Find Out: How Republicans Are Killing Due Process

Hi, everybody, and welcome back to the Find Out podcast, episode six.

Lots and lots of really bad things this week and last week, and also some hopeful things as well.

I think we're going to kick this one off talking about probably the number one news story in the country right now, which is

the, well, quote unquote, mistaken deportation of a man named Abreo Garcia and the fact that Senator Chris Van Hollen from Maryland actually went down to El Salvador and got to meet with him and frankly gave us a proof of life to know that he was still alive.

And

I think that's where we're going to start this conversation.

I think we are starting to see how Democrats can fight back without the legislative powers.

So let's talk about this.

So guys, what do you think of Chris Van Holland's trip down to El Salvador?

Effective, not effective?

I love it.

I think it's great.

I mean, it's like the only thing you could possibly do is go go down and be like, okay, this guy is alive.

And clearly, there's not a hindrance to moving his alive body from El Salvador to the U.S.

So what are you guys going to do?

The Supreme Court said, do it.

I think it's a fantastic move.

I think it shows the world that America is not lost.

I mean, yes, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the rest of them are part of the executive branch and they are supposed to represent us in foreign affairs.

But there's a long history of the legislative branch ensuring that we are meeting our commitments to other countries, to human rights, and to people with protected status, whether they are American citizens or otherwise.

So I think this was a really positive sign.

And I hope that that is the feedback that Democrats are getting because we need to see more of this.

Yeah, I absolutely agree.

A line came to mind that I had forgotten about that was antagonizing.

I heard from somebody I admired several years ago.

She gave a presentation on why it was better to do something poorly than to do something, than to not do something at all.

And

the thinking is like, hey, if you're just, if you know something needs to get done and you're a perfectionist or you don't know how to start, you feel imposter syndrome, just do it.

It is better to do it poorly than to not do it at all.

And you look at Chris Van Haal and you look at what we, our people have been saying over the last few months, which is it's not enough.

What are we supposed to do?

You know, we're all looking for this like consolidated leader.

We're looking for a silver bullet.

And Chris Van Hollen, who's just a Democratic senator from a Democratic state.

He's not super senior.

Nobody really, you know, not everybody knows who he is.

Looked at a whole bunch of bad options and said, you know what?

I'm going to get on an airplane and I'm going to go to El Salvador.

I have absolutely no guarantee anything will happen here.

And he got rejected.

The first day, the headlines were El Salvador rejects American president, American, or American senator.

He's denied.

And the second day, he meets with him and he gets a photo.

And now, I mean, that guy's wife for, I think, coming up on three, four weeks, didn't know that he was alive.

And so this is a huge win for human beings.

It's a political win, it ended up being, but he didn't know it was going to be a political win.

He didn't go down there trying to score points.

He went down there to just do anything.

And it ended up working.

And I think that's, it's such a powerful reminder that Trump isn't the only one with the cards right now.

And because Trump, he's the one who said, there's nothing I can do.

It's out of our control.

And Chris Van Holland is like, the hell it is.

And he goes down there and he meets with him and he gets a photo and he proves that

we still have cards to play.

That's the part I don't understand, though.

Is like Trump says he can't do anything.

Well, paying them, right?

And then like

Bukele or whatever it says, like, I don't have the authority.

And it's like, if this senator can just in two days go and meet with this guy,

what is the holdup?

And I think that's what the Democrats have to do next is like, okay, our guy went and saw this.

He's alive.

He can easily be brought back.

What are you doing?

What is the actual physical holdup to do this?

Because the Supreme Court said do it.

Like,

I literally haven't heard a good explanation.

That's the thing that is the most flabbergasting to me is like, Trump said he's like an MS-13 member, which he's not.

Yeah.

Like, what is it?

Here's what I think the holdup is.

It's not like a good thing, but either one of two things.

They know he's got a fucking horror story to tell when he comes back.

Because, I mean, it was dystopian as hell for me to see him sitting there in brand new clothes, like the way down.

Like,

that's not a good sign for me.

And if they bring him back, they know that this, oh, we have the power to do it bullshit is out the fucking window.

Like, nobody is going to listen to that anymore after they've watched it get overturned.

Yeah, I think the, I think what Van Hollen did here, which I think is great, is just expose that for the bullshit that it is.

If they wanted him back or they, they could get him back.

They're paying El Salvador millions of dollars a year to do this.

And I mean, let's be honest, Trump can make El Salvador's life miserable if they didn't do something that he wanted.

And all you've got to do is look over history of what how the U.S.

has treated Latin America, to be honest.

Like, you know, when we didn't like Manuel Noriega, we just went in and removed him.

We've done a a lot of covert shit.

I'm not saying it's all good or bad, but like the reality is if we want to get him back, we could.

And what Chris Van Holland did here, which I think piggybacks off of what Corey Booker did, was show, as you all are saying,

there are levers to pull here.

And public opinion is really the one that's the biggest.

And if you pay attention to the news at all, all you've seen over the last day, we're recording on Friday, is Chris Van Holland sitting with him everywhere.

And it's not looking good for them.

And the other part that I want to dive into is just the sort of racism around categorizing him as MS-13.

One of the reasons there's this, there's this, all the right-wingers are saying, well, there's these two cases where they like caught him with a bunch of MS-13 members.

Do you know why they said that?

It was based on how he looked.

It was based on the shirt that he was wearing.

Now,

that's racial profiling.

That is not evidence.

And, you know, I think that's a good thing.

It's a bully shirt, right?

Yeah, something like that.

It wasn't like a shirt that said, I am a member of MS-13 on it.

I've seen old Chuckles Kirk talking about how, well, he couldn't name a Bulls member that's not

Jordan.

And it was like, okay, dude.

Yeah.

I don't know if I could right now.

I could name all of the guys on the 96 team, but I don't think I could name a single one here.

So it's like,

but you also know, like, it's just nonsense.

So I think we're dealing with a lot of these people.

They don't want him back.

But I think this, to me, is a very positive sign that Democrats are are starting to get that what we want is for them to fight.

Yeah, and I think it's also important for us to keep in mind that one of the things that almost got buried by this particular story was the fact that Donald Trump was talking about how he wanted to

deport homegrown

people, which is insane.

They are going to the Supreme Court

to fight about what birthright citizenship is.

They're trying to repeal not just case law, but an amendment of the Constitution that

was passed after the Civil War to ensure that black people who were formerly enslaved were treated as citizens.

That is how

deep they are going into the territory of racist white supremacy.

It's not just about immigration, as much as they might might try to say it.

It is entirely about white supremacy.

I think the hardest part, too, is like,

right now, it's like a few cases, right?

It's not, it's not enough for everybody in the country to get all up in arms.

And unfortunately, the only way for like people to truly start paying attention, the people in the middle, like especially the like Republicans who kind of held their nose and voted for Trump, to start actually going, okay, wait a minute, this is crazy, is for more of this to start happening.

Because as it stands now, it's a terrible set of cases, but it's like three people.

It needs to be like 3 000 people and then it's like oh my god the then we can turn the tide on everything but i think like trump of all people being the pr obsessed person he is understands that line and kind of is a master of treading it to the point where like oh didn't go too far see look i can just i can torture this guy this guy and this guy but as long as i don't go to that guy i'm fine he's playing that line incredibly well i i just wonder is he getting an appetite to cross that line soon because he knows he has so much power because like the supreme court point he's willfully ignoring the Supreme Court.

That's never happened.

Like, what is the enforcement of

like, yeah, you hold him in contempt.

What are you going to do?

Throw him in prison?

He's the president.

There's really no mechanism.

Right.

He's immune.

So like, that's where I start to get worried where it's like, yeah, Trump's treading this line.

He does that forever.

That's what makes Trump so good at avoiding trouble.

But if he's in this position where he goes, I can just ignore the Supreme Court.

This is pretty cool.

What's the next thing?

That's the thing that keeps me up at night.

So let's dive into that because this is a lot of people have said this, and I think it's absolutely correct.

We are in a constitutional crisis here.

The Supreme Court almost never rules 9-0.

Like, there is such ideological, uh,

I'll say diversity on the Supreme Court that you know, you'll see some 7-2s because Alito and Thomas are the most activist judges probably on planet Earth.

So, they always tend to splinter off from the majority of the group, or you will have a 6-3 because of the conservative-liberal split.

9-0

is rare, and it was very clear.

I know they gave him some outs, but

what, yeah, what is the consequence for a president that willfully ignores one-third of our federal government and our checks and balances?

And I don't know the answer.

So far, jack shit.

We heard the interpretation from discount gobel Steve Miller in the White House.

He said that actually

the 9-0 decision was unanimous support for the Trump position.

Like he is rewriting history

like Goebbels in real time.

And there is a significant

part of our population who are believing this shit.

And, you know, people have

thought that I've been hyperbolic talking about the rise of fascism and the

parallels with national socialism, with Nazism that we're seeing today.

But this is how it happened.

There is a historical record.

This is not hyperbole.

It is not exaggeration.

It is a white supremacist standing in the White House in front of a press briefing in front of the president, reinterpreting a crystal clear 9-0 case against the president, saying that it says the opposite of what it says.

That kind of gaslighting is very, very dangerous for us.

That's precisely why I'm worried about the set of circumstances we face now, because when you look at this situation, he is in a position where he can essentially do whatever the fuck he wants and rewrite the script, right?

So, you know, I just, I look at this and I go,

I think that hype, like the problem is we've been trapped in this realm of hyperbole for a long time.

We've been warning people about Donald Trump for 10 years now and saying, okay, this is going to be, this is where it's going to cross the line.

This is where it's going to cross the line.

I think we've finally arrived at that point where it's like, no, this is actually where he he could cross the line.

It could go from potentially hyperbole because I thought that too.

I thought for a long time, like a lot of these concerns about Trump were hyperbolic.

Like he's not actually a fascist or white supremacist.

He's just like a power-hungry dude who understands the bounds of what he can and can't do.

But I think at this point, he's sort of set the table so perfectly between the immunity ruling with the Supreme Court, this mandate he thinks he has, the way that his people like Stephen Miller are handling these sorts of rewriting of narratives.

He has everything he needs right now to actually change this from hyperbole to real life.

And that's like, for me, I'm not an alarmist or anything like that.

Like, I'm the opposite.

I'm usually very cautious to use this hyperbolic language.

I'm looking at it and going, no, we're pretty much there.

We're like one step away from it being real.

People need to remember that Auschwitz wasn't in fucking Germany.

Like,

there's a lot of fucking parallels to shoot, and all these goddamn constitutional fundamentalists that are out here, oh, can't infringe on our rights.

Yeah, here's your fucking chance to prove it, dude.

Like,

if they can take due process from someone, they can take it from you.

Exactly.

And don't forget, you know, and I hate mentioning his name because usually the rule is when you mention Nazis, you've lost, but I think in this case, it's relevant.

Adolf Hitler was democratically elected.

And I think people forget that.

What did it take him?

54 days to dismantle it?

It wasn't long.

And he wrote a nationalist wave in the wake of,

you know, the punishing penalties that the Allies gave to Germany after World War I, I, right?

They basically were,

you know, taxing them into oblivion,

which obviously was clearly not the right way to do that.

And, you know, so there are, there are similarities here.

There's a key difference, though,

because I hear that narrative a lot.

And it's like...

Hitler did actually like for the first order of business he had was to actually try to fix the economy because he got, you know, elected to do that.

And then once he did to a certain degree, that's when the whole country was like, okay, whatever Hitler Hitler wants, we'll go with it.

And it gave him that momentum.

So Trump really kind of needs to have, if he wants to be the next Hitler, he needs some success before everybody's going to go, oh, whatever Donnie wants.

Like, so if he doesn't do well, well, no, that's the thing that's scary, though.

Like, if he does do well, like, if somehow the economy turns around, I am legitimately like the parallel is perfect.

Then it's like, okay, everybody's going to go with whatever he wants.

I think the, and this is where I'll walk us back, because I'm also an anti-alarmist.

I have kids.

I can't have this be the next Nazi Germany.

And I will.

And

I think, you know, you remember 75 million million, 75 million Americans voted for Trump.

Maybe

30, 40% of those people would be enthusiastically in support of some sort of

much worse scenario.

I think the overwhelming majority, including members of my extended family, would not be in support of him going into those areas of extremism.

We also have an additional 230 million or so Americans who didn't vote for Donald Trump, either kids or people who just didn't vote or who voted for Kamala Harris.

So I think

even in his heyday of support, he's already missed the vote.

Congress is already, I mean, the Supreme Court just ruled nine to zero against him.

I mean, nine to zero, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito voted against Donald Trump.

And now they're taking up this birthright citizenship case, which every single lower court has issued absolutely scathing rebukes of Donald Trump's defense.

Case law supports them, and obviously it's written incredibly plainly.

One of the most plainly written things in our entire Constitution.

If it's anything but 9.0, it's going to be rough.

Agree.

It has to be 9.0.

It has to be a single majority opinion co-authored by everybody.

I mean, that's what I'm looking for.

And I think you look at the timing.

They could have taken this up.

They could have announced this earlier.

I think the timing lines up in a way that the judicial branch understands that

they need to have their own backs right now.

And I think for me, the big pillar that is outstanding is Congress.

And

I think the thing that's the most maybe positive here is that.

Congressional leaders have to get reelected in 2026, all of the House.

And they are on this, they're at this point right now where they're looking at town town halls they're looking at what trump's doing they're looking at the supreme court looking at coast to coast pushback from the educational community the tide has already begun to turn on trump and so now they have to decide are we gonna are we gonna go against the momentum of all of these institutions that this country relies on including wall street now including elon musk or are we going to somehow find this contorted way to to stay on trump's coattails even though trump will never be on the ballot again and i i think they're going to pick,

I hate to even say it out loud, but I feel like Congress is going to look at their own self-interest and pick the right side of history.

And Trump will back away from the cliff because he won't see it in the cards.

I hope you're right.

And if there's one thing that's true about Congress is that every member of Congress cares about themselves.

and their self-preservation more than anything else.

And so I think you're right.

I think all of the early signs of a monstrous blue wave in 2026 are already percolating.

I mean, we have Republicans coming out, not a lot, but some Republicans coming out and saying, I made a mistake.

That is powerful.

These rallies and these protests that have been organized, and I know, Chris, you're working on one for June 6th,

are going to be more power for the people.

And I think The combination of the Democratic senators and Congress members waking up and realizing it's time to fight, plus an erosion of even 5% of his support is deadly.

He did not win the majority of the vote in 2024.

Let's remember.

More people who went to vote voted for somebody else when you factor in third parties as well.

So there is no mandate here.

He was at his absolute peak on November, what, sixth, seventh, eighth afterwards.

And he had, I think, a three-month window.

And all he has done is sow chaos and disorder, screwing his own voters.

You know, farmers getting kicked in the teeth because of these tariffs for China, which are still there,

and other countries.

Our housing market is about to be in massive crisis because we're not going to be able to build anything because we don't have the goddamn materials to do it.

And it's, it's, I think you're right, Rich, that

his time has come.

But we also need to talk about what do, what does this opposition need to do now?

to make sure that that continues.

Well, I think one thing I want to say is like, I think we need to recognize what the other side thinks of this at the same time, because we're saying all this in our silo of like how we see Trump.

People who voted for Trump, even the ones who are not like MAGA crazies, they like what Trump is doing.

So like we, we look at this and we hate it and we have clear reasons as to why we hate it.

But I would argue that probably the majority of people, like close to 99%, if not more, of people who voted for Trump are happy with their vote right now.

And it's a simple reason why.

It's because Trump is doing something.

That's it.

It's not because he's doing something well.

It's because he's doing something.

And like, I agree with everybody here.

Like, you know, when all this stuff that he's doing falls flat in its face, it's going to potentially result in a blue wave.

But in the short term, we need to recognize that the other side is happy with how this is going.

And they're not just happy because of the details.

They're happy because this is just politics working faster.

And people love that shit.

So Trump can really, that's a huge hand for Trump to have.

Even if a lot of this stuff fails, Democrats can't underestimate how much value that brings to Trump's argument.

And we have to figure out a strategy, to Tim's point, of how we attack the fact that, yeah, okay, maybe you did like modernize

political bureaucracy, right?

That's really what he's doing.

But just because you're modernizing it and speeding it up doesn't mean you're doing a good job.

And we have to find a way to toe that line and get people who voted for Trump to recognize that speed does not mean good.

Yeah, I think that Zach is exactly right.

You know, I, for folks who don't know my background,

this is Chris.

I'm the investigator.

I spend most of my time and I have a team that does nothing but look at like extremists in this country.

And I think that Zach's framing, I want to kind of put it into something that more people might be familiar with.

Remember if you're old enough,

unlike Luke, if you're old enough to remember 9-11.

Right.

If you're old enough to remember 9-11, you remember how the entire country was

kind of racist.

It was really mainstream, right?

That kind of attack against our country really turned people into their worst selves.

It's across the political spectrum.

The right has been inundated with so much anti-immigrant propaganda, with...

you know, images of children and women being abused or murdered or tortured, et cetera, et cetera, right?

So, the way that the right and a broad swath of the right, I'm not saying MAGA, I'm saying a lot of Republicans and frankly, some Democrats and some Independents, they look at the so-called immigration problem with the same passion of a desire to cause harm to the bad guys

as the rest of America did in the days, weeks, and months, and years following 9-11.

I think it took, I mean, I was a Republican as a kid.

I was a Republican when I joined the army, went to Iraq, came home.

I stayed a Republican in support of the wars for several years, despite losing friends, like literally friends dying, friends getting hurt and maimed in the wars.

I didn't turn against the wars until 2007 or so, six years after they started and two years after I got home.

I think that it is going to take just as long and just as much trauma to shake Republicans from their belief that immigration is inherently akin to terrorism, because that is the framing that Donald Trump has been using for 10 years.

And that is the framing that Republicans and a lot of a lot of independents like him for.

Well, and it's the media ecosystem that they have created that they actually do not see another side at all.

Like you can go your entire life never seeing any content from our side and not even know it.

So it feels like it's so obvious to them that these things are happening because they are being told a false story.

Like, for example, this thing about undocumented workers creating all this crime.

Undocumented workers create or commit crimes at a quarter of the rate of an American citizen.

Quarter.

So if you're worried about crime, you need to to be worried about the American public and not undocumented workers.

And like,

you're saying that the right attacks marginalized groups with completely inflated viewpoints?

Really?

I had no idea.

Crazy.

Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's, you know, I, but we also don't do a good job yelling back about that, you know, because they cherry pick and then they tell a horrible story, right?

Like the Lake and Riley thing is a perfect example.

That is a horrific, fucking

interesting, horrific story, horrific.

And I, I,

my heart breaks for that family.

But they specifically asked politicians to not use that as a lever.

They did not want their daughter to become a political football.

And Republicans basically said, fuck you.

Yeah, fuck.

We're going to do it.

We're going to do it.

And because it's a great story for them in a vacuum.

But, you know, like if you look at the amount of murders every year committed across the country and you look at how many of them are from undocumented workers, it's such a tiny fraction.

But it's what Fox News shows.

It's what Ben Shapiro shows.

And they all just see these, and they always have always, the photos are always them like menacing.

You know, maybe they even darken the photos to make it look like it's worse.

But I think we need to be screaming louder about how amazing it is to have these people.

Also, from an economic perspective, like we don't survive without them.

Right.

I mean, the reason the strategy they use to get to this point is so impressively smart because what they essentially did was take an issue that doesn't actually affect almost anybody in the country very much and make it feel like it affects everything about your life.

And that's the thing that I think Democrats have to attack: sort of like honing in on people, going, What actually in your life is being affected by illegal immigrants?

Like, I've never met a single person who can tell me like a horror story about a crime or a job they lost or whatever.

It never happens, not one.

It doesn't.

They've got their entire voter base looking over their fucking shoulder.

Shit,

there's one of these illegal immigrants.

They're back there and get me.

And it's fucking despicable.

They did the exact same thing with, I was looking up the name, this Patty Morin,

a Morin.

She was a mother of a victim of illegal immigrant crime that they Trump paraded across the Oval Office in front of all the cameras

at the same time that Chris Van Holland is generating headlines with Abreo Garcia, because that's their approach is

you're defending a brown person, but look at this other person whose daughter was attacked and killed by a brown person.

Since all brown people are the same,

why are you guys defending murderers and rapists?

And

it's so disingenuous.

I think the opportunity, you know, these are horrific crimes.

And

so I use the word opportunity very, very carefully.

The opportunity to defend humans in this scenario where they're playing against each other is by just articulating the difference that, like, Abreo Garcia, he actually

doesn't appear to have anything that he's ever done that was wrong.

And

that was the crazy part.

Pam Bondi shared that whole, oh, this is the case.

And it says right at the top, no criminal history.

No criminal history.

What the fuck are you talking about?

And you read

it.

No, they can't.

Just to finish on this.

So Trump picked this turf for this battle with the courts because he thought it was friendly turf.

He thought

if I pick a battle with the judicial system over illegal immigrant criminals, that is the one issue he thought I can't possibly lose on.

And so, for it to blow up in his face on the first swing,

you know, this is not a political football.

These are human people's lives.

And they're treating it as such.

But, you know, they picked that battle.

And so, for it to backfire, I think that

this is an important moment in the debate over are illegal immigrants humans.

And it's not a debate I thought that we would be able to not win, but even have a leg to stand on.

And it turns out that we have an opportunity now to talk about how humans are actually humans.

100%.

It's a fucking conversation we shouldn't have to be having.

Yeah.

Right.

At all.

Well, let's.

Well, let's let's let's pivot a little bit to us going on offense, because I think after Senator Booker and Senator Van Holland and

AOC and Bernie have all showed that if we stand up and push back, there's a lot of support for that.

So, Luke and Rich, why don't you let us know what you're going to be doing early next week

on this topic?

We're going to A ⁇ M to meet up with Chuckles Kirk.

Well, not meet up with.

That's the wrong way of phrasing it.

There's a whole big-ass group of us going down there to be an opposition movement against Charlie Kirk at Texas A ⁇ M.

So for those of you who don't know, Charlie Kirk, who runs an organization called Turning Points USA,

is basically the conservative student outreach branch of the system.

They are very well funded.

And Charlie Kirk, you know, this 30-year-old dude goes to college campuses and records him tooling on students because that's clearly a fair fight.

And so

not even winning, it's completely

winning.

It's just gross.

But anyway, so

who are some of the people that are going to be with you?

And what are you hoping to do?

Well, Rich and I will be there.

That's cool.

And Dean Withers and Parker are going to be there.

And

who else is going to be there, Rich?

Well, Z

is one of the main organizers.

Geez.

I'd have to pull up the, it's funny because we're using Signal Chat to communicate.

Yeah, there's been a lot of military secrets that have been

dispensed through the city

shared or yeah yeah so far off the wagon's gonna be there yeah yeah there's like it's there's like 35 different influencers coming there's a shitload so are you guys going to be streaming on tick tock while you're down there what's what like do you know the logistics of how it's happening i think somebody will be streaming the whole thing they've got to i think i think probably seven or twelve or fifteen people at all times will be will be either live or shooting videos the the approach is um it's kind of hilarious because, of course, Charlie Kirk is coming into university campuses because that's when kids are, you know, at this moment.

And I was there taking all my poli-sci classes.

I had all the talking points that I read directly from books

and no practical knowledge, no life experience to corrupt, you know, being a privileged white dude in a white university.

I had no practical knowledge to corroborate my viewpoints.

And that's the perfect time for somebody like Charlie Kirk, who is not a he's not a person who's lived any of this.

He is a very polished policy debater.

And coming from a debate family, I see all of the things that he does as they're just parlor tricks.

It's just, it's just debate 101, 201, 301, rolled all together and just puked back.

And so he sets these kids up with impossible questions, impossible debates where he's got all this institutional knowledge and he knows the mind tricks and he just makes them look bad.

And it's really embarrassing.

And he won't take questions from older people because anybody who takes the mic who isn't 12.

Yeah, here's, by the way, before this all happens,

here's my prediction on what's going to happen next Tuesday.

There's going to be like three of us that actually get to debate him.

And then he's going to go, that's enough, no more.

And then he'll stop taking questions from people who are with us.

That's my prediction.

I think Parker and Dean are going to get to go and maybe one other guy.

So what I think is really cool about this campaign, the, I think it's called Unfuck America.

The Unfuck Americator.

Yeah.

So the Unfuck Americator

is,

to my knowledge, like the first real organized attempt to reframe the narrative against what Charlie Kirk has been doing, largely unopposed since 2012.

It's been 13 years that this guy has been getting paid by right-wing billionaires to go spread propaganda, to agitate and try to cause conflict on college campuses all around the country.

And ultimately, the work that he has been doing for the past decade plus is part of the reason that we're seeing Donald Trump so successful in attacking institutions today, creating this perception that colleges and universities are brainwashing kids.

Charlie Kirk has been serving as

the guy gathering

what looks like raw intelligence of how

far left it is, right?

Which is crazy because Charlie Kirk is a community college dropout.

Yeah.

And he's

projecting this

into the Fox News

ecosystem.

So all of these old people who watch nothing but conservative media truly do believe all of the terrible things that they say about our colleges and universities.

I am heartbroken.

graduated from Columbia University with my undergrad in 2020, not that long ago.

And I've watched that school to be first in line to capitulate to authoritarianism.

And

that is contrary to everything that I learned on that campus.

It is a shame and it is a true sign of authoritarianism

on the march and

gaining victories.

Yeah.

I mean, it's as simple as like, the more you know, the less likely you are to become a Republican.

That's why

they go after them.

It's the simplest shit in the world.

Like, no, no, you want to get educated?

That's a terrible idea.

Don't do that.

I mean, I don't know.

They want to keep you dumb.

They want to keep you broken.

They want to keep you pregnant.

Right.

That's how the world makes more Republicans.

I mean, it's just really funny because I went to a small liberal arts school in Pennsylvania, Dickinson College, and I was a political science major.

I did not have a single professor tell me what to think.

But the professors were there to teach you about world events and to teach you to think critically and to ask questions.

You don't go into a political science class and they're like, here's all the reasons why MAGA sucks.

Like, it's just not.

But it's right.

They are attacking higher education because, as Zach said, the more education that you have, you see a drop of party affiliation for the Republican Party, unless you're a billionaire and then it spicks back up because they want the taxes.

And that's just self-interest.

That's not ideological.

That's just shameless self-interest.

It's just more money, more money.

And so it is, but like when you tell people

that that's what colleges are doing of people who didn't go, it's very easy to look and say that's that's the elite and we want that down, which is funny because Donald Trump is actually the one that's working for the elite in this country, not higher education.

It's always crazy to me that it's a bunch of motherfuckers who went to higher education telling a bunch of people who didn't go to higher education, look how much they indoctrinate people.

Talk to me.

Except me.

Except me.

I'm better than them.

Right.

What's hilarious to me is that I went to Columbia University.

That is the first time that I was required to read the Bible.

Really?

This is the first, like, I grew up as a Catholic.

I did the, you know, the confirmation and all that shit.

Right.

Like, I did the Sunday school, whatever it was called.

Like, I did that.

But this was the first, when I went to Columbia University, part of the core curriculum that you cannot get away from.

Everyone has to study the fucking Bible when they go to these schools.

Right?

That That is not required like anywhere else in life.

That is where you engage critically with things like religious text and these foundational texts of philosophy that have, as these guys like to say, created the Western world.

Like the course is called Western Civilization that you have to take at Columbia University.

It is mind-blowing to me that Democrats have not been messaging like that and said, like, okay, like,

when are you reading you know fucking greek philosophers and uh you know the writings of of fucking saints that most americans have no most christians have never heard of like saint thomas aquinas like go ahead ask charlie kirk to give you a quote from him i bet you he can't Well, it reminds me of when Donald Trump was asked about his favorite Bible passage.

He doesn't have one.

I like them all.

It was all of them.

He liked it all so much.

Which, by the way, all of them is, and I am the least religious person probably in this group, but all of them actually sets you up for a lot of trouble because there is a lot of stuff that's in there about stoning people and all this.

So he loves all of that, which actually that part I believe.

They asked him, Old Testament or New Testament?

Oh, yeah.

If you're a Christian, it's New Testament is the answer.

That is the only answer because

we don't have to get into the details.

He said, I like them probably equally.

It's like, you don't know.

You don't.

He has no idea.

He's like, how many testaments are there, Donald?

Are there seven?

Are there 12?

Do you know which, do you know what book we're talking about here?

He's like, no, but I'll sell you my version of it.

It's made in China.

And while he sells Bibles, sells Bibles with his signature on them.

And he's never read the contents of the book.

It's just what his religious people tell him to believe, which, you know,

anyways.

Well, we had a, we're now like 37 minutes into this.

We haven't actually actually talked about the thing that we came into here, which tends to be what happens here.

Um, and I should also tell you,

I'm gonna come back, yeah, we're yeah, we're coming back to it, we're coming back to it, but I want to, I just want to tell the listeners that, like, what you're hearing is, is what happens when we are also off camera as well.

And many times, we're like, wait, why didn't we record that shit?

This is just how it sort of goes.

But so there has been a fair amount of talk

about

whether or not Donald Trump may try to declare martial law because of his ignoring of the courts and essentially his ignoring of Congress and doing

so much illegal stuff that people don't even know about.

And this has been mostly a thing that obviously people on the left have been sort of

worrying about.

And we've had some people write into find out to ask us about it as well.

So let's talk about it.

What do we think?

Is he insane enough to do it?

Yes.

Is it good enough?

Yes.

I think you punch it to Chris first.

Let him have it.

Yeah.

So

I have been

developing scenarios for years at this point on what this could look like.

So not only do I like study the far right and provide intelligence to like law enforcement for law breaking activity, I study the broader movements.

And

I've become very good.

And

it is as hokey as it sounds.

Like I instinctually kind of understand what these movements are going to do before they do it.

So I have basically written the scripts to documentaries and movies about this.

It is, in my opinion, entirely within the realm of possibility.

When we have seen guys like Dan Bongino

get

and Cash Patel, you know,

they're now in charge of the FBI.

They're, while FBI agents are not just going to do whatever they're told, like if the FBI is being dismantled so that they can't combat a growing terror threat, like that can, that can start to grow.

And one of the things that I want people to kind of consider is when they watch movie, and I didn't watch the Civil War movie, but when you skip straight to like, our tank's going to be rolling down the street, you've, you've lost the plot.

What I think most Americans should

imagine is the trauma that we have all collectively experienced already.

We know what it feels like for our economy to shut down and collapse.

And

that is what it would be like if,

not even if martial law was enacted, but if our federal government started to erode to the point that

commercial aspects of our human interaction, our economy, effectively shut down.

Like if the federal government becomes so incapable of doing anything through sabotage or incompetence, we're talking about shipping containers, we're talking about railroads, we're talking about roadways, we're talking about electricity.

All of these things, when they start to fall apart because no one is able to take care of them, that's when the real chaos starts.

Yeah, that's a, that's a, I have a question actually for you because I've thought about this a lot.

One of the things that I always wonder is like, if we get to that point where Trump is for obviously a very incorrect reason, whatever it's going to be, declaring martial law or praising restrictions on people that we're just not at all familiar with because we're used to being free, regular people,

how much do you think Trump and his administration factor in the public response?

Because the public response right now is, you know, everyone, the left left is angry, the right is happy, you know, there's people in between who are going to protest, but there's not a lot of action.

If this stuff started to happen, I can only imagine that the public response would be extreme.

And I can, I think, like, to me, I currently look at it as the primary deterrent for the Trump administration to not go forward because functionally they have all the power to do it right now.

Like they could do whatever they want.

Like you said, Cash Patel's in charge of the FBI.

Trump is ignoring the Supreme Court.

Who cares?

The only real impediment they have left is that Americans will not like it.

So do you think that that is their primary impediment right now?

And like, that's the only reason they're not going forward?

Or what do you think about that?

I think the primary impediment behind

anything when it comes to Trump is

what it's going to do to his personal bottom line.

I think that's

all that he cares about is his personal wealth.

And what happens to the broader economy or the country does not matter as long as his personal wealth continues to grow.

It's not even so much about power.

It's power in service of that personal wealth.

So I think that is the limiting factor.

But as far as who he's filled his administration with, whether it be Pete Hegseth or Stephen Miller,

these folks running the Department of Defense, the FBI,

DOJ,

DHS, they are all

loyalists to a point that they will do anything to please their master.

They will not say no.

Now, the grassroots federal employees are going to put up a resistance for anything that goes overboard.

We've seen that with like the doggy boys and Elon Musk coming into these agencies.

But at a certain point, individuals get scared and they stop fighting back because they want to protect their lives.

and their livelihoods, right?

So there is this constant balance going on.

And, you know, federal employees, one-third of them are veterans.

We mentioned the January 6th protests that I'm helping to organize of veterans coming down to DC on the anniversary of D-Day to say, hell no, you need to fucking stop.

It is going to take mass mobilizations of that kind to give those with remaining legitimate power in opposition.

in the federal government to get them to actually use

to exercise enough force to stop Donald Trump's attempted complete authoritarian coup.

Yeah, I think the mass mobilization thing is a great point.

And I do, and we've seen it, like they do sometimes back off.

And I think that, and it though, because those things drive news cycles, it gets more people to pay attention.

And I think that we need every time there is a protest in your city, please go.

You don't have to make a sign.

You don't have to say anything but wear a mask if you want to wear a mask yeah yeah wear a mask like you know it

it the numbers matter yeah there's power in seeing like all of the of times square full of people or all of fifth avenue just fucking completely blocked like 100 there's power there yeah it and and what that what what that does is it makes it so the people who don't pay attention, because as crazy as all this is, a lot of people don't pay attention.

These mass mobilizations get people to pay attention.

And so they are very important.

So if you can go to those, please do.

And also, I think we mentioned this on the last episode, but like, if you have not spoken up before, now is the time.

We are at the moment.

There is no more, well, this could happen or that could happen.

We're here.

And we have three and a half years to go.

on this.

But I mean, I kind of like to look at it as just like a year and a half till the 2026 elections, because then we could take back the house and grind some of this down.

But we have a year and a half to go.

And the democracy is on the line.

I think martial law is probably a bit off for now.

And I think that there's going to be strong opposition to it.

But you have to stand up now.

I want to back up and

point squarely at how we got here as a left movement, because

to the discussion of martial law specifically,

President Trump, I hate calling him that.

Donald,

I've never fucked him up.

Donald.

Just call him Donald.

He hates calling.

Dumpy diaper Donald.

It's hard to say, but that's my favorite way to think of him.

He signed an executive order instructing his military leaders to assess the position of the southern border, the security of the southern border, and come back in 90 days with a recommendation if additional steps are required, including invoking the Insurrection Act.

The Insurrection Act

is from 18,

whatever, you know, 750 years ago, 1807, Insurrection Act of 1807.

That is not martial law.

It is absolutely essential for the people on the left.

We've conflated immediately that Insurrection Act would be martial law.

Insurrection Act, the key difference, allows the military to enforce civilian laws.

That is what you do when you have, if there were an actual invasion, we're not suspending civilian law, which is what martial law is.

We are allowing the military to uphold civilian law.

So a critical difference.

Also, just looking at the facts, Donald Trump has never said the words martial law that I can find.

So

we are exclusively speculating when we talk about would Donald Trump declare martial law?

And I don't mean we, I mean the entire left, because we're getting into

what is textbook conspiracy theory when you start going down the path of this will happen and this will happen and this will happen because we've seen over and over and over again that same thing happen and it's like Charlie Brown in the football he backs away at the last second and he pivots and he talks about building resorts in Gaza or he starts talking about tariffs again he and we look like a dumbass exactly and he makes us look it is just like the Ropodope he makes us look like fools because he says look at these lunat these radical left lunatics they think all of this insane stuff about us about me and I don't want to do any of that so there are a lot of things going on, but I think it's very important to understand that even in this worst case scenario, we're on Easter Sunday, which will be in the past by the time our listeners hear this, if he does declare that the Insurrection Act needs to be invoked, that will not be the same as declaring martial law.

And even if he did then go to martial law, we're talking about Congress taking,

which appears to be not even feasible martial law.

I'm reading a political fact article about it right now, actually.

Even if he did try to go there, Congress can shut that down.

Like there's just, there's no appetite for this.

He missed the boat.

He missed his momentum on the upswing, like to Tim's point earlier about him peaking in November.

This is, it's, it's too little, too late, but it's still worth discussing because I do think in an ideal state, he sees himself as an Orban or as a Putin or as a Bukele where everybody obey or even Kim Jong-un, where everybody just obeys him.

Like he very much craves that kind of power.

But I think he's also pragmatic enough as a self-interested billionaire to understand that some of these paths have already closed.

Yeah.

So let me talk about one of the immediate threats.

We're recording this around noon Eastern on Friday, April 18th.

So this could be old news in five hours.

But we are expecting to see.

one or more executive orders come out of the White House very soon, which would target nonprofits, stripping nonprofits of their 501c3 status, which has the effect of

making them taxable entities.

So the boards, the individuals and the organizations on the boards of these nonprofits would instantly have taxes levied against them.

And it could be for some organizations, every individual board member is hit with millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions in taxes.

That is,

it's not martial law.

It's not anything close to it, right?

But that is the political targeting of political enemies.

And with those tax responsibilities, you know, come deadlines.

And eventually, you know, you can, you can go to jail for not making those kinds of deadlines, for not,

you know, disclosing what the federal government demands of you.

So, you know, while I don't think that the gun is at the head of the nation in terms of the specific act of martial law.

And again, predicting the future.

People are going to be listening to this after,

by the way, it's Hitler's birthday,

falls on the 90-day thing.

Conspiracy theories are going apeshit about all of this.

So it's dangerous for me to predict what's going to happen in the next few days before we release on Tuesday.

But the gun is to the head of the most effective defenders, most organized,

coordinated defenders of democracy.

And that is a very real problem.

Well, let's be very clear to people what that means.

So this, the 501c3

exemption, what that means is essentially for the organizations that you give money to that have the 501c3

designation means that you can write that off as a tax deduction.

They are going to be going after these organizations and basically trying to strip that from them.

So it's not only going against these organizations that are putting up a fight, they're also actually increasing the public's tax bill.

Yeah, they're fucking you over too.

Yeah, you're getting a that this is a this is a tax increase on the American public.

And this is the second time that Donald Trump has advocating for raising taxes on the American public, the first time being the tariffs.

So this Republican president who is trying to pass a $4 trillion tax cut that's going to help billionaires and millionaires and nobody else also wants to raise taxes on the middle class and the working class and the poor in this country.

And I think that's something Democrats need to be screaming a lot more about.

Don't forget about the overdraft fees thing, too.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

So that's the other one.

That really benefits people, the middle, lower middle class.

Luke, tell the people what you're referring to.

They pet, they...

There was a restriction on overdraft fees that they could only be, what, five bucks, something like that?

Yeah.

Gone.

How should we publish it?

Because Joe Biden passed it.

Joe Biden passed

on TV.

Yeah.

Because how dare, you know, you limit fees that are disproportionately affecting lower middle class people.

Yeah.

People who actively run overdraft fees.

You know, it's crazy.

Got to make the banks the money.

On the credit card fees that are like 30% in many cases, too.

It's like it's highway robbery.

Part of it is an attack on the, like what they're trying to do.

Like they're, they're taking away so many things that protect citizens in the name of like limiting bureaucracy, right?

That's the biggest problem problem that we're having right now.

It's like the narrative they're pushing is we want to limit the scope and the size of government.

It's like, they don't tell you what that means.

What that means is you lose these kinds of protections where like it's directly affecting you.

Like I'm, you know, I'm a former Republican, a lot of it because I do believe that smaller government is better in a lot of places.

This is not one of those places.

Like you need to protect people when they're going to be just completely screwed over by corporations.

Regulations work sometimes.

Sometimes they inhibit growth.

Sometimes they promote growth.

Sometimes they help poor people.

Sometimes they hurt poor people.

You have to look at it with with a fine-tooth comb.

You can't just take a hatchet and go, oh, bureaucracy is bad.

And that's exactly what they've done.

So, you know, it just shows the success of their approach because they're actively just like in front of people taking away good things from them, going, don't worry, it's fine.

You got it.

It's going to be great.

Yeah, like the direct file thing.

Oh, yeah.

Now you have to pay somebody to do your fucking taxes instead of just being able to do it yourself.

So let's dive into this direct file thing because I don't think people fully understand it.

So basically what happened over the last few years is that a team within the federal government built a tool so that you could file your taxes online directly with the government.

And before they put that up there, you had to pay somebody to do it for you.

And now Donald Trump has said, no, we don't want that.

So he has taken that away.

I also have another EO, or actually a regulation that just came out today that they're talking about getting rid of, which is they're getting going, they're going to propose getting rid of food safety inspections.

Oh, my God.

That was a fine day.

How can you possibly convince people that, yeah, we're going to keep your food safe is a bad thing?

Right.

Right.

Oh, it's so good.

Not to mention that we have these mega farms producing things where salmonella outbreaks happen.

Birds of bird flu.

Right.

Bird flu.

Do you know why we know that?

Food space safety inspections.

Exactly.

We would never know otherwise.

One of my first viral videos was about the Listeria outbreak in Lunch Meat and got millions of views because people were hundreds of thousands at least at the time of views because people were bookmarking it and sharing it with their family members because the USDA discovered through normal inspections and testing that there was listeria everywhere in this meat packing plant and that it was getting out and that killed a bunch of people a bunch of people died from listeria infections after that outbreak and that was just in i think july or august of 2024.

well and if you break it down right take the food expection i don't know how much that costs per year but if you take those out and then you then that means more people are going to get sick and die which means they're going to go to the hospital they're going to use their insurance maybe they don't have insurance, and then there's going to be a bill.

And, like, again, as we've said before, slicing these services is not just like, oh, it's not happening anymore, and we save all this money.

We're going to pay for it tenfold down the line.

And some people will die.

I can look at myself and my history and remember the way that I used to think.

And I think of like libertarian me, Chris, you know, Sergeant Chris Goldsmith in

2007 or so.

And I, I would be be like,

you know what?

I'm strong.

I'm in great shape.

I could probably weather through these illnesses.

Like, what do I really care?

But now here I am around, you know, around the corner from 40, and I'm five weeks away from having a baby girl.

And I'm thinking about, you know, if we have to use formula, is that formula going to be safe?

Like if when we're doing the normal schedule of vaccines, are those vaccines still going to be available?

I have a pickup truck, which is, you know, fits me, my wife, and my one 90-pound dog and a, you know, nearly 40-pound dog.

We don't have enough room in there for a baby seat.

And we didn't anticipate these tariffs coming.

So, like, we need to do, like a lot of American families, get a second car, something that we can put a car seat in.

That's

right.

Yeah.

Like, I've, dude, I got a lot of people.

I want a picture of you driving a Honda's Odyssey today.

Nazi Hunter sticker on the back window.

When my wife made the decision that we're going to have kids, because that's how it happened,

from day one, I was like, we're getting a minivan.

I was like, and that's

I've finally convinced her that the minivan is the good answer.

So I'm all about it.

I will gladly drive a minivan.

But yeah, but for real, you know, bringing it back to like, I was listening to an NPR

interview yesterday where a representative of a, like like a small business conglomerate was talking about how because of the tariffs on China,

things like baby bottles and pacifiers and the bags that breast milk go into,

they are simply not going to reorder them because

consumers will not buy them at 140% markup.

Like

I'm coming into parenthood in the most unstable time to have

a child like in my lifetime.

But Chris wild.

You have to remember the upside is that in four or five years, your child will be able to work at a manufacturing plant

that makes those little plastic baggies.

And they can work overnight.

Absolutely.

You don't have to worry about

the fumes, the plastic silver lining.

You don't have to worry about because there will be nobody there to tell you that there are films in the air poisoning everyone.

So it's great.

And your overtime won't be taxed either.

And what's crazy?

Yeah, I know.

What's crazy is that there are some red states that are already trying to loosen child labor laws.

Or not even Florida because they don't have enough undocumented workers.

So now they want to replace them with 14, 15, and 16-year-olds.

So it's just not that.

I mean, we're all laughing about it, but like, it's not that far off.

I mean, to me, like,

I think I said this in the previous episode, but like, it's a, it's a huge point is that these sort of, it's across just beyond tariffs as well.

These broad spectrum moves that are just like completely ignoring detail, they are going to have such unforeseen consequences, exactly like what Chris is talking about.

Little details are just completely ignored.

You don't understand, especially for like small businesses and tariffs, just how many businesses are going to just completely go bankrupt.

There's going to be people are going to lose their jobs.

There's going to be things that are going to cost a million times more money.

That's why, like, because people, a lot of people don't understand that like tariffs can be really smart if you target them correctly and you understand the market you're trying to manipulate and why you're trying to do it.

But if you just go 60%, it's like, okay, you realize it's 60% on everything.

So like we have no idea how to manage and figure out, is this industry going to collapse or boom?

We don't know.

And that is extremely dangerous.

And it's the same shit across the bureaucracy that he's doing, where it's like, what's going to happen when you get rid of these food investigators?

How deep is that problem going to cut into the fabric of America?

And how hard is it going to be to re-establish the shit that you got rid of?

Because you can't just press a button and then thousands of people come back to work.

It's not how it works.

So it is like right now in the short term, it seems extremely exciting for a lot of people who want less bureaucracy and they want the shit Trump wants.

But you fast forward a year or two when you start to see

so bad.

And they're going to go, how did this happen?

Does anybody else get like a sick kick out of seeing the, I voted for Trump and I have a small business videos?

And then they're like, oh, I got

the best.

Oh, I can't run anymore.

well you're getting what you voted for my farm is going under

i feel bad for 50 of these people the ones who voted the right way and who knew who were smart enough to figure out exactly the other ones them

this is this is the game you played you gain it you're you played a stupid game you're gonna win a stupid prize yep and look what you did luke are you suggesting that these people around in november that's exactly what i'm gonna say and now they are finding out exactly get fucked you bunch of idiots well done oh i got the catchphrase in here they voted for a vibe and they got policy outcomes.

Who would have possibly known that that could be a thing that would happen?

I will sit and kick my feet laying on my bed with a grin on my face reading those fucking comments of these people.

Oh, I can't run my small business anymore because these tariffs.

And the comments are just ripping these people a new fucking facehole about, yeah, look, well done.

Like, oh, thoughts and tariffs.

What's really interesting, though, is that the fact that Donald Trump, for the first time, is underwater on the economy.

Yeah.

And

what's really crazy is that the effects of what he has done have not been felt yet.

There are some estimates that, like, on the tariff stuff, you won't really start to feel it until June because of the amount of time and the backlog of stuff that we've already got.

So if he's already in the mid-40s on the economy, which was that number is the reason that he won because he was above water and Kamala wasn't,

he's in a lot of trouble.

He sees it.

I too.

Tim, are you suggesting that the tariffs are not going to make us $2 billion a day?

You know, I hate to break it to you, Luke, but I don't think so.

By the time Chris is buying those $7 a piece plastic bags for breast milk that pay for those tariffs, like Chris will be contributing at least half of that $2 billion.

Thank you.

Thank you for supporting

this.

You know how I know Trump's strategy is he's worried about what's going on is that he's trying to fire the Fed chair so he can go in and influence the rate.

Because for people who don't understand why he would do that, like right now, the thing that is the biggest impediment to the economy growing is the interest rate's too high.

So businesses can't borrow without losing a lot of money.

So lowering the interest rate, lowering mortgage rates will change the housing, all that stuff will be great.

The reason they don't do it is because it will cause hyperinflation or stagflation.

And it's just extremely economically dangerous to do it, which is why the current chair won't do it.

But Trump is seeing that, oh shit, my policies don't work and I need the interest rate to go down to make me look good.

I don't care if the long-term effect's terrible, I want a short-term boom so I look great.

That's exactly what he's trying to do.

So his next crusade is going to be getting Powell out and trying to replace him with somebody who's going to lower rates regardless of the outcome.

And you see it clear as day now.

And everybody's warning him not to do it.

And he's still going ahead.

Well, the Treasury Secretary Brissette, who has been a big Trump lackey and has not pushed back on anything, did apparently according to reports, went to the Oval and was like, if you do this, the markets will react negatively in a serious way.

Yes.

We also should remind folks who appointed Jerome Powell as Fed chair?

Donald Trump?

Hey, 2018.

You mean a Trump appointment he wants to get rid of?

Yep.

I think there's, when it comes to like the tariffs and the broader economy stuff, I think it's important for us to also mention the blatant corruption angle.

Like Donald Trump has been making carve-outs for his friends, and he will make carve-outs to anyone who makes his wealth bigger.

Sure.

Like we, we, and I, again, I fucking hope that there are FBI agents who are just doing their due diligence and tracking what's happening at Mar-a-Lago and the Trump hotels around the fucking world, because that's what we saw during his first presidency was like the Saudis would rent out an entire fucking floor and leave it empty.

I'm still not convinced that the whole Trump coin thing isn't a complete fucking foreign influence money laundering deal.

Yeah.

Oh.

Yep.

I'm like 90% sure.

On this, we actually just got some breaking news, which by the time you read this, you'll be like, oh, God.

Apparently, the head of the IRS has been fired because they were basically resisting against what Elon Musk wanted to do.

So

it just goes to Chris's point about the corruption that they are just getting rid of anybody who gets in their way.

We also heard that apparently someone in the Trump White House went to the IRS and basically told them to like lay off Mike Lindell, who is the My Pillow Guy.

Very much corrupt and like was going through through an audit.

And they were basically like, maybe you don't want to do that anymore.

That's what's happening in the government right now, folks, is that he is currying favor and with for his friends and doesn't give a shit about anybody else.

Sweet.

So.

Who was it?

He just instructed

the DOJ to look into to see if they could find any criminal

activity.

Oh, that was on

New York Attorney General Letitia James.

He has sent them after her because she has been a huge thorn in his side.

She's the one that went after him on the not why he can't run a nonprofit anymore.

But but the Biden administration is the one who weaponized the DOG, just so we're all under the same, you know, yes,

we're on the same page here, right?

Right.

Yeah, and that's that's why when

over the past episodes, I keep repeating myself, but I think it's worth doing.

Talking about prosecuting corruption is a is a smart stance.

Talking about prosecuting Trump specifically, he is able to, he is able to rhetorically turn that against someone.

Yes.

If Democrats make anti-corruption, anti-oligarchy, anti-monopoly, like that kind of message becomes a major theme of the next couple of elections, not only do I think that they'll win, but I think that they will have the popular support and the actual mandate necessary to pass

reforms for our economy, reforms for criminal law, and

reforms for justice for all of America.

I think you're right about that.

Theoretically, the only thing that Democrats have to do on top of all that, in order to make that strategy work, which I agree is the right strategy, is to live the life they're saying they're going to live right now.

Because, like, yes, the Democrats are the better party of the two, but both sides engage in corruption.

The left is engaging in a lot of things that are ingratiating themselves and making money, putting money in their pockets.

There's a whole donor class of folks that are probably not the best people in the world.

They need to rid themselves of whatever vestiges of that is left.

They need to be active about how they specifically are going to hurt their own lives, like putting bills forward, like saying, hey, if you were in Congress, you probably shouldn't be able to trade stocks and things like that.

Anything where it takes away their power and they can actually functionally show, hey, we're serious about this shit.

We're anti-corruption.

We're anti-to making money off of all this.

We're going to put the bills forward to prove it.

We're willing to put our money where our mouth is and have the vision, then they win.

But if they don't do that first part, they're not going to win.

Well, and I imagine Tim might have some idea of how this happens.

But like, what that's going to take is Americans

getting around the idea of shaping the Democratic Party platform to include those reforms.

Like that needs to be a commitment that is made at the next presidential convention.

100%.

It's 100% right.

And I think people need to, I mean, people are screaming about it already,

but I think we have to insist on it.

I don't want to support a candidate for president that doesn't support a ban on stock trades and also is willing to work with Congress to actually reestablish the equal levels of government so that we all three are on the same footing.

Congress has given up a tremendous amount of power over the years and it's time to give it back.

And I want somebody, again, as you said, like is going to do something that is against their self-interest, which is handing over power.

I think it's important and I think it will go a long way in convincing non-voters to come back that you're not just in this for yourself.

I want to restore the equal branches of government, I think, is a powerful message.

And I want to go after oligarchs or corporations.

I think people get corporations more than oligarchs.

They don't know what that word means.

It's kind of a, well, it's not a very word that we use in the U.S.

very much, right?

So

I think whoever picks up that mantle is going to do very well in the Democratic primary next year or two years, I guess.

I know we need to wrap.

So I want to bring us full circle because I was reluctant to even have a conversation about martial law because it is so, one, it's so scary, but also it is

getting a little close to the conspiracy side of things.

But I want to tie it together with, I guess, a message of inspiration for our listeners.

Because if you look through all of the things that we're talking about today, if you look at Scott Besant, who I just caught up on that breaking news, he pushed out.

He pushed out Elon Musk's appointed interim director of the IRS because Scott Besant said, this is trash.

It happened without my approval.

And the IRS is under the Treasury Department.

And so we're going to put somebody who's not an extreme far-right Elon Musk appointed person in charge of the IRS.

So

we do have these glimmers.

You've got Chris Van Holland going to El Salvador and proving that there is a place for senators to have power.

You've got Harvard and you've got all of these different institutions, higher education, they're collectively pushing back.

Our viewers are constantly saying, I hate this timeline.

I don't know what to do.

I feel crippled.

I'm so demoralized.

I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm spiraling.

This is working.

And

this is how we ensure that we never have to say martial law in a serious sense, because he is getting resistance.

Exactly.

He is seeing resistance everywhere.

And the system is designed for us to control it.

That is like the entire point of our constitution.

This is a living, breathing thing that happens every day because of what we choose to do when we wake up.

And so when you're waking up and you're going to a rally, when you're filming somebody getting tased at a Marjorie Taylor Greene rally, which we didn't cover,

when you share an article,

we're controlling the narrative and we're changing the narrative right now.

And so the reason that we're able to have this conversation about who do we want to see in 2026, who do we want to see in 2028, these are things that my own viewers are telling me.

If we even have an election in 2028, we absolutely will have an election in 2028 because we are collectively going to choose that that will be the case.

And I will not have it any other way.

So let's back away from the cliff.

Let's understand that this is in our hands.

It's just very slow and it's a very painful process because of how far Trump has pushed us.

But we can still get there and we will.

Well, I think that's a good note to wrap up on.

And I want to remind our viewers, first of all, thank you for listening.

And, you know, it's been wild over six episodes to see the community that we are building here.

And if you're only listening, we also want you to follow us on Substack Substack because we open the chat every episode.

There's a chat.

You know, we jump in there.

We're going to start doing lives.

And in fact, I think most of you will probably have heard this before we do this, but Zach and I are actually going to be on Jim Acosta's Substack show on Tuesday at 4 p.m., which is super awesome.

And we're working on some other things as well where we're going to be talking about this.

But we want you all.

to come join us on Substack, not just to read our content, but to engage with it.

And we're going to talk about how we can fight back.

So you can follow us at findoutpodcast.substack.com.

That's findoutpodcast.substack.com.

Come join us.

Let's fight back against this.

And let's make sure that Donald Trump and the Republicans find out in

November of 2026 what they have done.

So with that, thank you, everybody.

And until next time, thanks for listening.