Did Pete Hegseth Commit a War Crime?

Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Find Out podcast.

We hope that you had a lovely long weekend with Thanksgiving, hopefully with your family and not paying attention to some of the completely absurd things that happened over the break.

And we're going to talk about all of them. And we actually brought an expert on to talk to us about all of these things.

With us today is Dr. We're going to call her Dr.
Nola Hayes, but we're going to go Dr. Nola throughout this,

who is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, has more degrees than I can count, is an expert in foreign policy,

on all kinds of things. So Dr.
Nola, thank you for joining us today. Thank you, Tim.
I'm excited to be here. And thank you for reading my bio that way, because sometimes it is a bit ridiculous.

Well, I couldn't read the whole thing because it would take the whole show. You've done all kinds of amazing things.

But unfortunately, we're going to have to talk about some relatively serious matters.

And again, for those of you who haven't heard,

there was, it came out this weekend that the Secretary of Defense, I will not call him the Secretary of War because that is stupid. The Secretary of Defense.
I'm not a former secretary, though. Yes.

I think that's appropriate. Maybe we should just call him former weekend Fox and Friends anchor.
Pete tends to be former secretary.

you have to

deficit with drunk oh drunk weekend I mean there's a couple of them on Fox but not to be confused with Janine Pirot who is the other drunk Fox News host who is now

the I believe she is the uh district attorney for DC or not just uh the federal attorney or whatever it is federal district attorney not appointed he just

shoved her in anyways let's not talk about her uh because we have enough garbage we have to talk about here So it came out this weekend that Pete Hegseth ordered an additional strike on one of the boats that the Navy SEALs have been striking in the Caribbean that they have claimed were drug runners.

But in this particular case, it was clear that two people had survived the strike. They were hanging on to the side of what I only could imagine is fragments of the ship.

And the quote, I believe, that we've all been given was, he said, kill them all.

And so this obviously set off a firestorm this weekend. People calling it a war crime, people calling it extrajudicial killing.
And that's why we wanted Dr.

Nola to come on and talk to us about this because these distinctions matter. So Dr.
Nola, tell us what we know about this strike and what we actually should be calling it.

Thank you so much.

to all of you for hearing about the facts. And in a situation like this, facts matter.
Some people could easily argue that it's a matter of legalese. And first and foremost, I am not a lawyer.

I am a political scientist. But when it comes to the world of international security, those two worlds definitely cross over.

So in one of my security studies courses that I teach, I teach a great deal on war, what constitutes war, specifically the theory of war. And what's interesting about this situation is

The reason why I felt like I had to disrupt my social media vacay is because I kept seeing people refer to this as a war crime.

That is a way to describe it. If you're trying to get people to understand the level of severity, is it the right way to describe it?

If my students were to answer, if I were to give them this as a case study and say, how would you describe it? And if they said war crime, I would dock them points.

And it's a really simple reason why. No one has declared war, not even Venezuela.
And it's a reason for that because wars cost money. Maduro understands that he's in a tricky situation.

And he also understands what sort of

administration he's dealing with. So he's in a very tricky situation.
So he hasn't declared war. And to my knowledge, sitting here at 2.07 p.m.

December 1st, the United States has not declared war on Venezuela. So to call this a war crime is to suggest that this is a legal war, that this is a legal war and or conflict, and it is neither.

Yeah, so at in this, so what should we be calling this, in your opinion, from the facts that you've seen so far? Well, I agree with Ranking Member

Meeks, you know, on the on the ranking.

I always, it's the committee on,

oh my goodness, there's so many committees, and I cannot remember. I can't, I can't recall it right now.
But I agree with Ranking Member

Meeks on this. And I'm going to say something that I never ever thought I would say.
I'm going to agree with Rand Paul, who also describes it as an extrajudicial killing.

And it's a reason why the lawyers, why the legislators are describing it this way, because here's the situation, guys.

Having a legally declared war affords you a few things. So, say, for for instance, if they were enemy combatants in those ships, that's a different situation.

We may not actually even be having this conversation right now because in war, you can legally, unfortunately, kill your enemy combatants, right?

But what's the one thing we always hear about when we're talking about legally declared wars and conflicts? We're always hearing about the civilian count.

That's why this matters, right? So when you are just out there killing people without any sort sort of legal authority, without any sort of declaration of war, that pretty much just becomes murder.

Or, you know, in another way to put it, because we are talking about an international situation, extrajudicial killing. Now,

can you have extrajudicial killings

while there are legally determined wars and conflicts? Yes, but that's not what this is.

I think of it as like

if I'm in a boat off the coast of California, whale watching with my friends and

Australia says, we think that those are what's a gang, bloods or crips or something.

We think that those are bad. And then they just come and murder me right off the coast of California.
And then they say, well, don't worry, trust us. They were gang members and drug dealers.
And

what would a normal president do if we were killed off of our own coast by another government and without any actual evidence that anybody was anything other than just a random person, like these guys were, they might have all been drug dealing cartel traffickers.

We will probably never know because they'll never tell us or because they didn't even do the work to find out who these people actually were. They just made a judgment call.

And that's well, actually, I forget who. I forget if it was a New York Times or Political.
Someone actually did journalism. Someone did journalism.
Someone did a deep dive.

I can't remember

who it was, but they actually went to Venezuela, talked to community members, talked to family members to ask who these

people were because they're no longer here. And what was interesting in this kind of...

this piece is that it was revealed that you're talking, if they were dealing drugs, you were talking about petty, petty, petty, petty, petty, petty, petty, petty, petty, petty, you know, way down on the drug totem pole.

We're not talking about El Chapo's homies running in and out of the South Caribbean. That's not what we're talking about.
We're not talking about that kind of work. We're delivering them personally.

I mean,

so, you know,

this isn't the situation that we're talking about. And I think that's important to mention because I think this administration does a great job at throwing out some

a tiny bit of red meat so you can completely get people distracted from what the point is.

And so they can muddy the waters by saying, but they were actual drug dealers, bad guys, just like in the movies.

Right.

But I think the point being here, and I think this is what you're saying, is that there is no evidence that these guys were any sort of middle to higher level drug traffickers with, you know, hundreds of, maybe I'm going too far.

I don't know how much this stuff weighs. Well, kilos, I guess, but you know, like these boats, you know, you blow them up and there's not this like white powdered cloud because there's so many drugs.

It's there doesn't seem to be very much evidence, at least that's been presented to us that suggests, like you said, that these were anything other than one fisherman or two very, very low-level drug dealers who, by quote-unquote, eliminating them or killing them, doesn't do anything to stop the flow of drugs into this country.

I think what's important to note is that the Trump administration is conflating a whole bunch of things.

They like to say that like every boat that they are hitting with a missile strike, they're saving 27,000 Americans' lives.

They're acting as if everything on that boat is fentanyl and that that fentanyl is going to result in an overdose every single time. And where's this fentanyl coming from?

Because it's not coming from Venezuela.

Mexico. And none of

us do a video on that. What's really important to note is none of these boats could physically make it to the United States.
Because they're fishermen. Exactly.
They're fishermen.

They don't have refueling stations like, you know, every two hundred miles.

This isn't the start of NASCAR on in the South Caribbean Sea. Right.
You know, like we're not, we don't, we're not talking about souped up boats here.

So to be clear, one, I mean, at least, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I saw something that said most of the fentanyl comes from Mexico and it comes from the Pacific side. through California.

Yeah.

But and what we are saying here, just to be clear to everybody, because this kind of blows up their entire narrative, these boats can't make it to the United States, right? What did I say?

I said they were

the entire narrative.

Is that bad?

No, it is appropriate planned. Oh, okay.
I thought you were saying they always suggest that I say these pseudosexual things that I don't even realize it.

I don't think that was one of them. Anyways, he said something about Jeffrey Epstein dripping in one episode.
All right. It was like, come on.

This is a serious point. Guys, guys, we have a serious guest here.
A serious, serious guest.

Visual of anything dripping out of Jeffrey Epsom. Oh, God.

I know.

I walked us to the camera. Look what you did, Rich.
She dragged our corpses across the line. I'm not sure.

Anyways, to go back,

their narrative has been blown up

because the fact is these boats can't even get. What are we, like Miami, like to South Florida, I guess? So, like, it seems to me, and Dr.
Nola, correct me if I'm wrong.

These are not, these are, these are not boats that were coming to the United States. So, then what are we doing?

Exactly.

What are we doing? What we are doing is, you know, we're making a mineral resource grab.

I mean, it's the same, it's the same sort of tactic with Nigeria, you know, and you send poor Nikki Minash to the U.S.

I'm sorry. It's so, it's.
See, I told the Lord I was going to be good today. And I was like, No, no, no.
No, no, no. Dr.
Nola, Nola.

There are no rules here. You can say whatever you want.

Our audience will eat it up because it's at least us not making stupid comments. Like it's, you know, have at it.
So did he really send Nicki Minaj to the UN? Did that happen? That really happened.

Oh, my God. To talk about the Christians dying in Nigeria.
Here's the thing.

One of my 8,000 degrees you mentioned, Tim,

I have a background in divinity. So this is actually an area I care a great deal about.

And so I do a lot of work on the intersectional international security and identity and religion being one of those markers. So this is something that I care a great deal about.

I think that sending Nikki Minaj to the UN to make the case that Christians are dying in Nigeria, which is why the U.S.

needs to intervene when Nigeria isn't even the first country on the list where Christians are dying en masse. How about North Korea? I don't see him

telling his little buddy about

North Korea that we come in.

Right, exactly. I don't see you knocking on his door talking about we coming to save Christians.

So

it's this situation where

they literally change the narrative as they are telling the narrative. It's amazing.

But so from your perspective,

I agree.

These are resource battles.

This is nothing to do with stopping drugs coming into the United States, nor is it, I I guess, stopping the persecution of Christians in Nigeria, all places, which is a resource-rich, but also

highly,

what's the word I'm looking for?

There is a lot of war that goes on, and especially, I believe, in the northern parts of Nigeria, I think. Where Voko Haram, where they have a lot of

terror activities and a lot of awful things that happen. But this is like, they want the Venezuelan oil and they want the resources under the ground in Nigeria, I assume.

Absolutely. And then there's another another thing that's also going on here, too, when we're talking about these kind of regional tiffs.

When we're talking about, you know, when Trump talks about Greenland, when all of this

chaos started,

one of the questions that people were trying to answer in my world in foreign policy is not only what is our foreign policy going to look like, but what is the stance we're taking?

You know, so we heard a lot about isolationism on the campaign trail, but it's actually looked something more like wanting the opposite of everything that they said that they wanted to do, right? So

point number one,

getting involved.

We'll use

Israel, for example. Not only

going to Israel's defense, that's one part of it.

But then Trump trying to put his finger on the scale to tell Israel how they should handle Netanyahu.

The point that we are completely ignoring Venezuela's sovereignty, the point that we are completely egging on Greenland, you know, we've heard threats against Mexico.

So there's this kind of like regional spheres of influence theory that's been floated out there that Ben Rhodes has talked about. But now it's looking like something else.

It's looking like we want our finger on the scale for the things that Trump cares about, not necessarily what's in the best interest of the United States, because I would argue that we're moving in the opposite interest of the United States.

And then secondly, it's this kind of really bullying, bullish foreign policy

where the United States knows it's bigger and stronger. And so you're going to try and bully Venezuela.
You're going to bully Nigeria.

So it's this, I think this administration would probably use the word deterrent. I use the word bullying.

So are you suggesting, Dr. nola that trump's no new wars pledge was complete

what he's taking he's only ever told the truth until i he's never said anything that wasn't true he said he said no new wars though we're lighting up fishermen left and right in the caribbean and you know it's not war so we're totally great right right but i i guess

a little a little bit

casual well did you guys and we'll have to have the

i want to get to this so pete hegseth today did you guys see the tweet he put out about this? So it's going to be hard.

Yeah. So he posted this, this tweet that was basically the play on, I guess it's Franklin the Turtle.
The turtle. Something it's like a kid's.
It's so

because I'm from the Ninja Warrior generation. So I was really confused.
And can y'all just explain it to me, please?

I cannot. But like I could show you.
I think that's a turtle

book.

It's a children's book. Yeah, it's a children's book.

But obviously, they changed it to Franklin targets. It's a children's book.
Yeah, it's a children's book. This is a children's book.
We'll put it up on the, on the, the edit, we'll put it up.

But it says, Franklin targets narco-terrorists. And then it literally shows him in helmet and with a bazooka,

bazooka, shooting a boat that looks to be filled with

cocaine or fentanyl. And there's pictures of guys on the boats with what looks like automatic rifles kind of getting blown to bits.
This was today after all of the criticism about like killing these

fishermen. Why is that Franklin a turtle? I don't get it.

It's because it'll make the wokies, it'll trigger the libs. Yeah.

And the fishermen are brown.

You got to add that. Oh, right.
Yeah, that is true. That's a good point.
Very important. Very important.
Wow. I don't understand it.
But that's what he did.

It is incoherent. He is incoherent.
Well, this is how the the alt-right communicates.

They use absurdities in their memes so that we spend our time debating what does this mean? How is it offensive? How many layers of racism is it?

And that's distracting us from the fact that we should be talking about how Pete Hegseth is going to fucking jail. And like, there's, there's no getting around it.
Donald Trump could issue a pardon.

I don't think that

Pete Hegseth is going to work his way into a pardon for absolutely everything he's fucking done.

Well, actually, they actually tagged Southcom in this. That is disgusting.
Can you just explain what that is to folks that don't know?

Dr. Nola.
I'm sorry. No, it's okay.
I mean, it's like this stuff

takes everyone's breath away for a minute because it's just like complete horseshit.

What was the group that he tagged just so people know what that is? So, Southcom essentially is

it's a, it's a Southcom denotes region. Um, so it is where that military theater is within the South Caribbean, um, and other parts of the Caribbean Sea.

So, we're talking about the South Caribbean Sea, which is literally Southcom, South Command. So, he's basically tagging the

account run by people at the Pentagon that is basically meant to talk about the things that we are doing in that region, essentially, I guess. Yeah.

And so, he's using this children's meme, which I'm sure some alt-right asshole put together and someone gave it to him and was like, oh, look at this cool thing.

But I want to transition because one thing that I think is really, really important to talk about is that this does seem, at least right now, to be a rare instance where there is bipartisan anger over this.

And I think we saw a statement from both the

chair and the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee in the House issued a joint statement that they both like, this doesn't really happen anymore.

Sorry. Yo, go ahead.
Well, no, I think it's really critical to split this in half because

there's one issue of

killing, of blowing up boats. We have been trained by action movies, at least since the 80s, every Rambo movie, you know,

that blowing up bad guys. with missiles and military leaders who are just like, fuck it, you know, kill the bad guys.
I'm too like, there are lives at stake. And they go around the rules.

We've been trained to kind of look up to that kind of like swaggery bravado thing.

The critical difference here is those two people that were clinging to wreckage. That is what makes this a markedly different conversation where I think

a freakish number of Americans, and I'm looking at you, Zach.

If you just said, should the military shoot drug boats out of the ocean without permission from the other governments, a lot of people would say, like, you know, maybe that's not legal, but I don't like personally have a problem with it.

Or like, fuck those guys, they're bad guys or whatever.

Zach's death is a good idea. If you're a dispersion that they're actual drug dealers, I'm okay with it.
If they're regular innocent fishermen, I'm not okay with it.

But if you said humans who have already been attacked are clinging to wreckage in the ocean, should you double down and fucking murder them out of the water?

and not take them as prisoners and interrogate them. Where did you get your drugs? Like flip them, like do what you want.
You wouldn't think you would want to do that no matter what.

Do that part of it. So

that's the particularly brutal component here where this is different from all of the other boat strikes.

So I think that's zooming in on that, that key point is the thing that's going to really change people's minds. Right.

But that's the reason why there was, I think, this joint statement over the weekend. Because again, Democrats and Republicans agree on essentially nothing at this point, right?

Like even budget bills, we get that's why we have a shutdown because they don't agree on anything. But in this particular case, and I want to get Dr.

Nelly, your take is like, this feels different than some of the other, you know, questionable slash illegal things that the Trump administration has done.

Do you, do you, you know, I think Chris made a good point that like, you know, we would like to see if convicted, Pete Hags has spent some time upstate, I guess, or wherever, up the river or whatever.

But like, do you think that it's possible that there are enough Republicans that are outraged about this that like real hearings, real investigations will happen?

Absolutely. Because, you know, the calls aren't just coming from inside the House, right?

And they're not just coming from Americans who are already pissed off about the 800 different things we have to be pissed off about every single day, right?

This is coming from the UN.

This is coming from presidents from around the world, you know, presidents, leaders, whatever sort of regime type they have. So this,

it's not, if it has the potential to be, you know, career ending for Hexeth, where, you know, his freedom can be taken away.

Absolutely. Because

someone mentioned it earlier. I can't remember if it was you, Tim or Rich had mentioned the way that this administration moves.
They came in thinking that they were omnipotent.

They came in thinking that Trump was a king. They came in thinking that they could do whatever the hell it was that

they wanted to do. And who was going to question? Who was going to question them? You know, there's a famous moment in Real Housewives history where Cherie says, who gonna check me, boo?

And that's basically

what this administration came in with that attitude, like, who gonna check me, boo? Well, on this one, the whole world, the whole damn world is gonna check you on this one.

And then, especially when you have situations where you bring in,

I remember Ranking Member Meeks was talking about, I think on threads one day, how finally they had been briefed on a situation and there was no details in the brief. What are you hiding?

What are you hiding? You're hiding the fact that there is no real evidence. Now, what is interesting is

that situation that happened maybe a few weeks ago.

with Great Britain and stopping intelligence sharing with the United States in that area specifically, because there is still a question of where are they, where's the United States getting their intel from?

You know, so there are a lot of questions to unpack here. And I have one more question.
Whatever happened to that one person that survived a strike? Do y'all remember that?

There was one person that survived a strike. That person just completely went away.
Every now and then, I will remind people on threads. What happened to that person, i.e., witness.

Yeah, so I think that there's likely going to be some whistleblowers coming forward to talk about that.

It has to be described.

I could say that's going to happen.

I mean, isn't that how we know about the kill them all thing? Isn't was that somebody speaking off the record? Is that how we found that out? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
It's whistleblowers.

I mean, there's a lot of CYA, right? Like, people.

I mean, yeah, go ahead. There were actually two survivors in a strike.
I believe it was September 18th who both got repatriated.

And

that was a messy strike, too.

And there will be whistleblowers coming forward to talk about that. And that's why I'm very, very convinced that Pete Hexeth is going to jail.
And let me tell you something.

You know, I've been saying this for years.

As a national security person,

what has happened to the national security community?

Let me be gentle here.

There are a lot of aggrieved people. There are a lot of professional people who have dedicated their lives to making sure that not only that Americans are safe.

And I know sometimes that can be a throwaway, you know, kind of

idea, but there really are people who are dedicated to keeping Americans safe abroad and around the world.

And when you have an administration that does not respect the duty of the military, that does not respect the duty of rank, that does not respect tradition, that does not respect duty in and of itself, I'd argue, because the military right now in many instances are being used, you know, in ways that

people don't get, people don't sign up to get used for,

You talk to any vet, obviously they will have stories about maybe something

that they did, that they didn't love, that they had to do it, but they did it because they believed in the mission. We are having a situation where morale is low.

People are not understanding what the mission is, and that's dangerous.

So, and we got, I'll do one more question and then we'll wrap here. But so where do you see all of this going next?

Like, what, what do we think is going to happen both with Venezuela where last night, which which we're recording on Monday, Trump said without any sort of power that there's, that their airspace in Venezuela is closed, which it's not, but probably not a lot.

I don't. So

where do you see the end game on this?

Where do I see the end game? Well, The end game is going to be messy and chaotic. I mean, you know, they do a thing and they never have a plan for it.
They just go out there and do it.

They break stuff. They kind of don't care.
And then they go back and they go out into the world and break more stuff because there are no real consequences.

How this ends depends on the consequences here. This is the stop, right?

In my personal opinion, because after all of this, there's going to be a lot of cleanup that people like me are going to have to go out into the world and do, right? This is the stop.

This is the moment where.

Republicans are going to have to dig deep and ask themselves what matters most. You know, are you okay backing an administration that is just going out and killing people

without any authority? Congress is the only body that can declare war. There's no declaration of war.
So what are we doing? Do you want to back murder? That literally is your legacy.

That's literally what Republicans have to ask themselves at this point. Do you want to back murder? Period.

Right. So where I see all this ending is I think a few people probably will get shuffled out.
What happens to Donald Trump? I don't know if age or

senility or something like that is going to catch up with him. And he just kind of gets trotted off to somewhere, you know, where he can live out the rest of his days.

But some of the things that I'm hearing here in DC,

people understand that this is an administration problem. This isn't just a Trump problem.
And people are trying to figure out how to

fix

the cabinet problem of this administration.

And I know that there are some legal, some pretty extreme

legal ways to do that. But I think once Dims get back in office, I know for a fact that impeachments will happen all over the place.
But

I don't know what happens to Trump. I've been thinking a lot about that.
Does a Gavin Newsom come in and pardon him? Does Trump even make it all the way to 28? Right.

Yeah, I think it's a great question.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a great question.

I mean, he got enraged last week when there was an article about him dialing back, basically doing what Joe Biden did, which was a very short schedule every day. There was videos of him nodding off.

He sits at his desk rather than standing and he was very outraged. But I think it's a fair question.

I think we have talked about, like, I don't think any of us would support anybody who's, who would come in and pardon. Donald Trump, regardless of how old.

I won't.

I don't, maybe I don't speak for everybody here, but I think that it is that whoever is the Democratic standard bearer in 28 is all about investigations and getting to the bottom of this because we have always turned the other page or the other shoulder, whatever the hell the term is.

The other cheek. The other cheek.
Thank you, Rich. And I, like, that can't happen this time.

There's too much.

After this period of divisiveness, we are going to need a time for healing, Tim.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Don't start with me. Nope.

You started to say something that I agreed with.

Not that kind of healing.

Forgive and forget. You know, we're all Americans here.
No, I would actually love to see him go the opposite direction because Trump remember he wanted to bring back Alcatraz.

How amazing would it be if Gavin Newsom brought back Alcatraz for one

fucking person and he had to sit there and look at San Francisco through bars for the rest of his life and just think of all of the trans people eating kale, doing weird stuff that they do in in Sanford.

Like, that's, that is

hell and earth for Donald Trump. Sean Connery is no longer around to break anybody out of Alc Alcatraz.
So the pieces are all coming together. I'm so glad I worked in a rock

mention. This is like the Rock 3 or whatever.
Like, this is the next movie in the trilogy. Well, anyways, I think we can end it there.

I will say that I am super proud of us that we got somebody with a degree from Harvard Divinity talking about both

the housewives and Jeffrey Epstein. So I feel we did a great job today.
So Dr. Nola, thank you very much.
You are on all social platforms, threads.

You have a sub stack which people should go check out. What is it called? Remind me again.
It is called Security Brief and it's about all things security related. Yes.

So everybody go check that out and subscribe. But Dr.
Nola, thank you very much. I think this has been more entertaining than we expected when talking about extrajudicial killings.

So thank you very much. We will have you back soon.
Thank you. This is why I have one of the most popular classes in Georgetown because we talk about war and scary stuff.

And I've been sitting here thinking that, Dr. Noel, you make me want to go back to school.
I'm like, oh, wow. Look at that.

Yeah.

Look at that.

I don't have my master's yet. So it could happen.
There you go. You have no idea how emotional that just made me because that really is my ministry.
Like, you have no idea. Like,

but I've had a great time hanging out with y'all. Y'all have me back because, you know, they're going to continue to try to keep blowing up the world.
Oh, yeah.

well we we now we now know like who's the blow the person that we call when people get blown up that's dr nola all right well thank you very much everybody go check out her stuff online and uh we're gonna take a short break we'll come back and uh talk a little bit more so thanks a lot all right we are back uh nola might be my new favorite guest guys like i was really fun i feel like that transition deserved a hey everybody even though it's halfway through i just i just feel like we should have gotten another one hey everybody we're back everybody i feel so much better.

Okay. Now we can officially dive in.
So obviously,

we have talked about how bad it is to do extrajudicial killings. And I think most of us disagree with that.

You know, I don't know how much more we need to dive into the pieces of this, but I do think

this is a completely different item and is a potential momentum. Not momentum because Democrats have had it, but like.

This is one of those where it feels like the cracks might start, which we've been kind of hoping that that would happen. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, Chris, you go first. Like, is this starting to put a wedge in the MAGA world?

Pete Hegseth is going to be disposed of. We have seen what happens when someone gets to be

a political liability or if their name is in the press more than Donald Trump, which he also cares about too.

And Pete Hegseth has had both of that. He's been dominating headlines and it has all been bad.

And he's got, you know, people like Senator Rand Paul coming out and saying that like you need to fucking get rid rid of this guy. So I think that Pete Hegseth is operating on borrowed time

and that

he'll be really fucking lucky if he gets a pardon. But I don't think that Donald Trump is going to give him a pardon until it's absolutely fucking necessary.

Yeah, I think that's probably right.

I mean, he has been pardoning a lot of terrible people lately.

And one of the ones we haven't even talked about yet, which flies directly in the face of this we must stop all drugs coming into the united states he just pardoned the former honduran president yeah who was spending 45 years in a united states federal prison for smuggling cocaine and he just pardoned him yeah because he is part of the right-wing party in honduras their elections coming up and that's the candidate he wanted and he said even admitted he's like many fine people told me that this guy was screwed and it's like screwed by a united states jury and a United States judge?

Like, you're basically saying cocaine. You believe the Hondurans over the Americans who just like the whole process of democracy basically working to put a powerful person away.

And it's all just because it's the party that he supports. Well, it also might be because it's the party that he supports, or is it a pay-to-play scenario?

Because it's pay-to-play with a lot of everything else. Well, probably both, right? Others.
So,

I mean, cocaine money probably didn't get all seized.

I don't know. It's so hard to keep track of these things.
He also apparently pardoned some other horrible person recently other day I saw. Like, I don't know.
I mean, we're like 2,000 in by now.

I mean,

I stopped keeping track out of sanity. I'm like, yeah, obviously he pardoned that person.
I don't even, I don't know who they are or what they did, but obviously.

I literally, I said something about the Honduran thing, the pardon, and someone was like, yeah, well, that serves you right.

Biden pardoned his son, so it's the same. I'm like,

no, not the same. This is why you don't have conversations with MAGA because there is no reasoning with them.
That is speaking of which, did anybody have any MAGA family at Thanksgiving? No. Nope.

Did you? The only ones that were, yeah, the only ones that I have that were there were bone fucking silent.

Of course. And

I didn't even bother ruining Thanksgiving. I mean, his approval ratings are what, 36%? Yeah, it's atrocious.
Like, literally, basically the floor. Yeah.

Yeah. The floor mega.
There was a recent poll, I think, just like three days ago, and Gallup came out with the latest one. It's the lowest of his second term.
Yeah.

Well, this is a good transition then into a conversation that we wanted to have about the Tennessee fifth special election that when you're listening to this, it will be Tuesday Election Day. Go vote.

And go vote.

Seventh district.

Oh, seventh. Sorry.
I haven't spent a lot of time in Tennessee. Don't vote in the wrong district.
No, yeah. And also, well, it's interesting.

There have been reports that some groups have been putting putting out that the election is on Wednesday, and it's from Republican groups because they don't want people to vote, which is always something they do.

But Afton Bain is a Tennessee state legislator, and there was actually a poll that came out this weekend that showed her down two points. This is a Republican plus 22.

This is not a purple district, as we were talking about before. This is a red, a ruby red district.

So there is a possibility here that Democrats could actually pick this up, which just shows how unpopular Donald Trump is right now and how much there is a potential wave

forming for November of next year.

You know, I don't know if you guys have paid any attention to this race, but she's done a great job.

Kamala Harris was on the ground, a lot of groups on the ground.

She's got a shot. And if we get a shot at a plus 22,

like

there's not a lot of districts that are more red than that,

a handful that are maybe 30 and 40, but but

in a good year for Republicans. So, you know, if it's a 20-plus point swing,

100% agree, like we need to maintain the framing, maintain the perspective of what's happening here. Because if

she loses by two points or three points, that's a 20-point win for the left. Where even like a month ago, I remember people saying,

is there a chance? Democrats could flip this special election in Tennessee. Like, this was off of the radar three months ago.

even the the worst of the summer the worst of doge nobody's looking at the tennessee seventh district and thinking there's a there's a flip opportunity if we flip this and then you talk about marjorie taylor green leaving in january there's like actually a scenario here where mike johnson loses his majority before we start voting in the midterms it's getting like their majority is that slim um that's what's on the line here so i it's exciting to see

people have a chance to maybe flip and get a good representative in this district but like let's also keep that higher-level perspective of what this is going to mean more broadly.

Do we think that Mike Johnson is relieved?

I feel like he hates our job. I mean, I feel like he wants to quit.
He's got that smile on his face all the time that looks like he's just

on the pursed lips. Just on the fumes.
I mean, just the things he has to.

I mean, he's basically tossed all of his evangelical beliefs, which most of them are kind of bullshit anyways, in the trash to defend him.

Like it's just on the Epstein stuff in particular, where he's had to go full bore for Trump.

He was also like the eighth choice, don't forget, when they, when they came up with this, he was basically the like, well, we got to pick somebody. Well, there's Mike over there.

He's been off before they got married. Wow.
Yeah,

there's a lot that could be said there that I'm not going to do right now.

But I think, Rich, you made a very important point that, you know, even if Afton loses this race tomorrow, if it's a single-digit loss, that means then that anywhere from a plus 12 to plus 15 to plus 18,

those Republicans have to be worried because this is a plus 22. This is a really hard mountain.
Like, if she wins this, that is an earthquake.

But if she even loses by like less than five, that's also an earthquake. And I want to make sure that people understand that because a lot of times people have the tendency.

And I was on a call earlier where this came up, like, we don't want people to feel let down if she she loses because

there are wins in losses as long as you like, you know, talk about it the right way. And again, if she, even if she loses by five, that's a shocking, shocking result.

It's like Rand Paul going and winning Nancy Pelosi's district in San Francisco.

Yeah.

This is the whole idea behind like my whole on-offense brand. right? We have to put Republicans on the defensive, and that means defending plus 22 districts.

It is, uh, we can't simply just focus on the safe races. We can't simply focus on, you know, the purple districts and all that shit.

We have to play the game absolutely everywhere and we have to make it as

resource intensive for the other side as we possibly can. And when it comes to, you know, all of us, like

posting shit on social media and getting out that this race is happening and others like it, this stuff does matter. It might feel small small in the moment, but it does make a difference.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think the one thing we also need to accept here is that, which is great for us, is that Trump is not going to reverse course on any of this stuff because of these results.

He's not changing. And that's where I think, like, even going back to our previous conversation briefly, it was like, I don't think Hegseth is going anywhere either.

Because look at the difference in turnover from his first term and all these cabinet positions to now. 100% difference.

They went from the most turnover to pretty much the least overnight because he's pretty much walking in and going, this is my way. I'm doing it my way.
I don't give a shit what you think.

I'm going to let Heg Seth blow the people up in there. I'm going to lose all these races because I'm sticking wet with my fucking guns.

That's what Trump is doing because he has nothing to lose personally. That's the reason why he's doing it.
He has one term left. He's fucking using it.

So, all this, like, all the metrics of how Republicans are going to adjust their structure are different now because they don't have a leader that's looking out for their best interests.

They just have a leader who's looking out for his best interests. And they're not going to be able to do anything until they pivot around that.

And I think an election like this is a great eye-opening moment for them when, if even if she's close or wins or whatever, when Trump does nothing in response to it, it's going to be even more evidence that they have to, as a party, start to figure out: okay, well, what are we going to do long term?

Because this guy, A, he's going to be dead in the next few years. It's not going to matter, but he's the president and he's not listening to what we need.

And we're going to be alive in 20 years and trying to be in politics. It's just not going to happen for us.
So all the metrics are different because Trump does not give a fuck.

Trump is doing it for Trump. That's it.
Yeah. It's going to keep getting worse.

Yep. You know, we're talking about like cracks in the MAGA coalition.

I think I read like three different articles this weekend that were all different sources, like Washington Post, Politico, they all had articles about how the MAGA coalition is cracking in like six different places, right?

You've got the

Nick Fuentes versus the Ben Shapiros. Like you've got the...

I'm trying to think of the nicest way to say this. You've got the Israel split, right?

People can't decide who they're going to to let in. All the creators are going in different directions.
You know, Marjorie Taylor Greene is just like, fuck it.

The signs are all there that

this is going to be a deeply fractured and mostly leaderless movement, just like the Tea Party was, remember?

Like there were like 20 people who were like the self-appointed Tea Party leader, and lo and behold, Tea Party, the Tea Party didn't fucking do anything or go anywhere because it was leaderless.

And so, but now it's like 10 times deeper because they're just saying like, I am racist. They're saying I am a Nazi.
Like they're saying all of the things out loud that they didn't say 15 years ago.

And that's going to make it that much harder to come back, even though Trump is giving them. off-ramp after off-ramp after off-ramp with all of these things that he is doing.

And I agree, Zach, doubling down and tripling down. He's going to keep committing

to his own brand because he has always been me first. But now me first doesn't include all of the people who needed to ride on his coattails because he doesn't need them anymore.
Right. Right.

Did you guys see that Trump wants to rename the Republican Party?

Yeah, I did see that.

It's a story that looks like it should be out of the onion, but it's not. Like, Donald Trump is talking about, and he's serious, he wants to rename the Republican Party the Trumplicans.

Oh, I did see that. Did he flip it? He also floated

T-Publicans and

the T,

I don't know, two different spellings of the T-Publicans,

which

I love this story because the more we talk about it, the more Republicans are going to say, no, he's not serious, and the more that Donald Trump will want to double down. Right.
Yeah, I am serious.

He's a hilarious fight.

Oh, I love it.

Well, it's also, but it also just shows like he's not, he doesn't give a shit about the Republicans. He's, he's only.
He's never did. No, he's never.

He's, I mean, he's become a Republican, don't get me wrong, but like, he never was one.

You know, he's friends with the Clintons and like he gave Hillary all kinds of money back in the day. Like, he gave Bubba something.
well oh yeah

but you know he found the Republicans were his were his vehicle to power and to more money and so like him with their name like

like it's just a vehicle no it's in power he could just set the vehicle on fire

and he the thing he cares about most is showing that he's in control right so he's gonna embarrass these people and I guarantee you that he's it's going to get worse as we get closer like can you imagine when like there are republicans running running for president next year and he has to deal with like them getting the spotlight and no one's paying attention to him anymore?

Well, this is going to lose his fucking shit. This is in the context of him teasing a third term.
Yeah. So he might just be nuking everyone who pops every Republican who pops their head up.

And remember when he was running for re-election the first time, the RNC had a whole convention and they decided that they no longer have a party platform. Yeah.
That's going to happen again.

Like they've already got Project 2025. Donald Trump doesn't want to be committed to anything.
So the one thing that would come out of the next RNC

is him renaming the Republican Party after himself right before they get absolutely fucking demolished.

I love this. I think that's

the way.

The way this is looking right now, and there's a lot that can happen, but like

they are, they are marching towards a very bad place. And I will say, like you look, and I think the way of framing it is right about Fuentes versus Shapiro.
Fuentes is winning. Oh, yeah.

Like they are going to a very, very, and by the way, Nick Fuentes is a neo-Nazi. Like there is no mistaking it.

He is a neo-Nazi and he is seeing the crack that he is going to try to drive right through and make this party an alt, a true alt-right party.

And if you think that Donald Trump is bad, wait until this guy gets a hold of the party. He is, I mean, Chris, you're the expert here.
So you, I shouldn't be Trump talking about the drug.

But Trump is the gateway to a very, very bad, bad place. Oh, yeah.
I mean, the House and Senate is filled with Groipers right now.

Four years ago, five years ago, when I was first writing threat reports for members of Congress, like in the context of the ongoing January 6th committee at the time, I was writing about how Groupers were in Paul Gosar's office and that there were new groupers popping up.

And Groupers are these neo-Nazi followers of Nick Fuentes, how they were popping up in other offices. Now, if you go to

Washington, D.C., and you sit down with an intern in a Republican office, that person's probably a Grouper.

Because no one else wants to actually get into Republican politics. Normal young men, and it is almost entirely young men,

who are Republican. They don't want to get involved.
It's only these like really hate-filled incel types. That is what Washington, D.C.
is flush with right now.

Are you saying that that

intern or whoever that was that had the American flag with the swastika? It was the fucking swastika drawn into the stripes. Are you saying that that person is not the right person for us for America?

Like, this is a controversial. Well, Rich, Rich, hold on a second.

That image was very hard to see when it was in there. It was very like

including which was their actual answer to why there was an American flag with a Nazi symbol in the middle of it. Oh, well, like, yeah, the photo like highlighted it.
We couldn't tell.

There's a lot of these out there now. Now you can tell.
A little bit too much of a coincidence when it happens 35 times. And there's no like process of introspection, right? Of like, hey, we.

So now that we know that there is a person with a swastika flag on their work computer in the Capitol,

we're going to do some deep dives. We're going to have some, you know, some sessions to talk about how we get Nazis out of the party.
Like they don't go there. They just say, oh, it's hard to see.

It's like the WhatsApp thread. You know, oh, a bunch of kids.
We don't want them to ruin their futures. Right.
38-year-old kids.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, but they have learned that, and I, you know, I hate to be the person that's always like the media, but like they don't get challenged on it.
Like it's a one-day story and it's gone.

No one is holding them accountable. They know that they have won that battle with the media.

They have pushed it so far to the right in order for the media to say that they aren't biased, but they keep moving it so that everything keeps getting shifted.

And like then a Democrat says something that's completely normal and they're like, well, that doesn't like that doesn't jive. Wait, you want to have health care for everybody? That's dangerous.

Like it's just like, so like they don't have to because nobody holds them accountable. Yeah.
I mean, look at Reince Priebus and Paul Ryan.

Like, they've just disappeared into, you know, who, who are they? Fucking consulting land.

Like, they're making a ton of fucking money because they don't have to live with the shame of building a party that was taken over by fucking Nazis in less than a year.

And Paul Ryan is on the board of Fox.

And so, and he sits there and he always is like, oh, well, this is not who we are. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Meanwhile, like part of his compensation is coming from Sean Hannity and Jesse Waters and like all these garbage human beings. And they just rake in the cash because they don't actually care.

How do we get onto this when we were starting? We started talking about Shapiro and Fuentes. Like,

I feel like we tangented for like 20 minutes there, which is always

making fun of young Republicans is like a national pastime in my social circle. Shooting fish in a barrel.

Right, right. Fishing for fish in the barrel.

But how did we get onto this?

Maybe, just maybe,

this is the wrap. You're right.
I think this is the wrap. But some listener is going to be like, you were saying the thing and fuck, you guys never picked it back.

Well, you know what's going to happen. We're going to hit stop and then we'll remember.
Immediately remembering. But I have great stuff to talk about to wrap this show up.
Is it merch?

Oh, in a minute. In a minute.
But

so today is Cyber Monday.

And so for this week, we are offering our memberships on Substack for 20% off.

So now for less than $5 a month, you can help support our work in one, keeping the lights on and developing new shows, which we will be talking about somewhat soon.

And we will run this through the rest of the week. So if you want to go to findoutpodcast.substack.com and become a member for $4.80

per month, you can do that right now, and we would greatly appreciate it. You can also buy

merch.

She just did the Gavin Newsome. I did.

We didn't tell you.

I know. We should have coordinated this before.

Our merch

is so wonderful. Union-made and printed.
Made in America. Super comfy.
Hoodies. The hoodies are great.
Super comfortable. The shirts, also great.
Black, white, you know, all kinds of options.

People can use their 20% savings on Substack and get themselves a hoodie. I think the math checks out.

Yes, definitely.

Our $1.20 hoodies that are sending us into bankruptcy uh

you but you could say use that money if you're budgeting that way to buy a find out hoodie at findoutpodcast.com and i think with that uh i think that's all we've got guys i i don't have a great unless luke's got to get fucked on the spot not off the top of my head i mean pete hexeth pete hexeth we already that was all that was kind of wait i do have one yes you guys see this story about the uh the student at the university of oklahoma who's losing their shit about their grade on that essay oh i did tell the but tell the audience what this is uh so they're framing it as i used the bible in my essay i got failed for it

not the case you were supposed to write an academic essay with citations that appealed to reality you didn't do that you did i think i feel and by the way it came from the bible That's not a fucking citation.

Get fucked for making this about the fact that the teacher's trans or something. God damn, you ignorant fucks.
You didn't write an essay that you were supposed to.

Yep.

That's a better essay already. I need to go read the actual essay, but I like that.
It's fucking atrocious. An eighth grader could write that essay.

Are you saying that the Bible should not be used as a historical fact, like citation?

You mean the document that's passed through the hands of approximately a billion powerful white men who wanted to use it to control

how things were done in their time isn't reliable? Shocker.

I still read mine every day, so I don't know what we've even doing here.

I sleep with it under my pillow. Gives me tells me I'm big and strong and brave and that I should be in charge.
Why wouldn't I read it? I mean, come on.

I don't know if America's ready for our conversation on religion yet, but we will hold that for another day. Everybody, thank you for watching and/or listening, wherever you do.
Thank you to Dr.

Nola for joining us today. And we will be back on Thursday and we'll have news about Afton Band, what it means,

and I'm sure a bunch of other crazy shit will happen along the way. So thank you.
We'll be back

on Thursday. Bye, guys.