President of Peace Invades Chicago (feat. JB Pritzker)

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Welcome to Pod Safe America.

I'm John Favreau.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

On today's show, we're going to talk about what Oregon and Illinois are doing to fight back against the president invading their states with the U.S.

military.

I'm also going to talk to Governor J.B.

Pritzker later in the show about everything he's doing to fight back.

We're also going to talk about the fact that they just indicted Letitia James as the next political prosecution for Donald Trump.

James Comey was also arraigned this week.

We're going to talk about that.

We're going to talk about the shutdown, which is in its 10th day as of this recording.

We'll see if there's any end in sight to that.

There's also a potential peace deal in Gaza.

And more importantly, we'll talk about whether that means that Donald Trump will be getting the Nobel Peace Prize.

So that's what matters, not actual peace.

But let's start with...

the president of peace's war against Americans.

On Wednesday, Trump hosted what the White House called a roundtable on Antifa.

What a phrase.

A roundtable on Antifa that featured Pam Bondi, Christy Noam, Cash Patel, and a slew of right-wing influencers who allegedly cover Antifa.

I guess they're journalists, which again, Antifa, not an actual organization.

Nonetheless, the participants told stories about being assaulted by black-clad mobs, which then gave Trump and the cabinet an opportunity to push their favorite new conspiracy.

That actually, Antifa has its tentacles everywhere, and that the government will not rest until its imaginary network of funders and supporters is destroyed.

Here's a sampling.

Just like we did with cartels, we're going to take the same approach, President Trump, with Antifa.

Destroy the entire organization from top to bottom.

One of the individuals we arrested recently in Portland was the girlfriend of one of the founders of Antifa.

This network of Antifa is just as sophisticated as MS-13, as TDA, as ISIS, as Hezbollah, as Hamas, as all of them.

We're going to be very threatening to them, far more threatening to them than they ever were with us, and that includes the people that fund them.

These are not people that write out their signs in a basement that believe in something.

These are paid anarchists.

Another group right now that is behind Antifa and working with Antifa very closely based on the research that we have right now that we're going to give to you and your team are the Democratic socialists of the America.

It's helpful to see all these goobers together because

Christine Ohm is definitely the dumbest.

You know?

Yeah.

Like

listening to her talk about like they're like,

first of all, what Antifa's like ISIS,

it's, it's, it's

heads from Naragua and Al-Qaeda.

The girlfriend of the founder of Antifa.

There is no founder of Antifa.

This is like having a roundtable about fascists.

We're going to be like, how are we going to go get the fascists?

I guess we have a roundtable about fascists

Mondays and Thursdays.

That was a roundtable by fascists.

Two different things.

But that is, it's like, it's not a, it's, it's not a, it's not an organization.

It's an ideology.

It's a.

It's not even that.

It's barely an ideology.

It's loosely an ideology.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's, it is a

well, that could just be a, but it's a like a more people who are like more militant.

That's basically what it is.

Sort of.

Like, I guess, but it's really primarily a creation of right-wing media.

Yeah.

Right.

Like this is, I mean, might be the dumbest, but also most dangerous event held in the White House in a very long time.

As is everything.

As is everything.

Because these people,

you just have to, like, I watched the coverage of this.

I watched it in real time, which I'd like to thank you for, alerting me that it was on.

So I decided to do that.

Can't miss the Antifa Roundtable.

You know, you really can't.

Uh, then I watched some of the coverage afterwards, then I read some of the stories about it, and I feel like everyone is losing their mind.

Like, this is like patently ridiculous.

It's absurd.

I'm not saying the press coverage treated it seriously, it did not, it's but it did not treat it unseriously enough.

Because

you have like, just you just have to step back sometimes to like describe what this is, right?

Which is the president got together his top advisors with a group of third-tier right-wing influencers to talk about how to use America's massive post-9-11 counterterrorism apparatus to take down a group they made up.

It doesn't exist.

Don't you remember we went through this in 2020 when like Bill Barr sort of helped out the president in saying that they were an organization.

And then there was like a few Yahoos in Congress that were trying to designate it a domestic terrorist organization, which isn't a thing.

And then Christopher Wray, the FBI director, was like, no, no, no, it's not an organization.

It's more like a loosely affiliated groups with different ideologies and decentralized here in the United States and all over the world.

I mean, they're just creating a threat

to justify oppression of people they disagree with.

Yeah.

And they're trying to do it so they can say,

oh,

see, you know, the mention of the DSA or of Democratic Socialists, right?

It's like, oh, you're DSA.

Actually, you're Antifa.

And so now they're going going to blur the line between that.

And then they're going to say, for Democrats, oh, you say you're a Democrat, but I think you're just Antifa.

Like during fucking Pam Bondi's hearing earlier this week, when she said that

Senator Hirono had been outside protesting with a group that had a couple Antifa next to it.

I don't even know what that means.

She's like, are you Antifa, Senator Hirono?

Yes.

I mean, like, this is the day.

The dumb part is these people are fucking stupid with like the barest grasp on reality of what's actually happening in the world.

Like they truly, their brains are so pickled by the

right-wing bubble they live in that they like, I'm confident that Christy Noam, like Stephen Miller makes a lot of shit ups in order to justify his true goals.

Christy Noam fucking believes that Antifa is like Hezbollah.

And she really believes they're going to send in a SEAL team to Antifa HQ to disrupt the sleeper cells.

Like, it's like, what?

By the way, if you know, if you know the address of Antifa HQ, please let the federal government know because they are.

They're looking.

They are looking.

It's like the red scare if there weren't really communists.

Yes, yes, that's exactly right.

It's the dangerous part, like they've actually stumbled ass backwards into something that is quite dangerous and potentially effective for their fascistic goals, which is if no one's Antifa, then everyone's Antifa.

And

that's that we don't like.

Right, exactly.

So it's just like you can make, because it's like, if you're going after a real organization, there is like evidence as to whether this person is a part of that organization, right?

Like, are they a part of this mob family or this drug cartel?

Like, you have to present evidence that here, you just have to assert that they're loosely associated with this philosophy, and therefore, you can go rooting around into the financial records of their foundation, or you can investigate them for these crimes, or you can, or even more likely, just accuse them of being part of what a domestic terrorist or domestic extremist that Stephen Miller has done.

Do you think we can get the Trump administration to start calling themselves profa?

What's that is?

I mean, it is a little on the fucking nose.

It's like the Antifa is short for anti-fascist.

And so that really, so like, you know, you guys are clearly, they're all profa.

The MAGA supporters are profa.

Do not call us fascists.

Also, our top priority is to take on anti-fascists.

Enemies of our non-fascist state are called anti-fascists.

It really is a laugh.

It's a laugh or cry moment.

It really is.

Like, we're all going to, the whole country is going to go down for the stupidest fucking reasons by the stupidest fucking people.

This is.

We've.

I mean, I don't know if I wanted more intellectually serious people to take down the country.

It's not like I'm asking for that, but it is rather ironic.

Stupid.

I don't know.

Is it ironic?

I don't even know if that's the right word.

Anyway, it seems like this is more than just a threat.

Reuters dropped a big investigative report on Thursday that has aides from the White House, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security talking on background about a specific plan to go after left-leaning groups.

They had a list of nine groups that they shared with Reuters.

Potential targets include George Soros and his Open Society Foundation, as we've mentioned before, also Act Blue, Indivisible, and Jewish Voice for Peace.

And I'll quote from the article here.

Potential tools to defund or shut down these groups include IRS investigations to strip them of tax-exempt status, criminal probes by the Justice Department and FBI, surveillance by federal law enforcement agencies, the use of RICO statutes, typically used for organized crime and financial investigations under anti-terror laws to identify donors and funders.

The person directing all of it, according to the officials, is our friend Stephen Miller, who now regularly uses the term domestic extremists to describe American citizens who didn't vote for Donald Trump.

And judges appointed by Trump in many cases.

That's true.

That's true.

And judges.

What did you make of the Reuters piece?

Well, I'd say a couple of things.

One, I read the whole thing two, three, four or five times.

At no point did I find any evidence that there was any sort of left-wing conspiracy funding violence that seems to be lacking in this.

We work with Indivisible.

We've worked with Indivisible for years.

They're good friends and partners.

It is laughable to think that Indivisible, which has also

just grassroots chapters all across the country that get together to like help register voters and go to town hall meetings and get people organized is like has anything to do with any kind of even close to violent activity.

I mean, also the idea they're going after Act Blue, which is a payment processor.

It's a payment processor.

Yes.

We're going to take down PayPal next.

Like, what are we doing here?

And then the other sort of funny insider baseball part of this story is they talked to two different White House officials on background.

And one White House official was clearly like Stephen Miller, Stephen Miller, Jason.

It's like, this is who says, this is how we're going to take down the Soros network.

And then the other White House official, who clearly probably worked in the council's office and does not want to go to prison

in a subsequent administration, was like, no, we are only going to go after actual plots to fund violence.

And it's like the first administration official would be back in, first White House official would be back in like, no, we're taking down the lefties.

And it's like, it was very, it's very clear that.

In addition to being a very menacing story and like a pretty scary story, there's also like the classic bumbling incompetence that's going on in the government.

You get this because Trump's twin directives on domestic political violence have caused confusion.

Lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security are scrambling to figure out how to implement them legally, according to two DHS officials not authorized to speak publicly.

So Trump also at that event with Antifa, and mentioned this in the Reuters story, Trump requested participants to name groups and funders they claim carry out violence, effectively crowdsourcing potential targets in real time.

He then vowed to pursue these.

Anyone got any Antifa?

Any Antifa out there that's pissing you off?

Pam,

go get him.

I mean,

just name names.

The craziest part of that hearing or that roundtable was when the guy was like, I have a burnt American flag and I know the guy who burned it.

And Trump was like,

give his name to Pam so she can press charges.

And then Trump gives us his crazy.

He's just constituent services now.

So we're doing it right there in real time.

But then Trump's like, well, that's why we got rid of freedom of speech.

Because

he has now decided against all Supreme Court decisions and the Constitution itself that flag burning is now a crime punishable by a year in prison.

Right.

There's no law on the book that suggests that.

Yeah, which they can't do that.

It's not going to work because it's constitutionally protected.

And their legal argument, which is, I would say, flimsy, but it's more than flimsy.

It's fucking absurd.

Is that and Trump tried to make it,

not, I wouldn't say eloquently,

is that burning the flag causes causes uh the people around the flag burner to become agitated and violent can i make a small point just not to i'm not president trump's personal attorney but it would seem to me that if i was donald trump one thing that i would not try to encourage is prosecution of speech that leads to violence

Well, you know, like if just by chance you gave us a speech on the mall, then the participants, the attendees of that speech then marched on the Capitol and tried to hang the vice president, just as one example.

well i don't think his lawyer would tell him anything about that because john roberts and the court gave it yes stamp of approval can't be prosecuted official act wait till president aoc expands the court my friend

jesus christ

oh i mean i it's really like

what if anything do you like Democratic leaders have been sort of quiet on the Antifa stuff.

You know, there was initially when they put out the EOs, when they first announced the EOs, I think there were, you know, the typical round of statements and, you know, the same people who are always speaking out are speaking out.

Is there anything anyone can do about this?

Like, it does seem like you don't, what you don't want is to get into the situation where...

So, yeah, they don't go arrest everyone at Act Blue and indivisible and all these groups, Open Society.

But suddenly they open an investigation or there's FBI surveillance of these groups or suddenly someone gets a subpoena and it's more drip, drip, drip than it is a big event that can focus everyone's attention.

And I don't know, I just worry about, I worry about that part of it.

Well, the other, it's also the shoe you never hear drop, which is so it's like Trump named Reid Hoffman, right?

The founder of LinkedIn,

who's a huge Democratic donor.

He's like, we'll go after Reid Hoffman.

There's no allocation that Reid Hoffman's involved in anything at all.

But like, who is the other rich people out there who think, who would think about becoming donors like Reid Hoffman, who now don't want to do that because they do not want to be on the anti-Antifa task force list, right?

I mean, so the question is: what do Democrats do about it?

I mean, it's like, how many things can they yell about at one time, right?

You have one of our, a significant part of our party, which is dealing with the government showtown we'll talk about in a minute.

You have our most prominent governors who are, one is fighting a redistricting battle, the other one is being having his state invaded by troops from Texas right now.

I think the challenge for Democrats here, and this is a longer conversation I want us to have on a less newsy podcast at some point, but is

about how you take all that's happening here and tie it into one story, not a slogan.

No, you're really,

you came to the right place, Dan.

One story about how, like what Trump is doing, why he's doing it, what it means, and how it affects people.

Like that, that is the message.

And there is, like, we've talked about this before, there is this like huge debate within the party about this.

You put yourself in the middle of this debate by arguing

that Democrats should make the shutdown about more than health care and to take on all these issues.

That's a debate you and I can also have at a different point, but there's a whack-a-mole element to all of these things where the way you get out of that and the way you ultimately deal with the flood the zone strategy is you need a compelling narrative about Trump, this moment, this Republican Party, and how Democrats are different under which you could fit all of these things.

So you're not just putting out a fire here.

What's our anti-anti-Antifa statement right now?

What's our statement on the troops?

You know, all of that.

Like you have to, we have, no, there have been some.

Newsom has done some of this.

Chris Murphy's done a lot of it.

AOC has done some of this.

Speaking of Chris Murphy, I had forgotten about this because it was a headline from, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago, which might as well have been a couple of years ago, that he's donating $100,000 from his political fund to progressive organizing group, Indivisible.

And I do think elected Democrats coming out and standing with some of these groups

that could be potential targets publicly is probably important.

There's great news because Act Blue is

Act Blue's on all their websites.

So if you don't know what here's what they're going to do, they're not just going to text you seven times in Act Blue Link.

They're going to text you 14 times and Act Luling.

Actually, maybe they have.

No, just kidding.

Yeah.

Trump, come talk to me.

Pam, come talk to me about Act Blue for a second.

No.

The reality is that the No Kings rally is coming up next weekend.

Which everyone should fucking go to.

That is an opportunity.

Indivisible is very involved in organizing.

That's a group shooting.

That is a moment where every Democratic official should stand publicly with people.

Go to it.

Be proud that you're going to it.

Let everyone know, publicize it.

And because I do think that's going to be a moment to show that like no one is scared and no one is backing down.

And yeah, because this is, it's getting real.

It's getting real.

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Of course, our cities are now the front lines in the battle against Antifa.

The deployment of Oregon and Texas National Guard troops to Portland is still on hold for the moment, but that may not last long.

A panel of judges from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, two of the three of whom are Trump appointees, seem to think the district judge had overstepped.

If you remember, the Ninth Circuit was also the appeals court that heard Newsom and California's challenge to the deployment of troops here in L.A.

And they basically said that it would, the case hasn't been fully decided yet, but they let the deployment continue because the judges decided in the Ninth Circuit, it is likely that

the government, the federal government, would win the case because it was under, it was within President Trump's statutory authority to do so, to deploy those troops.

So Christy Noam visited Portland on Tuesday where she was accompanied by an entourage that included a pardoned January 6th insurrectionist.

Did you know that, Dan?

That was part of,

had a jacket on that said staff on the back.

That's who she took with her to Portland to, I guess, a monitor Antifa, which they did from a roof.

They stood on the roof of an ICE facility to watch the Antifa mob from a safe distance.

The Antifa mob being a tiny crowd of protesters that included a guy in a chicken suit.

I encourage you all to go look for that footage because there's Christy Noam and her January 6th insurrectionist and a bunch of other goobers up on a fucking roof.

And they're looking down at a guy in a chicken suit.

And that's America 2025.

That's the civil war that's going on right now.

During Thursday's cabinet meeting, Noam told Trump that she met with when she was in Oregon, the governor, the mayor of Portland, the chief of police in Portland, the head of the highway patrol, and she called all of them lying and disingenuous and dishonest people for merely reporting to her that the protest was small, low energy, and under control, which of course it is.

She also said the DHS would be purchasing more property in Portland to operate out of and sending more federal agents.

She plans to do the same in Chicago, where a federal judge on Thursday heard arguments from lawyers from the city and state about blocking the guard deployments there.

Just a day after Trump posted a demand that J.B.

Pritzker, who you'll hear from in a minute, and Mayor Brandon Johnson should both be jailed, quote, for failing to protect ICE officers.

The judge didn't seem overly warm to the Justice Department's arguments, but as of this recording, she hadn't issued a ruling.

Guys, just give us a thumbs up or something if you hear it.

What's your take on what's happening in these cities and who do you think is making the better argument?

I think,

I mean, we talked about this when it happened in L.A.

We have talked about it happening in D.C.

And there is this surreal element to all of this because this is the thing that if you said Trump was going to do, as Kamala Harris did in the campaign, then everyone would laugh at you and say you're insane for thinking that.

You have TDS.

But I think what is clear, particularly in Chicago and Portland, is the pattern here in the plan, which is Trump.

and his administration and his right-wing goons, they make up a threat, they fabricate a threat or they exaggerate a real problem like crime or disorder, then send in massed ICE agents who essentially operate as a paramilitary organization with social media influencers in tow to capture it to create chaos and backlash.

Then they exaggerate that chaos and backlash and use that as a pretext to send in American troops.

Right.

And this is where we are.

And this is.

This is an A-plus answer to a poli-sci 101 question about how fascism starts, right?

This is the exact formula.

This is exactly what they do.

It's exactly what's happening.

It's happening in LA.

It's happening in DC.

It's Chicago, Portland, and it's going to be everywhere by 2026.

Like that, that is the path we are on.

Yeah.

And I think it's also important to point out, having gone through this here in LA,

it can seem like it's not a big deal at first.

We didn't notice really the National Guard.

deployed here in Los Angeles because they were defending like two federal buildings, defending from no one.

And, you know, they were out with ICE on some raids, I guess, but you wouldn't have seen them really.

And

same in DC.

People in D.C.

will tell you this too.

And they were like taking pictures with tourists and they didn't have anything to do.

And so they were cleaning up trash.

And so I think there is this sense that, okay, the guard's here.

It's crazy that Trump's doing this.

There's no reason for him to do this.

He's clearly doing this because he is power hungry and wants to, you know, prove a point or whatever.

But is it really causing much harm?

But with each each deployment, it gets a little more serious, and

the deployment gets bigger, and the facts on the ground are much more intense, right?

And so, I think Chicago, of all the cities so far, like the way that ICE has been operating in Chicago is completely out of fucking control.

And we have all seen the videos, and you've heard us talk about it here.

You've seen it all on our socials, and we've been reposting them and all that.

There's fucking, they shot a pastor in the head with a pepper ball who was merely praying and actually asking the ICE agents to join him in prayer doing nothing and they shot him in the head with a pepper ball and they just they they dragged a woman out of her car yesterday who was she's a legal resident who was picking up her child at elementary school dragged her out of the car And this is happening.

There's just a million stories like this right now.

And so when you deploy troops in that situation where ICE is terrorizing neighborhoods, detaining, arresting people who are citizens, legal residents, or undocumented immigrants who are not dangerous by any measure, but using riot gear and flashbang grenades and pepper ball spray, and they're shooting pepper balls at journalists.

And when you do that, then, and Pritzker talks with me about this, then of course,

residents and neighbors are going to get mad and they're they're going to start shouting at ICE.

And now you deploy troops into that situation.

And now you've also got Trump flirting with invoking the Insurrection Act.

And I talk about that with Pritzker as well, which would suddenly give the troops on the ground law enforcement power.

So they're not just.

defending buildings or defending ICE agents, but now they can go carry out law enforcement actions, which they are not trained to do.

Now you've got a really explosive situation.

Yeah.

And it doesn't, in that case, it doesn't has to be the the national guard anymore right right exactly exactly you could see that you could actually do what trump said he would do at the pen at the speech at Quantico with Hexeth and the generals is use U.S.

cities as training grounds for the troops that he expects to fight wars overseas yeah and I mean this is how you get the navy seals kicking out the doors of uh Antifa HQ

right right Antifa HQ right which is again let us know where it is you see the popes involved woke marks as pope i mean you don't come to his city he's he's a chicagoan i love our American Pope.

I thought I loved Pope Francis as my favorite Pope, I think, because

Jesuit, a big Jesuit guy.

But our American Pope from Chicago, who is now, and I guess he's pushing the bishops to make a really clear moral statement on this, on what's happening in the United States around immigration, because he wants unity.

And so he wants all the bishops on the same page, which I think is a good move.

But

he is apparently, you know, he had some advocates and activists, immigration activists visit him, I believe from Texas, and was quite moved by some of these stories and like emotionally moved.

And I think that

it's good to see that the Pope is getting involved in this.

It's crazy that the Pope has to get involved in this, but it's good to see it.

All right.

So

Austin just sent us this story.

From Axios, President Trump is temporarily barred from sending the National Guard to Illinois to aid his immigration crackdown after a federal judge in part granted the state a temporary restraining order against the deployment.

So there you go.

That's great news.

One other major front in the war against America's enemies, the political prosecutions of people the president doesn't like.

News broke right before we started recording that a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia has indicted New York Attorney General Tish James for one count of bank fraud and one count related to false statements.

All right, so this was related to another alleged mortgage fraud case, Dan, that the mortgage fraud czar Bill Pultey has been pushing for quite some time.

And once again, there was reporting leading up to this that all the attorneys, all the prosecutors who work in the Eastern District of Virginia didn't really see a case here, didn't think there was evidence for a case, didn't think there was evidence that she broke any laws.

And so when Lindsay Halligan, Donald Trump's random staffer, who had never prosecuted a case before, was installed, and then she indicted Comey.

She went after Letitia James as well, and apparently

has won an indictment from a grand jury on two charges.

How strong or weak do you think this case is against Tish James?

I think the fact that Lindsay Halligan presented the indictment herself suggests that no actual qualified prosecutor in the office is willing to do so.

So that says a lot about it.

It's also, you know, it's weak because one of the reasons Trump fired the original U.S.

attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was because he and his staff did not think there was a case you could bring here.

And the third reason why we also know it's a bad case is that people are almost never, ever prosecuted for making this mistake.

It is almost always handled civilly.

The only time it's ever

done criminally is if it has seemed to be part of a pattern where someone has done it many times or it's part of, or it's like an obvious move where they like use a fake name or a fake disguise or something like that.

Like this is something happens all the time.

We know it happens all the time.

It happens to a lot of people in the Trump administration because of the the pro-public reporting that looked at it.

So, this is absurd, but this is what Trump wants.

He wants another way he can go and say he went after his enemies.

And everyone else on that list should be concerned because even if they did not commit the fake crime in the Eastern District of Virginia, Trump will just fire the U.S.

attorney wherever he wants to bring the case, install some other crony there, and do the same thing.

Like, this, this is where we are as a country now.

This one seems even worse when you look into it because it's saying that she, you know, she allegedly tried to declare somewhere her primary residence that wasn't so she could, you know, get a more favorable loan.

But she, in this case, it was like one document that a third party.

checked a box that said primary residence, but in another email, she wrote, this will not be my primary residence very clearly.

And on another form, she said, this will not be my primary residence.

So then you'd have to believe that she tried to lie about this, but then told the truth about it as well.

Like that is just fucking insane.

This happens all the time.

This was a big thing in politics in the early 2000s where people who, members of Congress who also owned homes in D.C.

would often check a box that said they wanted to claim the homestead exemption.

And then people would get hammered in their districts for claiming that they live in D.C.

But it's because

the

settlement, the people who prepare the papers just fill it out that way and everyone just signs it, right?

Without actually looking at it, this is exactly what happened in this case.

There was reporting in the Washington Post that

the house was, I believe, this residence was bought for her niece.

Yes.

Her niece actually testified to the grand jury and reportedly gave testimony that was quite exculpatory of Letitia James, yet they perceived that.

It does seem like the indictment now they're saying that the problem is that it's a rental pro it was always meant as a rental property for her niece.

And so she couldn't, she shouldn't, she shouldn't have even said it was her second home, her her second property.

Because then it's an investment property, which is a different thing.

This stuff happens all the time.

These are not crimes.

They are homes that have to get addressed.

And they are addressed with the bank.

They're addressed civilly.

This is not how it happens.

This is just.

And it also, it always drives me nuts even going into the details of the case because it's so fucking like it's a political prosecution.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That

career attorneys from Republicans and Democrats appointed by Republicans and Democrats over the years all said, no, this is crazy too.

And then fucking Lindsey Halligan comes in after Donald Trump said to Pam Bondi, go,

what's taken so long?

Go prosecute my enemies.

And they did.

You don't have to be a fucking genius to figure that out.

You don't need a law degree.

Tis James is in good company.

Former FBI Director James Comey, who was indicted two weeks ago, was arraigned in federal court in Alexandria on Wednesday morning.

He pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers indicated that they will seek to have the case thrown out on the grounds that the prosecution is vindictive and selective.

It is, of course, both.

Apparently, Lindsay Halligan in this one brought in a prosecutor from North Carolina to help her with the case because they couldn't find anyone in the Eastern District who would do it.

I don't know if the jurors will even know about that or the judge will, but it doesn't doesn't doesn't bode well for their case, I think.

Yeah,

you're right.

I have no idea if that's something that a jury will ever know about, but it will.

It just says how weak the case is.

Right.

Like there was plenty of ambitious Republican career prosecutors, right, who have eyes on bigger jobs, who, if there was a real case here and they did, they would prosecute it.

The problem is there is no real case and they care about their reputation and their ethics and so they're not going to do it.

Yeah.

Wall Street Journal had an amazing report on Wednesday that the

famous truth social post that Trump addressed to Pam,

which said, you know, delays in charging Comey were killing our reputation and credibility, was in fact meant to be a DM.

I feel vindicated.

Me too.

Yeah.

Although this is what happened.

I was

we were we were just hanging out with the neighbors.

All the kids were there.

One of my neighbors is Tommy.

And I saw the news broke and I was like, oh my, oh my God.

I think this was supposed to be, I think this was supposed to be a DM.

And he's like, no.

That's, there's no way that was a DM.

He would, he, you know, Trump, he would just say Pam in a truth social post.

And I was like, you know what?

You're right.

That's crazy to think that.

So I did give up pretty soon.

I mean, like anything that's possible with Trump, but it's just, I know caring about the information security habits of high government officials is like very 2016, but it is fucking bananas that Trump communicates with his cabinet through direct messaging on his janky social media site.

I'm surprised.

Like I didn't.

He might as well BCC every foreign intelligence agency in the world.

I mean, mean, like, how, think how many other DMs there are.

Do you think this is just the first time he decided to DM someone was about a political prosecution?

He's just like, I got to communicate about this Watergate-level crime and abuse of power.

Why don't I do it by DM?

That would be my first DM.

No, he must be DMing people all the time, which we know he was DMing people on Twitter because that was a part of the Jack Smith investigation was

subpoenaing his DMs.

It's funny, though, that you went to the OPSEC thing because my first reaction was, there's not a lot that can shock me about Donald Trump, but the fact that he knows how to use the direct message function on his Janky platform.

He doesn't, obviously.

Yes.

I mean,

not well, not well, but at least he knows he can.

That's the one thing you can't do is

do it publicly.

Why isn't he texting Pam Bondi?

Why isn't he calling Pam Bondi?

He is an entire military unit whose job it is to connect him on the phone with people no matter where he is.

What?

I don't understand it.

It is just, it is the classic Stringer Bell, don't take notes on a motherfucking criminal conspiracy that he wrote this down and then sent it out publicly by accident.

The report has officials saying that Trump was, quote, surprised to learn it was public.

I bet he was.

And notes that, quote, Bondi grew upset and called White House aides in Trump, who then agreed to send a second post praising Bondi as doing a great job.

See, that's when I knew it was a DM was when he sent the second post.

That was my,

that seemed definitely like, oh, I got to to clean up here.

Also notable that the Attorney General of the United States did not seem upset that the president accidentally, publicly directed her to prosecute his enemies, but that he didn't seem to think she was doing a great job.

Yes.

She knows what her job is.

In the post.

And so what she really wanted was a follow-up that said, great job, not the president deciding not to direct her to prosecute his political enemies.

I want you to think about how this would have played out differently if he had written a memo or an email to Pampandi or an email from Susie Wiles or Stephen Miller to Pampandi that said almost that exact same thing.

And then the New York Times had gotten a hold of it.

These days,

I don't know.

Who knows?

I think it would have been like at least in the traditional media world, it would have been 10x this story.

Just think about think about the original perfect phone call to Ukraine was right because like Trump was doing crimes all the time, but when they got wind of a secret phone call through then they reacted that way.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch under the Obama administration was sitting on a plane in a tarmac while the Hillary Clinton email investigation was going on.

And Bill Clinton was on a plane next to her, got off the plane, went onto her plane, said hello, walked off the plane, and it was such a scandal that

Everyone was calling for her to recuse herself from the whole investigation.

So, yes.

And it's a couple, couple important points here.

One is

Bill Clinton not present at the time.

Not present.

Very important.

Like, no influence at all on what was happening.

Second, that really is butterfly effect to where we are right now, because that leads to her recusing herself, to Lisa Jim Comey sending the insane memo announcing the investigation of Hillary Clinton, which leads to Donald Trump getting elected, which then leads to Jim Comey ending up in a court this week.

Wow.

That's a, someone should just do a documentary just on that.

If you know someone who owns a media company, you should talk to them.

I guess we just did it.

There's nothing else to say.

That's right.

The fact that that was, oh my God,

it's insane.

It's insane.

All right, let's get to the government shutdown, which will be in its 10th day by the time you're hearing this.

On Thursday, the Senate voted again on two different versions of a funding bill.

Neither of them passed.

Democrats are clearly beginning to feel they've got the upper hand because they have a simple message.

Republicans won't budge on gutting your health care.

Republicans are more all over the place.

They're going to fire federal workers.

No, they aren't.

They're going to deny back pay to furloughed workers.

Maybe not.

Trump is talking to Democrats about cutting a deal on health care.

No, he isn't.

Even on Thursday in that cabinet meeting, Trump tried to say that Republicans were the ones trying to save health care and also tried his tough guy approach once again.

Take a listen.

We'll be making cuts that will be permanent.

And we're only going to cut Democrat programs.

I hate to tell you.

I guess that makes sense.

But we're only cutting Democrat programs.

They wanted to do this, so we'll give them a little taste of their own medicine.

At least one prominent Republican is getting frustrated by this lack of a clear plan.

Here's Marjorie Taylor Greene on CNN on Thursday morning.

So you're putting the blame on the leadership of your party.

Absolutely.

We control the House.

We control the Senate.

We have the White House.

When it comes to hearing from senior citizens or my own friends and neighbors and my own family members and people that voted for me, and they're just saying, Marjorie, we just really want somebody to do something about health insurance premiums.

I don't think it's good advice that a government shutdown is going to help Republicans in the midterms.

I don't agree with that.

I also don't think it's good advice that Republicans ignoring the health insurance crisis is going to be good for midterms.

I actually think that it would be very bad for midterms.

Yeah, and on that note, are you concerned about the cost of living

that the President Trump said he would lower?

The inflation crushed people in the past four and a half years, and the costs have not come down.

Marjorie Taylor Green, welcome to the resistance.

It's like, what is happening?

It's like, it's

a world.

That was an out-of-money experience.

Spaceblazers to that.

Yeah, I mean, just she used to run around the hall screaming at Sandy Hook victims, and now she is

talking about the momentum.

Someone tweeted, it's just wild seeing her sitting on a CNN set like this.

Like an animal who learned to use a knife and a fork.

She's just sitting there all nice with Wolf Blitzer.

What?

Just being friendly.

I mean, it's truly something.

So that's cool, I guess.

Yeah.

Right?

What does it say?

We're about to play another clip of like, what does it say that you've got Marjorie Taylor Greene now pushing for Republicans to make a deal to extend the ACA subsidies?

And then someone who's like a frontliner in a vulnerable seat, Mike Lawler, who's just like, you know, yelling at Hakeem Jeffries.

Like, what is going on?

I think it's notable that the 10 incumbent House Republicans in toss-up races are to the right of Marjorie Taylor Greene on healthcare.

Yeah.

The politics of these Obamacare tax credits are abysmal for Republicans.

Abysmal.

Right.

So you have the Kaiser Family Foundation poll, which shows that 78% of people want them extended.

That includes, and this is like a truly stunning number, 57% of self-identified MAGA supporters want them extended.

57%.

And it's pretty interesting as to why.

Because if you look at it, I think like three-quarters of the premium increases are going to hit red states.

Well, yes, because so the Kaiser Family Foundation has been tracking Obamacare approval since the law passed.

And it's never been more popular.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans now support it.

What's interesting is that disapproval among Republicans has come down pretty sharply by about 10 points in the last four years.

And that lines up pretty closely with the passage of the enhanced premiums in 2021.

And the reason why those two things are probably connected is because if you live in a state that did not expand Medicaid, you're going to be more likely to be eligible for these tax credits.

And so there's been a huge increase in Obamacare enrollment since the passage of these enhanced tax credits.

Most of that is in red states.

Like right now, 10% of the population in Texas and Florida is on the Affordable Care Act.

And so any of these tax credits will cause a massive premium spike that is going to disproportionately hit Republicans in Republican states.

Somehow, Marjorie Taylor Greene is the only Republican who gets that because

Georgia is a confusing case because they partially expanded Medicaid, but there is a disproportionate number of people who have signed up for the Obamacare since the tax credits in Georgia, too.

So her constituents will be hit by this.

Do you think that other House Republicans are just, they feel like Marjorie Taylor Greene feels, but they just don't want to say anything because they are either thinking that there will be a deal at some point or have like promised Mike Johnson that they wouldn't cause trouble and that they'd all stay strong and

stay quiet for a while.

I mean, there must be some, right?

There have to be some.

It has to be.

It has to be.

Not because like they're, you don't have to guess their motivations, but they know how to read polls.

I mean,

like we've talked about the poll from Tony Fabrizio, Trump's pollster, which showed a massive swing in the generic ballot if the Republicans let these tax credits expire.

So there have to be a bunch of people who think that, right?

There are a bunch of, there are some of them who are coming up with like fig leaf solutions to try to say they're for something without actually being for something.

So there are people who want it.

Now, there's a huge part of his caucus who are in safe seats, who do not care about anything other than owning the libs and will let these things expire.

Whether you can actually get a deal that can pass the house is an interesting question, but there are definitely people who agree with her.

And the question is, well, Marjorie, Marjorie Taylor Green is probably not the best person to create a permission structure for other people?

Because I think most Republicans hate her too.

But it does give some space or room for someone else to come out.

I imagine that to get a deal to pass the House, you would need mostly Democratic votes.

Yeah.

Right.

I mean, you're not going to...

He's not going to get most of his caucus on board.

He's not going to get a majority of his caucus on board.

But would Johnson put a bill on the floor that violates the Hassard rule is the question.

The Hassard rule being the rule named after the former Speaker of the House in prison for pedophilia.

Which is now an issue that Republicans are once again on the wrong side of it.

Yeah, yeah.

It all comes together.

It all comes once again.

But that rule says that

you cannot bring a bill to the floor that doesn't have a majority of the majority.

Interesting.

So let's talk about how this might end.

Furloughed workers are going to start missing paychecks on Friday.

Troops are going to start missing paychecks this Wednesday, the 15th.

There's some reporting that that will ultimately get a gang together, bipartisan gang, to figure this all out.

Though there's also some reporting that even after the missed paychecks, Democrats are planning to stand firm.

How are you feeling about this?

How do you think this shakes out?

I think this, I really have no idea, but I think the shutdown probably either comes to some sort of temporary end next week or it's around for months potentially.

Wow.

You think it's possible to do months, huh?

Well, it's really hard to see what the thing that ends it is.

Now, Thune floated today

an idea that we'd open the government with a guaranteed vote on

these tax credits at some point.

Gallego, I think, just happened to be walking by reporters at the time this came up.

And he said he would be open to that idea depending on the timing because he wants to make sure that the vote happens, like the vote

and the temporary funding bill line up so the Democrats could walk away again if the Republicans didn't fulfill their end of it or whatever else.

Right.

So because just to remind people again,

this is about a seven-day CR, right?

Yeah.

That we're fighting over.

So you could say, I was wondering, apparently Gallagher had said this before, something like this before, and there have been no takers, but it does seem like a way for everyone to save face where Republicans can say, okay, well, we didn't negotiate while the government was closed and we just said we'd work with them and promise a vote and then they do the vote.

and then if Republicans don't provide the votes to extend the tax credit then you know the next the CR only lasts a week and then we're just back into the shutdown like you could do that to get troops paid the other thing that could happen is in a normal world where the Republicans were not staying out of Washington to avoid voting on the Epstein files the house would come in would today be voting on a bill to fund the troops.

This happens every single time.

And then Democrats have to make a decision, which is, do they vote for that and essentially give up some leverage in the shutdown, but also then take on the political pain of denying pay to the troops?

But they can't do that because Mike Johnson won't bring the House back.

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Let's listen in on a live, unscripted Challenger School class.

They're reviewing the American Revolution.

The British were initiating force and the Americans were retaliating.

Okay.

Where did they initiate force?

It started in their taxation without representation.

Why is that wrong?

The purpose of a government is to protect individual rights and by encroaching on individual rights they cannot protect them.

Welcome to eighth grade at Challenger School.

Learn more at challengerschool.com.

Well, let's talk about how, in case this drags on for quite a while, let's talk about how Democrats are handling the messaging.

There have been plenty of standard videos and press conferences of varying quality, but we should note that they are getting quite a bit of views, quite a bit of traction on social media.

I think Peter Hamby at Puck had a piece about, and the firm Resonate tracks this, that, you know, for once, a lot of like the Democratic created content, whether by politicians or influencers or groups or whatever, is just like outperforming a lot of the Republican content on social media and is actually shut down content is going quite far.

So that's good.

Democrats also seem to be having real luck taking the fight to Republicans in these ambush moments, I guess is what we're calling them now, that have been happening in the Capitol.

In one of them, New York Republican Congressman Mike Lawler confronted Akeem Jeffries about extending the ACA subsidies.

And in another, Arizona Democratic Senators Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego held a press conference outside Mike Johnson's office to pressure him to swear in newly elected Congresswoman Adelita Grahalva from their state.

And Johnson walked into the middle of the press conference.

Here's a taste of how both of those exchanges went.

Why don't we sign on?

Did your boss Donald Trump easily extend your business?

Did your boss Donald Trump give you permission?

Yes, he is.

You're chasing clouds.

You're an embarrasser.

You're not going to talk to me and talk over me

because you don't want to hear what I have to say.

Oh, I'm listening.

So why don't you just keep your mouth shut?

Because you showed up.

You showed up.

You showed up.

And so you voted for this one big ugly bill.

You can extend it,

permanent extension of massive tax breaks for your billionaire donors.

Let's be clear.

The reason Alita Grahava is not here is because Mike Johnson wants to do two things.

Number one, cover up for pedophiles on the epsilon list, and number two, put his members in a really rough position when it comes to voting and extending these ACA tax credits.

This is an excuse, so she doesn't sign on to that.

This is absurd.

This is the longest time the House Support.

Do you want me to answer the question?

If you ask the question, you're not going to actually answer the question.

I'm not blocking her.

I just

the longest time that House Superintendent has been out of session.

That's not in a regular August session.

This is the longest time it's taken for someone to be sworn in.

And it all happens to coincide with the fact that she's going to be the deciding vote on the discharge.

Wow.

That's democracy for you right there.

What do you think?

What do you think?

All the messaging is going right now.

I think

that

we should give Democrats credit here because they have done better than at any point since in a couple of years now, actually, at actually communicating the message, thinking about how to get their message out, playing the games of the attention economy.

And like, I think it's, I think it's good.

Like, is it perfect?

Of course not.

Are some of these scenes like really cringy and painful to watch?

Absolutely.

But they have done much better and we should give them credit for it.

Yeah, I totally, I agree.

I agree.

I think it's the right, look, it is, it is good that they made this about healthcare.

As you know, I think they should made it about more.

I think they still should.

But it is clear that healthcare is, you know, they are right on both the substance and the politics here in healthcare.

I guess what I hadn't anticipated is the notices that are coming out from the insurance companies that are going to let people know that their premiums are going up are a forcing mechanism that I hadn't anticipated would be as powerful as it is, right?

Because I do think that without that, like if they were just arguing about reversing Medicaid cuts that aren't going to take effect for a couple years.

I don't know that the fight would be as clearly defined as it is right now.

And I think what's making Republicans nervous is those notices as well too, because this is something that they're going to have to deal with very soon.

And so it's more of a cliff than

another fight over healthcare might have been.

Yeah, this is the

they were right to pick this, make this the fight to pick, I think.

I mean, there's a world where possibly they could have stitched together the larger argument you wanted people to make, but I don't think in this political environment with this caucus, in this media environment, they could have pulled that off.

And there's real advantage in having something simple.

I actually wish they would ditch all the talk about the big ugly bill and the Medicaid cuts and focus only on this.

Because it's a one thing that I'm going to do.

They got you calling it the big ugly bill, huh?

How did it get to you?

Because you just need to listen to that clip.

It's funny because I've actually been part of presentations where the argument is you should just, there's been this huge debate within the party about what you call it, right?

Do you call it the big, beautiful bill?

Do you call it the big ugly bill?

Do you call it the Republican budget plan or whatever else?

And then there is one of the real arguments that you just use the same language they use.

So you're fighting on the same territory and voters know you're talking about the same thing.

And so I've been an advocate for using the big beautiful bill.

So I just fucked up, is what I'm saying.

What do you think would be happening right now if Democrats said we are not going to vote to fund the government unless we make sure that ICE federal agents cannot raid people's homes without a warrant, that they cannot hold American citizens and legal residents for more than two hours, that they cannot use military tactics and military weapons to invade communities and black hawk helicopters, just like basic constitutional rights, due process, no unreasonable search and seizure focused on American citizens, legal residents, and all of these videos are out there that are, have gone probably more viral than the healthcare stuff.

Of course, of course.

And I'm just like, what do you, because I genuinely don't know, but like, what do you think would happen?

I think the challenge of that approach is twofold.

One is, can you keep a caucus that spans from Jared Golden to AOC on board for that?

Because you have to.

Right.

That's one.

Two is what you, this is a legislative fight and you need a legislative solution to a legislative fight.

So what,

and I spend a lot of time thinking about this.

I talk to some people about how you would possibly construct this.

Like, let's say you wanted to, you're going to demand that funding can't go to some of these activities.

It's a very hard thing to police.

Like, you,

you really need a specific, I think in a shutdown fight, a specific legislative vehicle to solve the problem you want solved, right?

Whether that is cut Medicaid like Newt Kingridge wanted, fund a wall like Trump wanted, defund Obamacare like Ted Cruz wanted, or extend these tax cuts like Democrats want.

And as you can see,

you could just say ICE loses the extra funding it got in Trump's budget bill.

I think that that's a fight you're not going to win.

And unfortunately.

And so you're going to have two choices.

The government stays closed forever,

which eventually will blow back on Democrats, I imagine, or you're going to reopen the government by having gotten nothing.

Here's my other question.

If we win this fight, and get the health care, the Affordable Care Act subsidies extended, do you think there is a political benefit for Democrats in the midterms or even leading up to the midterms?

I think that people are thinking about the political benefit of this in a very simplistic, one-dimensional way.

What Democrats needed to do here was to show that they had the strength to fight to lower costs for people.

And so if we can actually do that and achieve it in a moment where people are paying attention, and not enough people are paying attention yet, to be clear, but this is a moment where we actually look, have a chance to look strong and look like we are fighting for some for people on an issue that nearly 80 of the country wants and i think that can have benefits on how people see democrats because the problem we have here is like if you want to understand the difference between 2018 and 2026 right now is that trump is just as unpopular as he was at this point in 2017 he is doing more unpopular stuff frankly now than he was doing then he's he was above water in the economy back then he's really far underwater on the economy right now but the reason why the generic ballot was democrats plus seven then and Democrats plus three now is because people don't trust us to be an alternative.

And so the goal, the political benefit here, if we can pull it off, is that people

have a better trust in us to be someone who can fight for them.

And when you say people,

do you think it helps with our voters, like people who are already Democrats, who are just pissed at the Democratic Party?

Or is it, I mean, because we know that, like, we know that most of the people who are actually going to be helped by this are Trump voters,

or at least, you know,

75%, right?

And I don't think that they're going to change their opinion of Democrats, even though they got helped by premium increases, though I hope so.

Maybe a few will.

Maybe it's independents who are just looking for a party that actually is going to fight for something they care about.

I think it's a couple of different audiences.

But one, this is probably not super connected to how we will do in the midterms, but it has a real chance of improving the Democratic Party's approval rating because more Democrats might like the Democratic Party, which would just be nice.

We could spend less time talking about our brand crisis all the time.

But the people who you were looking to see that are the Biden-Trump voters.

You were looking at the younger voters who supported Trump, who now have, whose approval rating of him has dropped significantly.

You're looking at Latino voters whose approval rating of Trump has dropped significantly since 2024.

And you're looking at a sort of a wider swath of working class non-white voters, right?

All the groups that Trump made gains with, many of whom voted for Biden in 2020, and even if they didn't vote in 2020, probably would have picked Biden if they had, those are the voters that we have to, that we have a chance to make inroads with.

And that's who we need to sell ourselves to.

It's, I don't also think it's like, it's not as specific as these, you know, there are 15 million people who use these tax credits.

7 million of them are Democrats and 8 million are Republicans or 5 million are Democrats.

And we're going to get those 5 million.

No, I think it's more people are seeing us fight for something.

And healthcare premiums are so confusing anyway that just being seen as the people fighting to lower them and Republicans being either opposing lowering them or being dragged to lowering them is helpful to us.

Do you think we'll be able to run on this in the midterms?

I think we will be able to.

I think we will have to run on a lot of things.

One of those things is as people who can actually address inflation and high prices.

And this is a data point in that case.

I don't think it's...

There we go.

We fought if we did something.

We did it or we fought for it.

And

either we did it or they jacked your premiums up.

Those are the two options here.

And it's like a data point in that larger argument.

Do I think what happens in October of 2025 is going to be top of mind in

November of 2026?

Probably not.

Although I will say the, it was much earlier in the year when Trump tried to repeal the ACA in 2017.

And that was still pretty resonant when people went to vote in 2018.

Yeah.

I do think that

even if this is about making the Democrats in Congress who took part in this feel confident that they can fight

and that fighting is a good thing and that taking a risk is a good thing, then that's positive.

You know, like good for them that they got positive reinforcement for taking that risk.

I mean, this is like, this is sort of smallball part of it, but you'll remember this from having been in the Senate at the time.

But the Democrats were a fucking mess after the 2004 election.

And one of the things that actually taught Democrats how to fight back against Bush was the fight to defeat Social Security privatization.

This is akin to that.

It created unity in the party.

It reminded the base that we can fight.

It reminded Democrats in Congress they could fight.

And I think this has the potential to have a similar effect.

Yeah.

I'm shocked that Republicans have not looked to make a deal and get out of this at this point.

Well, it's hard because Trump doesn't understand the issue.

And so like that's the, that's the forcing mechanism you're saying.

But he's probably the one with the best politics on this internally.

He's got like an instinct that because he's like accidentally saying, yeah, I want to do a deal on health care and then he has to walk it back and all that kind of shit.

But like he knows, he doesn't want this issue on the table.

I would imagine not.

And I can't imagine that Republicans in the House and Senate who are trying to keep the House and Senate want this on the table.

And so it's like, if I'm a, if I'm a Republican or a Republican strategist, like I look for a way that it doesn't look like I lost and just gave in to the Democrats, but that we can take the issue off the table and extend the fucking subsidies if I'm looking at the the polling and want to win the midterms one of the things that's keeping a deal from getting done is the lack of vulnerable incumbents in either party

you have basically you have susan collins right who's look who's looking for a deal looking for a deal john ososoff who's not looking for a deal right um and you know because you remember what ended the waffle house shutdown of 2018 was claire mccaskill um

Joe Manchin, all these people were up in 2018 in Red States were like, get me the fuck out of this.

There's just no one in that situation because the other Senate races don't have incumbents, right?

North Carolina, Iowa, Texas, you have an incumbent, but that incumbent's in the middle of a primary where they're basically trying to see who could be the bigger fascists right now.

So that person's not going to cut an Affordable Care Act deal.

And so

that's why it's hard to get a gang together because you don't have people whose own political immediate self-interest is affected by this.

Yeah, it's wild.

All right.

We want to spend just a bit of time on the good news that's being celebrated literally around the world.

Hopefully you've listened to Tommy and Ben on this already, but on Wednesday evening, Hamas accepted the first phase of the Gaza peace plan brokered by the Trump team.

As of this recording, Israel's government was doing the same.

If that happens, the IDF will pull back to a first designated perimeter and Hamas will release the remaining hostages, which Trump says could happen as early as Monday or maybe Tuesday.

He also said he'll be traveling to Israel in the coming days and that he'll meet with hostages once they return.

What do you think?

What do you think?

How about this?

I think, as you mentioned, there's a lot further to do here, right?

This is just the beginning of a process.

But if this means that the hostages are released, if it means that Palestinian political prisoners are released, if it means that the genocide pauses, if it means that more aid gets into Gaza, then this is a great thing and that everyone involved, we should be grateful to the people involved who got this done, even if that means Donald Trump.

Yeah, it's incredible news.

The hostages can come home.

And it's also incredible news news if, like, just, I mean, it's a pause to all hostilities, right?

The bombing's going to be.

And that's why I said, that's why I said pause, not so much.

Right.

Because we have a lot of wars.

That's the big question.

Because, you know, releasing the hostages,

that, you know, that they don't really have any more leverage anymore.

And, you know, you hope that.

Israel and Bibi Netanyahu keeps their end of the deal here and does not resume hostilities.

And you hope that Hamas does not resume hostilities as well.

Right.

And

but the idea that you could stop the killing, stop the slaughter, and stop the starvation, and that aid could come back in, because that's part of the deal too, that immediately aid is rushed in with, you know, no limits like it was before,

would be huge.

It would be huge.

This is a smaller thing, maybe a little picky, but how are you feeling about reading all the tributes to not just Trump, but Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff,

the real estate team from New York?

Got it done.

I'll tell you, John,

I

read that story about Kushner where he just talked about how he's a deal guy.

And this is that actually Middle East Peace is a lot like doing real estate deals.

And that's why he and Wickoff could get it done.

And it got about two-thirds of the way through it.

I decided to do something fun, which is send it to Tommy and Ben and see how they'd react to it.

That's what I've been doing is because

it's making me mad.

And so I'm like, I can't imagine how it's, well, I can now because Tommy Halter is just like, fuck.

Yes.

And so I've decided to stop reading them.

Decided I can take a pause.

I don't need this.

Like we

it's also, and Tommy remember saying this too, like it

Trump, and good for Trump on this, was able to put pressure on BB.

Yeah.

Right.

Which we were told a million times that Joe Biden just couldn't do and wouldn't work.

All right.

And Donald Trump came in and he took too long to put the pressure on BB, way too long.

And like, how many more people fucking died over the last year because he wasn't, he didn't do what he did now and finally told BB, knock it the fuck off, you know, but he did, and it worked.

Yeah.

You know, or at least we hope it works.

Yeah.

It is, it is an indictment of Biden's strategy for sure.

For sure.

All right.

How about the peace prize?

Peace prize.

The peace prize, which is they, they immediately,

it's basically all Trump cares about.

And it's like, all right, if that's your incentive and the incentive, which is,

you know, typical narcissistic incentive, perverse, but if it leads to a good outcome, who are we to judge?

I mean, we can judge.

We can judge, but the outcome would be good, right?

Not the outcome of him getting the peace prize, but the outcome of the war being over.

That's the good outcome.

And by the time you're listening to this,

oh yeah,

it'll be out.

Yeah, because it gets announced tomorrow morning.

And what we did find out is the Guardian said that

I think they've sources in the Nobel Prize committee saying that they picked the winner on Monday.

Yeah, final meeting with the city.

So before

yeah, before

this whole deal came about.

I'm excited for the Axio story about Trump yelling at Kushner and Wickoff for not getting this done over the weekend so that he could get in before the vote.

I'm worried for the Norwegians.

Yeah, that's right.

As you're listening to this, one of two things could be happening.

Trump could have the Nobel Peace Prize or we could be at war with Norway.

Those are the two options.

Which is, again, deeply ironic that to go to war with a country whose committee did not give you the peace prize.

That would be,

and if I were a Norwegian, I would just, I would not get in a boat around those fjords anytime soon if this doesn't go well.

I would just say to the, to the Nobel Prize committee, you have to keep dangling in front of him for as long as possible.

You want him, so yeah, because if he gets it, he's going to stop caring about peace.

So he's got to, the carrot's always got to be like one foot out of his reach.

So he continues.

Like we, we still got to deal with Russia, Ukraine.

There are other things in the world.

Because even while he was trying to get the Nobel Peace Prize, he has started multiple conflicts around the world and sort of just bombing boats everywhere.

So if he doesn't have that incentive, what do we think is going to happen?

President of peace, president of extrajudicial executions at sea, right?

It's just, it's the same thing.

Peace through war, as they always say.

Speaking of which, speaking of which, on Thursday afternoon, final thing we'll leave you with here.

On Thursday afternoon, Christy Noam

tweeted out an AI parody video, all the rage these days among

the Trump administration, of the love boat theme song featuring Trump as the captain,

tailor-made to go viral, piss off libs like us.

And you know what?

It worked.

Here it is.

The drug boats

now are destroyed, and our ocean shown.

The drug boats

perfectly blown into oblivion.

Wiping out narco terror president Trump and J D

America below

I mean, it's just worth pointing out in this absurd time that that is a video of people being killed.

Yeah.

People being murdered.

People being executed with no due process, no evidence, just

killed

as a joke

by the Secretary of Homeland Security.

And they are

saying merely that they are narco-terrorists that they killed, which even if that's true,

is not a legal basis to kill people.

They have not, the government has not even bothered to say who they are, who they were,

has not even bothered to, like you said, offer any evidence whatsoever, offer the identities of the people.

The president of Colombia this week said actually one of the boats was a bunch of Colombian citizens in the boat.

And is that true?

We don't know because the U.S.

government will not provide any information about this.

They are just saying, trust us, we are murdering people at sea.

and we're saying they're narco-terrorists, and we don't have to tell you anything else.

All we have to do is make AI parody videos to the fucking love boat, which is a song that is probably on Donald Trump's iPad that he plays in the new Rose Garden cafe and

dance hall, or whatever it is.

Fuck, what a wall.

This

fucking political system sucks.

The profile, the profiles have been just really, really bad.

That's all I have to say.

But when we come back, you will hear my conversation with Governor J.B.

Pritzker, who's wonderful.

We love J.B.

Pritzker.

And we talk about everything that's going on in Chicago.

Before we get to that, two quick things.

A reminder that we moved Crooked Con,

aka

Antifa HQ, to

that's not funny.

That's not funny.

That's not funny.

In any way, shape, or form.

No?

To a bigger venue.

A bigger venue.

The Ronald Reagan building.

Unlikely place for Antifa HQ, right?

The place you least expect.

It's the Reagan building.

We need some lightness.

Come on.

Bigger venue to accommodate more speakers, more panels, more tickets.

Dan and I are just going to do a one-on-one panel just all about the larger story we have to tell.

I actually think I am doing a panel on that.

You are doing a panel on that.

I am doing a panel on that.

Though you and I could do it, we could do a whole pod on that.

If only we had a weekly podcast to talk about it on.

I know.

We'll have to do it next time.

Too much news.

There's also the VSA Action Hub.

Dan, you haven't had a chance to make a joke about the Action Hub yet.

Care to try?

No, because I applaud people trying to save our democracy.

Okay.

All right.

No, no action hub for you.

Head to cricketcon.com to grab your tickets if you haven't already.

Also, Lovett's got this great new limited series going in the Love It or Leave It feed.

It's called Bravo America, all about how reality TV explains the world we're living in, including our politics.

Seems a little self-serving to me.

You're a Bravo guy, right?

I am a Bravo guy, yes.

Yeah, so you might like this.

I don't know any of the people, some of the people, any of the people that he's.

He's only had one, right?

Right, right.

He gave me some other names, and I just, I was not.

It was Terry DeBrow,

husband of Heather DeBrux of Orange County fame.

Okay.

Okay.

He was also a reality star on his own on the TV show Botched, I think it was called.

Just not a show you want to see about pusk surgery going wrong.

Reality stars being interviewed by a reality guest star.

That's true.

No, he's a true.

He's a reality star.

Yeah.

Yeah, briefly.

That's true.

That's his joke.

It's his own joke from his own show.

Yes.

The series is full of great interviews and insights.

New episodes drop Tuesdays on the Love or to Leave It feed and on YouTube.

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Chevrolet, together let's drive.

Governor Pritzker, welcome back to Podsafe America.

Great to see you, John.

I'm glad to see that you're not in jail, despite the president's

best wishes to the contrary.

He and Christy Noam were just in a cabinet meeting today.

They said that the reason you're pushing back on the guard deployment is because you're scared and threatened by the anarchists and the politics of doing the right thing.

Care to respond?

Yeah, you know, often when the president and his minions

say anything, it's really a reflection of how they're feeling.

They're just projecting on other people.

So I would just say the same right back at them.

I think they're afraid.

And

frankly, I don't think they really understand

the implications of what they're doing, some of them.

And certainly, Christy Noam has absolutely no idea what law enforcement really means, and she's the head of Homeland Security.

How does it feel when you see the President of the United States say that you should be in jail?

Like, what was your reaction to that?

Well, it's never happened to me before.

Oh, it's a new feeling, whatever it is.

Look, I, you know, the thing is, we've heard Donald Trump speak about things he knows nothing about and often makes crazy

assertions.

And

I mean, over time, I guess we've all become a little bit

deafened to

the idea that he actually means anything.

Because from one moment to the other, he says things that he will then change, you know, five minutes later.

He knows he's lying.

So you don't exactly know which one is a lie, which one is a feeling,

you know, which one is something he's actually going to act on.

So

it's, to my mind anyway,

all I can say is the rhetoric itself is dangerous.

I don't, there's no basis upon which to come after me or the mayor of Chicago or Gavin Newsome.

I know that he's talked about jailing him

or any other elected officials that I know of that he's mentioned that are just speaking out.

And look, he hates everyone on the left.

He hates any critic of his.

And so

I'm a critic.

I'm going to get criticism.

I don't think that it's going to have any real impact.

And so I kind of thumb my nose at the guy because I just don't think that he's a serious individual.

By the way, the rest of the world knows that he is not a serious individual.

He's got a lot of power, and I know that too.

But, you know, but as if the guy says something on a day and means it, you can't take that for granted.

So

he and Noam continue to describe Chicago as some kind of a crime-ridden, lawless hellhole where, you know, brave ICE agents are being assaulted by anarchists.

For people who aren't in Chicago, who have only seen like headlines and posts here and there, what's the situation on the ground right now?

Well, day before yesterday, Condé Nast named us the best big city in America.

So let's start with that.

I love Chicago.

It was one of the best places I've ever lived.

Thank you.

And I have to say, you know, we've had truly an amazing summer.

And

I would point out we've had a greater tourism than ever before in the history of Chicago and in the state of Illinois.

So the idea that people are

continuing to come to Chicago to visit us, and yet somehow it's a hellhole and crime-ridden, crime-ridden, and

people are wearing flak jackets and

murders are happening right and left around you.

It's ludicrous.

And now, I recognize we're a big city.

We've had crime in the past.

I think every big city's had a wave of crime that they've had to deal with.

But four years ago to today,

half the number of homicides in the state of Illinois, in the city of Chicago, rather.

The state, by the way, the state of Illinois, including the city, doesn't rank in the bottom half in terms of violent crime.

We're 19th.

I would like to be first, best, most, you know, safest.

That would be first.

We're 19th safest.

So, you know, I'm working on the rest.

But the point is, everything that he's saying about Chicago and Illinois is just something that he's got drilled into his head from, I don't know when.

And the man doesn't read anything.

He doesn't know anything except what he gets told by Stephen Miller or by Christy Noam or by, I don't know who in the White House who have their own designs on

what the world order should look like with Donald Trump as their leader.

Well, and what is going on in Chicago and outside Chicago seems to be, at least for the last several weeks, if not months, ICE agents sort of terrorizing neighborhoods.

It seems like there's been like some protests around the Broadview facility outside Chicago.

And then now.

Just so you know, two blocks

of

people protesting.

I'm talking about on the other side of the street from the Broadview facility, two blocks of people.

That's it.

I mean, now, I will also tell you that when they try to march up and down the streets, you know, in their uniforms and with their

automatic weapons,

and when they go into neighborhoods and try to arrest people, yeah, people are yelling at them.

People, I mean, there are instant protests of just neighbors who are like, what are you doing?

Like, this person is my friend.

He's lived here for 10 years.

Why are you taking him away?

People are really upset about this.

And so there are kind of instant protests.

But this idea that there's some sort of like, I don't know, fires or, you know,

Antifa with masks on are running around, just, it's all so completely false.

And it's very upsetting to me.

Sorry to interrupt you, but the idea that the protests that people are talking about, yeah, there are more and more people showing up because they're getting more and more upset about what's happening.

And ICE is mistreating people, including U.S.

citizens.

They're running up to people who are brown.

You've seen the videos, but I'm telling you, holding somebody who's brown and saying, I need proof of your citizenship.

John, you don't carry proof of citizenship.

I bet you don't.

No, I do not.

I do not.

I mean, we have a driver's license.

That's not proof of citizenship.

And we've never had to do that in this country.

And yet, that is what is now being demanded, or you will be detained and possibly arrested.

And now the Guard has been deployed, and he's federalized the Illinois National Guard, and Texas has sent 200 troops.

What is the status of that?

I know that there was a court hearing today.

Probably there may be a ruling by the time you're all hearing this.

But what's the status of the Guard right now?

Well, I think two things.

One is that they've also deployed California National Guard to Illinois.

That's news, by the way.

I don't think anybody else knows that yet.

There are 14 of them so far from California, we found out today.

The hearing that you're talking about has been going on since earlier this afternoon.

They took a little break in the middle because I think that the feds needed to get some information demanded by the judge to present to them, but they're coming back in

in about an hour and a half from now.

And we're expecting that there will be a ruling, but it's hard to tell.

Have you spoken to Greg Abbott at all

since the deployment of the Texas National Guard to Illinois?

No, he has not called me.

And Greg Abbott, I want to remind you, is the same Greg Abbott who signed a letter last year to President Biden saying do not federalize our National Guard for the purposes of using them with Space Force, that you should have very limited authority to

call our National Guard, the Texas National Guard,

into service service for the federal government's purposes.

And therefore,

that's what his view was a year ago when there was a Democratic president.

Seems like things have changed.

A year later, all of a sudden, he thinks it's just fine to federalize his National Guard to send them to another state or to have the government, the federal government and the president do whatever they want with them.

You said earlier this week that this is all a pretext for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act,

which, you know, I think he probably has fewer limits legally on that if he invokes the Insurrection Act than even the deployment of

the Guard.

But how would that look different than what's happening right now?

What should people know about that?

So, I mean, we're going to get into some legal matters that, although I'm an attorney, I would say I mostly play one on TV these days.

But I can say this, that the Insurrection Act,

let's start with, it's called the Insurrection Act for a reason.

Needs to be an insurrection.

Yeah, yeah.

Or a foreign invasion.

I mean, we have an invasion going on in Chicago.

It is by federal agents at the moment and potentially by federal troops,

or federalized troops.

But the Insurrection Act really can only be invoked in those circumstances.

Truly

a foreign invasion, an insurrection.

Those are basically the circumstances or something that is truly a national emergency.

So he legally can't invoke the Insurrection Act.

I know, again, he woke up this morning with a new idea, you know,

or yesterday morning.

So he's saying it.

Meanwhile,

we have to rely upon the courts.

to protect us from a president just saying things and then doing it,

even though it's unconstitutional illegal.

How would it look different?

Well, to be honest with you, it would look different in the sense that today in court, the federal lawyers are saying

that the reason they want to bring in National Guard is to protect the facilities of ICE and the ICE agents.

So they're not saying, the federal lawyers are not saying this is about crime, which is what Donald Trump continues to say, despite the fact that the lawyers for the federal government are arguing something completely different.

So why are they sending troops in?

Donald Trump is telling them to, and they're coming up with any argument that will work.

But an Insurrection Act,

if the Insurrection Act were invoked,

that could be...

for almost any purpose to repel a foreign invasion, to put down an insurrection.

So it would be hard to determine any difference between protecting facilities, potentially fighting crime.

You know,

it would be martial law, essentially, that could be invoked in the city of Chicago or the state of Illinois under the Insurrection Act.

Again, he has no right to do so.

The act is there for a purpose.

By the same reason, you know, separately that there's a Passe Comitatus Act.

There are reasons why these things were passed and are part of our legal lexicon.

So, you guys have taken legal action on the guard deployments.

What other options are you considering to help protect the people of Illinois from ICE terrorizing the neighborhoods, from

everything else that Donald Trump is trying to do to Illinois and Chicago specifically?

Like, you know, I'm sure you get up every day and your highest priority is to protect people in your state.

And this is obviously a...

pretty extreme situation that it seems like Donald Trump wants to escalate even further.

So

do you have other options or other tools that you can consider?

So,

look, there are limits on the power of states to

overcome

what the federal government is attempting to do.

So

believe me, starting on November the 8th,

we began looking at all of the things that we thought Donald Trump was capable of doing and thinking, trying think through how we could respond, what all of the available responses are.

And still,

you know, there are things we didn't imagine

that are happening.

And so we have to think it through constantly.

And thank God we've got a great attorney general.

I've got a great general counsel in my office and terrific outside counsels that help us as well, not to mention our teams.

And they're basically a bunch of things that we've been doing.

And

I've often sometimes talked about

Trump-proofing our state.

So we've passed laws that have done things to protect people in our neighborhoods.

Again, not knowing exactly what was going to happen, ice on the ground for persistent

months.

But here are some things that we're doing and we'll continue to do.

And then, of course, there are things we could contemplate.

One is we funded something that's, I guess, we're all calling rapid reaction,

which is

local nonprofit nonprofit organizations that when ICE comes into a neighborhood, they are texted or called by people in the neighborhood.

Everybody knows how to get a hold of them in the neighborhoods where we think they're most targeted.

And those folks come in from wherever they are nearby.

It's, you know, they...

They

know

who's nearby and they come as fast as they can.

And the idea is not to interfere with ICE because you're not allowed.

It's not legal to stand in the way of a law enforcement officer of federal government or state.

But rather to make sure that people in the neighborhood generally are warned

what's going on and also to help out people who are being ill-affected.

You know, there's a family, I'll just take an example, a family where maybe there's a mixed status family where one person is undocumented and another person is perhaps partially documented.

Another person yet still is a u.s citizen and ice will come in detain them all uh because they all look alike and nobody has proof on them uh of their status and uh and then you know after perhaps an hour they will have detained them in a car or perhaps removed them to another place and then they'll let the u.s citizen go you know what have you but the rapid reaction force is there to assist what about the children that are there uh what about the the grandma who's not being arrested, but she's now left by herself?

And the neighborhood is traumatized.

One other thing, remember that we've got, I mean, real trauma going on where you've got kids, children at elementary schools nearby who's, they don't know.

You know, we all talk about whether a parent can, you know, walk their child to school because they might get stopped by ice.

And that's one problem.

Another is the children at the school are traumatized by the idea, even now, that they don't know if they go home, if anybody's going to be home when they get there.

And so, this is the world, this is the country, the city that we're living in, the country that we're living in, where that can happen.

So, we're Rapid Reaction Force is there to assist people in the neighborhoods.

We've got Illinois State Police that are

working with local law enforcement in Broadview.

That's a separate suburb.

It's not Chicago.

And it's a very small police department there.

We're working with them and we've brought in the Cook County Sheriff's Office to protect the protesters who, as you've seen in some of the videos, they're getting pelted with

gas pellets, with rubber bullets, even when they're not doing anything wrong.

I think everybody now has seen the, you know, the pastor just standing there praying with his arms wide open and getting pelted.

So, you know, we're doing things to protect people on the ground as best we can.

We've advised ICE that you know, they're doing it wrong and you know and explaining that that you know they should be coordinating and talking to us about where they're going, what they're doing, not because we're going to assist them or or or anything like that, but but rather because we want to make sure that there isn't any misunderstanding or isn't any protest that gets out of hand in any particular location.

That's what we would like.

But they have done no communication with us.

Okay, so let you ask me what are we doing.

So the rest of it is people knowing their rights.

They're not allowed to break down your door if they do not have a judicial warrant.

And they almost never have a judicial warrant.

Now, the building, the South Shore building, that you're probably well aware of, that was, you know, essentially taken over like a war zone,

and under the guise that it was some headquarters of Trend de Aragua,

what happened there, I mean,

they give us no notice.

They gave nobody in the building notice.

Okay, they have to go get somebody.

They had, as I understand it, they had judicial warrant on perhaps a few, two, three trend de Aragua members.

Instead of going after them, and you know, we all understand police, you know, they if you can isolate the apartment or area of a building, you know, they're going to go there and they're going to isolate it and make sure that people are safe who they're not looking at.

Instead, they literally went into this building like they were in a Fallujah.

And repelling off of Blackhawk helicopters, they ransacked the entire place.

Doors are broken, windows are broken.

They kept people, innocent U.S.

citizens and people who are documented.

They kept them detained for hours, some of them zip-tied.

while they went and got the few people that they were going after.

And look, I want them to get the bad guys.

Please understand.

Just like I want our police and the FBI and DEA, I want them to go after gang members, whether they're Trende Aragua or anything else.

But for God's sakes, the innocent people whose lives have been upended, the trauma that the children have gone through, that shouldn't be allowed in this country.

And,

you know, whether they are given immunity by the President of the United States, they are going to be held accountable when there is a change in administration.

They are.

When there is a Democrat in office

or when the Congress takes over, the Democratic Congress takes over and actually does something,

they're going to hold hearings.

People are going to be held accountable and they could be held accountable legally and it might take a few years, which is not at all

satisfying to any of us.

The people who are doing this on the ground need to know that they may feel safe now because the president and Christy Noam and Tom Holman say it's okay.

But trust me, a few years from now, this is going to hurt.

I mean, you mentioned Congress.

So Democrats in Congress have made the government shut down about health care.

They won't vote to fund the government unless Trump and Republicans agree to reverse health care cuts that will lead to huge premium spikes for millions as well as people losing their health care.

I think this is a worthy fight.

both on the substance.

I think it's going to help people if they win.

And and it's also, and I think it's good politically.

I also think that they should be saying they won't fund the government unless Trump and Republicans agree to some basic restrictions on ICE.

And, you know, a federal judge in Illinois, just before we started talking, just imposed temporary restrictions that, you know, prevent ICE from using force or arresting journalists or nonviolent protesters

unless there's probable cause they've committed a crime.

They also prevent ICE from using riot control weapons and throwing people to the the ground unless there's an imminent risk of public safety.

Do you think the Democrats in Congress should be demanding reforms like these around ICE?

We could name a few more, as a condition for funding the government?

Look, I think we should be demanding those things, but I also think that you've got to have some strategy about getting to the end of a shutdown.

And so getting real results so that you can get to the end of a shutdown.

And I believe strongly that that what you just described is something that I've talked about with some senators and congressmen before the shutdown took place.

You know, what should the strategy be?

What should you be going after?

I,

again, I think we should be fighting for, as you just said, like both sides of that, right?

Healthcare and I guess I'll just proudly say democracy.

But I do think that it's very difficult to get actual guarantees from a federal administration, especially one that's being given carte blanche by the Supreme Court.

And, you know, as if they have ultimate executive power with very few limitations, it's hard to get any agreement from them that will hold.

But what you can do is get a piece of legislation that says, you know, we're going to give people or preserve people's health care and make sure that they're not dying because they don't have health care coverage or that their premiums will be doubled.

So

I think there's a limit to what you can demand because otherwise, why not just put everything on the table and say we're not opening up the government until we get all of these things.

So I think, you know, again,

I am not suggesting that we shouldn't be very, very...

vocal and fight very hard to make sure that we're limiting what ICE and CBP are doing.

But I think there's just a limit to what can be done by Congress right now.

And this is actually,

because you raise it, I'll just tell you, it's why I think that governors are so important in this moment.

And

I know that sounds self-serving, but I just am saying that governors, whether it's Gavin Newsom or Maura Healy or Michelle Luhan Grisham, we don't talk about all those folks all the time,

but governors have the ability to

get things done.

And we have.

I mean, Tim Walls, I was just in Minnesota with him.

Boy, look at the things he's gotten done.

And even with a divided, you know, 50-50 legislature.

Yeah.

But in Washington, I mean, it's so little gets done that's positive for the American people.

And

I think that it's a little bit like we need to look back to the states.

We banned

prior authorizations for mental health, for example.

We've expanded health care in a massive way since I've been governor.

We raised the minimum wage, $15 here now from $8.25 when I took office.

Just all of those things are things we got done at the state level that really do help people.

While the federal government is kind of like either hurting or just sitting silent and neutral and getting nothing done, it's a sad state of affairs in the country.

And I do think the 2026 elections are going to be vital for determining which direction we're really going to go.

For sure.

And you have warned a few times now that Trump might use the military in connection with the 2026 elections.

What specifically are you worried about and what do you think can be done about it?

Yeah.

Well, I think we're seeing something very unusual.

And I guess I'm going to piece a few things together for you just to make the point.

So we're seeing the agents themselves dressed as soldiers marching in a major city, in several major cities, causing mayhem and hoping to bring in more soldiers, right?

These folks, nobody knows the difference between somebody wearing camouflage and holding an automatic weapon who happens to be an ICE agent and someone who's

wearing the same thing, you know, who's a soldier.

So

the normalization of that is what I think their aim is.

And, you know, they keep expanding more cities, more cities, right?

It's easier to do it in a red state, even in a blue city, but a red state, than it is in a blue state.

But that's, you know, so you're seeing them do it in blue states and red states.

Now,

that's one thing that's happening, the normalization and militarization of cities.

Another thing that's happened, and very few people paying attention, you probably are,

which is they asked for, they demanded, the DOJ did, our voter data, not just ours in Illinois.

Every state's voter data.

Why?

They won't tell us why.

And actually,

what they seem to be looking for, remember back to the 2020 elections, is they want to be able to find voter fraud, which

lots of organizations have been looking for voter fraud, as you know, for a long time.

There's very little voter fraud going on, very little.

They're calling for all these databases so that they can look through them, and yet they won't tell you when they're going to come up with any conclusion about whatever it is they're looking for.

Next year, when we have a November election, I think you're going to see two things that occur.

One, you won't have had any results from this mass collection of data, of voter data.

And then the second is you're going to have soldiers or people dressed as soldiers at polling places saying we're protecting your voting rights.

You know, this is about voter integrity.

And then the possibility that they'll be doing what Michael Flynn urged the president to do back in 2020, which is seize the ballot boxes at the polling places so that we can have the military do a fair count.

Now,

if you put all the things together that are happening right now,

that doesn't wouldn't surprise me at all.

Think about how hard they fought on this issue of whether the election had been stolen.

in 2020, right?

The January 6th riot being an example of that, but lots of other things.

And then all of those people at January 6th, you know, being pardoned.

All of that, put all those together and ask yourself, do you think what I just said is completely ridiculous?

Do you think what I just said is something that's really possible with Trump as president and Stephen Miller in the White House and

all the same people kind of advising the president that are at the, you know, at the edges of the law?

I think it's definitely possible.

It doesn't sound that far-fetched.

I think my concern is, A,

so what do we do about that?

And B,

it's like, I'm sure you walk this fine line all the time, which is we want to warn people like, hey, wake up, this is happening or this could happen.

But also, you don't want to scare people into staying home and depressing turnout, right?

And so how do you think about like the way to handle that this could be coming in 2026?

They're the ones who want to scare people to stay home, right?

That's the purpose of having troops.

So that, I mean, that's one of the purposes.

But look, I think we've just got to make it plain to people that now is a moment when you're going to have to

choose to,

are you going to just let democracy go?

And I might remind you, because I know you're a political being, as any elected official is too.

This is not how we win elections.

Like talking about democracy, I was not a fan of what...

Joe Biden did at that Valley Forge.

I thought it was a great speech he gave at Valley Forge in January of 2024.

But I didn't go in part because I didn't think that should not be the theme of a campaign.

And that's what he was trying to make it.

And because I don't think democracy is the issue on which you win.

I do think that you can't win unless you have democracy.

So those of us who have any power to do anything about it need to stand up and speak out about the danger of losing democracy.

And then we've also got to run campaigns all across the United States.

I'm running for re-election, but the Congress in particular, we've got to make sure that we're running campaigns about things that really matter in everybody's life.

I'll tell you a quick story, if I can, about something that happened to me when I was working on Capitol Hill.

I worked for two United States senators many years ago in my 20s.

I got offered the opportunity to go with this organization you may have heard of called the American Council of Young Political Leaders to a foreign country with half Democrats, half Republicans, young people like me at the time,

where we learned about the, we got sent to Argentina to learn about their political system, and they would bring bring people from other countries to learn about ours we went there we landed in buenos aires and the minute we landed strangely there was a military coup i promise i had nothing to do with it um but it and so we went to the uh to the uh hotel all of us together and watched on tv what was happening um and then we had to make a decision or at least the leader of our troop our group said we have to make a decision are we going to go to the to the embassy and wait it out?

Or are we going to go, there's going to be a democracy rally the next day in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires.

Should we go there to learn about democracy, like, you know, in person in this situation?

And by the way, the vote was basically half and half.

The Republicans all wanted to go to the embassy.

The Democrats all wanted to go to the democracy rally.

We went to the democracy rally, the tiebreaker being the leader of the group.

And

we got to see hundreds of thousands of people carrying banners and

talking about democracy, yelling, chanting, and so on.

And

there was a guy in the middle of all of that with an ice cream cart selling popsicles and ice cream.

And I remember that vividly.

I'm 60 years old now.

I was 23 at the time.

I still remember it vividly because I remember thinking at the time and talking to a few of the people I was with about the fact that That guy doesn't mostly care about what the form of government is.

What he cares about is he's got to put food on the, That's the number one consideration is the food on the table, right?

He's got to put gas in his car.

He's got to survive.

And I think about that now, thinking about our elections coming up next year, that the number one issue in people's lives is, can I put food on the table, get to work?

Can I, you know, can I feed my family or take care of them and have a home to live in?

And the number two issue is, you know, the form of government.

And so we've got to win elections on number one.

And then we've also also got to fight for number two in order to have the elections.

Governor Pritzker, well said.

And thank you, as always, for joining Pod Save America.

Thanks, John.

That's our show for today.

Thanks, J.B.

Pritzker, for joining.

Tommy Lovett and I will be back with a new show next week.

Bye, everyone.

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