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Speaker 2 Welcome to Plaza Save America. I'm John Fabre.

Speaker 1 I'm John Lovett. I'm Tommy Detour.

Speaker 2 Love it, you're in New York. Are you doing some last-minute canvassing for Cuomo?

Speaker 1 No, I'm doing it.

Speaker 1 It's more like a hurricane or war reporting as I watch the people escape the city before the socialists take over a lot of BMW X-5s with their stuff loaded on the roof like they're Okies.

Speaker 1 Pretty exciting time here.

Speaker 2 Just trying to stuff all the means of production you can in your pockets before you take off.

Speaker 1 It's my last time visiting New York City as a business owner.

Speaker 1 Excited to be here part of a commune of some kind in the future, but for now I'm here as a management.

Speaker 19 Bill Ackman's just throwing all the words into his bucket for his long, long tweets.

Speaker 2 Oh, the character with. That's right.

Speaker 2 Enjoy the grocery stores while you can.

Speaker 2 On today's show, we'll talk about Trump's lengthy 60-minutes interview from Mar-a-Lago that was recorded just hours before hosting a great Gatsby-themed Halloween party in the midst of a government shutdown he refuses to do anything about.

Speaker 2 We'll also cover the newsiest moments from that interview, which includes Trump's new urge to test nuclear weapons, potential ground wars in Venezuela and Nigeria, and his push to end the filibuster.

Speaker 2 There you go. We'll also talk about the intra-maga battle over Tucker Carlson and white nationalist Nick Fuentes, as well as all the last-minute activity in the big elections wrapping up today.

Speaker 2 Then I'll be talking to George Redis, the combat veteran and American citizen who was detained by ICE while driving to work and put in solitary confinement for three days with absolutely no due process whatsoever.

Speaker 2 Wild story and raging story. But let's start with Trump's big interview with 60 Minutes Nora O'Donnell.

Speaker 2 His first sit-down with the show since CBS and Paramount chose to pay him a $16 million settlement over their decision to not air one part of one answer that Kamala Harris gave during her 60 Minutes interview during the 2024 campaign.

Speaker 2 It was also Trump's first interview since David Ellison, son of Trump donor and close ally Larry Ellison, took over CBS and installed Barry Weiss as the news division's editor-in-chief.

Speaker 2 Trump, of course, brought up the the settlement during the interview, as well as all the good things he's heard about Weiss.

Speaker 2 But he also faced some tough, newsy questions from Nora on a range of topics that we'll go through. But let's start with deportations and military deployments.

Speaker 20 Americans have been watching videos of ICE tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows. Have some of these raids gone too far?

Speaker 21 No, I think they haven't gone far enough.

Speaker 20 You're okay with those tactics.

Speaker 21 Yeah, because you have to get the people out.

Speaker 20 Well, you promised in your campaign that you were going to deport the worst of the worst.

Speaker 2 Violent criminals,

Speaker 21 rapists. Well, that's what we have.

Speaker 20 But a lot of the people that your administration has arrested and deported aren't violent criminals. Landscapers, nannies, construction workers.

Speaker 2 Landscapers.

Speaker 20 Arm workers. You said, if we need more than the National Guard, we'll send more than the National Guard.
What does that mean, send more than the National Guard?

Speaker 21 Well, if you had to send in the Army or if you had to send in the Marines, I'd do that in a heartbeat.

Speaker 20 So you're going to send the military into American cities?

Speaker 21 Well, if I wanted to, I could.

Speaker 21 If I wanted to use the Insurrection Act, the Insurrection Act has been used routinely by presidents, and if I needed it, that would mean I could bring in the Army, the Marines, I could bring in whoever I want.

Speaker 21 But I haven't chosen to use it. I hope you give me credit for that.

Speaker 2 So those answers both sent to me, like Stephen Miller, very much still running the show,

Speaker 2 and maybe Trump's information diet. What did you guys make of those answers, Tommy?

Speaker 19 I tend to take Trump at his word that he doesn't think it's gone far enough. I mean, it would have been very easy.

Speaker 19 Obviously, he didn't have the benefit of the video of some of those worst excesses, but it would be very easy to rhetorically distance yourself from like abuses or harming American citizens.

Speaker 19 And there's real political risk, I think, for Trump if people begin to think that the raids have gone too far.

Speaker 19 And like stories about Americans getting beat up, George Redis' story, the priest we've talked about who got shot in the head with a pepper ball, raids at Home Depots, like, you know, your sort of feature stories about someone who's lived here for 30 years and is now getting deported despite not having done anything.

Speaker 19 Like, those are bad. People don't like that.
And I think it's telling that he doesn't distance himself there. And also, the policy itself has gotten more extreme.

Speaker 19 And, you know, like, that's happening with personnel too. Like, Tom Homan seemingly wasn't extreme enough for these guys.

Speaker 19 They've elevated this nut, Greg Bovino, who is behind a lot of the worst stuff happening in Chicago, for example, like the tear gassing of kids trick-or-treating. They made up a new title for him.

Speaker 19 He's now the commander-at-large. He reports directly to Christy Noam.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 19 Stephen Miller is clearly a huge driver of the policy. I agree with you, but Trump seemed to think he seems to like it.

Speaker 2 Love it.

Speaker 2 You've been going back and forth on the Insurrection Act and the potential invocation of the Insurrection Act.

Speaker 2 I thought it was interesting that he wants credit for not doing it yet. Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So part of this, I do think it

Speaker 1 he will never, when asked by a mainstream journalist, are you going too far? He will never ever say yes.

Speaker 1 But if he's called by his, say, agriculture secretary about raids at meat packing plants causing a problem for business, all of a sudden he'll pop off about how, yeah, we've got to deport people, but we also need people to do the farming and do the growing and do the jobs and the landscaping.

Speaker 1 So like, I don't know if this represents any kind of actual shift or like kind of

Speaker 1 new insight into what he actually thinks, but he will not give an inch on any of this when he's going to talk to a mainstream journalist because he wants to do his sort of tough guy performance.

Speaker 1 I wonder if he's asked

Speaker 1 about people who support his policies on immigration broadly or voted for him because they thought he would crack down on the border that view his success at the border as something that they appreciate but worry about this, what he would say if it's framed more towards the people who actually kind of are allied with him.

Speaker 1 But beyond that, you know, he is

Speaker 1 going down this dark path and does not seem at least rhetorically interested in stopping.

Speaker 2 Aaron Powell, Jr.: Yeah, I sort of wonder if

Speaker 2 what he would have said if he was asked about like the ProPublica story that sort of detailed all of the American citizens who'd been detained.

Speaker 2 I imagine he would just be like, well, I don't know anything about that. And they just sort of like,

Speaker 2 they wave it off. To your point, Tommy, though, new NBC news poll that came out over the weekend,

Speaker 2 you know, by 55 to 44%, people do not think the current deployments of National Guard troops are justified.

Speaker 2 ICE is viewed positively by only 39% of Americans, and 50% view ICE negatively, including two-thirds of black and Hispanic voters view ICE negatively.

Speaker 2 And those negative views, apparently, of ICE, that's like a new high. It's doubled since 2020.
And obviously,

Speaker 2 they weren't too loved in 2020 either. So that is interesting.

Speaker 1 And also, there's also been a bunch of reporting about division inside the administration between ICE and the Border Patrol, about those that believe ICE is being tagged for some of the worst excesses of the Border Patrol, people inside of those agencies that believe they're going too far in a way that is redounding to negative perceptions of

Speaker 1 the agency and are not sort of contributing to the goals they set out to achieve at the beginning. So I do think beneath this, there is still that actual political problem.

Speaker 1 He's just not going to answer it in a question that's about like, are you tough enough, sir?

Speaker 2 I will say, just broadly, watching the 60 Minutes interview,

Speaker 2 it really

Speaker 2 stands out how long it's been since he sat down for a full interview with a real journalist. Because I think Nora did a good job.

Speaker 2 She also just had so many things to get through that even on something like that, you can't really follow up more than once or twice because you really have to talk about a whole bunch of shit.

Speaker 19 And he gave her 90 minutes. I mean, this is a long interview.
Like, again, the one thing this guy does is he makes himself available.

Speaker 19 Usually it's to Marjorie Taylor Green's boyfriend more than anybody else, but you know, 90 minutes.

Speaker 2 Trump was also asked about his recent pardon of Binance founder CZ,

Speaker 2 who was serving time for failing to stop terrorist money laundering on his platform.

Speaker 2 The pardon came after CZ publicly asked for a pardon and after Binance made sure that Trump's family crypto coin was used to facilitate a $2 billion investment. Complete coincidence, of course.

Speaker 2 Here's the 60 Minutes Exchange.

Speaker 20 Why did you pardon him?

Speaker 21 Okay, are you ready? I don't know who he is. I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that, and I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.

Speaker 20 His crypto exchange, Binance, helped facilitate a $2 billion purchase of World Liberty Financial's stablecoin and then you pardoned cz

Speaker 2 how do you address the appearance of pay-for-play well here's the thing i know nothing about it because i'm too busy doing the other i can only tell you that but i got a minute i can only tell you this i do i look i nora like had good tough questions on this i do wonder if that's a moment where you throw away your script and you're like you don't know the guy you pardoned that you've gotten a bunch of tough questions about like the really corrupt guy the money launder you don't know who that is you just pardoned him are you not very upset right now that uh Joe Biden apparently didn't really pardon any of the people he pardoned, but used an auto pen?

Speaker 2 Isn't that one of your big, you want an investigation over that, but you don't know the people you're pardoning?

Speaker 1 It's crazy. There's an auto pen hanging.
He hung the auto pen in the White House because he's mad that Joe Biden didn't know who he's pardoning. It's outrageous.
It's outrageous.

Speaker 2 You'll never believe this, guys, but the rest of that Trump answer where she asks him, is he concerned at all? And he says, I can't say because I can't say I'm not concerned. I don't.

Speaker 2 I'd rather not have you ask the question.

Speaker 2 That part was omitted from the extended version of the interview on YouTube. So can we also for $15 million?

Speaker 19 Congrats on the new gig, Barry Weiss.

Speaker 1 I didn't realize that. Because I know that I saw that they had cut it from what had aired and I saw the transcript of it.
It doesn't even, it's not even in that extended cut on you.

Speaker 1 They just don't even have the video of it.

Speaker 2 That's what Austin told us. Not even on the extended colour.
That's why it's interesting.

Speaker 19 It is just for folks who have been following this. I mean, CZ did four months in jail.
Binance paid $4.3 billion in fines. It was the largest settlement in U.S.
history.

Speaker 19 And again, they willfully failed to report financial transactions with al-Qaeda, ISIS, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas. There was money going to Iran and other sanctioned companies.

Speaker 19 There was money going to websites selling child sex abuse material. And the willful piece is so important.

Speaker 19 Like the New Yorker quoted Binance's chief compliance officer saying, I assume it's like a Slack message or something, saying, come on, they are here for crime.

Speaker 19 They knew what their customers were doing. And so, but Trump, like, he pardons this guy? Obviously, because Binance, they wrote the code to USD1, which is the Trump family stablecoin.

Speaker 19 They facilitated this investment into Binance by this Emirati-backed firm. And Binance asked that it be done in USD1, which was barely on the map.
It had like been launched in March.

Speaker 19 Now it's the sixth largest stablecoin in the world. And the Trump family will make an estimated $80 million per year in interest alone off of that investment.
That's how we got a.

Speaker 2 He knows nothing about it. Knows nothing about it.
He knows nothing about it. I don't know.
Ready? I don't know this guy.

Speaker 2 He was like proud of the answer too ready ready i have no idea who he is ready work on this it's like look you think you've got me in some kind of gotcha get guess

Speaker 1 guess what i don't have a clue who this guy is my doing this wasn't corruption it's pure incompetence the

Speaker 1 the other the other part of this too like all these pardons

Speaker 1 like santos cz the the the insurrectionists

Speaker 1 They're like right now, there are people inside the Department of Justice, the FBI, prosecutors looking at whether or not to investigate Republicans or other allies of Trump.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't know how you would bring yourself to put the energy and hard work into what it takes to do one of these prosecutions, to do one of these investigations, when you know that you're going to have the legs cut out from under you.

Speaker 1 The second anybody gets a call into Trump because he is pardoning anybody. He's basically made it so that Republicans or his closest allies

Speaker 2 cannot be held accountable for federal crimes.

Speaker 2 I don't think those people should worry because I don't think they're going to get assigned to any more of these cases while Donald Trump is president.

Speaker 2 I don't think that's going to be a priority for the department.

Speaker 19 By the way, did George Santos get hired to do something with DOJ?

Speaker 19 He posted this photo of himself now that he's out and he's like, I'm doing something working with DOJ in some way, but it wasn't clear what he's talking about.

Speaker 2 I mean, I'm sure sky's the limit, Deputy Attorney General.

Speaker 19 What does he want?

Speaker 1 Yeah, give him a gig. He's going to go talk to school kids about, you know,

Speaker 1 like staying clean.

Speaker 2 That kind of thing. Staying clean.
So on CZ, Trump's going with no idea who he is.

Speaker 2 But on Sunday, when he was asked about Prince Andrew being banished from the British royal family over his involvement in the Epstein scandal, Trump said, quote, that's been a tragic situation, and it's too bad.

Speaker 2 I mean, I feel badly for the family. Not exactly a characteristic show of empathy from Donald Trump, is it?

Speaker 19 Not the families of the victims. He feels bad for the royal family.
I mean, again, remember, so this book came out by an Epstein victim named Virginia Duffray. She died by suicide in February.

Speaker 19 In that book, she says she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew after being trafficked by Epstein, and that Prince Andrew said to her that his daughters were, quote, just a little younger than you on the evening of their first alleged sexual encounter when she was 17.

Speaker 19 So this guy is a total scumbag. It has been known at the time.
He did this disastrous 2019 interview with the BBC where he said he had no recollection of meeting Juffrey.

Speaker 19 But then he settles a lawsuit with her for like tens of millions of dollars.

Speaker 19 So it's gross. He lied about cutting ties with Epstein.
There's emails that prove it. But yeah, but Trump's empathy is with the royal family.

Speaker 2 I just don't get like Lovett. It's like he could have so easily given an answer there that's like, no, you know what? Good.
He's a creep. Just like Jeffrey Epstein's a creep.

Speaker 2 And that's why I kicked him out of my club. And I don't want to have any, I don't have anything to do with these people.
Like, you could, what is the purpose?

Speaker 2 Who is this helping aside from Prince Andrew?

Speaker 1 I have

Speaker 1 no fucking idea. It's actually like strange.

Speaker 1 He's shown a great deal of empathy in the past couple of of weeks for

Speaker 1 Argentinian beef producers and Prince Andrew. Like that's sort of where his heart goes.

Speaker 1 I don't know if it's because he is thinking about Prince Charles and trying to like, you know, be sympathetic to Prince Charles in some way because he's a king and he likes kings.

Speaker 1 It's just fucking bizarre. Or is it just that Andrew knows shit?

Speaker 1 I mean, you got to go.

Speaker 2 First it was, I wish her well back during the campaign. Now she's in a minimum security.
Now she was transferred to a nice prison. And who knows if she'll get the pardon herself?

Speaker 19 Maybe Andrew will live in a compound on Mar-a-Lago. He needs housing.
He's getting kicked out of his palace.

Speaker 2 Maybe he'll get maybe he'll be at the next Gatsby party. Yeah, he'll be at the

Speaker 1 Roaring 20s events. They're doing a series this year at Mar-a-Lago.
Yeah, it does seem like if anyone even tangentially related to this situation, he is nothing but warm words.

Speaker 1 Until they die in prison, then he can call them creeps.

Speaker 2 It is true.

Speaker 2 The one constant for Trump, though, is sympathy for other rich and powerful creeps.

Speaker 2 he always has lots of sympathy for them.

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Speaker 2 President of Peace also got a few questions about the military buildup and illegal executions he's ordered in the Caribbean, specifically the threats his administration keeps making against Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.

Speaker 2 Here's that exchange.

Speaker 20 Are we going to war against Venezuela?

Speaker 21 I doubt it. I don't think so, but they've been treating us very badly, not only on drugs.

Speaker 21 They've dumped hundreds of thousands of people into our country that we didn't want. People from prison, they emptied their mental institutions and their insane asylums.

Speaker 20 Are Maduro's days as president numbered?

Speaker 21 I would say, yeah. I think so, yeah.

Speaker 20 And this issue of potential land strikes in Venezuela, is that true?

Speaker 21 I don't tell you that. I mean, I'm not saying it's true or untrue, but I, you know, I wouldn't.

Speaker 2 Why wouldn't you?

Speaker 21 I wouldn't be inclined to say that I would do that,

Speaker 21 because I don't talk to a reporter about whether or not I'm going to strike.

Speaker 2 Tommy, does that sound like a guy who's just saber-rattling to you?

Speaker 19 Fair point at the end there.

Speaker 19 So the last time we talked about this issue, I think I cited a stat from this think tank, CSIS, that said about 10% of all deployed U.S. naval assets were in the Caribbean.

Speaker 19 Since then, Trump has announced they're sending the USS Gerald Ford, which is an aircraft carrier. So that means when that bad boy gets there, it comes with a couple guided missile destroyers.

Speaker 19 There will be another 4,000 additional troops. I think it gets at like 16,000 U.S.
troops and sailors in the Caribbean total. And that comes on top of all the other stuff like

Speaker 19 a nuclear-powered sub,

Speaker 19 an amphibious assault ship, B-52 bombers, B-1 bombers, F-35s.

Speaker 19 People spotted these like specialized attack helicopters off the coast of Venezuela training. And so.

Speaker 2 Silver lining, more troops in the Caribbean means fewer troops available for the cities.

Speaker 19 That's true. That is true.

Speaker 19 But the interesting thing about this is as the the Caribbean buildup grows, they are increasingly hitting boats that are alleged narco-traffickers in the Pacific Ocean, on the other side of the continent, right?

Speaker 19 So none of this makes any sense. You have all these troops, 16,000 U.S.
troops in the Caribbean. We're killing people in the Pacific Ocean.

Speaker 19 And so there were reports last week that I think Nora was getting out the U.S. had already picked targets in Venezuela, on Venezuelan soil to hit.

Speaker 19 This whole operation is reportedly being run by Marco Rubio, who wants a regime change operation to topple the Maduro government, in part because he thinks you take down the Cuban government by taking out Maduro first.

Speaker 19 So it's completely insane.

Speaker 19 He's also doing this while demanding the Nobel Peace Prize, which is annoying and galling.

Speaker 19 But yeah, I mean, it feels like there's a lot of momentum behind this. We'll see if he actually does it.

Speaker 2 You see that NBC News just reported, too, that they've already started planning.

Speaker 2 The Defense Department has already, sorry, Department of War has already started planning for strikes in Mexico to get the cartels there.

Speaker 2 And we should know that the strikes aren't imminent, according to NBC News' reporting, but the planning has already begun.

Speaker 19 I mean, at least that's where fentanyl trafficking actually happens. There's no fentanyl in Venezuela, yet they keep claiming that these ships are loaded up with fentanyl.

Speaker 19 If anything, it's cocaine, but it's probably not even going to the U.S.

Speaker 2 How many countries in Central and South America can we go to war with?

Speaker 19 What is going on here? You Google how many there are.

Speaker 1 It's just so sad that all this is happening while John Bolton is unavailable.

Speaker 2 I know.

Speaker 1 What a bummer for him because, I mean, this is it.

Speaker 2 Is bittersweet, would you call it?

Speaker 1 Yeah, like he sees all this the amassing of U.S. military assets off the coast, and he's just like, God damn it, I can't even get off on this ramp.

Speaker 2 I'm so fucking up.

Speaker 2 Because I'm so anxious because of my trials and my crimes. Fuck, this sucks.

Speaker 2 That's what he thinks.

Speaker 19 This whole thing is so 80s, though. It's like very Trumpian in that sense.
It's like the worst excesses of the Reagan era, Noriega, the CIA toppling governments. I mean, it's just a throwback.

Speaker 1 Coke is back.

Speaker 19 Yeah, cooking is back.

Speaker 2 I did see in some of the some of the polling over the weekend, like we've previously seen polling that shows, you know, strikes uh are unfortunately quite quite popular quite strikes in the boats even like strikes you know lobbing a few strikes to venezuela or whatever if there's narco traffickers but then there then someone finally asked the question i think it was a you gov poll about like military action in venezuela and said very unpopular yeah because and this is where trump is living right which is um he knows that wars people don't like wars they don't like troops they don't like you know the potential loss of american life or or spending billions of dollars on foreign wars they don't like any of that but they do like if he can just pretend that the whole thing is just a few quick strikes taking out boats then uh then he's got the public with them yeah i think like you know he'll win a couple rounds of pr wars and headlines but ultimately fentanyls in china that get sent to mexico where they're put together and trafficked to the united states if you're worried about cocaine the problem is much more coming from ecuador and colombia but blowing up a bunch of boats you know in the pacific or off the coast of venezuela and the caribbean it's just not going to solve any problems I mean, again, it might like Pete Hexeth likes it, he likes to tweet it out and show these snuff films, but you're not going to fix anything.

Speaker 1 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, I also think it does matter, too, that you have Republicans coming out of these

Speaker 1 closed-door hearings, being like, we're not satisfied with these answers. You have Rand Paul saying these are the definition of extra version of these are the definition of extrajudicial killings.

Speaker 1 Reports that they don't even know the names of who they're killing, the idea that they're, oh, they're three hops or some, or to some, to you know, three degrees from

Speaker 1 like direct observation of the traffickers themselves, which is sort of like absolutely shocking.

Speaker 1 So I do think the public debate will matter.

Speaker 19 Yeah, it's like

Speaker 19 you're neighbors with the cousin of a drug trafficker. You can be blown up in these strikes under like a three-hop intelligence scenario.
It's insane.

Speaker 2 Which, of course, is there's no legal basis for that. It is fucking made up three-hop but bullshit.

Speaker 19 Again, this is another place where people will go to jail, I think, someday based on this policy if Trump doesn't stick around in office forever. I mean, this is just extrajudicial murder.

Speaker 2 Seems like Trump now wants to start wars on as many continents as possible. He also threatened to attack Nigeria over the weekend based on what he says is the country's failure to protect Christians.

Speaker 2 Trump said he ordered the Department of War to prepare for possible action to wipe out Islamic terrorists and that, quote, if we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our cherished Christians.

Speaker 2 Tommy, what's this all about?

Speaker 19 Unclear. So there are real extremist groups and real extremist group problems in Nigeria.

Speaker 1 There's a group called Boko Haram.

Speaker 19 They operate mostly in northeastern Nigeria. There is no evidence that their attacks are focused on Christians.
In fact, Boko Haram just indiscriminately murders civilians.

Speaker 19 They attack churches, mosques, anyone, but they operate in areas that are predominantly Muslim. So the idea that Boko Haram is doing this doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 2 There's also, I mean, complicating this, is

Speaker 19 there's a problem in central Nigeria where you've got these semi-nomadic cattle herders attacking Christian farmers, but that's fighting over scarce land and water resources.

Speaker 19 And so those clashes really have killed a bunch of Christian farmers, but those are not Boko Haram groups. Those are just like people who need land.

Speaker 19 So the Nigerian government is just like confused, I think. They want U.S.
support. They want to help battling Boko Haram and other extremist groups.

Speaker 19 But making this like a Muslim versus Christian thing is really unhelpful. And the Nigerian president, this guy, Bola Tanubu, he is married to a Christian minister.
He's a Muslim man.

Speaker 19 So I think it's like hard to argue that he's turning a blind eye to attacks on Christians, or at least there's no evidence of that.

Speaker 19 I think it's just more like it's just really hard to battle these extremist groups.

Speaker 19 And Nigeria is situated in a part of Africa that is just south of all these countries where there's a really bad extremism problem. And there have been a bunch of coups and that has led to the U.S.

Speaker 19 and French counterterrorism forces getting pushed out, the Russians coming in, the Wagner group and these other mercenaries.

Speaker 1 And so it's not clear to me what Trump is doing.

Speaker 19 Like, I think there's a bunch of right-wing Christian groups who have been lobbying Congress and stuff. stuff, and I think that probably

Speaker 19 him. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I was like, if I had to guess, it would be like something started in a right-wing fever swamp online somewhere, but maybe it's the direct lobbying that suddenly it got to him somehow through all of his crazy channels or people who are now running the government.

Speaker 19 Someone he ran into at an event or at Mar-a-Lago or whatever. I mean, ultimately, this will probably result in the U.S.
selling a bunch more weapons to Nigeria.

Speaker 19 But like, it's just particularly strange. I mean, one, it's the second time he's like claimed a genocide against a group that's not being genocided, like remember the white farmers in South Africa.

Speaker 19 And two, there is an actual genocide happening in Sudan as we speak, where the RSF, this militia group, has taken over all of Darfur and are just massacring civilians.

Speaker 19 But he's tweeting about Christians in Nigeria. It's just like very divorced from reality.

Speaker 2 Fucking weird.

Speaker 2 Dan and I talked last episode about Trump's announcement that the U.S. will resume nuclear testing, quote, on an equal basis.
That's Trump's words.

Speaker 2 And Trump's seeming confusion between testing that involves detonating actual nuclear warheads, which no country but North Korea has done since 1992, and even North Korea has done it since 2017.

Speaker 2 Difference between that and testing nuclear delivery devices, which Russia has recently done.

Speaker 2 Trump's energy secretary, Chris Wright, who would be responsible for testing nukes, clarified over the weekend that the tests will not be nuclear explosions.

Speaker 2 But Trump still seemed a bit confused on 60 Minutes.

Speaker 20 Why do we need to test our nuclear weapons?

Speaker 21 Well, because you have to see how they work. We're We're the only country that doesn't test, and I don't want to be the only country that doesn't test.

Speaker 20 The only country that's testing nuclear weapons is North Korea. China and Russia.

Speaker 21 No, no, Russia's testing nuclear weapons.

Speaker 20 My understanding.

Speaker 21 And China's testing them, too. You just don't know about it.

Speaker 20 That would be certainly very newsworthy.

Speaker 19 That was like a great moment for Nora.

Speaker 1 And you know, look, there have been moments, like, it's an impossible conversation to have with Donald Trump. He's all over the place.
You've got every issue under the sun.

Speaker 1 You've got Barry Weiss in the rafters above the fucking studio waiting to pounce down if you go too hard. Like really like a delicate balance.

Speaker 1 But man, just incredibly stupid shit.

Speaker 2 It is funny listening to Nora try to be like, well, it's my understanding.

Speaker 2 Meaning like the facts are, Mr. President, because once again, I have to tell you something that's real since you're in fucking la-la land.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Tommy, should we rest easier after Chris Wright's comments or no?

Speaker 1 I hope so.

Speaker 19 I mean, like you said, I mean, the Russians, basically, like whenever it seems like NATO's going to have have some balls and maybe send long-range weapons to Ukraine, Putin does something to sort of rattle the nuclear saber.

Speaker 19 And this time, it was again talking about this nuclear cruise missile, which he claims to have tested, which they rolled out in 2018, by the way.

Speaker 19 So this one wasn't new.

Speaker 19 And then they say they have this other, like a super torpedo that can get to the east coast or the west coast and detonate and cause a tsunami, which a lot of people question would ever work.

Speaker 19 But also, neither weapon like changes the strategic calculus of nuclear warfare, which is if you start it, like, mutually assured destruction will happen in any of these cases, right?

Speaker 19 So, these are not like game-changing weapons. And so, what Trump is talking about, I mean,

Speaker 19 it makes no sense. Like, we, like you said, we stopped nuclear testing in 1992.
There was the comprehensive test ban treaty that was put into place in 1996. The U.S.

Speaker 19 doesn't need to test more nuclear weapons because we've tested more nuclear weapons than anybody. We've done like a thousand tests since World War II.
The Russians did around 700, the Chinese did 45.

Speaker 2 Nice.

Speaker 19 And, like, we have more nuclear testing data than anybody. And if we get rid of the restrictions on testing, what will happen?

Speaker 19 The Chinese will test a ton of nuclear weapons as they raced to build a stockpile that's equivalent to ours before they'll enter into any like non-proliferation treaties.

Speaker 19 So it's a terrible strategic idea. Where are you going to do it? Like, are we going to go back to Nevada?

Speaker 19 I think what the Energy Secretary is getting at is the nuclear testing site has been refurbished to do other things.

Speaker 19 You would take like a year to three years to get that back to a place where you could actually test nuclear weapons.

Speaker 1 It's mostly focused on sports betting, yeah.

Speaker 19 Just a Calcian tradition.

Speaker 1 It's a lot of servers for those apps.

Speaker 19 Like people in Nevada would go nuts if all of a sudden we were detonating nukes in the continental U.S. again.

Speaker 19 So anyway, it's just crazy, but there's parts of the conservative movement that actually do want to do this. Like as part of Project 2025,

Speaker 19 they talked about essentially,

Speaker 1 like they said, we should ditch the CTBT and be postured to begin testing nukes again because some people really believe that the way you win a nuclear war is just by creating more nukes which is like kind of an idea abandoned by ronald reagan in the 80s but i don't know these people are nuts it's funny it's funny just project 2025 of course like oh yeah there's a nuclear section it's also it's like their whole philosophy in that thing was like no good ideas in a brainstorm just like if you've thought of something that would make the world a more dangerous and scary place we want it in here because this is our fucking shot did you see that when he started talking about taiwan that uh he said now he it was similar to what he said about uh maduro he said i'm not going to tell you you're a journalist, but he said

Speaker 1 Xi knows what I would do if he were to invade Taiwan, but I'm not telling you. That's stupid.

Speaker 2 It's like if you can tell the answer to him, nothing.

Speaker 1 Right, if you exactly, but like, but like, just follow it out. It's like, if you've told him, you can tell us.
If you haven't told him, I get maybe why you might not want to tell us.

Speaker 1 But it seems like you've said you've told him. So you can tell us.

Speaker 2 You take Taiwan. We get access to the chips that we need from them.
That's our deal. You buy a little crypto.
That's my, without knowing much, that's just probably what's in Trump's head.

Speaker 2 I also don't believe that.

Speaker 1 And I got a lot of beans.

Speaker 2 Beans for chips.

Speaker 19 I don't believe for a second that Taiwan didn't come up at the Xi Jinping meeting. Like there was all this reporting going into it that Xi

Speaker 19 thinks he can get Trump to reduce our commitment to Taiwan and basically say that we will not intervene if he moves to invade and just trade that away for some sort of economic deal.

Speaker 19 I'm sure that is on the table and is likely to happen.

Speaker 19 Yeah, but Trump there, I'm not going to to tell anyone, only going to tell my buddy she.

Speaker 2 So Trump also waited on the other nuclear option in the 60-minutes interview, getting rid of the filibuster once and for all. Here's Nora O'Donnell asking Trump about the ongoing government shutdown.

Speaker 20 Sounds like it's not going to get solved, the shutdown.

Speaker 21 It's going to get solved. Yeah.
Oh, it's going to get solved. How? We'll get it solved.
Eventually, they're going to have to vote. And if they don't vote, that's their problem.

Speaker 21 Now, I happen to agree with something else. I think we should do the nuclear option.
This is a totally different nuclear, by the way. It's called

Speaker 21 Ending the Filibuster. Oh, I like John Thone.
I think he's terrific, but I disagree with him on this point.

Speaker 20 He said today he wasn't going to do it.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 21 that's too bad.

Speaker 2 First time you learn that information. That's too much.

Speaker 2 Should we send Donald Trump an abolish the filibuster t-shirt from the crooked merch store? Because

Speaker 2 we're selling them at one point. Maybe I have to.
Welcome to the club.

Speaker 1 A red hat.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, great. Donald Trump, welcome to the Resistance.

Speaker 2 What do you guys make of that? There's basically three ways this thing ends now. Dems cave.
There's a deal on the Affordable Care Act subsidies somehow, which means the Republicans and Trump cave.

Speaker 2 Or they get rid of the filibuster, which John Thune is saying no still, but Donald Trump is now all in, which I'm sure did not make Jon Thune and other Senate Republicans too happy.

Speaker 2 Love it, what do you think?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so it's not just Thune. A bunch of them are pretty firm in saying no.
on the filibuster.

Speaker 1 And even Mike Johnson made the point that if they get rid of the filibuster, it will make it easier for Dems to do a bunch of stuff that he doesn't think

Speaker 1 Congress should do. So, like, right now, it's just, they don't, they do not have 50 votes to get rid of the filibuster, full stop.

Speaker 1 Even if you take Jon Thun out of it, there's a bunch of other people, Collins, Tillis, a few others that are all just no.

Speaker 1 And so, you know, maybe that breaks or maybe they find some rhetorical way around it.

Speaker 1 I mean, they've already, you know, the filibuster has been slowly chipped away at in so many different ways, but it seems like that's going to hold at least for the short term.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I can't tell like why they're so,

Speaker 2 I know they don't have the votes, but I do think that in terms of public pressure, you can see during this whole answer, you can see Trump wrestling with this because he's like, you know, Nora sort of gives him the, well, you're the, you're the guy that makes the deals that can end this kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 And he's very much like, well, yeah, I'm going to get it done. I'm going to get it.
Well, how? Well, the Democrats are going to cave. Well, what if they don't cave?

Speaker 2 Are you not going to get it done then? And then he's like, so he knows knows that then he goes to the filibuster. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, because he understands that the public pressure over people paying more for health care or losing their food benefits, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 At some point, someone's going to say that the public's going to be like, Hey, Donald Trump, why don't you do something? You're the president of the United States.

Speaker 19 And that time should have been several weeks ago because he has been completely absent. Completely doing nothing.
Congress is not in session. He's not doing anything.
He's not making calls.

Speaker 19 Like, what's going on here?

Speaker 2 But if I, if I was a Senate Democrat watching that interview, I would have been, that would have bucked me up a little bit in terms of not wanting to cave on this one.

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B21.

Speaker 2 So, on Monday, just a bit before we recorded this, the Trump administration made a partial concession in its campaign to use struggling Americans' food benefits as leverage against Democrats.

Speaker 2 The administration had previously said they wouldn't use emergency funding to make sure 42 million Americans still received SNAP benefits after the money ran out on November 1st.

Speaker 2 But thanks to multiple courts ordering the administration to dip into the emergency funding, the government now says they'll use the $4.6 billion in the emergency fund, though they claim it's only enough to fund about half of the usual monthly benefit for the one in eight Americans who receive food assistance.

Speaker 2 It's not clear what will happen next month, but the White House doesn't seem too concerned. On Friday, Trump hosted a Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 2 The White House told reporters that the official theme was the great Gatsby and, quote, a little party never killed anybody.

Speaker 2 Just right on the nose. The only thing that kills anybody is strikes against boats.
That's what they're doing.

Speaker 19 And starvation, if you don't have snapping.

Speaker 2 Yes, also that. Trump was seen at a candlelit table next to Mark Orrubio.
It's just the

Speaker 2 just the Where's Waldo of this administration in these pictures.

Speaker 2 Find someone looking like they want to die.

Speaker 2 There he is.

Speaker 2 And D.C. U.S.
Attorney Janine Pirro in a flapper dress and headband. She was right next to them, too.
There were also dancers in feathered headdresses working the crowd.

Speaker 2 Trump also announced last week that he's completed a gut renovation of the bathroom off the famous Lincoln bedroom, covering it in black and white marble and gold fixtures.

Speaker 2 The White House won't say how much it cost or who paid for it. Trump, for his part, called the new look totally in keeping with the Civil War era.

Speaker 1 It is so fucking funny. It is so funny to claim like this is pretty much what Abraham Lincoln would have done if he did a bathroom reno,

Speaker 2 which I fuck.

Speaker 1 And then it's just this marble clad fucking

Speaker 1 contractor flip house marble monstrosity. I fucking love it.
It's like the the the like whatever the optics of it we're in the middle of a shutdown.

Speaker 1 This is all because of moral reasons to find this gross. It is so like uh offensive looking and then to be like this is uh I did it in Abe's name.
This is what he would have wanted

Speaker 2 and I still decided he's just like an old guy who is like, you know, used to do real estate and now he's like fucking bored.

Speaker 2 And so he just keeps renovating things in his house and showing them off to people. Like, oh, did you see what I did to the bathroom? America?

Speaker 1 Honestly, it's it's very Great Gatsby-coded, to be honest. It's like, the funny thing about this, it's like, hey, guys, what do you think the Great Gatsby was about?

Speaker 2 What do you think?

Speaker 1 What do you think? Do you think about how fun the parties were?

Speaker 2 Is that, in fact, you think Tom and Daisy were the heroes? Yeah, like,

Speaker 2 what do you think?

Speaker 2 Did you finish that book? Yeah,

Speaker 1 understand what happened.

Speaker 1 What happens when you stare at the green light? Do you remember it all? No, nothing. You didn't get to the end.
Right.

Speaker 2 This is not who.

Speaker 1 No, our side of the side that knows what's in the Great Gatsby and then can't win a fucking election.

Speaker 19 Did you guys see Caroline Levitt's tweet about this?

Speaker 19 She tweeted, when I first learned a toilet like that existed inside the White House, I was horrified.

Speaker 2 That's what horrified Caroline Levitt. The toilet.
The toilet in the Lincoln bedroom. Okay.
So now she can rest easy. Also, why are we in there?

Speaker 2 Well, maybe she found out she's her social like everyone else. Sometimes you got to listen,

Speaker 1 when you got to go, you got to go.

Speaker 19 Right. It's an emergency.

Speaker 2 Do you guys think the

Speaker 2 ballroom, plus the party, plus the bathroom, plus all the other blatant corruption? I mean, it feels like we got a narrative here. We got a lot here, man.

Speaker 2 And maybe it's, this is going to help define the shutdown in the minds of people who are paying attention to all this, or is this just wishful thinking?

Speaker 19 Like, one would think, I mean, Trump is clearly in the YOLO period of his presidency.

Speaker 19 The corruption in the, like, he's normally very politically savvy, but the total disregard for optics or the politics of their decision-making is genuinely shocking to me.

Speaker 19 I do think this is where Democrats pay dearly for not having media infrastructure. Like, if a Democrat did this, Fox News would be crucifying them all day, every day, until the shutdown was was over.

Speaker 19 I worry that this stuff is just not reaching people.

Speaker 19 I did sort of wonder, like, would it be smart for somebody, it could be the DNC, it could be someone who wants to run for president, like a Gavin Newsom or some type, to start running a series of digital ads on the corruption, on the sort of optics of the ballroom, the CZ pardon, the toilet, like all of it, and just get it on, you know, do a huge digital buy, like a lot or a long-term, like low-boil one.

Speaker 19 Because I think we got to get these stories in front of people. I think Democrats would be excited about it and would promote it on social media.

Speaker 19 Like I donate to somebody that was running ads on this that might actually reach voters who are undecided somehow. I mean, like, let's just get this message out there.

Speaker 2 Well, and also this is

Speaker 2 perfect fodder for a genuinely creative, funny ad campaign. For sure.
Like it does.

Speaker 2 You put out some 30, 60 seconds ads about this. Don't talk to me.

Speaker 2 They're not going anywhere.

Speaker 19 Typical narrator voice?

Speaker 2 I don't, yeah, I don't want to hear that shit. Like a tar riff.
You could do like a mini movie. Like it's very, there's just so many opportunities here.

Speaker 19 Got to be a movie. I mean,

Speaker 2 love it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, SNL. Do you want to comment on something?

Speaker 1 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 Well, SNL did Property Brothers

Speaker 1 about the ballroom. And it was great.

Speaker 1 I do think, by the way, I do think that like the ballroom, I don't know if the, I mean, the bathroom is sort of, I think, still making its way through the algorithms, but I do think the ballroom broke through.

Speaker 2 Big time, yeah.

Speaker 1 I also do think it fits into a narrative that is already pretty strongly held across the board, right?

Speaker 1 Like the vast majority of Americans believe Donald Trump's not focused on the issues he was elected to resolve on prices. And then he is building a brand new ballroom.
He's tearing down the East Wing.

Speaker 1 He is redoing bathrooms. He is having galas and flapper and Roar 20 style parties.
Like if we can't make this something,

Speaker 1 I would say like we don't deserve to have a party, but I would say like we even less deserve to have one.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I will say that the NBC poll that came out over the weekend, CNN poll, I think like the last batch of polling that's just been the last week has been quite bad for Trump.

Speaker 2 Like it's getting it's getting a little worse. He was in the sort of mid to low 40s.
Now he's like low, you know, NBC was 43.55. The generic ballot is now 50, 42 Democrats.

Speaker 2 70% said that they want their vote in the midterms to be to send a message about opposing the president. And that is the highest number in NBC polling dating back 30 years.

Speaker 2 And it's got to be that because in the same poll, the Democratic Party's approval rating is still sitting at 28%.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 So they're up by eight eight in the generic ballot,

Speaker 2 which means it's all about Trump, you know?

Speaker 1 Right, but a lot of those are Democrats who will vote against Trump no matter what and vote against Republicans in the midterms, but just don't like how Democrats, they don't view them as fighting hard enough.

Speaker 1 I will say we're hitting the number that Chuck Schumer said was the number we needed to get to for Republicans to crack. Remember when he did that?

Speaker 1 He was before the previous moment where they didn't do the shuntdown. It was that like he needed to get Trump into the 30s, then all of a sudden Republicans in Congress would start playing ball.

Speaker 1 So we're here.

Speaker 2 We're here. We did it.

Speaker 19 I do love that like Trump holds a party in Mar-a-Lago that is 1920s themed.

Speaker 19 Janine Pirro is dressed like a flapper, which I believe was like a modern hip woman who is like excited about new social freedoms, and yet she's at this event surrounded by trad wifes and some of the worst excesses of plastic surgery in Boca history.

Speaker 19 And here we are.

Speaker 2 Yeah, a lot of contradictions.

Speaker 2 One other big conversation point in the political world that we haven't had the chance to talk about here, last Last week, Tucker Carlson sat down to interview white nationalist influencer Nick Fuentes for more than two hours.

Speaker 2 You might remember Fuentes as Trump's other dinner companion, aside from Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago in 2022. Fuentes has said that, quote, Hitler is awesome, and quote, the Holocaust didn't happen.

Speaker 2 He's also called J.D. Vance, quote, a fat, gay, race traitor.

Speaker 2 In the interview with Tucker, Fuentes attempted to sound slightly more mainstream, though he did accuse Jews of disloyalty to America and basically said they're part of a global conspiracy.

Speaker 2 Here's a taste.

Speaker 23 For the international Jewish community, they're extremely organized, and many of them are critical of Israel or Israel's current government or the project of Israel.

Speaker 23 But I guess what they have in common is that they have this international community across borders, extremely organized,

Speaker 23 that is putting the interests of themselves before the interests of their home country.

Speaker 2 So Carlson really didn't push back in any substantive ways. and this has set off a bit of a mega civil war.

Speaker 2 Ben Shapiro went hard at after Tucker on Monday, calling him, quote, an intellectual coward, a dishonest interlocutor, and a terrible friend.

Speaker 2 On the other hand, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation and one of the guys behind Project 2025, released a video where he criticized everyone who was criticizing Carlson for having Fuentes on.

Speaker 2 He said that while he, quote, abhors some things that Fuentes has said, Fuentes shouldn't be canceled and that Heritage will be keeping up its close association with Carlson, saying, quote, the Heritage Foundation didn't become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians, and we won't start doing that now.

Speaker 2 Coming under immediate withering fire, he put out a second post listing and condemning lots of horrid things Fuentes said about Jews and others and appealed to young conservatives not to fall under his sway.

Speaker 2 Whew.

Speaker 2 Lots of justified outrage from everywhere about this.

Speaker 2 What do you guys think? Love it?

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I do do think it's important and it's been interesting, right? Because

Speaker 1 Kevin Roberts puts out this statement and says, we shouldn't cancel Nick Fuentes. I don't know what this word means anymore, but yeah, you should.
That's somebody to cancel.

Speaker 1 Whatever cancellation means, if it means anything, it should mean you cancel Nick Fuentes. And he approaches ideas like, oh, we're not going to punch to the right.

Speaker 1 We're not going to criticize people on the right. I'll tell you, like, I've been, I think it's like

Speaker 1 seeing the amount of kind of outrage about this, I think has been genuinely good.

Speaker 1 But I think part of this has been the ways in which a lot of people have turned a blind eye to how sort of anti-Semites, pure, unalloyed anti-Semites, have found more and more quarter inside of the MAGA movement.

Speaker 1 And then you have people like Ben Shapiro now calling it out. You have people like Ted Cruz and others speaking to Republican Jewish organizations to call it out.

Speaker 1 But in general, this is a consequence of

Speaker 1 just how much flirtation there has been with some of the most heinous and reactionary and fanatical

Speaker 1 far-right creatures of social media and the internet.

Speaker 2 Tommy?

Speaker 19 Yeah, I think Nick Fuentes is really dangerous, and he has been for a while. And his stature is growing.
His show is getting more streams. Like more people are paying attention to him.

Speaker 19 And this is a big deal. I think it's kind of like a seminal moment for the right.

Speaker 19 Because the backstory in the Tucker interview is Tucker had Candace Owens on his show and he picked a fight with Nick Fuentes.

Speaker 19 I think he called him like a weird little gay kid in his parents' basement or something. And then he suggested that Fuentes was a like a paid government plant.

Speaker 19 And that was a bad idea because like Nick Fuentes has nothing better to do than to go back at him.

Speaker 19 And Fuentes went hard and he talked about Tucker's dad being in the CIA and talked about hypocrisy and inconsistency. And I think was largely seen as like getting the better of that exchange.

Speaker 19 And Tucker saw Nick Fuentes as a threat to his stature as kind of a kingmaker in the Republican Party and decided to stop fighting him and just have him on. And Tucker wasn't the only one.

Speaker 19 Like, I think Glenn Greenwald had him on. This guy, Patrick David Bett, had him on his podcast as well.
But

Speaker 19 like you said, it wasn't just having him on the show. It was like just how soft the interview was.
And there's been a lot of focus on Nick Fuentes' anti-Semitism, and rightly so.

Speaker 19 This guy is like, says Hitler is cool, stuff like that. I mean, it's not subtle.
He questions the scale of death and the Holocaust. He did it via an analogy about how many cookies you could beat.

Speaker 2 That's fucking risk. Right.

Speaker 19 It's disgusting. It's disgusting.
But he's also a vile racist. Like, he says the N-word all the time on the show.
He criticizes people for race mixing, including JD Vance.

Speaker 19 And he's also a misogynist in the most literal sense of the world. He wants to repeal the 19th Amendment.
So, like, this dude is a very scary figure, someone who

Speaker 19 I think is trying to step into the void left after Charlie Kirk's assassination and continue to pull young Republican men to the right. And I think

Speaker 19 is is having considerable success.

Speaker 2 And he's, and he knows that he needs to mainstream himself. And he's smart enough to figure out kind of how to do that.

Speaker 2 When he, like, I'm only, you know, I started listening to the Tucker interview and, you know, he frames his whole political view, political beliefs as like, well, you know, it's really about the government of Israel.

Speaker 2 You know, he starts there and he doesn't,

Speaker 2 it's not quite like the clips you see from his show that go around once in a while.

Speaker 19 Yeah, the clips from his show are just him speaking alone in a room, like to a camera, just ranting for 45 minutes about stuff. And like the thing to know about him is he can be quite funny.

Speaker 19 He can come off as reasonable because like when the Epstein stuff happened, he was like, Trump's covering this up. MAGA's over.
This is ridiculous. Like he'll like state the obvious at times.

Speaker 19 But I think that then gives him credibility to launder in these views that like organized Jewry, I think is the word, the terminology he used, are controlling all the world's events and have started all the wars.

Speaker 19 And it's just like your very classic textbook

Speaker 19 anti-Semitism.

Speaker 2 I also think it's very notable that you have, you know, glad that Ben Shapiro said something today. I think Ted Cruz has been out there attacking Fuentes and Carlson.

Speaker 2 Nothing from the White House, nothing from, I mean, you don't expect Trump to be in the weeds on this kind of stuff, but certainly J.D. Vance has been following this

Speaker 2 back and forth and has

Speaker 2 yet to say anything.

Speaker 1 And by the way, J.D. Vance, who defended people for having, for just being kids joking around, for doing sort of a bunch of Holocaust jokes.
I don't think it's like,

Speaker 1 you know, know, Tucker Carlson has been doing this kind of just asking questions stuff, right? Like he had Candace Owens on. Candice Owens

Speaker 1 has made all kinds of anti-Semitic

Speaker 1 comments. Tucker had a just asking questions interview with someone saying, well, maybe Churchill was responsible for World War II when you think about it.

Speaker 1 And so Tucker has been flirting with kind of the kind of vile recesses of like anti-Semitic ideology. And part of it too, like more broadly, is,

Speaker 1 you know, there's this, like,

Speaker 1 you know, all the establishment is bad in every way possible. And so that means the vaccines are bad.

Speaker 19 Like, the stories we're told, they're all lies.

Speaker 1 All the stories are lies, right? The story about

Speaker 1 COVID is a lie. And the story about vaccines generally are a lie.
The story about climate is a lie. And you start going further and further.

Speaker 1 And eventually, it's like, is the story of World War II a lie? Is the story of a Holocaust a lie? What else are they lying to us about?

Speaker 2 What other

Speaker 1 kind of cultural shibboleths can we

Speaker 1 interrogate? And I think like it leads to this like really fucking dark place.

Speaker 19 Yeah, again, just like this Fuertes is attacking J.D. Vance's wife.
He's going after his kids. He called him a fake Marine.
He's just like going after him in the most vicious way as possible.

Speaker 19 You're right. We haven't heard anything from J.D.
Vance.

Speaker 19 And the Heritage Foundation, not only did they defend and stand by Tucker, but he said it was like only a globalist class that was being critical and like basically

Speaker 19 said explicitly, I forget the exact language, I deleted whatever I had written it down, that was like

Speaker 19 the faction of

Speaker 19 people within the GOP, they were like vile or something like that, like the ones criticizing Tucker for having Fuentes on.

Speaker 19 So he like made it about, like, it's this, this like maximalist view that thou shalt not attack another Republican no matter what under any circumstances.

Speaker 19 And like Lovett says, like, if there's never a time, man, it's when you're interviewing a neo-Nazi, like, it's maybe time to rethink who your friends are.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, yeah.

Speaker 1 And one other point about this, too, is, like I,

Speaker 1 the, the amount of just pure like Nazism and anti-Semitism on Twitter is just, has like been growing. Like it is just unleashed.
I see, I, like, it used to be something you would see.

Speaker 1 Now, like, I, like, I, I see it in my comments all the time. Like, I just, there is so much vile, unrestrained anti-Semitism on social media.

Speaker 1 By the way, you're seeing it with people being like unabashed and even like it's stupid, but like even in their Halloween costumes, being proud about like dressing as Nazis and doing blackface, there's a kind of like joyful

Speaker 1 embrace of

Speaker 1 like full, like, you know, mask off bigotry.

Speaker 1 And it's just very, very dangerous. And you need people like J.D.
Vance to call it out. As much as I wish it weren't true, it matters whether or not he does.

Speaker 2 All right. By the time you're listening to this, it'll be election day.

Speaker 2 We got Prop 50 here in California, governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia, the mayor's race in New York City, Public Service Commission in Georgia, and the state Supreme Court in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 2 These last few days are usually when the final big endorsements happen and the most high-profile surrogates hit the trail.

Speaker 2 But interestingly, Trump did not appear in person anywhere. He's doing tele rallies instead.
Still don't really know what those are. I don't know.

Speaker 2 In Virginia and New Jersey. And also, to Zoran Mamdani's delight, Trump endorsed Andrew Cuomo in the 60 Minutes interview.
One top Democratic surrogate was out there over the weekend.

Speaker 2 Here's Barack Obama rallying with Abigail Spanberger on Saturday.

Speaker 24 The president,

Speaker 24 he has been focused on critical issues like paving over the rose garden so folks don't get mud on their shoes

Speaker 24 and gold-plating the Oval Office and building a $300 million ballroom.

Speaker 24 So, Virginia, here's the good news.

Speaker 24 If you can't visit a doctor, don't worry. He will save you a dance.

Speaker 24 The over-the-top rhetoric, the fabricated conspiracies, the weird videos of

Speaker 24 a U.S. president with a crown on his head flying a fighter jet and dumping poop

Speaker 2 on

Speaker 24 protesting citizens.

Speaker 24 All of that is designed to distract you

Speaker 24 from the fact that your situation has not gotten better.

Speaker 2 Don't poo, vote.

Speaker 2 There's it. There's our title.

Speaker 2 There's our episode title.

Speaker 2 You know, what I love about that is you think, oh, Barack Obama,

Speaker 2 he's sort of out of the game. He's not paying attention.
He's following it all. He's online.

Speaker 2 He's online.

Speaker 2 He saw the poop video thing.

Speaker 2 He was also like, after he talked about the they'll save you a dance, he's like, you can watch all the beautiful people partying in Mar-a-Lago on Truth Social.

Speaker 2 I was like, now that is very specific as well. Yeah.
He also had a good line. He was like, You got a flat tire?

Speaker 19 DEI.

Speaker 2 DEI. I know.
Very, very Obama riff. Very Obama riff.
So, final thoughts on these races?

Speaker 2 How they're all closing? We got Trump nowhere to be found. Barack Obama's out there.
He was with Mikey Sherrill as well in Jersey. The folks behind Prop 50 are feeling good.

Speaker 2 I don't know what you guys think. Any final thoughts? Love it.
I saw

Speaker 2 kind of

Speaker 1 a shirtless yelling man holding a a giant cross saying the end is nigh, but it was just Bill Ackman.

Speaker 3 So I don't think there's anything to worry about.

Speaker 1 There's been all this sort of like, I don't know, like pre-coverage about like Mom Donnie and the future of the Democratic Party. But then you have like

Speaker 1 Mikey Sherrill, who's a veteran. You got Spamberger, who's like in the CIA.

Speaker 3 And it's like,

Speaker 1 I hope they all win because it'll do a great job to, I prefer they'll all win win to scramble any kind of easy conclusions that people would love to draw to address their priors. That's all.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I mean, you know, Jonathan Martin had a great piece over the weekend about how weird it is how Trump has either given up or made things worse.

Speaker 3 You know, like

Speaker 19 maybe, look, maybe Trump doesn't care about the Virginia governor's race. Maybe he doesn't care about New Jersey.
Maybe he knows that his mere presence would make things worse for his candidates.

Speaker 19 So he's doing whatever a tele town hall is.

Speaker 19 But Prop 50 directly impacts Trump and his agenda.

Speaker 19 If California can send five more Democrats to Congress, it makes it a lot easier for us to take the House and then subpoena the shit out of him and figure out all the corrupt deals that he's doing.

Speaker 19 And again, even if Trump didn't want to campaign in California, he could have made five phone calls and raised $100 million for ads.

Speaker 19 But Republicans are basically off the air fighting against Prop 50 at this point because they just got out gunned. And

Speaker 19 it looks like a big loss to Gavin Newsome, like his primary antagonist in the Democratic Party, is likely going to look like he kicked his ass.

Speaker 19 And like, maybe just doesn't care, it doesn't matter, but bother me.

Speaker 2 I think when Trump feels like he's going to lose,

Speaker 2 his idea is just like, maybe don't say anything about it at all.

Speaker 2 And maybe just kind of like play it cool.

Speaker 2 Cause if he went all in and then still lost, which I think that probably would have happened, like, I don't think, I don't think Donald Trump helps a ballot measure out here.

Speaker 19 Just call Peter Thiel and be like, give me $20 million. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I just don't think think Newsom.

Speaker 1 But Newsom, Newsom was like, oh, we didn't need to raise any more money. At the very least, you could have had to force Democrats to spend more money in California.

Speaker 1 If you've had some money dropped in here.

Speaker 2 I'm interested in the margin in Jersey to see if it, how it is compared to both 2024, when obviously Trump made up a lot of ground in New Jersey, and also the last governor's race when Phil Murphy was the incumbent and Jack Chitterelli had run again.

Speaker 2 And then same thing with Virginia,

Speaker 2 basically like, how does it compare to Kamala's margin in in Virginia? Although I would say that Spanberger has pretty much a worse opponent than Cheryl does, for sure,

Speaker 2 the least popular opponent. So anyway, it'll be interesting.
And then, of course, Mamdani will be.

Speaker 2 I know. I know.

Speaker 2 We'll see how many Curtis Sliwa voters there are and whether Cuomo can make up

Speaker 2 any of that large gap. I think Mamdani's ahead by like anywhere from 10 to 15 points in the polls right now.
All right. On that note, please go vote and get everyone you know to vote.

Speaker 2 In Virginia, in Georgia, polls are open until 7 p.m. local in New Jersey California and Pennsylvania it's 8 p.m.
local and in New York City it's 9 p.m.

Speaker 2 no excuses go vote votesaveamerica.com slash vote if you need more information also one final push before we get to my conversation with George Redis this is your last chance to get tickets to Crooked Con in DC there are only about 50 tickets left our lineup includes Jen Saki Tim Miller Maurice Mitchell Mark Elias Representative Pramila Jayapal Governor Andy Bashir Senator Brian Schatz Lena Khan a strict scrutiny live show and so much more.

Speaker 2 If you aren't able to make it, you can listen and watch the content afterward on our YouTube channels, our podcast feeds, and on crookedcon.com.

Speaker 2 We'll also be live posting throughout the day on the at crooked media socials. Make sure to head to crookedcon.com to snag tickets before the last few sell out.
When we come back, George Reddis.

Speaker 2 This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. As seasons change and days grow darker darker sooner, it can be a tough time for many.

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B21.

Speaker 2 Joining me in studio today is George Redis. He's a venture California native and a U.S.
Army veteran who was taken by ICE and detained for three days without charges.

Speaker 2 He's now suing the federal government for the illegal detention. George, thanks for coming on.

Speaker 3 Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 It really means a lot.

Speaker 2 I mean, I am so sorry this happened to you, you, and I have been so angry on your behalf.

Speaker 2 And I'm also just like so grateful for all the ways you've served this country, including speaking out right now. So, thank you.
I've been thinking about your story a lot.

Speaker 2 I've been talking about your story a lot. But for people who aren't familiar, maybe you can start by talking a little bit about your life before your detention last summer.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I was born and raised in Ventura, California.

Speaker 3 I was basically a single mother. My dad was in and out of prison.
So

Speaker 3 to a single mother, have two older siblings. I now have

Speaker 3 three younger. And so big family.
And

Speaker 3 so just at 18,

Speaker 3 I mean, I just graduated high school. I went straight into college.
I went for photography. I'm just trying to figure out life at that time.
I didn't know what I was doing. I was,

Speaker 3 I was just, I don't know, I guess making wrong decisions, just

Speaker 3 hanging with the wrong crowd. Not really hanging with the wrong crowd.
I wouldn't say that. I was just making bad decisions myself.
And just,

Speaker 3 I don't know. I felt like I was trapped just in a circle of just like not doing anything.
And I just felt like I wasn't doing anything with my life. I just felt like.

Speaker 3 There was no purpose. I felt like I had no purpose.
And so I just wanted to do something bigger. I just like felt like this wasn't meant for me.

Speaker 3 Like just doing nothing is not what I'm here to do and so I felt like there was just something more for me to do and so

Speaker 3 an easier option to do something bigger and contribute to like the bigger world is easy path is the military like no matter how small the difference like the military was a like perfect way to start and so when I was 18 I joined the army

Speaker 3 I ended up going infantry. All the recruiters, they were infantry, so they convinced me to go infantry.

Speaker 3 And so I ended up going to basic training, fort benning georgia i went there for basic training from there i went to fort wainwright alaska uh

Speaker 3 and and from alaska i ended up deploying to iraq for 10 months uh from 2019 to 2020 and um

Speaker 3 after that i went back to alaska for a little while and then i ended up coming down on orders to go to fort hood Texas. And so I ended up finishing the rest of my contract down there.

Speaker 3 I got out honorably.

Speaker 3 I was was really on the fence on like re-enlisting or not, if I'm being honest with you. It was just

Speaker 3 like at the time, the military was all I knew. I mean, I was only 22 getting out.

Speaker 3 And like, after going through all that, I don't know, I felt like I was doing a lot more stuff than like kids my age or like people my age.

Speaker 3 And so, I don't know, the military was all I knew at that time.

Speaker 3 And just for me, the biggest reason I got out was for my kids, like, not having to be in the field every other week for two weeks at a time or not having to deploy at like any any second.

Speaker 3 So I got out and that was kind of a hard decision for me

Speaker 3 just because I didn't know what I wanted to do. And so I got out and I stayed home for a little bit, just enjoyed time with my family.
And I got tired of that.

Speaker 3 Not of the kids, but just being at home all the time.

Speaker 3 Just and so I ended up going to school, just trying to figure out what was the right path. So I went and got my license to drive semi-trucks.

Speaker 3 And then after that, it was just, I started a job, didn't like it. I was like, this isn't me.

Speaker 3 I ended up going to dental assistant school and just was like, yeah, this isn't me either. But I got my license for that.
And I was like, okay, cool. And just something else.

Speaker 3 And eventually I was just, I got my guard card in Texas and then I got my guard card in California. It was just.
easy for me. I mean, it's all I did in the military.

Speaker 3 So figured just might go something natural.

Speaker 3 And so I got my guard card and the beginning of this year, I ended up moving back to California and I got a job working security for a security company called Securitas and so I got a job with them and

Speaker 3 Glasshouse Farms where the whole incident takes place ended up contracting out that security company and so that's where my security company put me and so for seven months Since the beginning of this year, I was working at Glasshouse Farms.

Speaker 3 And so that's how I ended up being there when the entire situation took place

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 if you wouldn't mind just explaining like what happened when you got close to work that day in July and saw all the ICE agents you said your car had a disabled veteran plate and sticker showing your service you told agents you were a U.S.

Speaker 2 citizen in Iraq veteran

Speaker 3 Did any of that seem to matter in the moment to them what what what happened no um i mean I'll just start from the beginning, I guess, just make it easier.

Speaker 3 So that day, July 10th, I was going to work as normal.

Speaker 3 I was pulling up to the main road that my work is on, and there's just cars piled up,

Speaker 3 like bumper to bumper.

Speaker 3 People weren't even in their cars. It was just literally crazy.
It was chaos like all over the place. And so I'm making my way through all this.

Speaker 3 I mean, even though all that's happening, work never called me saying, don't show up today, like don't go in. And so

Speaker 3 I make my way through all this because even though this is happening, I still got to go to work. And so I make my way through.
And eventually I get to the front of where everything is happening.

Speaker 3 And so there's a line of agents lined up across the road, all in gas masks,

Speaker 2 all in their

Speaker 3 gear and just lined up across the road, stopping anyone from going. And so there's a car in the right lane.

Speaker 3 And I don't know if there was anyone in there, but I ended up pulling into the left lane right beside the car. I'm a good distance away.

Speaker 3 I put my car in park. I get out, close my door, and I stand right beside my car.
I don't approach them. I'm not getting in their face.
And so

Speaker 3 like the first thing I say when I get out of my car is like, I tell them I'm a U.S. citizen.
Like I'm just trying to get to work. I'm not here to protest.
Like I'm not part of the protest.

Speaker 3 I'm not here to get in your guys' face. I'm literally just trying to get to work.
And they were just completely hostile.

Speaker 2 Are we able to cuss on here? Yes. Okay.

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 3 Just had to confirm that before.

Speaker 3 They were just telling me to get the the fuck out of there. They were telling me to pull over to the side.
They were telling me to get in my car.

Speaker 3 They were telling me that work is closed, that I'm not going to be going to work today. And so

Speaker 3 they're just all being hostile for no reason. And so I ended up asking for a badge number just to, just to let Notework know, like, I'm trying to go into work, like, and I wasn't able to.

Speaker 3 And so I asked for a badge number. And so.

Speaker 3 After asking that, for some reason, one of the agents got super upset over that. And that's when he tries to like step forward to try to approach me.

Speaker 3 And it takes another agent to step forward and like hold him back from approaching. And I see that and just, I'm not, wasn't there to escalate.
Like, I'm not trying to escalate things further.

Speaker 3 And so I turn around to get back into my car. And simultaneously, as I'm getting back into my car, the line of agents starts walking towards me.
And

Speaker 3 they surround my car.

Speaker 3 And so I'm sitting in my car.

Speaker 3 I have agents on my driver's side, side, on my passenger side, pulling on my door handle, banging on my window, telling me to get out.

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 3 I have agents in front of my car and telling me to reverse. I have an agent behind my car, like behind, like in my rearview mirror, telling me to reverse, like trying to show me to reverse.

Speaker 3 And so, just all of them yelling at me to do different things. And so, I'm sitting there just trying to figure out the situation.

Speaker 3 And eventually, they end up reversing me into like an angle, sort of, and they reverse me back into the right lane.

Speaker 3 And once they put my car into the right lane, they end up throwing tear gas into the protesters and they throw tear gas behind my car, and it just engulfs my car in tear gas.

Speaker 3 And so tear gas gets in my car, and I'm just trapped in the right lane in my car, just trapped with tear gas, trying to hold out as long as I can. And at that point, they left my car alone.

Speaker 3 And the entire time I'm trapped in my car with tear gas, their vehicles are passing by on the left-hand side. Their trucks, their buses are passing by on the left-hand side.

Speaker 3 And so I'm just trapped in my car

Speaker 3 with the tear gas, eyes watery, trying to catch my breath. I couldn't see.

Speaker 3 And once all their vehicles finished passing by, I don't know what reason they had or why they did it, but for some reason they reapproached my car.

Speaker 3 And so they reapproached my car and they surrounded again. Agents on my driver's side, agents on my passenger side, pulling on my door handle, banging on the windows, telling me to get

Speaker 3 The agents in front of my car are telling me to reverse, telling me to pull over to the side. And I'm just in there coughing.
I'm like pleading with them, like I'm trying to leave. Like, I can't see.

Speaker 3 There's a cloud of smoke behind me. Like, you could obviously put the entire situation together.

Speaker 3 Like, there's smoke behind me. There's protesters behind me.
I like, I can't see. I'm literally, I'm trying to catch my breath.
My eyes are watery. And I'm just pleading with them.
Like, I can't see.

Speaker 3 I'm trying to leave. And

Speaker 3 just eventually my driver's side ended up giving in and

Speaker 3 it shattered. A glass flew into my leg.
Immediately following it, shattering, no questions, no nothing. Another agent sticks his arm through and Pepper sprays me in the face.

Speaker 3 They end up dragging me out of the car. They throw me down and I'm basically like a ragdoll letting them do whatever,

Speaker 3 not fighting, just letting them do whatever.

Speaker 3 And so even though I'm letting them do whatever, when they throw me on the ground,

Speaker 3 an agent comes and he kneels on my back. And then another one comes and he nails on my neck.
And

Speaker 3 the entire time they're like that, I'm telling them like, I can't breathe. Like I'm telling, like, I'm just pleading with them, I can't breathe.

Speaker 3 You guys, like, you could put the entire situation together. I was just trapped in my car with tear gas, trying to catch my breath.
You guys just pepper sprayed me in the face.

Speaker 3 And now you guys are kneeling on my neck and back. Like, I'm telling you guys, I can't breathe.
And I mean, they didn't care.

Speaker 3 I couldn't tell you how long I was like that for.

Speaker 3 Just eventually they zip-tied my hands and they picked me up. And they ended up walking me back to the farm where I worked.

Speaker 3 And the entire time they're walking me back, they're just asking each other, like, who's taking responsibility for him? Like, who's he going with? Like, who's taking responsibility for what happened?

Speaker 3 And they're just all asking each other this as they're walking me back. And so they ended up walking me back to the farm.

Speaker 2 Are you talking to them at this point? Like, are you asking them, like, hey, I'm a citizen? What, what are we doing? Why are you talking about that?

Speaker 3 At that that point, I'm telling, like, I'm a citizen. Like, I don't, like, I don't know what's wrong.
Like, I'm a citizen. And I was just telling them that the entire way back.

Speaker 3 They didn't care.

Speaker 3 Took me back to the farm and they sat me down right there in the dirt with my hands zip-tied behind my back for about four hours or so.

Speaker 3 And throughout that time, they only asked me for my ID once and I tell them it's in my car.

Speaker 3 Like, I'd be more than happy to show you, like, I have my ID. Like, I could prove I'm a citizen.
Like, on my car, it says, like, I have DV plates for disabled veteran.

Speaker 3 like i have a iraq combat veteran sticker on my windshield like i told them i was a veteran and that was it that's the only time they asked me for my id and that was it um after the time there they ended up putting me back they put me in an unmarked car and they drove me into like a convoy kind of like

Speaker 3 basically a convoy um to a navy base in port waineme and they took us onto the base and took us to this giant open field uh on the base and every federal agency you could think think of is there, FBI, Homeland Security, ICBP, people from the Navy, National Guard.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 they take me there and there they do my fingerprints.

Speaker 3 They swab my mouth for DNA. They take my picture.

Speaker 3 They end up reading me my rights there, but saying that they were only investigating what had happened. They never said that I was charged with anything.
They never said I was being arrested.

Speaker 3 They just said that they were investigating. what had happened and why I was there.
And that was it.

Speaker 3 And so I literally told them the entire situation, exactly how I'm telling you and that was it.

Speaker 3 They asked me the questions and then they put me back in the car and from there they took me to the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown LA and we got there around 1030 at night and I would assume they improcessed me like a normal prisoner.

Speaker 3 They strip searched me.

Speaker 3 And at that time I asked them like,

Speaker 3 when would I be able to call a lawyer? Like could I call my family? And they just ignored me completely. And so while they're strip searching me, I would tell them like my skin skin is burning.

Speaker 3 Like, they sprayed me with tear gas, and or they spread, like, I was trapped in my car with tear gas and they sprayed me with pepper spray. Like, my skin is burning.

Speaker 3 And I tell them that, and they tell me, like, like, I'll get over it. The effects will wear off.

Speaker 3 That it'll pass. And so that was it.

Speaker 3 They end up doing my fingerprints and they took my mug shot.

Speaker 3 And after that, they took me upstairs and they put me in a cell with one other person,

Speaker 3 the professor who was also arrested that day. And

Speaker 3 so that entire first Thursday night, I'm in the cell and my body's just burning. My hands, my face, my skin, just my entire body is on fire.

Speaker 3 No other way to put it, just

Speaker 3 an extreme heat that just would not go away.

Speaker 2 Wouldn't let you wash your hands, shower, wash your face.

Speaker 3 So they ended up

Speaker 3 giving us dinner and sandwiches in a sandwich bag. And so I took the sandwiches out and I filled up the sandwich bag with water from the sink.

Speaker 3 And so that entire night, I was alternating my hands in this bag of water, just trying to relieve the heat. And

Speaker 3 I don't know if it helped or if it made it worse, but it... it just would not go away.
And so that entire first Thursday night, I'm just burning.

Speaker 3 That just like that, the entire first Thursday night, I don't sleep. And so Friday ends up coming around and they finished doing my improcessing.

Speaker 3 They let me talk to a medical and it's just basically about our past life and how we are now and after that they let me talk to a psychiatric nurse and

Speaker 3 after the questions she asked and the way I answered them she felt like it was best to put me on suicide watch and so that Friday morning they ended up putting me on suicide watch and Suicide watch is just this yellow concrete room, a concrete block in the corner with a thin mattress on top.

Speaker 3 There's this tiny little rectangle window.

Speaker 3 It's a glass door, and an officer sits up there 24-7.

Speaker 3 A psychiatric nurse comes and checks on me once a day to make sure I don't kill myself.

Speaker 3 They leave the light on 24-7. I'm in there naked in a hospital dress, and I'm like that from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon to literally the point I'm released.
And so

Speaker 3 Sunday morning, close to afternoon-ish comes around, and an officer comes up to the cell. He walks up and he's just says, I'm off suicide watch and that I'm going to get released and walks away.

Speaker 3 And so

Speaker 3 even though he says, I'm off suicide watch, I'm there, still in those conditions. And I mean, I don't want to get my hopes up.
I mean, I'm still there. And so I'm there for a couple more hours.

Speaker 3 And eventually another officer comes up and they open the door. They walk me downstairs.
They give me back my clothes. and I signed for my phone, my watch, and my piercings and stuff.
And

Speaker 3 that was it.

Speaker 3 They said that I was free to go, that all the charges on me had been dropped and that I was free to go. And so that wasn't good enough for me.
And I asked them,

Speaker 3 so I was locked up in here and I missed my daughter's birthday for no fucking reason. And it was just the loudest silence ever.

Speaker 3 Literally the loudest silence ever.

Speaker 3 No explanation, no nothing.

Speaker 3 They let me call for a ride and they walked me out and that was it. I was free to go.

Speaker 3 Never heard anything back from them, never nothing

Speaker 3 until I wrote an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle. And then they came out with a tweet or whatever saying that I assaulted agents and that stories like mine demonize ICE agents.
And

Speaker 3 it was just crazy to hear because after all that, after just being released, no charges, after even on the paperwork, it says that I was only detained pursuant, detained pursuant to arrest.

Speaker 3 Basically, I was arrested for being arrested. That's the only

Speaker 3 information it says on the paperwork is that I was arrested for being arrested, basically.

Speaker 3 And so with that being the only explanation and them tweeting this,

Speaker 3 it was really crazy to hear.

Speaker 3 It was insane that this is really the stance that they're willing to go behind and die on, that I'm just like this crazy person and like they just try to paint me as this villain, and like I'm this bad guy

Speaker 3 when that's not the truth at all. I mean, there's so much evidence out there.
There's helicopter footage, and so it's just like, why?

Speaker 2 I was going to say, I've seen the footage on the local news, and it was, there's a lot of footage of you, like the whole story you tell about when you get out of the car and then when you back up, like, that's all on film.

Speaker 2 Yes, exactly, exactly, exactly. What was going through your mind in those three days that you were in jail? Like, what?

Speaker 3 Did you think that

Speaker 2 did you think that you were getting out? Did you think they were going to send you somewhere else? Were you like, how am I going to get on the phone with a lawyer or my family?

Speaker 3 Honestly, the only thing on my mind were my kids.

Speaker 2 Like,

Speaker 3 when, like, I mean, the last thing I told them was like, I'll see you later. And, like, later never came.
And so

Speaker 3 my daughter had just turned three that Saturday, and my son is eight.

Speaker 2 So, you finally get out of this nightmare, you go back home, and then you decide to

Speaker 2 file a lawsuit against the federal government for seemingly violating multiple constitutional rights that you have as an American.

Speaker 2 What are you hoping for out of the lawsuit, and what do you want them to do?

Speaker 3 So,

Speaker 3 what I want out of the lawsuit is obviously accountability. I mean, you don't just go to go around and take away people's rights and like get to treat people that any way you want.

Speaker 2 Um, I mean,

Speaker 2 like

Speaker 3 it's just crazy, like to have no accountability and just to take no responsibility and no explanation for me for what happened. Um, it's just crazy.

Speaker 3 And so for myself, I want that accountability of just like take ownership of what you did to me, take ownership of what you did and don't lie like just tell everyone the truth um

Speaker 3 and i guess the bigger picture for the bigger change is um

Speaker 3 for um them to amend uh 1983 uh to add five words in it which would include federal officers uh which would allow people to sue federal officer officers basically um because right now um

Speaker 3 it's basically

Speaker 3 they're untouchable i mean if a state officer had done what they did to me, I would be able to go to court right now and file a lawsuit for everything that happened.

Speaker 3 But it's the fact that because they're federal officers,

Speaker 3 I show up to the courthouse and they tell me basically,

Speaker 3 like, unfortunately for you, like, yeah, your civil rights were violated. But unfortunately for you, they're federal officers and there's no clear path for you to file a lawsuit.

Speaker 3 So they shut the door in my face and not only my face, but for everyone that's filing a lawsuit currently, they're going to be met with the same endeavor that I am, just a door shut in your face.

Speaker 3 And so my bigger goal is to amend that statue, make it where to every single person could get accountability and justice for what happens to them.

Speaker 3 For a federal officer, any federal officer, FBI, ATF, ICE, IRS, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 Any officer that violates their rights, it gives them accountability and justice. And so that's the bigger goal.
And that's my bigger message for everyone.

Speaker 2 I became aware of the way that the law is reading. The New York Times did a story, I think, the other week where they

Speaker 2 wrote about Trump suing his own Justice Department now for coming for the charges and the investigations against him before he became president for the second time.

Speaker 2 He will now settle his own lawsuit against his own government for something like over $200 million. It won't even go to court.

Speaker 2 He'll just, obviously, the federal government will settle with Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 And then they contrasted, I'm sure you've seen this, they contrasted that with you

Speaker 2 and people like you who've been detained. And I had not realized that if you are deprived of your constitutional rights as an American citizen by federal officers, it becomes very, very challenging.

Speaker 2 to win that lawsuit. Like you can still, I guess you can still file it, but that these, these federal agents have almost total immunity here.

Speaker 3 Basically, and so it's just crazy. Like you would think that if anyone violates your rights, no matter who, you would be able to get justice for what happened to you.

Speaker 3 And it's just crazy to think and just to realize like that's not the way it works.

Speaker 3 And you would think like a clear path would just be to, okay, let's amend this statue and let's fix this problem, this crack in the law. for everyone.
Like it just doesn't affect the left or right.

Speaker 3 It affects everyone.

Speaker 3 Like they could violate anyone's rights. And so that's scary.
It's scary that there's no justice for anyone. And so it's a very concerning hole in the law.
And so

Speaker 2 what I know you went to Washington last week or the other week. Yes.
Tell me about your trip to Washington.

Speaker 3 So my trip to Washington.

Speaker 3 It was fun. It was my first time in Washington.
The weather was nice. Everyone told me it's not normally like that.

Speaker 2 That's true.

Speaker 3 So, I mean, Washington was fun. I spoke to lawmakers.

Speaker 3 I spoke to senators and basically told them my story in person,

Speaker 3 gave them the solution, basically like I'm telling you, men 1983 and

Speaker 3 just basically what I told you. And so I literally gave them that explanation to everyone I spoke with.
And the biggest like confront I got out of it was there's nothing wrong with it.

Speaker 3 It's just politics. The bigger

Speaker 2 there's nothing wrong with the law.

Speaker 3 There's nothing law with amending that law, but unfortunately.

Speaker 3 Politics won't is the trouble with amending it.

Speaker 2 You got Congressman Raskin and Johnson too. They're going to try to push for it.
But yeah, clearly a Republican Congress is not going to pass it.

Speaker 2 A Democratic Congress and a Democratic president may, hopefully. But we are not there yet.

Speaker 3 I mean, that's also a big reason why people, it's a big reason for people to speak out and to

Speaker 3 call their people in charge for everyone to make their voice heard. I mean, it's all our responsibility.

Speaker 2 So I don't know if you saw Christina, the Department of Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. She was asked at a press conference yesterday

Speaker 2 about American citizens like you being arrested and detained for no reason. It's happening more and more.
And she said, quote, no American citizens have been arrested or detained.

Speaker 2 We focus on those who are here illegally. And anything you would hear or report that would be different that is simply not true and false reporting.

Speaker 2 Any response to that?

Speaker 3 I mean, I don't really, I don't feel like I need a respond when I'm, I mean, I'm, I mean, it's all over the news, it's all over social media. Like, I'm not blind.

Speaker 3 Like, I obviously see what's going on in the world. People see what's going on in the world.
Like, just because they say something doesn't make it true or doesn't mean people believe them.

Speaker 3 And so, I mean, they could say whatever they want. I mean,

Speaker 3 the facts are out there. People are able to

Speaker 3 people are able to film and like take pictures and record. So, I mean, everyone gets to see the truth.

Speaker 3 I mean, so just because you send out a tweet or just because you make a comment doesn't make it true, and so I mean, I don't really need to say anything.

Speaker 3 I mean, hopefully, my case goes to court or whatever. And I mean, the truth gets to be presented in everyone to like in front of everyone and in front of the world.

Speaker 2 How did you make the choice to speak up at a time when a lot of very rich and powerful people who know this is wrong have decided to stay quiet. Like, were you at all scared to do this?

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 3 uh, no, I was not scared one bit.

Speaker 2 Like,

Speaker 3 I mean, I don't scare it easily, um,

Speaker 2 but

Speaker 3 like, I mean, you don't just, I'm not the type of person to just let something happen to them and like walk away.

Speaker 3 Like, I'm definitely not that type of person to see something wrong and turn the other cheek. And so, um,

Speaker 3 so I mean, you don't just get to do this to not only me, but everyone else else

Speaker 3 and just not take accountability. And so, for me, once this happened to me, like, I mean, I never had a voice before.

Speaker 3 Like, I never had a platform or been on the news to like make my voice heard or anything. So, I mean,

Speaker 3 now that being given the opportunity, I mean, I always talked about wanting to make a change in the world. I mean, I did before the army.
And so, like, I ask for all this food on my plate.

Speaker 3 And when it's finally on my plate, like, I can't turn it away now. Like, what am I going to do? Like, just let this keep happening.

Speaker 3 No, I mean, I understand people. Some people have their reasons for not wanting to.
I mean, maybe family,

Speaker 3 maybe other reasons. They're just scared of retaliation.
But I mean, that's not me whatsoever. I'll take this head on.
I'll take the weight of the world against me. And I'll see this through.

Speaker 2 I'm not a problem.

Speaker 3 I mean, the truth is out there and I'll keep saying it and I'll keep letting it be known.

Speaker 2 What do you think about what's happening in the country right now?

Speaker 3 I think it's crazy, and I think it is absolutely wrong.

Speaker 3 You don't just get to

Speaker 3 mask up and cover your face and just go around

Speaker 3 questioning people, asking them if they're here at illeague or not. You don't just get to...

Speaker 3 Nail on people's back. You don't just get to break cars.
You don't get to violate people's rights in general and just do all this all these things

Speaker 3 It's completely wrong and it's crazy.

Speaker 3 And so

Speaker 3 that's another reason why I'm doing this.

Speaker 3 Hopefully doing this and allowing people to take accountability for agents violating civil rights makes them think twice before they even think about doing something.

Speaker 3 And so I'm hoping that it fixes them doing this, fixes the overall picture and fixes the problem with the way agents act.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 because it's just crazy.

Speaker 3 There's no way. There's no way this is like the right type of trial.
There's no way.

Speaker 3 Like it's complete and utter insanity with the way they act and the way they treat people. It's just completely wrong.
Like it's crazy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 How are your kids handling this?

Speaker 3 I keep them away from this as much as possible. I mean, there's no reason for them to hear it.
I mean,

Speaker 3 when they get older, I mean, if they want to look into it, I mean, that's on them. But I mean,

Speaker 3 I just keep them away from it. So

Speaker 2 I'm glad you're back home with them. Thank you.

Speaker 2 I appreciate it. They're going to be really proud of their dad someday.

Speaker 3 Thank you. I really do appreciate it.
I really are.

Speaker 2 Because what you're doing is,

Speaker 2 I think it's brave. I think it's hard.
And like I said, it is a fuck of a lot more than a lot of people who have a lot more protections and a lot more power are doing right now. So,

Speaker 2 like, you know, you've served the country bravely even before this incident, and you're continuing to do so now. And I'm really grateful for that.

Speaker 2 And I'm grateful that you stopped by and told your story.

Speaker 3 So, thanks. Thank you for having me.
I really do appreciate it. I mean, I can't share my story without people like you.
And so, I mean, it's just as meaningful as me telling my story.

Speaker 3 And so together, we are making change.

Speaker 2 We will keep sharing it and we'll keep pushing

Speaker 2 until we get that law passed.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much. Thank you.

Speaker 2 That's our show for today. Thanks to George Reddis for coming on and for fighting back.

Speaker 2 We'll be back in your feed with our reactions to election night, and then we'll be headed to DC for our live show and CrookedCon. Talk to everybody then.

Speaker 2 If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 2 Also, please consider leaving us a review. That helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked.
Pod Save America is a crooked media production.

Speaker 2 Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illich Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari.
Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Cherlin is our executive editor.

Speaker 2 Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.
Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis.

Speaker 2 Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant.

Speaker 2 Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Carol Pelavieve, David Toles, and Ryan Young.

Speaker 2 Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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