in the States Department.

Marco Rubio might have learned in that moment with Tammy Bruce that he was going to be the international security advisor.

It's just I like to think that's probably this is

there are so many hard things that happen for presidents, so many tough decisions, so many tough things.

And when they can, they screw up the easy stuff, it should make you really worried about the hard stuff.

And they fumbled every bit of this throughout the process.

It's just, it's, it's a.

What happened to the, what happened to Susie Wiles running a tight ship?

Yeah, I just, I never really bought that one, John.

She,

even

around the hundred days, there's some interview where she was like, yeah, she succeeded because she never tries to calm Trump down or change things or anything, but she does, she's really good at creating a process and like getting things in order via process only.

It seems like this process got away from her a little bit.

It seems like they all do.

So everyone obviously like went right to SignalGate on why Waltz lost his job, got a promotion.

Who knows what it is.

But, you know, the Atlantic did some reporting on this.

And apparently, like, Signalgate was just one of many issues that he had but way before signal gate uh there was this view that he wasn't maga enough uh for the rest of the crew that he was too much of a neocon too much of a hawk um hence the loomering Hence the loomering.

Yes.

He didn't play well with others, couldn't manage his staff well.

Apparently, not only did he piss off Laura Loomer, because I guess he wasn't enough of a fucking lunatic,

but he pissed off Susie Wiles, speaking of Susie Wiles, because he treated her like staff, reportedly,

when that's not what you do to the White House chief of staff, because she's the chief of staff.

Could you read me back

Susie Wiles' title again?

Yeah, she would be the chief of staff.

Yes,

there.

I remember one of, I think it was maybe Dennis McDonough telling us he'd gotten some advice from former chiefs of staff.

And the best chiefs of staff are the ones who think the emphasis goes on staff, not chief.

Seems like Susie Wiles falls in the former category there.

It was also funny, right after this,

Mike Waltz announcement,

there's a picture of him that Reuters caught from yesterday's cabinet meeting, Wednesday's cabinet meeting, or Tuesday, whenever the fuck it was.

And it's just a picture of him on signal.

And they zoom in, and you can see he's got a conversation with JD Vance, and one with Mark Arubio, and a call from Tulsi Gabber, and another message from Steve Witkoff.

So he just has his phone out in view of the cameras texting people on signal.

We just, yes, that is irresponsible, as we've said before, to it's a responsible you signal.

It's B responsible for you signal on live television, but it's also a violation of the Presidential Records Act.

Yeah.

They're doing all of this to avoid creating records that could then be subpoenaed one day by non

obsequious prosecutors or a Democratic majority or whatever else.

And we just, that keeps getting glossed over by the idiocy of adding Jeff Goldberg to the group chat.

Right.

Yeah, there is a, I mean, we've, yeah, we've, we've skipped over the whole Presidential Records Act.

We required all that bullshit.

Uh, just

so what are your thoughts on whether Mike Waltz actually gets confirmed to be the UN ambassador?

Because he's now going to have to do a confirmation hearing.

Like, he's answered some reporters' questions, or he, he used to answer a few reporters' questions about Signal.

A lot of what he said to the reporters was just lies.

Now he's going to have to go to a Senate confirmation hearing, be under oath, and answer even more questions about Signal, which is probably not great for him, not great for Pete Hegseph, not great for any of them.

You raising these questions

has happened before anyone, the Trump administration raised those questions.

Unless this was like punishment.

Maybe it's not a promotion.

Maybe it's just punishment.

I think this is

Donald Trump.

Realizing that he asked this guy to give up his congressional career for 102 days of humiliating servitude and was just looking for a place to put him.

And also, if you look, there was some reporting on this before that one of the reasons why Trump did not fire him in the outset was he didn't want to give his critics a win.

So by being able to pretend that this is some sort of promotion to this necessary but vacant position, he can continue to live in that reality.

When you actually get, will he actually get confirmed?

I mean, that's an open question.

This is an easy, not an easy no.

Trump doesn't care about this guy.

So this isn't like sinking RFK Jr.

or Hag Seth.

Like, will he be able able to answer those questions under oath?

Will that go well?

It's a good question.

Who knows?

I mean, one thing's for sure.

It guarantees that the whole Signal scandal is in the news for another day,

someday down the line, whatever the hearing is.

So that's fun.

We had actually, people had stopped talking about Signal.

And so Trump waited to the exact moment when it finally faded from the news to then

find this guy and bring it right back up again.

Just master communicator of that one.

Well, excited for Marco for his new job.

Just more opportunities to be humiliated.

Can I give you a take on this?

I think this is the way in which he gets Marco out and Steve Witcoff in.

Oh, out, like, for good, for good?

For good, for good.

Both from all the jobs?

No, he makes him anything.

Marco has a third job, by the way, that we should mention, which he is the nationalist.

National archivist.

Is he no longer running USAID?

Well, USAID is like officially done.

It doesn't exist.

Whatever foreign aid we still have is within the State Department.

So

in that sense, he's there.

He's like the security guard at a zombie mall, basically.

He's got all the important jobs, Marco.

But what I think happens here is he does this job for a while.

Trump decides

he should do the job.

He gives up, forces him to give up his State Department job.

Witkoff comes in.

And now Trump has his punching bag with him every single day.

The problem is it's hard to humiliate Rubio when he's off in different time zones all the time.

Now he will be down the hall.

Yeah, I mean, the only way that he could humiliate Rubio more at this point is to put an actual dog collar around him and like have a chain just make a where rubio is just walking next to trump on all fours i mean can we get that from the pot from the pot art that this is the first hundred days so i i hope someone is going is going to an ai image creator and see if we can get that made

i'm thinking of the thinking of the scene the end of um uh uh what the movie what was it this is the end remember remember the one with uh you know the scene i'm talking about seth rugan yes yeah uh anyway that's what i'm thinking about

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All right, let's get to something that really matters.

Donald Trump's new war on Christmas, which is part of his broader war on the U.S.

economy and people who buy things.

On Wednesday, we got the news that the economy actually shrank over the first few months of 2025, despite being projected to grow.

To save you all the trouble of Googling the official definition of a recession, it's two consecutive quarters of the economy shrinking.

So one down, one to go.

The worst part.

The GDP data that we got is from January through March.

So before Trump announced his Liberation Day tariffs that are currently wreaking havoc all over the world in the markets, tanking consumer confidence, causing all kinds of U.S.

companies to warn us about empty shelves, higher prices, factory closings, layoffs, Trump was asked about all this during the cabinet meeting where Mike Welch was very busy on signal.

And boy, boy, did Trump nail the answer.

Let's listen.

Core GDP,

and this is, you know, you probably saw some numbers today.

And I have to start off by saying that's Biden.

That's not Trump, because we came in on January, just the quarterly numbers.

So this is Biden.

And you could even say the next quarter is sort of Biden because it doesn't just happen on a daily or an hourly basis.

They made a trillion dollars with Biden, a trillion dollars, even a trillion one

with Biden selling this stuff.

Much of it we don't need.

You know, somebody said, oh, the shelves are going to be open.

Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dollars, you know.

And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.

But

This is a man who told Jeffrey Goldberg and Ashley Parker and Michael Sherr when they were in the Oval Office to look up at the ceiling because it's covered in 24-karat gold.

Who needs the extra dolls for Christmas?

This is an actual line that the man said, the President of the United States.

As you might imagine, this one's breaking through.

Even the New York Post, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, made it Thursday's cover story with the headline, skimp on the Barbie.

And that is fucking great.

They know what they're doing at the New York Post.

They're very good at headlines.

Got to hand it to them.

They're really bad at other things, but headlines they're very good at.

Skimp on the Barbie.

Trump admits that tariffs will raise some prices, cause shortages.

Donald Trump has obviously said a countless number of dumb and politically damaging things in the decade we've been covering him.

This has to be in the top five, top 10, top 20?

What do you think?

Top 10, at least.

Top 10, right?

Be mentally painful for us and the audience to try to go through them one by one to figure out to rank them.

Yeah.

That would be bad content.

I think, I mean, dumb is impossible, but if you're actually, if you're also including politically damaging, you know, the guy gets elected again

against the odds because they think, ah, well, at least, at least he'll be good for the economy and he'll bring prices down.

Then he's like, fuck you.

You don't need that many toys.

Well, in the moment, it's just another crazy thing he said.

But as the weeks go on and the shelves get empty and the prices go up, this becomes more painful.

And then when you put it in the context of you're telling people to do without toys, to be willing that you should just suck it up and pay more for things at the same time that he is trying to pass a massive tax cut for rich people paid for by cutting healthcare for working class people and

stuffing his pockets full of billions of dollars of foreign crypto money.

Like you need that in context.

And this will be one of those things where will this fade away like all the other Trump things?

Well, that's actually something we all control.

And so it's up to Democrats and everyone else to remind people of this when the shelves are empty, right?

We are weeks away from this.

The last container ships filled with stuff that was pre-tariffs have come.

And the next ones are going to be empty or with more expensive stuff.

There's just an announcement today that Microsoft is raising the price of Xboxes by 25%.

And the stuff that we need for the holiday season, those toys, that is the stuff coming now and in the coming weeks, all under the tariff regime.

That line about the toys, which you could combine with any number of statements from Donald Trump and the rest of his administration on like, we don't need cheap goods.

We don't need TVs.

Americans are buying too much shit.

Who cares?

Little bit of pain, no big deal.

I mean, there's just line after line.

Like,

these should be burned into the minds of the American people so that they can recite them in their sleep.

That is how much content, ads, everything else the Democrats should be putting out on this.

Like, you shouldn't be able to go anywhere without hearing that line from Donald Trump about the toys.

Billboards.

Especially, right?

Billboards outside of Targets and Walmarts.

That's what we need.

Oh, man.

Stephen Miller tried to clean this up

at his briefing today where he was screaming about how children must learn to love america in our schools they will learn to love america um and someone asked him about this and he said uh if you have it look if you have a choice between a doll from china that might have lead paint on it and not be well constructed and and a doll from america that's made with great environmental standards which trump is repealing all of them you'd probably be willing to pay more for the american dollar There are no American dolls.

I think the American doll might be made in China.

I I have to check on that.

I think like 80% of toys that we buy.

I think it's higher than that.

It is.

Yeah.

I mean,

it would be nice if we had a doll industry in America to supplement these Chinese dolls.

And maybe it'd be a little more expensive to buy high-quality, non-lead paint, like union-made dolls, but those don't exist.

That's not a thing.

Doesn't exist.

That's what Stephen Miller's saying.

Three Trump officials told Rolling Stone that they're already stockpiling goods at Target.

Bulk toilet paper, food, household supplies.

They're also stashing cash reserves in their homes in D.C.

And the reason they're doing this is because, and this is a quote one of them gave Rolling Stone, it would be stupid not to.

Explain the cash reserves.

Because I understand the other side.

That's a little frightening.

What do we not know that they know about the banking system right now?

I know.

That is somewhat alarming.

That is somewhat alarming.

Also, here's from the

sorry if these guys were true trump fans they would have been stocking themselves with trump coins oh yeah that is a good idea the trump meme coins that's a perfect perfect

perfect story about the trump economy you can't get actual things on the shelves but you can buy the fake coins that make the president richer perfect perfect perfect perfect uh the u.s toy association which is what represents all the toy manufacturers in the united states says quote we have a frozen supply chain that is putting christmas at risk if we don't start production soon there's a high probability of a toy shortage this holiday season.

Are you going to start buying your kids toys for Christmas now?

I just want to say that.

I feel like I should go on Amazon tonight and start buying.

Here's the thing.

I wish I could, but the odds that they were going to, what they like now is what they're going to like in December.

So it's a possibility.

I know, I know, I know.

Let's just buy some Legos.

What's your take on the effectiveness of blaming Joe Biden for this one, as Trump has been doing?

I would note that all the way way back before Trump took office, when stocks were going up, Trump posted, this is the Trump stock market, because his theory then was the stock market was going up because everyone was so excited that Donald Trump got elected and was about to become president.

Now the stock market's down.

It's Joe Biden's fault.

Yeah, I don't think this one's going to work, John.

Let me just give you three poll numbers

that go at the core of the flaw in Trump's argument.

In the NPR PBS Marist college poll that came out last week, 60% of Americans said the current economic conditions are mostly a result of Trump's policies, while only 39% said he inherited them.

In the CBS News YouGov poll, 54% said that Trump's policies were more responsible for the state of the economy.

Only 21% said about Biden.

And in the Gallup poll, 89% of Americans say that tariffs, Trump's signature policy, will lead to higher prices.

I mean, yeah.

Well, I guess all those Americans in the majority nailed it because that's the truth.

Yeah, they're exactly right.

I mean, it is fascinating how Trump screwed this up because as we know all too well, for the almost the entirety of Obama's first term, if you ask people who was more responsible for the state of the economy, they would pick Bush over Obama because they understood that the financial crisis happened before Obama.

There's a world in which Trump could have come in and like, he would never actually do this, but a smart, normal human would say, we didn't get in this mess overnight.

It's going to take us a while to get out of it.

but we're going to be working on it.

Instead, he declared several times during the campaign that prices would go down immediately.

Inflation would be vanquished.

And so he said expectations the wrong way and then put in place a policy designed to do the exact opposite of what he ran on.

And so, no, I don't think blaming Joe Biden is going to work here.

Though they are doing the

old Biden strategy of, you know, you get Stephen Miller out there and be like, egg prices are down.

And actually, inflation is down and grocery prices are down.

It's like, all right, man, you tell us all the made-up statistics you want about how great the fucking economy is when the shelves are empty and the prices have risen and the factories close and the people are laid off, guess what?

We're going to know it's bullshit.

They see the price of eggs.

They know.

We haven't even had the chance to talk about the Amazon story from earlier this week.

There was reporting on Monday that the company was considering displaying the cost of Trump's tariffs next to products on its website, which got me very excited.

The White House, the White House immediately went to war, calling it a hostile and political act.

Trump then called up his new pal Jeff Bezos, and wouldn't you know, Amazon put out a statement saying the tariff indicator was only under consideration for Amazon Hall Marketplace, which competes directly with Chinese retailers that have actually been displaying the tariff price increases.

Meanwhile, UPS says it's going to lay off 20,000 people and close 73 facilities because of lower volume from Amazon.

Some of that is pre-planned, but the CEO acknowledged on an earnings call that the tariffs are creating huge uncertainty, saying the world hasn't been faced with such enormous potential impacts to trade in more than 100 years.

Making history again.

Is that a smooth haulie reference?

I think it might be, yeah.

GM also said on Thursday that it stands to lose $4 to $5 billion in profit this year because of the tariffs.

Question for you.

Why would it have been a hostile and political act for Amazon to let consumers know about the impacts of the tariffs?

that Donald Trump loves so much.

I thought these tariffs are going to make us rich.

It's going to make America great again.

They're going to bring back manufacturing.

He should be proud of advertising what the tariffs are doing.

Why hide them?

Well, I think here in the dystopian wannabe dictatorship in which we live, anything that could possibly be described as criticism of the regime is a hostile political act.

It's why Trump is directing the Department of Justice to investigate his critics like Christopher Krebs and Miles Taylor.

It's why he's going after companies who he thinks don't have it share his interest.

It's why they're going after universities.

And so, yeah, of course they view this as a hostile political act.

Also, most importantly, it exposes the giant idiotic lie at the center of the tariff policy, which is that the foreign government pays the tariff, not you.

Does Bezos think a pissed-off Trump could do more damage to his companies than Trump's trade war?

It seems to be like that's the calculation he's making by being like, oh, no, I would never do that.

And he's still, he's still playing nice with Trump right now.

Like, why not display it?

I guess we'll see how the trade war goes as it continues, but like, why not display the tariff tax next to each product?

I think pretty clearly, Trump could do more damage to Jeff Bezos' companies than

the tariffs could do.

Because Blue Origin, his space company that exists to send Katy Perry to the moon,

depends

on government contracts.

Amazon gets a ton of government contracts for delivery and logistics stuff.

Imagine if Trump unleashed the regulatory hounds on Amazon, right?

The FTC, all of those things.

So they could do real lasting damage if you assume that this trade war has some

end date.

And Amazon is also a reseller of other people's products.

The people who is really in their interest to do it is the people who make and sell the products themselves, like car companies.

Right.

So you understand like Amazon,

you know, whether they're not necessarily the one, like they're going to lose business over this, but they're going to lose business whether the tariffs are indicated or not.

If you're a company that makes a product whose cost is about to go up, you want to show your people, your customers, why that price is going up,

that it's not just you jacking prices up.

Amazon, one way or the other doesn't, I don't think, may not care that much.

They should care.

It would be the right thing to do, but that's not really, that's never really been their deal.

So Bezos is still in Trump's pocket for now.

Yeah, it's working out.

It's working out great for him, I'd say.

Yeah, he's crushing it.

Trump also made some non-tariff news during his 100 Days Week celebration that might be of interest to the Supreme Court.

During a contentious Oval Office interview with ABC's Terry Moran, Trump was asked about the Supreme Court's order that he facilitate the release of Kilmar Obrego Garcia.

Here's how it went.

The order from the Supreme Court stands.

He came into our country illegally.

You could get him back.

There's a phone on this desk.

I could.

You could pick it up, and by all the power of the presidency, you could call up the president of El Salvador and say, send him back right now.

And if he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that.

But the court has ordered you to facilitate that.

I'm not the one making this decision.

We have lawyers

who want to do this.

With the buck stops eyes off.

No, no, no, no.

I follow the law.

You want me to follow the law?

If I were the president that just wanted to do anything, I'd probably keep him right where he is.

And on his knuckles, he had MS-13.

There's a disposition.

Wait a minute.

Wait a minute.

He had MS-13 on his knuckles tattoo.

He had some tattoos that are interpreted that way.

But let's move on.

Wait a a minute.

Hey, Terry, Terry.

Terry.

He did not have the letter MS13.

It says MS13.

That was Photoshop.

So let me tell you.

That was Photoshop.

Terry, you have to then.

Hey, they're giving you the big break of a lifetime.

You know, you're doing the interview.

I picked you because, frankly, I never heard of you, but that's okay.

I picked you, Terry.

But you're not being very nice.

This is not the most important part of that, but I picked you because I didn't know who you were.

I think there's a chance for us, Dan.

That's true.

You know what?

We just got to get into the right signal chat.

Just sneak right in there.

So for those of you who missed this particular storyline,

what happened there is at some point they had Trump in the oval with the,

there are tattoos across Kilmar Robrego-Garcia's knuckles, and the White House decided to Photoshop on top of the photo of the tattoos on his knuckles, MS-13, because they have decided to buy into a conspiracy that the marijuana leaf stands for M, and then there's an S, and then there's this that stands for the one, and this that stands for the three, and they've put it all together.

There's a bunch of red string on a billboard somewhere, and so they gave it to Trump, and he held up the picture that said MS-13.

There is, of course, no MS-13 on his knuckles, which you can see from any picture of him, of his knuckles.

You can see it in any of the pictures from El Salvador.

Also,

actual people who've conducted decades of research on MS-13, law enforcement officials who've prosecuted MS-13, they say they've never seen those tattoos associated with

Like, why would you possibly do that?

Just, right?

Like, maybe they should get t-shirts and say, I am guilty.

Like, it's absurd.

I think this story has not gotten enough attention.

Yeah, you think?

The president of the United States sat in the Oval Office and communicated to the world a photoshopped

image.

alleging that someone was part of a gang.

Also, we've talked about tattoos in relation to the Trende Aragua Venezuelan migrants that they are shipping to El Salvador.

The government, nowhere in any of the court filings or court records or the gang worksheet that was filled out by the PG County cop that ended up getting suspended for misconduct and fired, nowhere in any of that is the government or anyone alleging that

his ties, his alleged ties to MS-13 had anything to do with the tattoos.

The tattoos have never come up anywhere.

Do you think if he had gone into court that day with MS-13 tattooed on his hands,

it would have been in dispute?

No, of course not.

And we have the pictures from Chris Van Holland's visit.

And someone photoshopped it, and then a bunch of fucking Yahoos of the White House, either wittingly or unwittingly, decided to believe it and then broadcast it to the world.

Like, I know the president has immunity.

Thank you, Supreme Court.

But, like, that is defamation, like, hands down.

I mean, and I can't tell.

It's like, does he, does he truly believe this?

He does.

Is he just lying?

I think he truly believes it.

I think one of the takeaways in the Oval Office interview, Oval Office meeting with

Bukeley, and very, the way he talked about Terry Moran is, he is in a completely fucked up information bubble.

Like he does not know what's in the Supreme Court case.

Like, maybe he is, he has some sense is not as clear-cut as the Stephen Miller and I know thing, but he hasn't read it.

He doesn't know.

He's not reading anyone who's going to tell them what the real truth is.

Frankly, most people around him don't seem to be either.

And I think Trump 100% believes it.

And I think some of the people would probably believe it.

I think Stephen Miller is like a pathological liar, pathological many things.

Just a sociopath.

Pathogen, honestly.

But he is lying all the time about everything, knows he's lying, doesn't care.

And Trump trusts Stephen Miller, as he has said many times before, and told interviewers and everything.

So I think that Stephen Miller is just feeding him a bunch of shit about immigration, and he's just, you know, buying whatever Stephen Miller says, because he knows that he doesn't really like immigrants, and he wants to get a bunch of people out of the country.

And beyond that, he doesn't want to get into the details, you know?

Yeah.

His natural assumption is that Kilmar must be an MS-13.

Yes.

Yes.

And so anything that validates that notion, he will automatically believe.

So the New York Times also reported this week that the White House has sent a diplomatic note to Bukele asking him to release Obrego Garcia, which the dictator apparently declined.

That, of course, contradicts what Trump told Terry Moran about how he could pick up the phone at any moment and get him back.

He just doesn't want to because he doesn't think he's a good man.

But then he also said he didn't because his lawyers said it wasn't a good idea.

How do you think all that's going to land with the nine justices on the Supreme Court when this inevitably comes back to them?

I really can't believe that democracy is going to hinge on the interpretation of the word facilitate.

I know.

On the merits, this would be open and shut.

They said you have to do it.

He said on national television that he could do it.

He said he has not done it.

And then they assume just covered his ass by sending this fake note that Bukele knew to reject.

And I think the reason they did that is because if you look at the Supreme Court decision and they, you know, they draw the distinction between facilitate and effectuate.

And you could see a situation where the government says, okay, we tried.

We asked to get them back.

But then now Bukay said no.

Now this is squarely in the realm of foreign policy and diplomatic relations.

And the court can't tell the administration, the executive branch, how to run their foreign policy.

We tried.

Sorry.

That might have worked were it not for Trump sitting in the Oval Office telling the world through Terry Moran that actually

I could pick up the phone myself, but I just I just don't want to.

And also my lawyers don't want to.

It all comes down to the willingness of the court to

force a confrontation with Trump.

They wrote the decision to give some space to avoid a confrontation, and Trump is now forcing it.

And when push comes to shove, will they actually

again demand he do it in stronger language?

Yeah.

And you could say, look, he'll get, I could see Thomas Alito and then who knows who else saying, oh, they did send the diplomatic note and that's, they tried, you know?

So that is, they tried to do that, but I don't, I don't know if that's going to be enough for anyone,

anyone who's a straight shooter.

Wow.

Also, I hate to tell you this, John, but.

Well, look, John Roberts is just calling balls and strikes.

A judge in Texas, another judge, Multiple judges have ruled this now, just ruled today, as we're recording this on Thursday, that Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act to send people to El Salvador without due process is illegal.

That, no, you cannot just say that we are being invaded by a foreign government because you somehow made the connection that Trende Aragua is

invading the country at the behest of the Venezuelan government.

There's just no evidence of that, including, by the way, the State Department says there's no evidence of that.

Trump's own State Department, and there's a cable that says that.

And so the judge ruled it's illegal.

And what's interesting about that is it is a Trump judge.

It is another, another conservative Trump judge is like, no.

And that's actually a big deal because the Supreme Court has not touched this part of this yet, which is Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, constitutional, is the appropriate place to use it.

And

that's going to end up at the Supreme Court, too.

And

I think that's a tough one to prove as well.

I'm not a constitutional scholar here, but of course it doesn't fucking allow it.

The whole point is that you have to be invaded and you can't just make up fake invasions from gangs, street gangs.

Yeah.

Well, how will Supreme Court rule?

Don't know.

But once again, on the pure common sense level, they should not be allowed to use this law to deport people without due process.

Yeah.

And at least we've started this case with at least one Trump judge has said this is a no-no.

So we'll see what the others say.

One bit of good news we wanted to touch on before moving on.

Columbia University activist Mohsen Madawi, who was arrested in April at his naturalization interview, was released by a federal judge in Vermont on a Wednesday who likened his detention to the McCarthy-era Red Scare.

Speaking outside the courthouse, Madawi said, we have to mobilize, we have to organize, we have to invest in peace and center compassion and empathy.

And he told the Trump administration, I am not afraid of you.

What do you think?

Do you have the sense that the tide may be turning on the

student visa purge?

Maybe.

It kind of feels like it.

I mean,

the White House, House, the administration has backed off on a lot of it.

There's been a lot of very good public demonstration against it and public pressure put in place.

And so we'll see, right?

You never want to claim victory with the Trump administration on an immigration issue, but it seems like the momentum for what they were doing has stopped.

And there were too few people when the first cases started happening where people were afraid to speak up.

They were afraid.

And that seems to have changed.

And the fact that people have spoken up, both political leaders, university presidents, others in the community, protesters themselves, has changed the tide here.

I think that's a positive sign.

Mark Arubio, the Secretary of State, does have, unfortunately, a lot of leeway to terminate visas if he believes the visa holder, the student, represents a threat to our foreign policy or national security or would, you know,

their existence in the country would mean adverse effects for our foreign policy, whatever the exact language is.

But you still have to like, you still have to prove that.

Yeah.

You know, you have to have some evidence for that.

And I don't think an op-ed in the case, some cases, or just showing up at a peaceful protest,

I don't know that that's going to be enough for the courts.

It shouldn't be.

It shouldn't be.

It shouldn't be.

It wasn't in this case, at least.

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Let's talk about how Democrats have been responding to Trump's 100 Days Week celebration with lots of posting, protesting, and speechifying, including a return to the spotlight for Kamala Harris, who gave a big speech late Wednesday night in San Francisco, where she called Trump's tariffs, quote, the greatest man-made economic crisis in modern presidential history and warned of a constitutional crisis.

She also praised fellow Democrats for, quote, speaking with moral clarity about this moment.

What did you make of the speech?

Why give it now?

Why give it now is an interesting question because

we are

more than 100 days in.

This is really the first time anyone's heard her speak since her concession speech at Howard University.

That is a sort of an unprecedented period of time for someone to stay silent, particularly someone who reportedly has political ambitions for something beyond this, right?

It's not just someone who lost and then that was the end of their career.

She had some event that was like sort of a little remarked on where she spoke a little bit about people finding courage and then she spoke out.

She toured the fire damage in LA and said a few things there, but that's really been it.

This is the first time.

This is for her first comment, and this was pitched as, like we saw stories about this was pitched as her first remarks.

My takeaway here is that she is someone who is still processing the loss and in a bit of purgatory about her political future.

Does she want to run for governor?

Does she want to run for president?

Or does she want to do neither and do something else with her life?

You know, I mean, I think she's declared she wants to stay involved in some way, but that does not necessarily entail elective office.

And I think this speech looks one way if she's decided to to run for governor.

I think it looks another way if she's definitely decided that she's most likely run for president.

And it looks a third way if she's decided something else.

And she clearly hasn't decided among those things.

The other thing I would just say is I'm not sure I would have picked a speech at a gala event that happened at 8 p.m.

Pacific time as my big moment.

Like this was probably another way to do this.

If she really wanted, maybe she had just agreed to this because it's an organization that has supported her and she supports.

And so she was going to make the best of it.

But then her people

just told all the reporters this was like a big moment.

Like once they started previewing it, it was more than just like, oh, I was going here anyway.

And so I was just like, if it had been me, I would have let the era.

I would have done something else earlier.

It doesn't even have to be like, I actually would have not done a speech as my first comment.

I would have found a place, you know, you could be in conversation somewhere.

You could do a podcast.

You know, like one example I thought of is she could go on the I've Had It podcast, which is, you know, where she's, she had been before.

maybe she was vice president, did a great job.

Just obviously Pod Save America, the door is open at any time, but just find a way to just have a like a more fulsome conversation about everything.

What happened, why you lost, what do you think about happening without having to give, because a speech just comes with expectations.

What are you going to say that's new, right?

How are you going to like, what is.

like what is your reaction to all the world there's i think there's probably a more formal more modern communications way to do it but you know it's fine it was fun like this is not the end-all, be-all of the whole thing.

I think one other thing that just

we don't think, perhaps we don't think about because we're in it every day, but when you look at the polls of who people think the leader of the Democratic Party is, the plurality by far is Kamala Harris.

Yeah.

It's like 28, 30%.

How much do you think that's a function of name ID?

It's like, well, the other people are...

Kamala's just the one who was on the ticket.

Yeah, she was, she is the, I don't think she is acting.

It's not, we have not given her the task of being leader of the nominee party.

She hasn't asked for it, but she is a big voice.

Like, if you look about people who can get attention in this moment to make a case against trump she is on a short list of people who can do that yeah right and it seemed like she wanted to give the speech but not get a ton of attention given how she gave it and when she gave it so it feels between

i guess i would say this it feels betwixt in between for me yeah to your point about it looks one way if she's running for president another for governor another if it's something else i think if she has or if she ultimately decides that she's not going to run for anything else and she's just going to you know speak out whenever she can and do whatever else.

I think it's like a perfectly fine speech.

I think if she's running for president or if she's running for governor of California, then,

you know, she just, she needs more.

We need to hear more from her because I think it was a lot of,

it's just sort of warmed over rhetoric that didn't, she didn't really say anything new or interesting or particularly insightful that we haven't heard before.

And look, I don't think this is anything that a

consultant or a speechwriter or anyone can give you.

I think like this needs to come from her.

I think if she wants to be, she wants to run for president again, she wants to be governor, like she has to decide what she really believes, what she really cares about, offer some actual ideas.

And she said at the end of the speech, like, I'm not here to give you all the answers.

That's fine.

It's a first speech.

But

I just think that

I just think we need more from her.

And look, I think she had an enormously difficult job in the 100 days of this campaign.

I think she stepped up in a huge way.

She deserves all the praise in the world for that.

But, you know, she just, you need more if you're going to, at this point in the country, at this, where the country is right now, Donald Trump president, we're under threat, constitutional crisis, all the stuff we've been talking about.

Like, you got to have something to say about that that is different

than just rhetoric, you know, and that's, and mostly the speech was just rhetoric.

I think the place where I would offer some grace here is

we've known people who've run for president and lost, particularly if you're the nominee, and And it is a pretty earth-shattering, traumatic experience.

It takes a lot.

Al Gore grew a beard.

It really, and she's in a particularly strange position where it's like, one day she's vice president.

She's just going about her life.

Maybe, maybe she's going to get reelected as vice president or not, but she has this future.

And then she gets, she didn't run for president in 2024.

She got snatched out of her job, thrown into this thing with 106 days to go, gets this burst of momentum, outperforms all reasonable expectations for most of that campaign for someone who's put in that position, and then loses to this horrendous, horrible person.

It's like it's clear she's still processing that, and she found herself in a situation where she had to say something, hasn't figured out what's next for her or like what the next step is.

And so it's just like, yeah, everything you say about what she said is correct.

It's just

she's in a difficult position, I think, is that is worth acknowledging.

She is, she is, but this, this predates this speech and her difficult position.

It's like, I just, I, I really want Kamala Harris to sit down and it's like, no notes, no advisors.

What do you think's happening to the country right now?

What is bothering you?

What do you want to fix?

And what do you really want to fight about?

Just tell us.

No notes.

You know, and I think that would do her, I mean, again, if she doesn't want to run again for anything, that's fine.

Then, then I have no criticisms.

But if you want to, like, this is the big leagues, right?

You want to be president of the United States or you want to be governor of the biggest state in the country, got to step up, you know?

So that is my

thought on that.

Another Democrat out there this week, perhaps inadvertently, was Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who spent Trump's 100th day with Trump in Michigan at an airbase that he agreed to keep open and expand, which is something that Whitmer had been pushing for since Biden was president and had multiple calls and meetings with Trump about.

Trump thanked Whitmer at the event and then, without warning, asked her to say a few words, which she looked so psyched to do.

So Whitmer Whitmer awkwardly thanked Trump without saying his name, shook his hand, walked away.

This was after an equally awkward embrace on the tarmac, half embrace.

He went in for the embrace.

She kind of had her hand on the shoulder.

It was very awkward.

And that came a few weeks after Whitmer's now famous Oval Office meeting with Trump, which unbeknownst to her, started as a press event where Trump announced criminal investigations into two former Trump administration officials, ultimately causing her to hide her face behind a folder, which was a picture that will live in infamy.

Just exactly how she planned it all, I'm sure.

It's on the whiteboard.

So I spoke to Governor Whitmer on Wednesday about all this.

You'll hear that conversation in a minute, but wanted to ask you, what do you think of all of this, her last few weeks, the event this week?

So let's stipulate that a lot of people have declared that her political career is functionally over because of the hug, the folder photo, all of that, that if she had any presidential ambitions, it was over.

I think that's premature.

There's a lot, plenty of time to bounce back from what has been an uncomfortable couple weeks here.

Having said that, I think that there,

some of these things definitely raise a question of political instincts.

Like, I still don't understand why she did not walk out of the Oval Office.

And the second you walk out of the West Wing of the White House, there are reporters arrayed there with microphones.

And you could just, you know, if you don't want to yell at the president on live national television in his office, I can buy that.

Other people may think, maybe some people do that.

If you don't want to do that, that's fine.

But you, you can't go out and not say something to the press about what you just witnessed.

And she told me that what reporters haven't been reporting is that she did leave.

Like after the picture and after she started close to him and then she sunk away and then she was, then she did the, then they did the folder and she said, then she left and she talked to her staff and she said, you know, I told them like, we must get it out there that I don't agree agree with it, which still gets to your point where you're like, she could, she could have told the cameras that.

Right.

It's an opportunity.

Like the way to think about it is

it's both you now you have a problem and you got to fix your problem right away.

And it may also be an opportunity if you handle it right.

Like that, I don't know why that instinct wasn't there, but I think there's something bigger than just what Whitmer, this is about bigger than Whitmer.

Like what I think we're seeing here is what I think is the real divide in the Democratic Party now, which is not left-right.

It's those people who truly believe to their core that we are in an extraordinary, dangerous moment in American history and want to respond as such.

Those are people like AOC and Bernie, Chris Murphy, Corey Booker, who sort of are trying to toss traditional ordinary politics aside and respond in a new way that is commiserate with the threat that Trump faces.

Then there's another group of people.

There's no group of people who think Trump is not bad.

But the other group of people, which I think Whitmer falls into this and Schumer falls into it, is that Trump is bad and dangerous, but we are not truly in a crisis that necessitates an extraordinary response and that ordinary politics can still work, that it is okay to believe that the traditional rules of how shutdowns work out politically is the same way.

And then in Whitmer's case, it is, you're still in a moment where the right thing to, the good politics is to bring the bacon home for your state.

Now, she is right that this is an important thing and she's been working on it a long time.

You do want to help your state.

And I am sympathetic to Gavin Newsom when he had to be kind of play nice to ensure that California didn't lose out on aid after the wildfires.

But if you truly believe that Trump is something dangerous, you don't get on stage with him.

You don't vote for his budget.

You don't put yourself in a position where he could hug you.

Right.

And you're willing to take and you're, you like there is your state could pay a price for it, but you're going to fight back on all the other terrible things that Trump is doing to your state.

And you're not just focusing on this one particular project, which comes at the expense of all those other things.

Here's what's wild about the Whitmer thing is the two different factions you laid out.

Like, I totally agree with that.

But when you listen to this interview, she basically picks both.

And that was what's wild to me.

Like, I thought that when I asked her, are we in a constitutional crisis?

You know, is this a, is he really a threat, all this kind of stuff, that she would try to make an argument that normal politics works and I'm not going to get into that.

And I'm thinking about my state and all that kind of stuff, which is, again,

I don't agree with that, but it is a cohesive argument.

It's very weird to me that she at one point was like, yeah, yes, we're in a constitutional crisis.

Yes, people should be scared.

I read her J.B.

Pritzker's quote from one of his speech where he called for mass protests and resistance in the streets.

And she said, I agree with that.

And I agree with what AOC and Bernie are doing.

And then she was like, but I'm mad that pundits, you know, don't,

they think they know what's going on in the ground in Michigan and what Michigan people care about.

And it's like, you got to, you got to pick something.

You got to pick a lane.

And like, again, I, I don't, I don't really, I didn't with her want to focus on the folder or being at the event or the hug or anything like that.

Cause it's like, you know, even being civil to Trump, a lot of this is optics.

And I get it.

I get the odd position.

And like, I totally understand if you are a governor, you want to help your state and you want to, you need to work with this guy and talk with this guy about some stuff to help your state.

I get that.

And all the people who are like, you don't understand.

She needs to help jobs in Michigan and people in Michigan love her for this and that's great.

Like, yeah, no, I get that.

That's fine.

You can still do that while also

speaking out about the threat of Donald Trump, which she used to do all the time back in 2020 when she was dealing with him in COVID.

She was dealing with him over in the pandemic and criticizing him him pretty intensely.

So something has changed.

She's either gotten some advice from people that I don't think is good advice or not.

But like, I don't, I just don't understand why you can't really say it's a constitutional crisis, that we're in a constitutional crisis and then also say like, but yeah, I just needed to talk to him and hang out with him and not bring up all these issues.

I think I have not listened to your interview yet.

I look forward to it.

This is so not speaking specifically about Whitmer here, but everyone is saying what they think people want to hear about it being a constitutional crisis.

The question is whether you truly believe it.

I agree.

Whether you're responding as if it is true or you're saying it because to say the, there is no one saying it's not bad.

There's no Democrat arguing that or that this is a passing thing.

It's really in their actions, right?

You can truly understand how much they believe it, how worried they are about the moment.

But also, like, if you don't really believe it, don't say it because this is, this goes to a problem of Democrats and their credibility with voters, right?

Which is, and we've talked about this before with a number of Democrats, where we say democracy's on the line, democracy's on the line, Donald Trump's a threat to democracy, what are we going to do?

And then he wins and everyone's like, okay, I was just kidding.

We're going to work with him.

It's going to be normal.

We're going to figure things out.

And that's obviously an exaggeration, but that's the gist.

And I worry for anyone who is saying what they think.

activists want to hear or what they think people want to hear.

And you get a lot of, Whitmer did this, Kamala Harris did this in her speech.

People are like, and I want to call out Chris Murphy and Corey Booker and AOC and Bernie.

Like they're praising the people who are speaking out and acting like it's a constitutional crisis.

And it's like, it's nice to praise them, but like, what do you have to say about it?

Like, are you going to do something about it?

Because if you do believe it's a constitutional crisis, then like, show us, you know?

And if you don't, then make an argument that it's not.

That's fine.

No one knows what's going to happen.

And maybe it's also very possible that Christian Whipper has no desire to run for president.

True.

Like she could have run in 2024.

And she might not, yeah.

Like after Biden dropped out, like that was an option for her.

So she may not even want to do it.

But for people who are thinking thinking of running president i just can't imagine that there's gonna be a lane for people who underreact to trump yeah and i'm saying like and even if one of the reasons i i asked her about some like michigan specific actions he's taken it's like even if you're not going to run for president and your whole thing is i want to stand up for the people of michigan like you know he's investigating michigan colleges he's like taking visas away from michigan students he's he's like trying to freeze education funding for michigan like if you're going to talk to him about the airbase which i agree you should like maybe bring up hey man why are you doing this to my state?

You know, like, you got to do both.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break.

And when we come back, you can all hear what Whitmer herself had to say about all of this.

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That's T-R-Y-A-R-M-R-A dot com slash cricket how hard is it to kill a planet maybe all it takes is a little drilling some mining and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere when you see what's left it starts to look like a crime scene are we really safe is our water safe you destroyed our top and crimes like that they don't just happen we call things accidents there is no accident this was 100

preventable they're the result of choices by people ruthless oil tycoons corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

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

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

Follow Lawless Planet wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer, welcome back to Pod Safe America.

Good to be with you, John.

So you were with Donald Trump yesterday in Michigan when he announced an expansion of the Selfridge Air National Guard base, I believe, starting in 2028.

You've been fighting to get that done for a long time.

Means a lot of jobs.

It's really good for the economy.

You called it a big bipartisan win.

Said you appreciated Trump's partnership.

What did it take to get that done with the president?

Did he need convincing?

Like, how did those discussions go?

Well, you know, I'll just start with this.

Selfridge is a really important linchpin in Michigan's bases.

We've got four.

Selfridge is the place where we have our fighter mission.

The A-10s have been scheduled to be retired.

And so I have spent every year since I've been governor trying to get recapitalized a fighter mission.

You know, through the four years, you know, to be candid, under the Biden administration, I was trying to get this done.

We did get tankers, which is great, but it's not a fighter mission.

So,

as soon as I had the opportunity for the first conversation at the National Governors Association dinner, I took the chance to say this is important.

And ever since then, I've had a number of meetings and phone calls just to try to get this over the finish line.

And I'm grateful that they were interested.

I know they care about Michigan, but I think defense is a place where they see a need, and

it took a lot of work to get there.

But, you know, it's the right thing for Michigan.

There's no question that recapitalizing this, it's got $850 million impact on the state of Michigan.

30,000 jobs are connected to self-ridge.

And so this is a BFD.

And I'm glad that we got over the finish line.

It doesn't mean I've abandoned any of my values.

It doesn't mean that I'm not going to stand my ground and fight where we have to.

But

this is one of those moments where as a public servant, you're reminded your job is to put service above self.

And that's what it was all about.

So you do this event with the president, then he does a political event in Michigan, which you didn't attend,

where he attacks judges for, quote, trying to take away the power of our president.

Then he does an interview after with ABC where he says he could facilitate the release of Kilmar Obrego Garcia, as the Supreme Court has ordered in a unanimous decision, but that his lawyers don't want to.

Is the president not in open defiance of the Supreme Court at this point?

Yeah, I mean, it's unconscionable so many of the actions that they've taken in 100 days, the amount of damage that has been done.

You know, I continue to stay grounded in talking to Michiganers, and I can tell you that the tariffs are taking a toll.

Job losses, concerns about, you know, being able to afford an F-150.

You know, when I was at the White House in that folder in that infamous picture, Inside that were real stories from Michiganers about how hard the tariffs have already been on their families, on their businesses, small businesses alike.

And

that's who I'm fighting for.

And so to see that, to hear that,

you can see why, you know, there's no way on earth I was doing anything beyond that press conference yesterday,

because I think so much of what they're doing is damaging, not just here and now, but they're going to have long-term consequences in this country.

And that's precisely why I think it's important that we are showing up, we are locking arms, and we are the party that is fighting for the average hardworking person in this country.

I do want to get to the tariffs, but before we do, do you think we're in a constitutional crisis?

If the Supreme Court has told the president to do something, he has decided not to do it.

I think this is the second time he's done this.

He's also not enforcing the TikTok ban, just sort of ignoring that or ignoring the court's order on that.

Are we in a constitutional crisis?

And what's the responsibility of other leaders in the country if we are?

We are.

And I think that no one is above the law.

The thought that we've got an administration that is just blatantly violating court orders should, I think, scare everybody.

This is a very serious moment.

You know, at the end of the day, I hope that we finally see some backbone out of some of the Republicans in Congress, you know, to stand up to the courts to enforce their orders.

I mean, there are a lot of people that aren't doing their jobs to protect the foundations of this country.

And many of us are fighting the fights that we can, but ultimately, the courts have got to be able to have the last word.

And this undermines, I think, the foundations of our country on every level when this happens.

The president went on to say in that interview that he's justified in ordering criminal investigations into people he thinks are dishonest.

You were obviously unwittingly brought into into the Oval for the press event where Trump ordered an investigation into one of his first-term administration officials because he said the 2020 election wasn't fraudulent.

State election officials responded to that saying they are outraged and alarmed.

This was a cybersecurity election official.

What was your reaction when you saw him do that and you were in the Oval?

Well,

as Lovett said, there are no corners in the Oval office, right?

I was brought in for what I thought was going to be a one-on-one meeting.

It became very clear as soon as I walked in the room that that was not the case.

I grabbed one of his staff people.

I said, What is happening here?

And he said, He's just going to sign executive order and then you're going to have your meeting.

And then all of that transpired.

And I gravitated from the front of the room to the back of the room.

And that's when that picture was taken.

But I also left the room.

No one reported that.

I left the room to go talk to my staff person and said, We got to get word out because the stuff that's going on in there, I want to be, I cannot be associated with that.

I do not endorse that.

I'm not here for that.

But I had to stay and have my meeting after that was done.

So, you know, it is not easy to navigate these times.

But one of the things that I've learned is I've got to put the people of Michigan first over my self-interest, over maybe what people assume are going to be my political interests.

The people of Michigan come first.

I took an oath to them.

When I was in the Senate, you know, we were in the minority.

I was the Senate minority leader, and we had Republican control of both chambers of the legislature and in the governor's office.

We got our teeth kicked in every day.

We, of course, I had colleagues who, when they finally wanted to do Medicaid expansion, a Republican governor wanted to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act of Michiganders.

Some of my Democratic colleagues said, hell no, let's not do it.

Let's make him beg for it.

Let's deliver him a loss and then they'll have to come back.

And I didn't want to take that risk because I knew hundreds of thousands of Michiganders might get their health care from this.

And so I went to work to bring my Democratic colleagues along.

It wasn't easy, but at the end of the day, that's the job.

That is the job that I have.

And if we Democrats want to be successful in future elections, we can't forget that.

We got to give each other the grace to fight on the battlefield and lock arms because these are high stakes moments in this country as we think about all the stuff that's just happened in merely 100 days.

Trump is currently investigating Michigan colleges and universities for their diversity policies.

He's already tried to kick dozens of Michigan foreign students out of the country.

He's threatening to unlawfully freeze federal funding for Michigan public schools, as he's already doing in Maine, because Governor Mills spoke up in a meeting.

Have you asked the president to stop targeting people and institutions in your state?

You know what?

I have talked to the president about tariffs, which obviously we don't agree on.

I have talked to the president about Asian carp that pose a real threat to the Great Lakes.

I have talked to the president about ice storm victims in northern Michigan, who I'm hoping we can get some help from FEMA to support.

I have not had that direct conversation on this subject yet, but I'm not afraid to do that.

Yeah.

I guess

where I am on this is like, I totally understand the need to work with even this president because whether we like it or not, He has a lot of power to help or hurt people that, in your case, that you represent.

But he's also abusing that power right now to hurt people that you represent.

And so I wonder if you, you know, isn't it worth speaking up for the rights and the freedoms of those people when you're at an event with them or when you're in a meeting with them?

Yeah, whenever I get the opportunity, I use every minute of that to cover a lot of different issues.

So this is, I think, a very important one that you're raising.

There's no question.

And I will continue whenever I have opportunities opportunities to make sure that i'm covering as much as i can no question on tariffs the president offered some relief to automakers last night he announced though the headline in the detroit free press is trump scales back tariffs on automakers but analysts still expect car prices to rise do you agree with that and and did you get a chance to raise tariffs with him on tuesday or and and what is his what have those conversations been like about tariffs with him you know i did not get much of a chance to talk about it on tuesday but i did say that the big three and the auto industry is hurting in Michigan because of the uncertainty around tariffs.

You know, certainly

this newest policy might be somewhat helpful on paper, but let's be clear: the uncertainty that has been created by a variety of policies without a stated goal and an obvious solution here is what is creating paralysis, what is creating animosity with

our northern neighbors, Canada, who is intertwined with the Michigan economy, is all across the country, that's true, but especially in Michigan and Mexico, treating our allies like adversaries.

I mean, there's a big cost to all of this, and it is going to be borne by the American consumer.

It is going to be borne by the person who gets laid off because their company doesn't make the investment that they had planned to.

It's going to be borne by small businesses that can't stock up storerooms.

like some businesses have been able to in preparation for all these ups and downs.

This chaos with this tariff policy has undermined the American economy and has taken money out of people's pockets, and that's the worst part of it.

So a couple of tweaks every few days doesn't fix the problem.

It actually

perpetuates the pain.

In your conversations with him, do you get the sense that he's persuadable on this issue?

No.

I'm sorry to say that.

I mean,

I'll just be blunt.

I can tell you that I know that the auto companies are talking with the White House.

I'm talking with them too.

I know that they are talking with Secretary Lutnick and Commerce.

Obviously, they've had some impact and that they've reevaluated some things, but

I do believe that there is a core belief that tariff, that messing with tariff policy is going to be good for America, but it's not based on any, I think, economic prowess or strategy.

And I think that's the biggest concern is that if there was a goal, if there was a new rule that was going to last, American business might be able to figure a way to work with it.

But the chaos is the biggest problem at the moment.

I remember when the fires hit Los Angeles, I interviewed Governor Newsom shortly after, and he was dealing with

somewhat similar to what you were dealing with with Selfridge, which is

he was trying not to criticize Trump too much because

we needed to get federal funding for disaster relief for California.

And I asked him in the interview, I said,

are you scared that if you criticize him too much or piss him off, then he's going to yank federal funding and not give us the disaster relief aid that we need?

Do you worry?

in the next couple of years that if you criticize Donald Trump too much, that he might change his mind on Selfridge?

No,

I mean I don't.

They've made a commitment.

This is, you know, there are Republicans and Democrats that have been working hard to get this done.

They got it done.

He got

great, you know, headlines here in Michigan.

I mean, people are thrilled with this.

So no, and, you know, my job is to fight for Michiganders.

And that means, you know, John, it means making tough decisions in a pandemic that ultimately people threaten to kill me.

I'm still going to put Michiganders first.

It means showing up at the Oval Office and maybe having people, you know, pundits take shots at me for being there, but that's putting the people of Michigan first.

I can tell you right now that the people in Macomb County are often the ones that get pulled whenever there's a presidential election.

They're the, you know, the bellwether and in a bellwet.

They don't care, you know, whether or not I held up a folder in a picture.

They don't care.

They care if they're going to have a job.

They care that their governor's fighting for them.

And I think that's the really interesting

difference here is the media in Michigan has been,

it's all been positive.

The reactions, not the media reactions, but the coverage, the people, the reaction of the real people on the ground.

And it's one of the things that real frustrate me about sometimes the national pundits is they tell Michiganders what they're thinking without actually talking to Michiganders.

And I think that's something that we have to educate people on because, man, if you're ever going to be able to fight for and earn the respect of people on the ground,

you got to be there with them.

And that's what it's all about.

Your neighboring governor, J.B.

Pritzker of Illinois, gave a speech this week where he called for mass protests, mobilization, and disruption.

He said, quote, these Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.

They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have.

Do you agree with all that?

You know, I do.

I mean, I think I'm glad I told JB, I don't know, a couple months ago, I'm glad he's out there.

I'm glad he's fighting.

You know what?

I'm really glad that AOC and Bernie are out there fighting.

I think it's going to be important.

We got to be Avenger style.

You know, every one of our voices matters.

We have to work together.

And ultimately, we're going to have to bring all these different groups of people that we're talking to that we represent together as well.

So I don't fault anyone outside of Michigan for not understanding what's going on the ground.

I just, you know, take umbrage with anyone who assumes they know what's going on the ground without actually asking because the real story is what's going on in real people's lives.

Yeah.

And obviously people in Michigan, just like elsewhere in America, are very concerned about more than anything else, cost of living issues and the effects of this trade war.

Do you think people in Michigan are also afraid of this president and

wonder if he poses a threat to democracy,

if we're going to have other elections.

Yeah, I do think that that's a concern for a lot of people.

You know, if you're not worried about putting food on the table, yes, you know, but if you're worried about putting food on the table or paying your electric bill, it's hard to think about anything else.

And that's one of the things that, you know,

as I campaigned for Kamala Harris and Joe Biden before and Barack Obama before, I can tell you that, and Hillary Clinton, I can't skip Hillary Clinton, of course.

We know that the personal economy is always going to be front and center for people.

And that's why we got to stay focused on how are Democrats making people's lives better.

That's what I've done in Michigan.

I think that's why I've been able to carry this really swing state by double digits in two elections.

We can't lose sight of that.

Last question.

In your role as governor, are there other issues where you are looking to make progress by working with President Trump?

And are there other fights you can see yourself having with the administration?

Oh, yeah, we're going to fight like hell to protect people.

You know, the Medicaid cuts could be devastating if they go through.

And we are working really hard.

We've got a bipartisan group of congresspeople that we are putting pressure on.

40% of the Michigan budget is federal.

Rural hospitals will close if those Medicaid cuts go through to pay for

that tax break that no one's calling for.

So, yeah, we're going to fight on all these battlegrounds.

I'll also say I'm going to continue to try to get help to protect the Great Lakes from Asian carp.

I am going to try to get that FEMA Declaration for people in northern Michigan who were devastated by the ice storm last month, some of whom still don't have power a month later.

So, I've got big things that I still want to try to get done with the feds, but

we're going to fight to protect Michiganers, fight to protect fundamental rights and the rule of law, too.

Governor Whitmer, thank you so much, as always, for giving us your time and coming on Pod Save America.

Thanks, John.

Good to be with you.

One last moment from this week that we wanted to cover.

On Wednesday night, News Nation held a virtual town hall with Trump, who called in, moderated by Chris Cuomo, Bill O'Reilly, and Stephen A.

Smith, featuring Steve Bannon, James Carville, RFK Jr.

Talk about a dream blunt rotation, huh?

We learned about this like hours before it happened.

I thought it was a prank when I first saw it.

I was like, that's not, this is not a cast of people who are actually going to be

you sent me a message that said, here comes our A-block for the show on Thursday.

And I clicked on it hours later.

So I clicked on it being taken directly into the town hall.

I knew there was a News Nation town hall with Chris Cuomo.

He was talking about what is going on.

And when I turned on, there was just Stephen A.

Smith and Bill O'Reilly.

I mean, and Trump also, he called in, which is bananas.

Bananas.

Bananas.

So Stephen A.

asked him about his fight with Harvard, and here's what happened.

Because when people think about Harvard, what they're basically talking about is they're asking, what do you say to those who view your actions as an attack on academic freedom rather than a defense of fairness?

What do you say to that?

Well, I say this.

We had riots in Harlem,

in Harlem, and frankly, if you look at what's gone on, and people from Harlem went up and they protested, Stephen, and they protested very strongly against Harvard.

They happened to be on my side.

You know, I got a very high black vote.

You know that.

Very, very high black vote.

It was a very great compliment to me.

I did criminal justice reform.

They agree with what I'm doing with respect to Harvard.

Lots to unpack there, Dan.

Lots to unpack.

First of all, does he start things off by confusing Columbia and Harvard?

Because he was saying there's the riots in Harlem?

Yeah, it seems that way.

So that's number one, right?

I think, unless he thought he said Harlem instead of Harvard, but I think he got

to Harvard.

He got to Harvard.

Also, in all of the times that Trump has talked about the process at Columbia University, he has never referred to it as the riots in Harlem until a black black person asked him about it.

Yep.

Yep.

And then, and then, why did he mention the black vote?

It is true.

Why did he mention the black vote out of nowhere to Stephen A.

Smith, the black person who asked it?

It's truly Pavlovian racism.

He just sees a black person ask a question and he cannot fathom in his lizard brain that a black person can ask him about a question that is not specific and inherently and entirely about something involving the black community.

It's why he talked about about criminal justice reform.

I mean, it's bananas.

He uses the term they in there like five times.

That's what I'm saying.

The cherry on the Sunday is the very end where he said they like what I'm doing at Harvard.

The black people, the black people of America like that I'm investigating Harvard over anti-Semitism.

Which was not your question, Stephen, but you are black, so I thought you might be curious to know that.

And by the way, Stephen, you may be asking me a difficult question that's a little challenging, but I want you to know that other black people, they voted for me.

That was, that's, that's what I got from it.

I don't know how else to take it.

Yeah, things are going great.

Anyway, that's our president.

That's our president.

America saw four years of that, and they were like, let's give us four more.

Let's do four more.

Maybe eight.

Who knows?

Okay.

Two quick things before we go.

You got to listen to Shadow Kingdom.

All the episodes are out now.

You can binge it from start to finish.

It's Crooked's newest podcast.

It's called Shadow Kingdom, God's Banker.

Over a million listeners around the world have already listened.

The story's got it all.

Money laundering, secret societies, the Vatican playing spy games.

It explains how far-right movements started finding fertile ground in Europe.

Perfect thing to listen to as we head into our conclave.

You can binge all episodes of Shadow Kingdom wherever you get your podcasts or on Apple Podcasts.

Also, new episode of Inside 2025 just dropped.

where, oh, Dan, you, you and Alyssa answered listener questions about Trump's first hundred days.

Uh, what'd you, what did you and Alyssa talk about?

You know, it's so funny.

I saw this in the housekeeping, and I recorded this podcast after a 35-hour trip home from the East Coast that involved some canceled flights, a radar down, and spending the night at the Newark Airport Hotel.

And I honestly don't remember what we talked about.

I think we talked about,

I think we talked about.

This is a camp miss.

No, no, in all seriousness, I say that only because it was quite punchy.

I was really,

you should listen to that.

I really got me.

It was untethered.

But we talked a lot about White House correspondence dinner, how that works.

Told some stories of our times, the White House correspondent.

We talked about 100 Days, how the press views that.

I bet you don't, do you remember where Obama went on his 100th day?

No.

Didn't I do the new foundation speech?

No, that wasn't the 100th day.

What was it?

We thought we went to Elkhart.

We went somewhere else.

We did a National Television Press Conference on the 100th Don in prime time back when TV mattered.

It It was cute.

And we told a bunch of stories.

We got great questions.

It's a ton of fun.

Alyssa is, as always, a laugh riot on this thing.

If you want to get access to this exclusive series, which you should, our Discord community and ad-free episodes of shows like Pod Save America and Love It or Leave It, head to crooked.com/slash friends to subscribe.

That's our show for today.

Dan's going to be back in the feed with a new show on Sunday.

Dan, you talked to Chuck Todd, former moderator of Meet the Press.

What did you guys talk about?

How's Chuck?

Chuck is great.

I wanted to talk to Chuck because politics and media are intertwined.

And if you want to understand where politics is going, you have to understand media.

Chuck has been at all levels of media from the editor of a political tip sheet called Hopline to a White House correspondent to Meet the Press.

And now he is, like us, an independent journalist podcaster.

And he had a lot to say about politics, about the state of the media today, how people are covering Trump, where the White House press corps is falling down on the job of standing up for their colleagues in the AP, and some tips on how someone can interview Trump.

Something I hope we never have to know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

He didn't know Terry Moran.

That's how we got in there.

Maybe we'll host a crooked media teletown haul and get him to call in.

That's all we need.

All right.

That's our show, everyone.

Have a good weekend.

And listen to Dan and Chuck Todd on Sunday.

And we'll be back with a new episode in your feeds on Tuesday.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

Bye, everyone.

If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free or get access to our subscriber Discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our Friends of the Pod community at crooked.com slash friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed.

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How hard is it to kill a planet?

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

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

Are we really safe?

Is our water safe?

You destroyed our town.

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

We call things accidents.

There is no accident.

This was 100%

preventable.

They're the result of choices by people.

Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

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

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

Follow Lawless Planet wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

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