S2 Ep1011: Susan Rice: This Is Bloody Serious

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Speaker 1 Hey guys, it's Tim. I've got a little programming note for you and a monologue about some of the news that has come out overnight with regards to the El Salvador prison.

Speaker 1 So first off, we had Susan Rice today. She was great.
We taped her podcast yesterday. Part of the reason I'm doing this monologue is that we were cut a little short.
But here's the thing.

Speaker 1 My mother always said when we went on vacation to a new city, she's like, you don't want to see all the sites on your first trip to the city. You want to leave yourself wanting more.

Speaker 1 So I think that's nice. I left myself wanting a little more with Susan Rice.
We can, you know, go deep on Benghazi or the nature of the Western world order at another time.

Speaker 1 But she is just really, really good on Mike Waltz and the comedy of errors of the man that is in the job she once held for President Obama. So that's coming up next.

Speaker 1 Last night, there was an Atlantic story I'm sure many of you have probably seen that I'm going to get into more here in a second about Kilmore Obrego Garcia. He's a man in Maryland, father of two.

Speaker 1 His five-year-old has a severe disability, autism. He can't speak.
He's been here since he was 16 years old. He's fleeing the gangs in El Salvador.

Speaker 1 Somehow, we lumped him in with the Venezuelans and claimed he was Trenda Aragua and sent him back to El Salvador to this gulag.

Speaker 1 And the story is awful. But what the Atlantic reported is that it was a mistake.

Speaker 1 And the government actually, in a court filing, admitted that it was a mistake, that this was not a person that was meant to be sent there, but said that we can't do anything now because he's in El Salvador's custody.

Speaker 1 So I fired off a rage take about that at about 1 a.m. last night that you can go listen to over on YouTube or on the Bulwark Takes podcast feed.
And so I just want kind of programming note on that.

Speaker 1 And then I want to expand on my points.

Speaker 1 The Bulwark Takes feed, like I've had some when we were at our event in Phoenix and people were really excited about it, loving it, because they kind of want to hear our reaction to all the horrors as they are happening.

Speaker 1 I've heard from other people that it's like, I can't live like this and hear about this stuff every minute. I got to tell you, I get it.
I totally understand on all counts of this.

Speaker 1 And, you know, we're here. I'm here.
I'm serving y'all. So if we're doing stuff that isn't serving you, you don't let take a break, like take a day off, take a couple days off, whatever.

Speaker 1 And there's some people that want the quick takes because that's all they have time for, right? Some people that just really want to know what's happening minute by minute. I get that.

Speaker 1 Others just, you know, want to listen to me on their daily constitutional. Whatever works for you, I think that you should be

Speaker 1 ensuring that this is serving you and serving your needs. And so I 100% support that.
And if there's something we can be doing better, you just let me know.

Speaker 1 My promise to myself, as far as serving my needs, I said this, I think in the very first podcast with JVL and Sarah after Trump won, was that the only way I can deal with this, this next four years of fucking nonsense, is to care what I care about,

Speaker 1 to not be fake outraged over Trump's stupid shit if I'm not actually outraged, to not

Speaker 1 focus on something just because I think it might matter in some triple bank shot in the midterms. Like, that's not the the point of what we're doing here.

Speaker 1 I don't, like, what I say on this podcast is like not

Speaker 1 going to be the determining factor on who wins the Colorado 7th district next year in November in 16 months. I think that our, my obligations are higher than that.

Speaker 1 And so, to that point, all we have in this world is like our ability to control our own choices and to try to influence things in the way that we can, and either in our communities or using our platforms, et cetera.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to do that no matter what I think is politically whatever, like useful. Like obsessing over that right now, I think it's really stupid.

Speaker 1 And in this case, in the case of the El Salvador Gulag,

Speaker 1 if it was a 20% issue, I said this on Twitter the other day. You could call me Mr.
20 because I don't give a fuck if it's a 20% issue. It's wrong.
And I'd get a tattoo that said Mr.

Speaker 1 20, but I'd worry that then they'd send me, get shackle me and send me on a plane to San Salvador. So no more tattoos for me.
But here's the good news for you guys. There was a poll about this.

Speaker 1 And it turns out I'm not Mr. 20.
You guys aren't because I know I've been hearing from you and you agree with me. We're Mr.
and Mrs. 47.

Speaker 1 Americans oppose the deportations of Venezuelan migrants without hearings by double digits, 47% to 35%,

Speaker 1 according to an economist YouGov poll. Most notably, only 32% of Republicans said they believed that the deported Venezuelans are actually all gang members, as the administration claims.

Speaker 1 Only one in three Republicans believe that.

Speaker 1 And a majority of Americans said they thought that the administration is making many or some mistakes in its deportations.

Speaker 1 So this goes back to what we were talking about with Bill yesterday with Joe Rogan. I don't know.

Speaker 1 I mean, I have a pretty low view of my fellow Americans for putting this fucking moron back into the White House again.

Speaker 1 But I don't have such a low view as to think that we cannot convince people that it's bad to send gay makeup artists to a torture dungeon in another fucking country with no due process and no ability to appeal.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I don't know that we're quite there yet as far as the depravity of our neighbors and our fellow Americans.
So that was a little bit of good news.

Speaker 1 The bad news is that this administration isn't doing anything about Kilmar Obrego Garcia.

Speaker 1 They shook him down when he's going to pick up his child from his mother-in-law's house, the kid's grandmother's house. They cuffed him.

Speaker 1 They sent him on this plane to San Salvador and then on a bus and then to this terrorist prison.

Speaker 1 He hasn't been able to contact his lawyers. He hasn't been able to contact his families.
It is just an unbelievable nightmare. It's an unimaginable nightmare.

Speaker 1 You think like to be him or to be his spouse, having your spouse just be snatched off the street when they've done nothing wrong? He had no criminal record here.

Speaker 1 The thing that you see that the administration is now saying is that, A, they don't have jurisdiction, which is such bullshit.

Speaker 1 We're paying El salvador to hold these guys so i think we have jurisdiction that'd be like me like hiring a babysitter to watch my daughter and then if something bad happens maybe like i have no jurisdiction over what happens there it's like what like what are you talking about like we are paying for them to hold these people so we do have jurisdiction but that's what they're saying and the other thing they're saying is that this person might not have been trend dearragua because remember we we did the alien enemies act because we're at war supposedly with trend dearagua that's why we can we can go around the constitution to invoke these extreme measures because this is a supposed war that we're in with this Nicaraguan gang, excuse me, Venezuelan gang.

Speaker 1 They don't even claim that this guy is in that gang.

Speaker 1 They do claim that he was a member of MS-13 based on some 2019 filing where another person that he got scooped up with in some raid accused him of that. There's been no evidence of it.
A judge

Speaker 1 gave him temporary status,

Speaker 1 said that he was protected because there was credible fears that he'd be hurt if he was sent back back to El Salvador, that he'd be targeted by gangs. Our buddy Jon Favreau tweeted about this.

Speaker 1 Our not buddy J.D. Vance quote tweeted Favreau to say this.

Speaker 1 My comment is: according to the court document you apparently didn't read, he was a convicted MS-13 gang member with no legal right to be here.

Speaker 1 My further comment is that it's gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported while ignoring citizens they victimize. This guy didn't fucking victimize anybody.
He is not a criminal.

Speaker 1 Like JD Vance might really have come to admire Putin and despise

Speaker 1 our European friends, as they said in that text message with P. Teg Seth.
But in liberal democracies, in free countries, there is a difference between accusation and conviction. When J.D.

Speaker 1 says that he was a convicted MS-13 gang member, I don't even know what that means. We don't convict people for being gang members, but he hasn't been convicted of anything.

Speaker 1 Like the judge gave him protected status during the Trump I administration.

Speaker 1 So, like, it was a time when Trump had jurisdiction over immigration. They ruled that this person wasn't a gang member.
Do they have new evidence? They're not even claiming to present new evidence.

Speaker 1 They're not saying that they have anything. Like, they're just saying that Donald Trump and J.D.

Speaker 1 Vance have the right to send a dad with a disabled kid, who's an American citizen, by the way, to a fucking gulag, and that we just have to say, okay, yes, sir.

Speaker 1 I mean, it is Stalin-esque behavior. It's like we're, you know, sending people to Siberia with no recourse.
And J.D. Vance is unapologetic about it.
He's totally wrong. There was no conviction.

Speaker 1 In the later tweet, he talked about how this was a Biden administration thing. He was wrong about that.
He had to edit his tweet to change it.

Speaker 1 Like, these guys are just making shit up as they go along. Here's Connor Lamb.

Speaker 1 The VP is lying about a building trades union member who a judge ordered not to be removed, never committed a crime in 14 years, and has a five-year-old, is now trapped in a Salvadoran prison.

Speaker 1 No one can get out of. Catholics, union members, believers in the Constitution, take note.
I agree. Thank you, Connor Lamb, for speaking clearly about that.

Speaker 1 The spokesperson for the White House was before this all came out, but there have been other stories, obviously, that we've been covering of people.

Speaker 1 And at this point, look, and we're adding on to segment two of this, the bonus interview. that I did yesterday with the reporters of Mother Jones who

Speaker 1 have talked to 10 of these family members of the people that are there.

Speaker 1 And they're like, we looked through the list and saw evidence of criminal behavior on a minority of the people, but they spoke to 10 family members and they're like, you know, you can only know what you can know from reporting, but they don't see any evidence that any of these 10 people are gang members.

Speaker 1 Now, this Maryland person was not included in that. Kilmar Garcia.
Andre, the makeup artist, wasn't included in that.

Speaker 1 There's a New York article out today on the makeup art on Andre that says that Andre's lawyers believed that actually the guy that was yelling that we talked about before who is crying who's crying for his mother screaming out I'm a gay barber their lawyers think that's maybe somebody else because they don't think Andre would describe himself as a barber he's a makeup artist and so who the hell knows maybe they got two gays down there so anyway like here is caroline uh levitt with her with her cross necklace uh discussing uh the people that we've sent to this hellhole yesterday and and whether they are actually doing vetting to verify that these people are gang members or criminals.

Speaker 8 Our agents on the front lines take

Speaker 8 deporting these people with the utmost seriousness, and there is a litany of criteria that they use to ensure that these individuals qualify as foreign terrorists

Speaker 8 and to

Speaker 8 ensure that they qualify for deportation.

Speaker 8 And the president made it incredibly clear to the American public that there would be a mass deportation campaign of not just foreign terrorists, but also illegal criminal aliens who have been wreaking havoc on American communities and shame on you and shame on the mainstream media for trying to cover for these individuals

Speaker 1 who have

Speaker 8 this is a vicious gang andrew this is a vicious gang that has taken the lives of american women the government filed in court which says all and you said yourself there are more there are eight criteria on that document

Speaker 8 and you are questioning the credibility of these agents who are putting their life on the line to protect your life and the life of everybody in this group and everybody across the country.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. She's so outraged.
She's so outraged. Oh, how dare you? How dare you? These people are gang members.
And this is like, this is sick.

Speaker 1 It is incumbent upon them to demonstrate that these people are criminals. Like, this is not how things work in a free country.

Speaker 1 You just get to shout down as Andrew Feinberg's reporter, a good reporter over there, and she's shouting down, shame on you, shame on you. Like, no, shame on you.

Speaker 1 It is incumbent upon you to demonstrate that people,

Speaker 1 that at least there is beyond a reasonable doubt, familiar with that phrase, that they are in a gang or committed a crime or even came here illegally.

Speaker 1 These other, like again, Kilmar Garcia was here illegally. Like a judge had given him protected status.

Speaker 1 I don't know what the political ramifications are of this, but this is the grossest thing we've done in a long time. Bill and I were talking about this in a lot of ways.

Speaker 1 And everybody remembers, and I was growing up, remember the Abu Ghraib scandal and how massive that scandal was. It was horrible.
It's just a nightmare that what we did.

Speaker 1 This is worse in a lot of ways. And these are people that are here legally, that are family members that are legal, that did nothing, that we are sending to another country.

Speaker 1 We don't even have, there's no oversight, there's no recourse, you know, at least in that case, in Abu Ghraib, there were brave people within the administration that were whistleblowing, that were speaking out.

Speaker 1 We don't have that option here. Like what we are doing here is the worst thing that this country has done in a long, long time.

Speaker 1 And I'm not going to turn away from it or focus on whatever kitchen table issues or Donald Trump's third term, whatever other stupid shit people want to talk about. So that's that.

Speaker 1 In segment two, we've got Noah Lenard and Isabella Diaz from Mother Jones that

Speaker 1 have spoken to the family members of some of the folks we've sent to El Salvador. And then here in segment one, we've got Susan Rice, who talks about the other, I just think, absolutely.

Speaker 1 you know, critical thing that's going on here, which is just the reorientation of our foreign policy, the recklessness of our foreign policy, and frankly, how it ties to economic policy with tariffs as well.

Speaker 1 So she's really great on it. Stick around for Susan Rice, Noah Lennard, and Isabella Diaz.
We'll see you soon.

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Speaker 1 Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Speaker 1 Delighted to welcome back someone that served as National Security Advisor and Ambassador to the United Nations during the Obama administration.

Speaker 1 She was Biden's chief domestic policy advisor for two and a half years. It's Susan Rice.
How are you doing?

Speaker 5 Great, Tim. Good to be with you again.

Speaker 1 Much, much to discuss.

Speaker 1 You know, you are a fan favorite from all the cussing from the last, both from the pre-election podcast. We even have more to cuss about now.
So I look forward to it.

Speaker 1 I guess at the beginning, When I was thinking about what I wanted to talk to you about, I was kind of like, you know what? I should just ask her what is the most alarming.

Speaker 1 What's the thing that alarms you the most from the first

Speaker 1 nine weeks of the administration? And why don't we just take it from there?

Speaker 5 Jesus, Tim, I don't even know where to start if you go with that question.

Speaker 5 I mean, I'm profoundly alarmed by the dismantling of the federal government and of vital programs from Meals on Wheels to veteran services to health care that so many Americans rely on.

Speaker 1 I'm

Speaker 5 profoundly concerned by the trend of retribution and the effort to undermine our democracy by trying to intimidate the media and law firms and universities and anybody who will stand up to this administration.

Speaker 5 Internationally, it's exceedingly concerning that we are essentially abandoning our traditional Western allies in NATO and Canada and Asia and aligning the United States with Vladimir Putin and Russia as we sacrifice Ukraine on an altar to Trump's ego.

Speaker 5 And at the same time, as we are cozying up to Russia, we are placing ourselves in the camp that is the axis of authoritarians.

Speaker 5 It's not just Russia, it's China and under Xi Jinping, North Korea and Iran, who are all a quadripartite virtual alliance of their own. So that's extremely concerning.

Speaker 5 The trade war and efforts to punish our best trading partners and traditional allies and undermine their economy, the effort to threaten Canada and Greenland.

Speaker 5 I mean, I can go on, and then we haven't even gotten to SignalGate yet. I mean, let me summarize.
This is a wholesale effort to kill America's democracy and sacrifice our global leadership.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a good summary. I agree with basically every sentence in that.

Speaker 1 I guess with one caveat, I do think that we are, you know, at least in some ways, still trying to challenge Iran and being hostile there. And I guess that gets us into SignalGate, right?

Speaker 1 So before we get to kind of the

Speaker 1 Yakady Sachs execution of it, I am wondering just what you thought about the broader policy with regards to kind of Yemen and countering Iran and the region.

Speaker 5 Well, it's not clear to me the extent to which we're countering Iran.

Speaker 5 I mean, remember Donald Trump, who blew up the Iran nuclear deal negotiated under President Obama Obama when I was national security advisor and claimed that that would be the way to emphatically prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

Speaker 5 That strategy of blowing up the deal and applying so-called maximum pressure has failed abjectly. Iran is closer to having a nuclear weapon than it ever was.
And now Trump is

Speaker 5 making nice to Iran, asking Iran to come please, please, please to the negotiating table. And Iran is giving them a stiff arm.
So, you know, that's on one side. On the other side, you've got J.D.

Speaker 5 Vance revealed in this signal text chain to be more interested in punishing our European allies than in taking military action against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen who are attacking international shipping and American warships.

Speaker 5 So I don't know exactly where they're coming from with respect to Iran. It seems as incoherent as much of the rest of their policy.

Speaker 1 Aaron Powell, it's interesting that you bring that up with the JD, because that's where I was going to go next.

Speaker 1 When you look at that signal text chain, was it the Vice President's substantive policy arguments on top of just what seems to be a deep personal disdain for our European allies that he and the Secretary of Defense had?

Speaker 1 And was that the thing that jumped out to you the most from the actual substance of the text exchange?

Speaker 5 That was certainly one of the things that jumped out at me about the substance of the text exchange. But it seemed to be a view shared not only by J.D.

Speaker 5 Vance and the Secretary of Defense, but Stephen Miller on behalf of the President and Michael Waltz.

Speaker 5 The notion that our efforts to ensure freedom of navigation, which the United States has upheld globally since the 18th century, is somehow merely a favor to our European partners that needs to be repaid in some extortionary fashion is extraordinary in itself and very simple-minded and transactional and counter to U.S.

Speaker 5 national security interests. We have the United States as a major global player, blue water navy, and

Speaker 5 reliant on commercial access via the seas everywhere. We have a long-standing historic interest in freedom of navigation, which it does seem the Secretary of Defense acknowledged in this conversation.

Speaker 5 And yet we have

Speaker 5 many people purporting to represent the President's views suggesting that that's a service that we can extort repayment for.

Speaker 5 Mind you, no evidence that any European country had asked the United States to take military action at that time and place against the Houthis.

Speaker 5 But nonetheless, we're supposed to extort them for payment.

Speaker 1 Crazy. I want to get into Europe more, but just at the biggest picture on the text chain,

Speaker 1 you had Waltz's job at one point. There's a news story out just a little bit ago about, I guess, two U.S.

Speaker 1 officials have said that Waltz created and hosted multiple other sensitive national security conversations on Signal with cabinet members, including separate threads on how to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine, as well as other military operations.

Speaker 1 I'm just like, the existence of this is crazy.

Speaker 1 Having been in that chair, just talk about why this is just so outside the norm and what struck you about it.

Speaker 5 It's mind-blowing for several reasons. First of all, those conversations that

Speaker 5 were captured in the Signal Gate text chain that Jeffrey Goldberg published were in so many ways and by every definition classified. There's no doubt about it.

Speaker 5 Simply the discussion, the deliberative discussion that the vice president, by the way, initiated in that text chain, which I've studied carefully.

Speaker 5 He initiated a conversation about whether the United States should engage in military action against a foreign adversary.

Speaker 5 And then it was spun into a bunch of comments and deliberations about the impact on the region, on our European partners, on Egypt. All of that.
The deliberation itself is classified.

Speaker 5 And then you get Hegseth coming in with the super crazy, which is

Speaker 5 the details. conveyed in an unsecure commercial application of forthcoming U.S.
military operations, which could have directly put U.S. servicemen and women in harm's way, pilots, seamen, and women.

Speaker 5 It's insane. Now that they have done that, they seem to claim that there's no reason for concern or remorse.

Speaker 5 And now we have the stories that this is not a one-off situation, as it obviously wasn't because nobody objected to having these discussions over a signal.

Speaker 5 This is how they conduct the foreign policy of the United States.

Speaker 5 Anybody who knows anything about national security knows that a signal chat can be hacked and stolen by our most sophisticated adversaries. And even knowing that, they continue to do it.

Speaker 5 I mean, remember who's on this chain, Tim? Marco Rubio,

Speaker 5 who was the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. John Ratcliffe, who did a prior stint as DNI.
Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth, who were military officers. They know what is classified.

Speaker 5 They know how to handle it. And if they don't, for more than one reason, they have no business being in those jobs.
But this is not a group of neophytes who woke up yesterday, Mike Waltz, Saint.

Speaker 5 And so they are deliberately, whether it's for expedience, laziness, or an effort to hide from the presidential records requirements and the Federal Records Act documentation of their deliberations and decisions, they are engaging in negligent, reckless behavior that's putting the United States and our men and women in uniform at risk.

Speaker 1 I'll take all of the above on that expedience and, you know, trying to avoid the Records Act.

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Speaker 1 I want to get back to our friend Marco, but the Hag Seth exchange was the one that struck me the most. And I've never been in these type of deliberations.
Our audience hasn't for the most part.

Speaker 1 So you have. And so I'm just wondering what you made of it.

Speaker 1 He seems to be trying very hard.

Speaker 1 It's just like, I can't imagine Bob Gates or Leon Ponetta feeling like they, you know, doing all caps pathetic, talking about the Europeans or like giving specific details on a chain such as this, feeling like he needed everybody's approval.

Speaker 1 I don't know. It just read like somebody in way over his head to me.
I don't know what you made of it.

Speaker 5 Well, I think, frankly, he wasn't qualified to begin with.

Speaker 5 I don't know what being a Fox News commentator or host has to do with running the most sophisticated military in the world in a department that is the largest employer in the nation.

Speaker 5 He ran two small nonprofits for veterans into the ground. I think there's a real question about his qualifications to begin with.

Speaker 5 But, you know, this was not handled in the serious professional way that significant decisions of national security consequence need to be. Nothing more sensitive than imminent military operations.

Speaker 5 And he seemed to care less or to be so amateurish that he went ahead and puts that information in a place that our adversaries could have easily taken it.

Speaker 1 How would those conversations actually work? And you've been, I just, I mean, for people that haven't been in them, you know, like you're trying to make a decision.

Speaker 1 Bob Gates is trying to read you in on where it is. Like, are they all happening in a secure phone call? Or how did that happen? How did that work?

Speaker 5 It's an excellent question. So national security decision-making proceeds by processes that have been long-standing for decades and that we all have followed to date to greater or lesser extent.

Speaker 5 So let's take this example that we're dealing with. of an imminent military operation or at least the consideration of one.
What should happen?

Speaker 5 Well, first of all, there ought to be a series of meetings held in the secure confines of the White House situation room, which is in the basement of the White House, very secure facility.

Speaker 5 You can't take in your cell phone. You can't take in your Apple Watch because those devices, we know, can be hacked and turned into listening devices for our adversaries.
So you leave all of that.

Speaker 5 far outside of the situation room. You go into the situation room and you have a conversation that is prepared and structured.
You have an agenda. You have a detailed policy options paper.

Speaker 5 You have a military concept of operations. You have a diplomatic strategy.
You have a communications plan.

Speaker 5 And the cabinet level or deputy cabinet level principals and deputies as we call them will meet in a series of discussions to very carefully weigh you know, what are the right options?

Speaker 5 What is the timing? What are the regional and global diplomatic, strategic, economic consequences of the proposed actions? They work through all of these things and then

Speaker 5 take the issue to the president for his decision, laying out the risks, the benefits, the challenges. And then what should happen is the president should convene his cabinet-level principals.

Speaker 5 in the situation room and they should have a discussion in which all or maybe multiple discussions in which a decision is taken And then it should be carefully executed and preparations and precautions should be taken.

Speaker 5 When you take military action like this, we need to make sure that all of the American personnel in the region who could be the victims of retaliation by the Houthis or the Iranians have taken, are on lockdown and secure, whether it's our diplomatic personnel or our military personnel, that our allies have been thought about and accounted for and that they are not going to be targeted in retaliation.

Speaker 5 There are all these complicated things that go into thoughtful deliberations and decision-making, none of which happened on that text chain, which is inappropriate for that kind of discussion, and none of which delved into the complexities that I just outlined.

Speaker 1 Yeah, one more thing on Hagseth, another new story that has come out about him is I guess he brought his wife to a couple of sensitive Pentagon meetings with foreign

Speaker 1 foreign military counterparts. This is a report from the Wall Street Journal.
I talked to to Mark Warner, I guess, last week, and it just seems like recklessness over and over again.

Speaker 5 It is recklessness over and over again. I mean, his wife undoubtedly does not have a security clearance.
If she did, it would be completely unnecessary and inappropriate.

Speaker 5 And even for people that have security clearances and discussing sensitive information with foreign counterparts, they need to have what we call a need to know.

Speaker 5 You don't just get to have access to information even when you have a clearance. You have to have, for the execution of your job, a need to know that information.

Speaker 5 So it is impossible for me anyway to conjure a rationale for his wife, my husband, or anybody else's spouse or partner to be in a sensitive meeting that's not a social occasion with foreign counterparts.

Speaker 5 If it were a social occasion, that's a different situation. That doesn't sound like what this was.

Speaker 1 I want to get back to Marco, who you referenced, Secretary of State. Your former colleague Ben Rhodes wrote this.
I thought he summed it up pretty well.

Speaker 1 The Rubio legacy to date, he's ended USAID democracy funding. He's terminated Radio Marti, which is a Cuban radio station that was funded in part by USAID.
Mass deportation of Cubans and Venezuelans.

Speaker 1 Anti-free speech policies that mirror the Cuban Communist Party. Great investment, Florida hardliners.
It is pretty remarkable. I don't know.

Speaker 1 Rubio had to be a type of person that you had some overlap with policy-wise policy-wise when you were back in the Obama administration, certainly not across the board, but on some of these types of issues, USAID, people fleeing communism, rights of people fleeing communism.

Speaker 1 And what do you make of just a total abdication of all of those past views from the Secretary of State?

Speaker 5 Well, you also neglected to mention the

Speaker 5 rounding up and deportation without due process of Venezuelans, Haitians, and others sent to some gulag in El Salvador, and then onward, in some cases, directly back to Venezuela, and now the apparent rounding up of a Russian here legally, but likely to be now deported back to Russia, having opposed the war with Ukraine.

Speaker 5 It is a very different Marco Rubio, to put it politely. than the one that we had all been familiar with before.

Speaker 5 And I can't get into his head or his motivations, but it certainly seems to be a 180 from where he was and where he's been, frankly, all his career.

Speaker 5 And I don't know if this makes him at all uncomfortable, but it surely makes those of us watching from the outside uncomfortable on his behalf.

Speaker 1 I'll be a little more impolite because, look, we can have some disagreements on foreign policy and the right approach to the situation with the Houthis or whatever.

Speaker 1 It is sick what we've been doing with these folks that are fleeing communism.

Speaker 1 Like that is central to Marco's past, central to, as a former Republican, former neocon, like central to our worldview about America's role, protecting freedom in the world, being a shining city on the hill for people fleeing oppression and communism, that we are taking people that fled communism and sending them to a gulag in a different country is.

Speaker 1 like about as un-American as anything I can imagine. And he's essentially the point person for this policy.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's remarkable and it's horrific. I mean, for the United States to be sending people to foreign gulags or back to repressive communist regimes is something I never thought I'd see.

Speaker 1 I do feel like there's been a little less outrage from the Democrats on that issue than I've seen on others. Do you know what you make of that? Are people scared about

Speaker 1 the immigration being a political loser? Or what do you make of that?

Speaker 5 I don't know. I'm not sure I would agree with that premise, but I don't know.
You know, I think everybody needs to understand, everybody.

Speaker 5 I don't care if you're an American citizen, you know, white male, Christian, Republican, straight as an arrow. Anybody in this country

Speaker 5 who walks the streets needs to fear a situation where the government believes it can pick you up, detain you, and deport you without due process.

Speaker 5 Because even if you're a citizen, they can claim you're not. And without due process, you don't have the opportunity to prove that you're a citizen.

Speaker 5 You don't have the opportunity to prove you're not a criminal.

Speaker 5 And so, you know, people may think that, oh, well, these brown people who must be Venezuelan gang members and came here illegally and committed crimes. I don't mind if they get sent to El Salvador.

Speaker 5 We have no way of knowing if those people are anything other than brown people. We don't know if they're non-citizens.
We don't know if they came here illegally. We don't know if they're gang members.

Speaker 5 We don't know if they've they've committed crimes because none of them had the opportunity to have their cases heard.

Speaker 5 And in a world where there is no due process for some, there is no due process for any of us. And we all need to wake up and understand how bloody serious this is.

Speaker 1 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, these words are more than just the opening of the Constitution. They're a reminder of who this country belongs to.
and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 1 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now. Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

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Speaker 9 Amazon Black Friday Week deals are here with everything for everyone on your list, like your Uncle Ricky, who ruined every single one of your wedding photos because his fly was open.

Speaker 9 Get him a three-pack of new underpants.

Speaker 9 And right now, with Amazon Black Friday Week deals, you can save up to 40% on the gifts everyone wants, like the latest toys and housewares, and the gifts they need, like underpants.

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Speaker 1 Let's talk about the European view really quick. My colleague Jonathan Last wrote yesterday about

Speaker 1 how Europe has to take the situation with Greenland and what we've seen in these signal chats very seriously.

Speaker 1 Possibly might impact their thinking on their own nuclear umbrella, their own defense posture, you know, having to go alone without the U.S. Obviously, you talked to former counterparties in Europe.

Speaker 1 What do you make of their,

Speaker 1 you know, the bind that they're in right now when it comes to our allyship or our one-time allyship?

Speaker 5 Well, I don't have to talk to counterparts to know, based on my 30 years of experience in this field, how incredibly angry, betrayed, distraught they all feel.

Speaker 5 You know, we have built a U.S.-led world order that has

Speaker 5 done an extraordinary job of securing the American people and our interests since World War II.

Speaker 5 And it has been predicated on our global alliances and partnerships, primarily with Europe and Canada, but also in Asia. And when a U.S.

Speaker 5 administration, the President of the United States, pulls both the economic and the security rug out from under them. And by the way, it's not a one-way street, it's a two-way street.

Speaker 5 The only time NATO has ever invoked Article 5 of our mutual defense treaty was after the United States was attacked on 9-11 and the Europeans came to our defense and our support in Canada in Afghanistan and actually a number of other non-NATO partners.

Speaker 5 In a world where we are threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our northern neighbor in Canada and Denmark and Greenland, there is no question that the Europeans and others have to look at this in their own interests and recognize that as Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, said, we're not in the same relationship that we used to be.

Speaker 5 This is a very different world where they do not anymore feel they can trust the United States as an economic partner, as a security partner, and as a partner that shares their values.

Speaker 5 And that is extremely damaging to our national security and our national interests. And this is damage, Tim, I'm afraid, is going to be extremely hard to repair.

Speaker 1 One of the members of the signal chat I forgot to ask you about that I needed to pick your brain on before I lost you was Steve Witkoff.

Speaker 1 Did you catch his interview with Tucker Carlson or clips of it where he talks about Donald Trump, Putin giving Donald Trump a painting and how he gained all of this trust with Putin and similar thoughts about

Speaker 1 some other autocrats? Like, what do you make of this?

Speaker 5 Tim, I read about it.

Speaker 5 I can't be bothered to watch Tucker Carlson.

Speaker 1 Okay. I mean,

Speaker 1 I can't be bothered to watch Tucker Carlson usually either, but he's interviewing the point person for the negotiation between Ukraine and Russia, which is a pretty important person, you'd think, even though he's a former real estate man.

Speaker 1 But it's like, that's insane, right? Like, he's bringing back a painting.

Speaker 5 What I've read of that interview is really extraordinary.

Speaker 5 But bringing back a painting, you know, there are plenty of foreign leaders who've tried to co-opt Donald Trump with blandishments and gifts and deals on the side and economic benefits.

Speaker 5 That's not particularly new. But Steve Witkoff essentially embracing Putin and all of Putin's demands

Speaker 5 going into any potential negotiation with Ukraine is is far more disturbing to me than some probably ugly portrait of Donald Trump. We have in Mr.

Speaker 5 Witkoff, it appears, as somebody who either doesn't know or doesn't care about the history of this conflict, doesn't know that Russia was an aggressor and a serial aggressor starting in 2008 with Georgia, attacking Ukraine, Crimea, and the Donbass in 2014, and then invading Ukraine again in 2022 with the aim aim of taking the whole country.

Speaker 5 If the president's special envoy is okay

Speaker 5 with Russia serially eating neighboring countries and continuing to roll through up to and through NATO bounds, then he is essentially saying he's okay with the potential of a World War III.

Speaker 5 And the whole reason why the United States, Europe, Canada, and many others have been so staunch in our support of Ukraine and its right to defend itself is because it profoundly risks our security and our interests.

Speaker 5 If the lesson that Putin learns from this further adventurism is that there are no bounds to what he can do and nothing that will stop him.

Speaker 1 Do you have a text chain yourself with other security officials where people are sending around like, can you believe this guy?

Speaker 1 Do you see this?

Speaker 1 You guys share notes on Steve Witkoff?

Speaker 5 Look,

Speaker 5 I think many folks who served at senior levels in national security roles in Democratic and Republican administrations prior to this, including Trump one, are bewildered.

Speaker 1 Well, I'd recommend, if you have one of the sex change, you could rename it Houthi PC Small Groups. Just a little fun, fun gag for your friends.
All right, last question.

Speaker 1 In that group, a serious one to end. I don't know, Ambassador, I'm pretty alarmed by how young folks are pretty disillusioned by just the whole notion of the U.S.

Speaker 1 world order that we've been talking about here.

Speaker 1 And if you look at the polls, there's just so much lack of confidence in our ability to be a leader in the world or that we should be a leader in the world.

Speaker 1 And this is across the partisan divide, really, as you get younger and younger. So you've been kind of involved in all this, Rob.

Speaker 1 Are there any lessons we've learned? Is there anything that you kind of reflect on and say, oh, we should have done a better job making this case or that case or this policy or that policy?

Speaker 1 Like what do you think explains the increasing distrust of us playing a role in the world among our fellow Americans?

Speaker 5 Well, I think that's a great question, and it's got many different aspects. The answer has many different aspects to it.

Speaker 5 First of all, I don't think we've done a good job educating the American people and particularly younger people about our role in the world, why it matters, what is happening around the world, and how those developments directly affect U.S.

Speaker 5 security and U.S. interests.

Speaker 5 People don't understand that we can't operate as an island in a world where we face not only hostile foreign powers like China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, but where many of the threats that affect Americans most directly, whether that's the impacts of climate change or the risk of pandemic disease or transnational criminal organizations or transnational terrorist organizations, all these transnational threats easily cross borders and affect the United States directly.

Speaker 5 Our economy, our health, our security is threatened by disease and pandemics. And we learned that the hard way.

Speaker 5 And that was with COVID, which was a far less deadly in terms of mortality rate pandemic than we would face, for example, if bird flu got out of control or if Ebola got out of control.

Speaker 5 So, you know, people don't understand well enough how our security is inextricably linked to that which happens overseas. That's one problem.

Speaker 5 Another problem is that we've gotten into stupid and long and costly wars that have, you know, taken a real toll on the men and women who've served and their families and on our security.

Speaker 5 I would go back to the Iraq war in 2003 and

Speaker 5 I don't think we can escape the consequences of that. I think further, young people look around and they see that we claim

Speaker 5 to be a force for good and a great moral leader, and yet they can cite innumerable instances of American rhetoric not living up to our behavior and arguably some very real instances of hypocrisy.

Speaker 5 And so I think all of those things, and I'm sure there are many other factors, combine to leave people questioning at best and disillusioned at worst.

Speaker 5 And the further we get away from the generation that fought and died in World War II, who really understand that

Speaker 5 what happens in Europe and what happens in Asia ultimately can directly affect us, the more we need to lean into education and understanding and leading in a way that not only garners the support of allies and partners and friends around the world, but of the American people who also have to be invested in this and have to understand that America first,

Speaker 5 if it becomes America alone, is exceedingly dangerous for America and that we don't have the luxury in the 21st century of putting up walls and barriers and assuming that what happens beyond our borders is of no consequence to us.

Speaker 5 It's It's precisely the opposite.

Speaker 1 I wish we didn't have so much breaking news. I could have done a full hour with you on that topic alone.
So maybe another time. All right.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much to Ambassador Susan Rice for coming on the podcast. Let's do it again soon.

Speaker 5 Good to be with you, Tim. Thank you.

Speaker 1 All right. Thanks so much to Susan Rice.
Stick around for a bonus segment with Noah Lenard and Isabella Diaz from Mother Jones.

Speaker 1 We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union. These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.
They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 1 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now. Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 1 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 1 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 1 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you. Same mission, new name, MS Now.
Learn more at MS.now.

Speaker 9 Amazon Black Friday Week deals are here with everything for everyone on your list. Like your Uncle Ricky, who ruined every single one of your wedding photos because his fly was open.

Speaker 9 Get him a three-pack of new underpants.

Speaker 9 And right now, with Amazon Black Friday week deals, you can save up to 40% on the gifts everyone wants, like the latest toys and housewares, and the gifts they need, like underpants.

Speaker 1 And Ricky, wear them, please.

Speaker 1 Hey guys, Tim Miller from the Bullwork. I'm here with Noah Lenard and Isabella Diaz of Mother Jones.

Speaker 1 And they wrote this great piece I've been referencing last week about the Venezuelans that we have sent to the El Salvador hellhole. It was called You're Here Because of Your Tattoos.

Speaker 1 And I wanted to talk to you guys about the story. Thanks for doing this.

Speaker 4 Yeah, thanks for having us on.

Speaker 9 Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1 So you guys have talked, you said in the article to family members of 10 of the Venezuelans that we've sent to El Salvador.

Speaker 1 I guess we think there's somewhere between 238, maybe more total that have been sent.

Speaker 1 I want to go through a couple of the specific people you talk about, but just broadly, kind of what are you hearing?

Speaker 1 What are you learning from those conversations conversations with these family members?

Speaker 4 Yeah, absolutely. So we spoke to, like you said, 10 families, lawyers, relatives of people who had been sent to El Salvador.

Speaker 4 And when we first started talking to them, we weren't sure they were in El Salvador and their relatives weren't because there was no official list.

Speaker 4 So it was a really kind of horrific situation where some of them had maybe recognized a relative in one of the very fascistic propaganda photos that the government put out in El Salvador.

Speaker 4 Others just said, like, oh, we talked to them. He said he was going back to Venezuela.
He never arrived. Therefore, he's probably in El Salvador.

Speaker 4 So that's where things stood as we started reporting it. And, you know, yeah, we were finding these people on social media through their lawyers, kind of all over the place.

Speaker 1 I can't even imagine just like the horror of some of the family members, like where you see these videos of them, you know, that they've been, you know, their head shaved, like they put their, you know, head down, you know, being treated just really horribly shackled.

Speaker 1 What was it like? Like, what were, how were they dealing with processing this emotionally?

Speaker 9 Yeah, I mean, I think it's kind of an unimaginable situation to to be in.

Speaker 9 You know, in most of the cases, the families had no news of their relatives and loved ones, you know, for a few days since March 15, when the planes took off.

Speaker 9 And so they were doing this kind of like desperate, you know, scouting of the internet for any clue, you know, looking at photos that the Salvadoran government released, like you said.

Speaker 9 And, you know, they all, all of these men were sent to the terrorism confinement center, were put in this white prison uniforms, they had their heads shaved.

Speaker 9 And so these family members were looking for any evidence, like trying to identify them based on tattoos. So seeing a rose on the neck that was peeking through the white t-shirt.

Speaker 9 And that's how they learned of the fate of their relatives. And then later on, when CBS News released a list of the 238 or so men who had been sent to El Salvador, they had the final confirmation.

Speaker 1 And your conversation with the lawyers, like at this point, the legal legal recourse here is pretty murky, right?

Speaker 1 Because if they were, you know, if they were still on American soil, you know, then I think they would have greater ability to obviously access their clients, for example, et cetera.

Speaker 1 So what are the lawyers saying about this process? I mean, are they fatalistic about it? Are there options?

Speaker 4 Yeah, so there's a lawsuit that covers some of the people sent there, about two-thirds of the people now from the ACLU.

Speaker 4 And that's the one that's been getting a lot of press attention, the one where where the Trump administration flouted the court order but yeah I mean it seems like from the court hearings we've been listening to is they're not super optimistic or the judge isn't certain that he has authority over these people anymore because they are now sent you know in the custody of a foreign government so I mean we are paying the U.S.

Speaker 4 United States is paying four six million dollars for them so maybe there's some recourse there but I wouldn't say there's a ton of optimism.

Speaker 9 Yeah, and I think, you know, we know for a fact that some of the men who were sent to El Salvador without due process, they had upcoming hearings in U.S. immigration courts.

Speaker 9 Some of those hearings were for asylum cases where they might have legitimate claims.

Speaker 9 You know, one of the people we write about in the story, his lawyer said he had a very good case for fleeing political persecution from paramilitary groups aligned with the Maduro regime in Venezuela.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 they were sent to this maximum security prison in El Salvador without having an opportunity to show any evidence before an immigration judge.

Speaker 9 A lot of them also came through legal pathways through the CBP1 application from the Biden administration, and they had their hearings moved and then were, you know, deported shortly before they were supposed to appear in court.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think this is an important point, though.

Speaker 1 You guys tell me, but at least in like many of the cases I've read, maybe even all of them,

Speaker 1 these men were coming through like at least quasi-legal means, right? It's not like they were sneaking across the border and had been captured.

Speaker 1 Like some of them were in third countries, either Mexico or Colombia, you know, applying, going through the process.

Speaker 1 As you mentioned, some of them came to the border, but then, you know, said they had an asylum claim.

Speaker 1 They used the CBP1 app that the Trump administration shut down, but was the legal way to kind of get a hearing during the Biden administration.

Speaker 1 So like a lot of the pushback that you saw from Victoria Sparts this weekend was like, these guys are illegal. You don't get due process if you come illegally.

Speaker 1 But I know the folks you talked to, And it seems like did they all or at least most of them were trying to come through legal pathways?

Speaker 4 I think everyone that we talked to was certainly trying to come through legal pathways. Many officially came to the border ports of entry through, like Isabella said, through the CBP1 application.

Speaker 4 And even in the other cases,

Speaker 4 no one we talked to that I'm aware of tried to sneak into the country.

Speaker 4 For example, in one of the cases, Neri Alvarado, he left Venezuela in late October, but he only ended up entering the U.S.

Speaker 4 in April because he was stuck basically waiting for one of these appointments for months.

Speaker 4 And when he couldn't get one, he just walked over and turned himself into a border patrol agent, which is what a lot of people were doing at that point.

Speaker 4 So that technically under the law counts as an illegal entry, but the goal is to get yourself into U.S. custody so you can present your asylum case.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, let's talk about some of these cases in particular. Since you mentioned Nari El Verada, we'll start with him.
Folks will be familiar because we've been talking about him.

Speaker 1 This is the guy that had the autism awareness tattoo. He kind of had like the rainbow ribbon tattoo.
Talk about his case.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so this was one that really stood out to us. We came across it because I saw a TikTok actually from the bakery that he worked at in Dallas.

Speaker 4 They had posted a TikTok basically in Spanish saying like one of our star bakers has been sent to El Salvador.

Speaker 4 So we called the bakery, got in touch with his boss, who was a great guy, had become his friend. And basically at that point, we were talking on Thursday, about 10 days ago.

Speaker 4 And he wasn't entirely sure yet that his friend was in El Salvador, but he was pretty sure because

Speaker 4 he had made the calls around and he hadn't shown up in Venezuela as they'd been expecting. But yeah, I mean, there he was.

Speaker 4 I mean, from everything we learned from our reporter, he was just a completely, as his boss described him, a stand-up guy.

Speaker 4 I talked to his older sister, and it was just like the love that she had for him was so clear. I mean, I said, like, what type of guy is he? How would you describe him?

Speaker 4 And it's like, oh, he's the type of person who would never hurt a fly. Anyone who spends even an hour with Neri will tell you what a nice guy, what a sweet person he is.

Speaker 4 And that's evidenced too by a video that we shared last week, too.

Speaker 4 You know, it's a video made by the swim club where he volunteered and worked helping children with developmental disabilities, including his brother, who's 15 and has autism.

Speaker 4 And that was part part of the reason he went to the United States was to support his brother. And he has a big tattoo that's an autism awareness ribbon with his brother's name, as you mentioned.

Speaker 4 And then his two other tattoos are similarly innocuous. One's in English.
It says brother, brothers, and the other says Familia.

Speaker 4 I mean, like, you could not have more innocuous tattoos, yet that seems to be how he got in this dragnet.

Speaker 1 It's quite the cover for being a gang member, you know, volunteering at a youth autism, you know, swimming meet camp.

Speaker 1 He was the one that you guys specifically said, I guess you said said Hernandez spoke to Alvarado. Was that Ms.
Hernandez's boss? Yes, that's right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so his boss spoke to him before he was sent to El Salvador, and he said, there are 90 of us here. We all have tattoos.
We are all detained for the same reasons.

Speaker 1 From what they told me, we're all going to be deported. So that's like a first person evidence that that's what they were telling them.

Speaker 1 That it was these tattoos were the reason they were being sent to. Well, they didn't know at the time being sent to El Salvador, but that was essentially the justification.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and that's the second time that that had come up in this case. And that's why Hernandez is such an important witness here is because he's a U.S.
citizen.

Speaker 4 He's Venezuelan, but he's lived in the United States for about three decades.

Speaker 4 And so he was able to visit Neri in detention as this was happening in a way that a lot of these family members in Venezuela were not able to. He visited Neri one day after he was detained as well.

Speaker 4 He was detained on February 5th by ICE. They showed up outside of his apartment and said, Neri Alvarado, we're looking for you.
They ended up bringing him into the Dallas field office.

Speaker 4 And there they said, you know, do you know why you're here? And according to Hernandez, they said, you know, we're looking for people with tattoos, Venezuelans with tattoos. We know you have them.

Speaker 4 Why don't you explain them? He ends up explaining his tattoos.

Speaker 4 And just like any normal person, this apparently Puerto Rican ICE agent said, you know, you're good, but why don't you go down the hall and just like check maybe with my supervisor or another ICE agent?

Speaker 4 And for reasons that remain unclear to me, they ended up hauling him into detention anyway, even though. An ICE agent said, yeah, you don't have anything to do with Trender Agua.

Speaker 9 There's been some great reporting about this in the Washington Post and elsewhere.

Speaker 9 It seems like a lot of this Venezuelan men were targeted, you know, for ICE detention sometime in late January and then February, picked up doing

Speaker 9 your routine ICE checking, over suspicion about their tattoos. Like we show in our piece, a lot of them with most of them without any

Speaker 9 relevant as a signal of any type of criminal activity or tie to gang affiliation.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You lead the story with another example of Arturo Trejo.
I might be a bunch of people.

Speaker 4 Yeah, Arturo Suarez Trejo.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, Suarez Trejo.
And it has a three-month-old child and who's a singer. And I guess I guess you spoke to his wife and also a similar situation where no criminal record.

Speaker 1 This is all based on the tattoos. But talk about that conversation.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so that one we had come across a Venezuelan news outlet, Elestimolo, had covered him and got in touch with older brother Nelson and Natalie through that.

Speaker 4 And yeah, I mean, last year, late last year, him and his wife Natalie were planning to go to the United States together. They realized that she was pregnant and pretty far along into her pregnancy.

Speaker 4 So he ended up going by himself because then he was going to work in the United States as he ended up doing to help support his wife and newborn baby girl.

Speaker 4 And instead, he ends up also getting detained in early February. In that case, it seemed like ICE had gone to his house because they were looking for someone there.

Speaker 4 They found that person, then they just ended up arresting everyone who was in the house. And like a lot of the other cases we highlighted, he had an upcoming court date.
He's supposed to be in court.

Speaker 4 I think it's on this Wednesday or Thursday.

Speaker 4 And he's not going to be there because he is in el salvador and he's one of the people his wife recognized him in the video he has a tattoo of a hummingbird on his neck which she told me you know it's meant supposed to represent you know harmony and and good vibes good energy very innocuous and like you said yeah he's a singer he's a he's a very good singer too like if you watch his music videos under the name suarez vzla like they're they're good music videos someone who was coming here to advance that career and also work here and support his family yeah i mean it seems like in that story also it was like she's like okay well if i can get deported at least I'm going to get deported back to Venezuela.

Speaker 1 I can see my baby. And instead, like, we've sent him to a gulag.

Speaker 9 These people had no idea that they were going to be sent to a foreign country, right? They were told directly in many cases that they were going to be deported to Venezuela.

Speaker 9 And in some cases, they expressed relief that they were going to be, you know, reunited with their families and meet their newborn children.

Speaker 9 So, you know, a lot of the family members described to us this situation as a kidnapping, essentially, and their loved ones being tricked by the U.S. government and yeah sent to El Salvador.

Speaker 1 Are there any of the other examples? I mean you you talked about this Fris Garrelf William I mean just talk about any of the other specific folks who you spoke to their families.

Speaker 9 Yes, we talked to Fris Jarro's brother Carlos who is in Caracas, Venezuela. And

Speaker 9 he talked about how they had they owned this like streetwear, you know, sportswear brand in Venezuela, this business, and that Fritz Jarov came to the United States in hope of expanding that business.

Speaker 9 He waited for several months in Mexico for a CBP-1 appointment. He was with other family members who were kind of let in, and he was held back.

Speaker 9 supposedly over his tattoos and he was sent to a nice detention in Louisiana.

Speaker 9 And we also, we got to see some messages that he actually sent to his family while he was detaining in Louisiana, you know, talking about how he never imagined that he would be imprisoned over tattoos.

Speaker 9 He had obtained a declaration from his tattoo artist essentially saying, you know, this is a creative, you know, kind of work. There's nothing meaningful behind this.

Speaker 9 Like, you know, he's someone who has no criminal record. He didn't have an order of deportation.
And, you know, he thought he was going to be going to Venezuela. And he too ended up in El Salvador.

Speaker 9 And there was another also, sister we talked to who said that her brother didn't even have a tattoo before he left Venezuela.

Speaker 9 He got a tattoo in Mexico, a tattoo of a clock that he got as a gift from his roommate as they were both waiting for the CBP1 appointment. And this roommate, you know, got the date before him.

Speaker 9 And to celebrate, they went and got a tattoo together. So he didn't even have a tattoo when he was in Venezuela.
And

Speaker 9 I think that speaks a lot too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's kind of crazy. So you spoke to 10 folks, or you know, or family members or lawyers, whatever, related to 10 of the people that have been sent there.

Speaker 1 It doesn't seem like the one that's gotten the most attention that we've been talking about a lot is this makeup artist, Andre, and he isn't in your story, even. So, that's another person.

Speaker 1 In these conversations, do you talk to anybody and you're like, I don't know, that guy might be a gang member. I mean, it's like it's kind of hard to believe.

Speaker 1 And it's one thing to say, like, one or two people got through. We need to focus on elevating these stories.
It was a fuck up. We need to get the makeup artist home.
And I believe that.

Speaker 1 It's another thing to seem like if it is at scale, that potentially many of these people are are wrongly accused. What's your sense for that?

Speaker 4 Yeah, we've probably, so after CBS published its list, we've now searched for a majority, or not a majority, but probably close to 100 of the people on that list.

Speaker 4 And yeah, in a minority of cases, I want to say 10% maybe, I've seen evidence that such and such person was arrested in this place for some sort of criminal offense.

Speaker 4 Doesn't mean necessarily that they were convicted either of that offense, but that was a small minority of the cases. And from the ones,

Speaker 4 we were talking to anyone we could talk to. And it's quite telling that all 10 of them had tattoos.

Speaker 4 You know, we weren't looking for people with tattoos and we weren't sure what the story was going to be when we started it because it was all so new.

Speaker 4 And yeah, I mean, like you said, and when Neri mentioned, you know, he's in this detention center in Texas and he looks around basically and says, oh, everyone here, there's 90 of us.

Speaker 4 We all have tattoos. I've also been told they were looking for people with tattoos.
I guess that's why we're here.

Speaker 4 And of course, you know, maybe some of those people who had tattoos had a prior arrest, but from what we've been able to see so far, that's a minority of the people.

Speaker 4 And it also would help here if the government who has sent these people to El Salvador with no due process or recourse would provide any information.

Speaker 4 Like before we published this story, every single person who's named in the article, we sent their name to ICE and DHS saying, if you have evidence that this person is a criminal or a terrorist, or to use their language, they're calling these people heinous monsters,

Speaker 4 please provide anything and zero response and zero response even after this article and others have gotten.

Speaker 1 And we've seen the DHS spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, like

Speaker 1 sending things. And I think this is important because this is what the government's saying right now.
She's like quote-tweeted or whatever various people online who have been pointing out

Speaker 1 that these cases seem very weak, you know, by saying, oh, no, we have more evidence. We have more evidence.
It's not just the tattoos. And she said things to that regard.
And I think that is...

Speaker 1 creating at some level like a chilling effect on people speaking out, particularly politicians speaking out.

Speaker 1 I think that there is a concern, you know, if you're a Democratic politician, you're like, I don't want to stick my neck out and have then it come afterwards that the person that I was saying was wrongfully detained actually was a gang member and tried to agar or actually committed a rape or whatever.

Speaker 1 And so I think that they're like kind of vague assurances that, no, they've got more material in all these people is contributing. So I don't know.
And what is your guys'?

Speaker 1 And I think that's the important part of like continuing to tell more and more of these stories, right? Because there is this caution towards speaking out about it.

Speaker 9 I mean, the administration themselves, they've admitted in court filings that many of these Venezuelans have no criminal history. They have tried to reassure

Speaker 9 the American public that they are going through this rigorous process to identify the alleged gang members and

Speaker 9 talking about how they are not just relying on social media posts or hand gestures or tattoos. But since our story came out, there has been more evidence.
The ACLU obtained this

Speaker 9 internal documents that shows that DHS appears to be relying on this

Speaker 9 Alien Enemies Act validation guide, where they attribute points to the alleged gang members to be deported.

Speaker 9 So a tattoo is worth four points, being associated in some way, leaving the same residence as someone who is alleged to be a Tendi Agua member.

Speaker 9 So that's kind of the system that they seem to be following. And there are plenty of

Speaker 9 experts out there that can tell you that tattoos are not really

Speaker 4 a trustworthy kind of signifier of Trende Aragua membership two quick things add on that is like one with a judge there one of these in a different legal case this came up in the Trendearagua accusation you know the government submitted its evidence for why this person was trendy Aragua a federal judge like said I was like it was the end of the day and I was kind of falling asleep at that point of the day and I read your declaration and it was so horrific that it woke me up.

Speaker 4 Like I would normally in a criminal case, I would throw you out of court if you tried to submit this kind of evidence.

Speaker 4 And the second thing is like, this is why we have due process in this this country.

Speaker 4 Like we shouldn't be having this conversation now, us as journalists saying like, hey, these people who are disappeared in El Salvador, you know, to the best of our knowledge, are completely innocent of the allegations.

Speaker 4 Like this should have been happening in a courtroom before a judge with a prosecutor and a defense attorney.

Speaker 1 And just to be clear, like even since your story is out, you've not heard from any spokesperson of the government, anybody at IH, anybody at DHS like offering more tangible evidence that these people are criminals beyond the tattoos.

Speaker 1 Zero on or off the record.

Speaker 4 Nothing.

Speaker 1 Truly remarkable. Guys, thank you so much for your work, Noah and Isabella.

Speaker 1 We'll keep monitoring as you guys are covering this story. And we'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 4 All right. Thanks for having us on, Tim.

Speaker 9 Thank you.

Speaker 1 All right. Thanks to everybody.
It was going to be a shorter pod with Susan Rice. And here you go.
You got a marathon. You got a good show, long show.
Call your senators.

Speaker 1 Get mad about what is happening and what we're doing to people who absolutely do not deserve it and deserve due process. I'd appreciate it.
It's a solid for me. We'll be back here tomorrow.

Speaker 1 We're going to talk a lot tomorrow about the elections. We got election night.
So, if you are in Wisconsin, if you're in the sixth district in Florida, there from St.

Speaker 1 Augustine, give or take, down to about Daytona Beach on the Atlantic coast of Florida, or if you know somebody in one of those places, remind them to vote.

Speaker 1 It's Election Day in America, and we'll be back tomorrow with Sam Stein to break that all down and whatever other horrors the Trump administration has for us. So, we'll see you all then.
Peace.

Speaker 1 Hangman,

Speaker 1 hangman, hold it a little while.

Speaker 1 I think I see my friends coming, riding many a mile.

Speaker 1 My friends, you get some silver,

Speaker 1 you get a little gold.

Speaker 1 What did you bring me, my dear friends? Keep me from the gallows pole.

Speaker 1 What did you bring me? Keep me from the gallows pole.

Speaker 1 I couldn't get no silver,

Speaker 1 I couldn't get no gold.

Speaker 1 You know the way I'm to depo

Speaker 1 from the gallows pole,

Speaker 1 hangman, hold it a little while.

Speaker 1 Think I see my brother coming, riding many a mile.

Speaker 1 Brother, you give me some steel

Speaker 1 as you get a little gold

Speaker 1 I want to make me my brother Keep me from the gallows fold

Speaker 1 Brother, I pull you to see

Speaker 1 I've got a little go

Speaker 1 I've put a little of everything

Speaker 1 Keep me from the gallows cold

Speaker 1 Yes, I've told you to keep it from the yellows fold.

Speaker 1 Hang me, hang me,

Speaker 1 turn your head away.

Speaker 1 I think I see my sister coming right.

Speaker 1 Mini ma, my, my, my.

Speaker 1 Sister, I implore you, take him by the hand,

Speaker 1 take him to some shady flowers, save him from the love of this man.

Speaker 1 The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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