Trump’s Epstein Problem

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Welcome to Raging Monarchs.

I'm Scott Galloway, and President Trump is clearly in the upscene files.

Oh, good morning to you too, Scott.

Come on.

Come on.

That's why we're here, Jessica.

In today's episode, I was in Obisa last week.

Word has it, I did Molly and had an amazing time, and I think I'm enjoying this more.

Yeah.

It's just taking you to another level.

Oh my God.

This is my hot girl summer.

Today we're going to talk about, today we're going to talk about MAGA revolting over the Epstein files, an all-time high of Americans now seeing immigration as a positive for the country.

Well,

welcome to Pulling Your Head Out of Your Ass.

And a proposal to evaluate lawmakers' cognitive fitness for office.

That's Aegis, Jus.

That's Aegis.

Anyways, let's get right into it.

The president is once again at odds with his own base.

This time it's over Jeffrey Epstein.

But we should really be focusing on Rosie O'Donnell.

I think that's not a distraction.

Our favorite Irish lass, Rosie?

Yeah, no, that is not an attempt to distract and say, look over here from the fact that he is clearly in the Epstein files.

After the DOJ released a memo concluding Epstein died by suicide and had no secret client list, Trump urged supporters to move on and defended Attorney General Pam Bondi, calling her fantastic.

He also claimed critics were just selfish people trying to hurt him.

But MAGA World isn't buying it, Jess.

At Turning Point USA Student Summit, the crowd booed Bondi's memo accusing Trump of breaking his own promise to release the full files, and influencers, including Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer, are openly criticizing the administration.

Loomer is now calling for a special counsel.

Who the fuck cares what Loomer wants?

But anyway.

Trump cares.

There you go.

Fair enough.

There you go.

The leader of the free world happens to care.

He cares.

Inside the administration, the fallout is even worse.

FBI deputy director and podcaster Dan Bongino almost resigned.

Almost.

Oh, no, Dan.

We hate to lose someone as competent as you from our public ranks.

He almost resigned after a tense blowup with Bondi.

He skipped work Friday.

He's like one of these little tech Google bitches doing a lunch walkout, pretending that anyone cares.

Oh, he almost took the day off.

That'll show him, Dan.

And he hasn't spoken to DOJ leadership since.

He hasn't spoken to him in a whole four days.

Bongino's future is uncertain, but for now, he's still on the job.

Bondi's still in Trump's good graces and even took her to

the football game on Sunday, which, by the way, was outstanding.

Yeah, it was kind of funny how he wouldn't get out of the picture, though.

Yeah, and he was booed.

That was my favorite part.

But this episode exposed serious fractures within the MAGA world and Trump's grip on it.

Jess, Give us your thoughts on this.

I got this wrong.

I didn't think it was going to be that big a deal, and it's it's just blown up.

Give us your take.

Yeah.

We are conditioned to think nothing matters because nothing has mattered up until this point.

Right.

So you think, oh, this is a news story for maybe a couple of days.

And you worry if you're recording something that it's going to be old by the next day, right?

But this one has had legs.

And a lot of that is because...

You have the luminaries, and I'm being generous with that term, but the faces of the party upset and the rank and file upset.

And usually those things don't coincide, right?

You get a few pissed off people here, but down here, everyone's fine.

Or down here, people are upset, but up here, folks aren't.

And we have to be real about this.

There are folks who were very outspoken about the Epstein files and being upset, like Charlie Kirk, Benny Johnson.

They've already fallen back in line.

Trump called Charlie Kirk, apparently.

Then he starts posting, you know, this isn't really worth our time.

And Benny Johnson, who had a four-point plan to how the administration could make things better, which also included, you know, something having to do with Bill Clinton,

now is saying that MAGA is taking this seriously.

And apparently, Bondi is going to start dribbling out more information.

Or that's what we heard from Lara Trump.

But I'm kind of in two minds about it.

So the one mind, which I think is more like your Abiza Molly mind, is I'm excited by this because it also shows that for some in this movement, there is a bridge too far or a line that you can't cross.

And there are a lot of people, especially the rank and file, who are upset because this guy was running a pedophile rank, right?

There were kids that were being abused who deserved justice.

And that that's something that should matter no matter what.

The other side of that is that it obviously exposes that Trump, someone who has managed miraculously to market himself as someone who isn't just in it for himself and isn't part of the swamp and the cabal of powerful people that will protect themselves no matter what, is exposed now as someone who's just your run-of-the-mill, you know, sharky salesman.

Right.

That's how it always was.

And for those of us who aren't particular fans of his, that's how we saw him from the jump, not even just with the Epstein stuff in general, especially if you'd been around New York, you knew exactly who Donald Trump was.

You know, the guy who's stiffing his contractors, who's saying disgusting things about women, who's, you know, cheating on everyone he ever married.

And that never penetrated.

So I kind of just gave up hope, I guess, that people would see that aspect of his character.

And that has been affirmed now that.

people are seeing this.

The other side of me, which is a bit of a Debbie Downer, and I hate to bring the mood of the pod down because it has been snappy to begin, is that I'm also concerned that we're going to spend all this time on the Epstein files and it won't matter.

And we'll forget to talk about real stuff that actually affect people's pocketbooks and how they're going to vote.

And, you know, we'll show up with campaign posters for 2026 that don't say he took away your Medicaid and it'll say like Pedo Island or something.

It won't be that extreme, but you know, being relentlessly focused on the things that win elections are how you capture people's attention.

And this is, it's an enjoyable sideshow, I guess, is how I would describe it.

So what are your feelings besides elation?

Well, so I teach a session on crisis management, and there's sort of just three basics to remember, and they're easy to remember, but they're hard to do.

And the first is to acknowledge the issue.

The second is to take responsibility, and the third is to overcorrect.

And

I would imagine that the vast majority of people who went to this island or accepted private jet travel with Epstein did not engage in pedophilia.

I mean, there's a lot of strafe here.

A lot of people have been caught up in this who ⁇ I mean, should wealthy, powerful people do enough diligence on someone to recognize, okay, if he's been convicted of a sex crime or has questionable activities, I'm not going to, you know, fraternize with him.

If the president, in my view, it's always the cover-up.

It's not the scandal, it's the cover-up.

And if the president had said,

you know, when I was younger, I liked to party.

I met this guy.

He was fun.

He was known for being having a good time.

He was giving money away.

He seemed legitimate.

And I spent time with him, went to the island, did not engage in any of these illegal activities.

It was a huge error in judgment, and I apologize.

I think this whole thing would blow over.

And if he said, even if he didn't mean it, and I've instructed my AG to release the files or look into it, and then just like he said, he was going to release his taxes and never did,

I think he'd be fine.

But he could not be acting more guilty.

Oh, wait, wait, wait.

Let's cancel Rosie's citizenship because look over here.

Nothing to see over here.

He could not.

It's when my dog gets into the trash and I walk into the kitchen, I know my dog has gotten into the trash.

I mean, she could not be more transparent in her guilt.

And it's as if a communications consultant has said, okay, do you want to come across as guilty as possible?

Do you want it to seem like, in fact, you weren't just down there, but there's some really ugly information about you in these files?

Okay, then act like this.

And this is exactly what he's acting like.

I feel as if he has such strong political instincts in terms of his base.

And here he's just, he literally looks like guilty.

And now I believe there's something more here.

I used to think, okay.

You know, all of these guys accepted a party.

They like to have a good time.

They like to be around hot people.

And I would imagine, just in terms of probability, the majority of them did not engage in a crime.

I'm sure some did.

But this feels like this guy is scared to death of this thing coming out.

And he comes across as really guilty.

Having said that, and then this is my prediction around this, and I'm curious to get yours.

Every time I'm hopeful that Senator Susan Collins actually gives a goddamn about her constituents or Senator Murkowski is going to find a backbone and realize that this is really counter to the values she espouses to.

And then they all fall in line.

And I think the same thing's going to happen here.

And, you know, all of a sudden, Charlie Kirk's saying,

you know, after trying to stir this conspiracy outrage and everything about, you know, the election being stolen and a pedophile ring in a basement that is non-existent of a pizza shop where Secretary Clinton was drinking the blood of sacrificed children, it is very rewarding to see the snake eating its own tail here.

But I think eventually he calls them and they all snap in fucking line.

And it's just, we just move on.

Your thoughts?

Yeah.

I mean, I largely agree with you.

It doesn't mean that you can't enjoy something fleeting.

Revel in it.

Like we all love Chinese food, right?

And then we forget that we ate an hour.

It's Chinese for Jews, Chinese food for everyone.

Yep.

So enjoy it.

Like the turning point clips will live forever of, you know, Steve Bannon and Megan Kelly and Tucker Carlson, though I'm very confused about the Mossad connect, you know, that he was an intelligence asset, also worked for the Israeli government.

But, you know, I'm happy to indulge in some more conspiracy.

But yeah, I generally think that they're going to fall in line.

And part of that is that there's no alternative.

And I'm not even talking about, oh, you're going to wake up and you're going to vote for Democrats.

Donald Trump has so completely owned the right wing of the country that you've got nowhere to go.

There have been many a moderate Republican soldier that has tried to stand up there and say, hey, look over here, there are other people who believe in

conservative values, and you could give it a shot.

Nikki Haley, Chris Christie in 2016, everybody and their mother tried, right?

Ted Cruz even won Iowa.

And

he has captivated the attention and the loyalty of this group of Americans in a way that I certainly haven't seen politically, at least in my time.

And so they don't really have an alternative of somewhere else to go.

And MAGA, more so than the Democrats, which we talk about this part all the time, they don't run purity tests the same way we do.

They allow for ideological inconsistency.

And yes, I think that there are going to be people that don't move past this, but it is going to be a drop in the bucket compared to the general MAGA movement because they've got no other optionality.

And we'll see what he essentially makes Pam Bondi do to try to paper over this because they're saying now that there's going to be more releases coming.

And

I'm not sure there has to be a sacrificial lamb.

If there will be, I think it's Pam Bondi.

And if I were to put on my conspiracy theory hat, which is very chic, I would say that my old colleague, Janine Pirro,

would be a wonderful replacement for Pam Bondi if she ended up exiting stage left in all of this.

I'm not sure if you're being serious or not.

You're being serious?

No, I am being serious.

You think that Janine Pirro would be a good attorney general?

She wouldn't be our choice necessarily, but I think that Pam Bondi has seemed miraculously unserious in this role for someone who had a very important job, obviously, in Florida, was instrumental to Trump in being able to win the state.

And she's been a bit blah, right, in this role.

She doesn't even perform that well in the cabinet meetings.

And, you know, Jeannie Pierrow is now the U.S.

attorney for DC.

So she is in the administration already.

And it wouldn't surprise me, is what I'm saying.

So, yes, I am being serious about that.

You know, you,

none of these people would be our picks, but the Wall Street Journal even wrote a piece about how much the DC office is loving having Piero there and how they have been surprised by her seriousness and she's reverted back to what she was like as a DA in Westchester.

So anyway, I'm just throwing that out there.

Well, at 74, she'd be one of the younger people in government.

There you go.

Yeah.

That's exactly what people wanted.

Janine, you look fantastic.

But do you think someone is going to have to go that there'll be a Mike Waltz?

This will be a blood offering.

It's a really interesting one.

I just don't, I have a striking inability to predict what's going on here.

I don't know.

I guess it depends how long it goes.

What do you think of this effort by a couple Democrats to force a vote?

The Rokana vote.

Yeah.

What do you think of that?

Do you think that's a good move politically?

Yeah.

I mean, it happened last night.

It got voted down.

That's right.

Shocker.

Well, they're in charge.

I mean, this is why you got to win fucking elections, right?

Because then you have the votes to do things.

Lag on, sister.

Yeah.

It's a well-timed F-bomb.

That's right.

That's what we're supposed to do, like one per day, right?

I think it's it's a role for Democrats.

That was mine.

But yes, I think it's right to be drawing attention to this.

And I also think the attitude the Democrats have had about this consistently, which is put it all out there.

There are going to be some folks on our side that are in these file.

I don't even know.

They're playing semantics with is it file?

Is it a list?

And Alan Dershowitz, who defended Epstein and also has been accused of being part of this cabal, has said in interviews recently, there's a list.

I know there's a list.

Galeene Maxwell is trying to get her story out there.

You know, she was the front page of Drudge, which you know that things are going really badly for the president when that's happening.

And you do have a person who is alive and for now, and hopefully stays alive, sitting in a jail cell who probably knows a thing or two about this.

So I think Rokana and folks should be out there really holding their feet to the fire, not losing the plot.

You know, they're cutting food assistance and Medicaid and giving tax breaks to the wealthy and all these things that people actually vote on.

But this is a cultural moment, I guess, not only because the Epstein files and did Jeffrey Epstein kill himself and all of that has taken on pop culture relevance, but it is saying something generally about class warfare.

And it is saying something about where the president fits in that conversation that we don't usually have a chance to partake in.

It's usually just partisans kind of peeing into the wind about it, right?

And it doesn't matter at all.

And now they're receiving a little bit of it.

Yeah, so just going back to Janine Pirro as Attorney General,

I hadn't realized that she was actually nominated for a daytime Emmy Award.

So I do think she's qualified.

Yeah, and also her criticizing the prosecutors, the January 6th defendants, saying they hadn't done their job.

She's clearly, you know, I just got to ask you.

Matt Gates, Pam Bondi.

Yeah.

If you're saying that you think he's going to wake up and say, I'd love, really, really love Merrick Garland back?

No, it just feels like even the president could do a little bit better than that.

But anyways,

anywho,

please move on.

So just some quick data here around this that shocked me and you're a pollster.

You'll find this interesting.

According to new polling from Morning Consult, Trump's approval rating has fallen about 6% since his comments about the Epsom epsilon case that's that's a pretty big move isn't it chess yeah it's things have been at certain moments in complete free fall for him and we're going to talk about immigration where that is very pronounced on the economy as well but yeah people are not into how this is being handled and you're completely correct that there was a way to manage this properly where you just said, you know, I want to protect the victims, for instance.

And some people would say that's a load of BS.

but in general, the people who are prone to forgive him would forgive him.

And certainly none of these influencers, I think, would have been mad about it.

So it's completely relevant that you could go down six points that quickly.

And you know that his team is paying attention to it as well and saying like, well, what can we do to leak out enough that nobody is incriminated or we don't have to hand over the proverbial list or files or whatever we're calling it and still be able to manage this base?

Because, you know, he has things that he's doing that he certainly feels really good about, right?

That he has a couple weeks of good news for his side, you know, getting the reconciliation bill across.

There's going to be the rescission bill, the Iranian strikes.

Like he'd love to be talking about all of those things.

And now this is all that he's getting.

I mean, trying to change the subject.

Now he's going after Adam Schiff for a bad mortgage in Maryland.

I mean, it's completely laughable.

So just a quick test of your political knowledge here.

There's only one cabinet member that has a net positive rating.

Any guesses who that is?

Rubio?

No, it's RFK Jr.

What?

RFK Jr.

is the most.

He is not wild.

He has a plus 5% net approval rating.

It's because he's good looking.

I'm pretty sure that the pollsters asked Rubella and Measles who their favorite cabinet member is.

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Welcome back.

In a quiet but seismic shift, the U.S.

recently deported eight men to South Sudan, most of whom aren't even from there, under a controversial third country deportation policy that legal experts say could amount to enforced disappearance.

Their words.

Their families haven't heard a word since July 4th, and now ICE has issued new guidance to fast-track similar deportations with minimal notice and virtually no chance for migrants to object.

And that's just one piece of a much bigger picture.

Across the country, immigration crackdowns are intensifying.

The new remote detention camp in Florida, Alligator Alcatraz is drawing outrage for inhumane conditions, and the fact that hundreds held there have no criminal charges.

Meanwhile, the administration is appealing a court order that blocked race-based immigration raids in California.

But a new Gallup poll shows Americans are more supportive of immigration than they've been in decades.

Even a majority of Republicans now favor a path to citizenship.

That's a switch.

But if you're wondering how far Trump might go to flex his immigration powers, look no further than his latest threat to strip Rosie O'Donnell of her citizenship.

Yeah, that makes sense.

He called her a threat to humanity.

Huh.

and said she should stay in Ireland where she moved after his reelection.

Legal experts quickly pointed out that's not how citizenship works.

Still, it's a telling moment, one that shows how far the rhetoric and policy is escalating.

It's a weapon of mass distraction.

Jess, how does the Supreme Court's green light on third country deportations open the door for more extreme removals?

And what legal or diplomatic fallout do you think we might see if other nations refuse to cooperate or detainees simply vanish, like in the South Sudan case?

I'm going to say it again.

You got to win elections because then you get to appoint people to the court.

And we are so massively screwed because of this conservative majority.

And my expectation is that Trump will probably get another appointment before he finishes in 2028.

And that really scares me.

You know, there are moments where you say, like, Amy, Coney Barrett, I love you or whatever.

Not this one.

And the most disturbing part of it to me, or the thing that I guess stuck out the most, is that as part of of getting rid of this nationwide injunction that came from the lower court, is that it does away with having to give meaningful notice before deporting to a third country.

So what they've been doing is essentially running out the clock or having no clock so that family and attorneys cannot get to a lot of these people who have been either wrongfully detained or really should just be deported back to their country of origin.

And you hear this constantly, whether we're talking about Seacot or detention facilities all over the U.S., makeshift or permanent.

You know, we'll talk about alligator Alcatraz, but nobody is

getting their due process.

Nobody is getting time to talk to an attorney, let alone to their wife or their husband.

And that the Supreme Court could be comfortable with that.

Even think about it.

It was just a few months ago, right, where they seemed like some sort of arbiters of humanity about the deportations to Seacot, where they said they have to make a meaningful effort to produce Kilmar Abrego-Garcia.

Now we have South Sudan with no call to your lawyer is fine.

Yeah.

It strikes me that in a weird way, a lot of these things are interconnected.

And I've been thinking about,

I hate anonymity.

And I'm interviewing today Greg Lukinov, who's a big First Amendment guy, and imagine he'll give me a...

He runs fire, right?

Yeah, he'll give me a cogent argument for why anonymity is so important.

But my sense is our fidelity or conflating free speech with anonymity has led to an environment where people will weaponize millions of trolls to create intimidation and shape the discourse around what's advantageous for some folks who don't have America's best interests at heart.

I don't think people would ever behave this way if they had to have their identity released online.

And in general, I think that almost anything involving a government investigation, there might be a quiet period for security reasons, but I think there's no reason not to release everything.

I just, I can't understand why any file isn't ultimately released that the FBI aggregates unless they see it as a security concern.

And then more generally, what do stormtroopers, ICE, the KKK, and

weirdos not letting Jews access certain parts of UCLA have in common?

And the answer is masks.

And when I think about what's been a hugely accretive or beneficial move for our men and women in blue, our trust in police forces around the nation.

It's been body cams and the fact that they have their badge number and their name right on their visible on their chest, and they're not allowed to wear a mask because they have to take accountability for their actions.

And it's been, I think, one of the greatest innovations in law enforcement that if you're going to apply force or you're here to protect and to serve, that you need to show all of your actions in 4D color.

And what do you know?

ICE enforcement agents are wearing masks, which tells you, in my opinion, everything about how they're acquitting themselves or what they're doing.

They wouldn't dare want anyone to actually know who they actually are.

So, this to me comes back to a basic trend in our society that's a wrong trend, and that is an acceptance and even reverence for anonymity as opposed to forcing people to take accountability for their actions.

And people come back and say, well, what about the civil rights lawyer in the Gulf that needs to protect our identity?

We could absolutely have anonymous accounts online and ensure that people are using them for reasons where they would need need anonymity.

But when you go onto your feed, and Jess, I imagine you get a lot of this because I have found a disturbing trend online where women are subject to more hate-filled emails and rhetoric and threats of violence by virtue of the fact that they're women.

I don't think it's healthy, this protection.

I think every social media platform should force identity and age gate.

Accepting a federal agency that now has greater funding than the Federal Bureau of Investigation, not doing covert or national security work, but treating people, you just wouldn't see them putting their knees on the heads of people or separating women from their 13-year-old screaming daughters if they actually had to show their fucking faces.

So whether it's the Epstein files and a belief that, oh, something should stay out of public view or masks.

covering the real identity and thereby reducing the accountability of this enforcement agency, which we are paying for, I think all of it comes back to the same place, and that is we have gone way too far with a reverence and an acceptance for anonymity and not connecting identity to people's actions.

Your thoughts?

I think it's an incredibly important point.

And if you wanted to get into the nuance of what has to be for national security, what actually needs to be put out in the world, I think that you can have those conversations on a case-by-case basis.

But in general, you know, that society would run a hell of a lot different if people had to show themselves, if they had to own what they're saying, in person and online behaviors.

And you're completely correct that it is a complete cesspool of what goes online, especially when it comes to misogyny and harassment.

I'm going through this right now.

There's a large conservative account that posted a picture of me with my ex-boyfriend and a picture of me with my husband.

And the post says that I cheated on my first husband.

I don't have a first husband.

I only have one husband.

And, you know, it gets worse.

We're talking whore, the C word, all of it.

And this is because I responded to the news that Ken Paxton, AG in Texas, his wife has filed for divorce after 38 years together.

It has been rumored for a long time that he cheats on her and she's just had enough at this point.

Anyway, so I wrote the party of family values strikes again because we're constantly lectured by conservatives about how Democrats are folks that are part of a pedophile ring.

And it has unleashed a torrent online that I haven't seen worse than actually when the president of the United States of America comes after you.

A lot from women, a lot from good Christians, right?

You know, I'm the best Christian there ever was, and you're an enormous whore and can't get it taken down.

because of what goes on on social media now and the changes that have happened under Elon Musk.

And so I'm kind of just sitting here having to take it.

The algorithms love this type of outrage.

This type of incendiary, ridiculous content.

And first off, I'm sorry you're going through this, but too, anyone that doesn't have their head up their ass realizes this is all total bullshit.

But what this continues is a long tradition of misogyny that has gone just ape shit online, where people don't have to take accountability for their hateful, weird rhetoric, which sometimes can be very, it's not only damaging emotionally and mentally, it can put people in physical danger because people start believing this shit.

And then a crazy person picks up on it.

But it continues a long tradition that has gotten much worse online, which a bunch of dudes refuse to address because

it's difficult to imagine what it's like to be a victim of this when you've never been a victim of this.

And the misogyny here is just so stark.

Because according to online trolls and especially the right, infidelity is a feature, not a bug for men.

And it's a crime against humanity for women.

So why not just accuse women of something?

Whereas it would be a compliment.

I mean, that's a real man on the Republican side.

So he should even be president.

Well, the people who are making these comments about you, one, I don't know if it's a media organization, but effectively this goes back to big tech.

The platform platforming this clearly false content, most likely, and it sounds like it's Twitter, the algorithms see it, like how much much activity it's getting.

And so they elevate it and they give it more organic reach than it deserves on its own.

There's no veracity here.

People wouldn't be spreading this type of information as far and wide organically.

But because...

It invokes a lot of reactions and back and forth, and I'm sure people are weighing in and defending you, the algorithms love it.

So they spread it further than it would go on its own, thereby disparaging your reputation and also creating emotional harm.

When algorithmically elevate content, you are now an editor, and there's no reason you shouldn't be subject to the same liability and slander laws as traditional media.

Fox News, including your endorsement for Attorney General, she was named in a case for spreading misinformation about SmartMatic, purposely and knowingly spreading misinformation.

around a company knowing that it was false information that caused material and economic harm.

This is happening to you right now, but because because it's happening to you, Twitter knows this is bullshit.

And it's very easy to see that this is causing real harm and disruption in your life.

But because they're quote unquote a nascent technology company, which is what it was called in 1997 when this ridiculous 230 law was passed, they are not subject to the same liability as Fox News when they spread misinformation.

So this all comes back to big tech.

figuring out a way to weaponize Republicans and Democrats to avoid any real responsibility or liability for things that traditional media has been responsible and liable for.

It not only tears at the fabric of our society and coarsens our dialogue, but it creates a post-truth society where nobody knows what to believe anymore.

Because the reality is, if somebody sees a story over and over, it becomes, in their mind, naturally, less of a lie.

It's like, oh, I'm seeing this everywhere, and there must be some truth to it.

No, it just means the algorithms have decided, regardless of how disparaging or slanderous it is, if it creates more engagement, we're going to spread it far and wide.

So, I kind of lay this at the feet not only of the people who created this false narrative, but the fact that one, the social media platform doesn't force identity when people weigh in and say vile things about you.

We should know who they are.

They should have to stand behind it.

And also, this organization or the people posting this content, or the platform specifically, should be subject to the same laws as traditional media.

Anyways, I'm sorry you're going through that.

And I hope you recognize that in the moment everything seems worse than it actually is.

This isn't that meaningful and everyone will forget about it and move on.

I hope so.

Yeah.

And I'm, you know, it's been a few days and you learn to move on quickly, which is probably another statement on how society works.

But I just wanted to add to your analysis to say that a critical component of why things are so bad is that we are so intellectually lazy now that no one wants to even Google something.

You know, this happens constantly.

And I understand that it is baked into the job for me to bring information that is different from the mainstream conservative point of view that my colleagues are espousing.

But because you don't want to spend any time taking a look at what Quinnipiak is saying or taking a look at what Marist is saying or even the Fox News poll.

You just immediately dismiss anything that makes your antenna go a little haywire.

You know, to loop it back to the immigration issue, Trump has blown his best issue in historic terms.

I mean, he is negative 27 on immigration now with Gallup, negative 16, Quinnipiac, negative nine, Marist, Fox News, minus seven.

Totally lost support of the Hispanic votes.

Remember, that was one of their favorite things to talk about, how the ombres actually wanted this.

Well, it turns out the ombres are not actually interested in the way immigration law is being enforced at this particular moment.

And it probably has to to do with the fact that 70% of people who are being detained haven't been convicted of anything.

So they say, oh, well, people are pending charges.

You can say whatever you want about someone.

Like, this is the United States of America.

You have to be convicted of something.

Not just that they're floating the idea that you did a very bad thing.

But you talk to the strongest section of his base about this, of Trump's base.

Those polls, they're all fake news polls, right?

If they even exist.

And they haven't spent any time actually going around and looking at a source that doesn't confirm their immediate bias.

And to the masking thing with ICE agents, I don't know if you've seen these stories, but there are people impersonating ICE agents, just like putting on masks and robbing, throwing people in trucks.

I mean, and some folks don't even know if it isn't actually an ICE agent that is doing something like this, because the reality on the ground is that there are folks that are doing this.

And Brian and I were talking about this over the weekend.

We hadn't been seeing that many stories from New York City about these immigration raids, like hearing a lot about what's going on in Chicago and in Boston.

And I heard from a friend that apparently in big immigrant neighborhoods out in Queens in particular, that there are ICE agents everywhere there now.

So the city is not being spared because Eric Adams is a friend of the Trump administration in any way.

And I assume that the stories are going to start rolling in of these terrible things happening, you know, all over the subways.

And it's just, I'm not saying that immigration law doesn't need to be in force, but I don't want our country looking like this.

Yeah, but

it's so gross.

It's performance and pageantry and fear and not really addressing the issue because going to the very core of the issue, while most people acknowledge immigration has been the secret sauce for American prosperity or one of them, What they don't want to have an honest conversation about is that the most profitable part of immigration has been illegal immigration.

And we can just wake up with tens of millions of illegal immigrants.

It's a flexible workforce that comes in, pays Social Security taxes, commits crimes at a lower rate, and then melts back to their own country when the work dries up.

It's been this unbelievable, profitable, flexible workforce.

And where I see the far right go is they say, look, and it's a solid argument theoretically, they broke the law.

They broke the law.

They knew they were breaking the law.

They should be subject to enforcement.

But they never want to talk about, well, based on that law, shouldn't we be prosecuting all the employers who knew they were employing undocumented workers?

And by the way, that is a crime.

But we don't talk about that.

We don't talk about the cut and dry, the employers, whether it's fast food restaurants or families employing undocumented workers.

We seem to forgive those less brown, older,

less vulnerable people, right?

So we're just not focused on the right thing.

If you want to talk about an alien invasion, if you want to talk about millions of people storming the shores and offer their services for free, you want to talk about disruption.

What if seven or eight or 10 million immigrants stormed the shores, just overwhelmed the United States, and were willing to work for free 24 by 7?

What would that do to certain industries?

Well, it's here, folks.

It's called AI.

And instead of focusing on AI and taking some of that $12 billion and upskilling people and training to be critical thinkers and understand AI and how to leverage it and job training to get people out of of things like trucking, which clearly AI is going to just decimate.

We want to scare the shit out of people and increase inflation by getting rid of 3% of America's working population, which is ICE's goal, which will be somewhere between 5% and 15% of the agricultural and construction communities.

Between tariffs on drywall gypsum, Canadian lumber, and then emptying out construction sites, of which 15% of the workforce is undocumented workers.

And by the the way, when you lose 15% of your workforce, the industry kind of collapses for a while.

You're going to see massive inflation and you're going to see huge economic strain.

But instead, you know, instead of focusing on our economy, instead of focusing on how we would use that money to upskill people and protect jobs, I just think the president, I think they love this macho mass, big guys

ripping families apart.

I think so many Americans are so angry and upset that they actually enjoy some of this footage like oh we'll show those

you know those criminals but you know the nice the nice white family that owns the car wash who's been hiring undocumented workers and wink wink

everybody's put up with this for a long time leave those good Americans alone I wonder what's going to happen I think at some point there's going to be a confrontation that's going to turn violent in the United States I think

I think people are so correctly horrified.

There was a really interesting video taken in a hospital where doctors just surrounded surrounded ICE and said, What are you doing?

Get out of here.

And what is going on here is so craven and so aggressive and so upsetting.

I mean, at least the brown shirts in Nazi Germany showed their faces.

You know, these guys showing up with masks and the militarization.

I mean, it's happened incrementally, so we're not as shocked.

But if someone had played just a few years ago what was going to happen here at car washes in Calabasas or to, you know, Uber drivers or people showing up for their citizen hearings or church.

I think we would have just said, well, of course that would never happen in America.

Well,

it is.

Anyways, with that, we'll take another quick break and we'll be back in just a moment.

Okay, welcome back.

Before we go, Washington Representative Marie Glissenkamp-Perez.

She's doing a few lawmakers have dared to do, publicly question whether some of her older colleagues are still mentally fit to serve.

The 36-year-old Democrat is pushing a proposal that would allow the House Ethics Office to assess whether a member's cognitive decline is impairing their ability to do the job.

An idea that was quickly swatted down by her colleagues in committee.

Are there really fucking old people?

Seriously, it's quite a lot of people.

Actually, no.

Really?

They're not really fucking old people that swatted it down.

It's people who want to hang out for the next 50 years in Congress.

Or who are scared of the really fucking old people who wield a tremendous amount of power as well.

Fair point.

Her call for cognitive oversight lands in a moment when concerns about mental acuity and government aren't just theoretical.

They're fueling investigations.

Republicans are now probing whether Biden was mentally fit enough to authorize end-of-term and clemency decisions, claiming staff may have used an auto-pen without his direct input.

Biden says he made every decision himself and slammed Trump and his allies as liars.

Still, the broader question remains, when is it too old to govern?

Curious on your thoughts on this, how realistic is Perez's proposal and could it actually break an unspoken code of silence around age and capacity in Congress or will it just be another flashpoint that fades without reform?

What do you think, Josh?

It's definitely not going to pass

ever.

But I do think that it's important for people to show who they are and their morality and their beliefs.

And that's what she's doing.

She's just making a public declaration.

And this is coming from her constituents who were all deeply concerned about President Biden and his mental fitness, as millions of Americans were, yourself included.

And she's putting her stake in the ground where she just says, this is something that we need to be talking about more and to be thinking about.

And maybe it's not the end of the world if there's some mechanism to step in when there's a problem.

And the...

argument against it is well we you know we have elections and they have to stand again and get voted back in.

But in a lot of these districts, they're rubber stamps for whoever is in the majority.

You're talking about like D plus 30 districts.

And if someone isn't getting primaried, then that carries on.

There's a lawmaker, I think she's 86 years old, who's been flirting with maybe I'm going to run, maybe I'm not going to run.

Her staff has to kind of clean up after she makes a comment about it.

And now she's decided that she's going to run again.

Maxine Waters, she's 86 years old.

I get it.

These are only two-year terms, so she'll be out by 89 or whatever.

But like, some things just don't feel appropriate.

And I also think that there is an unfair sliding scale for folks.

Like I interviewed Greg Kassar for our podcast, and he wants a new generation of leaders.

He's part of that.

He's on the progressive left of the party.

He's been on tour with Bernie and AOC.

So I say, you know, well, Bernie's 82 years old and he's going to run again again for his Senate seat.

Well, there's a carve out for Bernie because Bernie has a ton of energy.

And yes, I get it.

Bernie Sanders, you have a lot more faith in his ability to survive a term than you did necessarily about Joe Biden.

But you either have a standard or you don't have a standard.

And that's where this representative, Glusen Kemp Perez, is kind of putting her stake in the ground and just saying we need to have standards that everyone abides by.

And then you can plan for what life after Congress looks like for you.

If it's just retirement, or maybe you want to go into the private sector, or you want to go back to teaching if you're a teacher, or maybe, you know, want to travel the world, whatever it is.

But a lot of people have been talking a big game about passing the torch and a new generation of leaders or what it takes to do this job, which is just an incredibly special elite job.

There are only 435 people with this job on the Senate side.

Only 100 people in a country of 330 million who get this job.

Take it more seriously.

I love this, and I think it's just insane that we've decided that a 34-year-old doesn't have the cognitive ability or life experience to run for president, but someone

81 can do it.

16 years, term limits, or 18 years and 75, you're out.

It's just insane to me.

We age gate all sorts of tasks, whether it's pilots, whether it's CEOs of public companies, and we've decided that, arguably, to your point, the most important decision we're not going to have age limits on.

And it really hurt Democrats.

I think five representatives died.

I think it's three.

Was it three?

I thought it was five of them passed away.

Like since the term.

Yeah, three.

It's a lot of people.

When I joked, I'm going to go see the F1 movie.

And I'm like, I think it's hilarious that Brad Pitt is an F1 driver who clearly, I can spoiler alert, I'm pretty sure he probably wins the race, but in 10 years, his kids are probably going to take his driver's license away.

It not only creates a situation where you have people who are cognitively impaired and make poor decisions, including to run again, Bernie should not be allowed to run again.

That's insane because biology is undefeated.

And by the time he's 86 or 87, he's probably going to slow down and not be able to represent his constituency very well.

And there will always be examples of the 100-year-old who runs a marathon.

But in general, we've decided that 17-year-olds don't have the cognitive capacity to decide to join the Army for good reason, or that they, you know, kids should not be able to access pornography, at least theoretically.

We age gate all sorts of stuff on the bottom end, and the cognitive decline is just as severe on the back end.

Of course we should age gate this.

And the dialogue, I believe, has actually progressed.

When I first said that Biden was too old to run, I'm Bill Maher two and a half years ago.

It was called an ageist and how dare you?

And okay,

in addition to the cognitive decline, which puts serious strain on the public, having to put up with individuals who no longer have good judgment or even just the capacity to do their jobs, it creates an environment where we're not thinking long term.

Two-thirds of Congress will be dead within 25 years.

Are they really that concerned at the end of the day about deficits and climate change?

And they get all indignant and clutch

their pearls that they got as a wedding gift in the 30s and say, okay,

you're being ageist.

We care about climate change and our grandchildren.

No, you don't.

Listen to young people talk about the deficit and the climate change.

They're going to be around to have to pay this shit back.

They're going to be around when everyone has to move out of the ⁇ or there's forced mass migration and an unbelievable tax on everybody

when we have to pay for disaster relief on super fires that are happening every other week.

So we absolutely, we need a representative democracy.

And the average age of our elected representatives across the world, this is a global phenomenon, has risen from 55 to 62.

And the U.S.

has the oldest, I believe, of any, any G7, except

we haven't taken a note from other countries.

Most countries, there's age gates.

You know, firefighters in the U.S.

have to retire at 57.

You have to retire from the armed forces at 64 because you might make bad decisions to kill other people when you're 84.

But we've decided, no, you can make decisions about who gets food stamps or what nations we do or do not declare war against.

Finland requires medical testing for driver's license applicants after the age of 45.

England has an age limit of 75 for sitting on a jury.

They realize at 76, you may not have the cognitive ability or the physical stamina to pay attention to ensure that an individual is acquitted fairly through the court process.

86 members of the House and 33 members of the Senate are now over the age of 70.

In the House, the average age is 57.

In the Senate, it's 65.

And this is the third oldest Congress since 1789.

Enough already.

Enough already.

We need age limits.

If we have them on the bottom end, there is no reason we shouldn't have them on the top end.

It's also a worse problem on the Democratic side than it is on the Republican side.

Fair.

Trump aside, who's obviously an incredibly old president.

But the rank and file, and this is they're doing as well with the Supreme Court nominations, too.

I could see a world in which we were in power and we're like, I'm really into this 65-year-old.

I think it'd be great on the bench.

I'm like, take the teenager, put the teenager on the court.

Put in Representative Tallarico.

That's a great plug.

Yeah.

We have him on the podcast on Friday.

There you go.

This is how you've got to be thinking about it.

I do want to say something positive about the current state of Democratic politics.

Go on.

Because we don't do this nearly enough.

And these are fundamentally our people.

There's new polling out from Tony Fabrizio, Trump's pollster, showing that Republicans are trailing on the generic ballot in 28 House battleground seats.

There are huge amounts of pickup opportunities, especially with the big beautiful bill.

Don't blow it by only talking about Epstein.

And one thing that I saw that I thought you would really like is there's this up-and-coming ad-making firm that's cool campaigns, Van Ness Creative.

And they have basically issued a warning saying that if you're not going to get online, then you just need to retire, That no one should be making you ads or supporting campaigns of people who cannot communicate the way that the world is getting information and ingesting it.

And, you know, there's an effort that you can make if, you know, you're older and all you can do is hold a camera up to your face while you're sitting in a car or whatever.

That's still making some sort of effort.

But there are actually pretty high numbers of folks in elected office who don't even want to partake in the main vehicle for political communication at this point, and that those people need to retire along with the 85-year-olds.

I agree.

Across both chambers, there are 20 members who are 80 years or older who likely think Chat GPT is a venereal disease.

I mean,

Congress is beginning to look like the waiting room at a cardiologist in Boca Raton.

It's just, for God's sakes, enough already.

All right.

Jess, that's all for this episode.

Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates.

Our producers are David Toledo and Eric Jenicus.

Our technical director is Drew Burroughs.

Going forward, you'll find Raging Moderates every Wednesday and Friday.

Subscribe to Raging Moderates on its own feed to hear exclusive interviews with sharp political minds.

This week, Jess and I are talking with, and we're excited about this, with Texas State Representative James Tallarico.

Make sure to follow us wherever you get your podcast so you don't miss an episode.

Just have a great rest of the week.

You too.