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3/19/25: Trump Call With Putin, Israel Shells UN Building, Media Flips On Schumer & MORE!

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Published Mar 19, 2025, 3:56 PM

Ryan and Emily discuss Trump's two hour call with Putin on Ukraine, SCOTUS slams the breaks on Trump judge attacks, eyewitness says Israel shelled Gaza UN building, liberal media turns on Schumer, fired FTC commissioner tells all on Trump.

 

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Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal.

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Good morning, and welcome to the Counterpoints.

Emily Crystal Sager film all way finishing their two.

Day long argument. We're going to pick it.

Up today though, because we've got more news on the Venezuelan migrants.

Do I have to play the role of Sager and.

Jenny whatever, whatever works for you.

See, we'll say stay tuned for that because there's actually some pretty interesting updates and some interesting reaction to how Chief Justice John Roberts decided to handle the situation yesterday.

We will get to that.

We're going to start first with developments in the ceasefire negotiations. Donald Trump obviously spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday and did a big interview with Lord Ingram on Fox News last night where we got more and more information about what a potential ceasefire deal.

Could end up looking like.

We are then going to move on to how Chief Justice John Roberts rebuked Trump and Magaworld's calls to impeach the judge that halted those migrant deportation flights. The judge impeachment calls are actually a trend, It's not just this judge. So we're going to break all of that down. We're then going to move to really right in a segment I think is going to be really unique, to something that you're able to bring the show via drop site and talk to some people who have witnessed on the ground in Gaza these strikes.

Yeah, we're going to have our midies that are Shreeve Hebdelkadu's join us. We may also have Abu Baker Abed who many of you on the show.

No, he's amazing to appear. We'll see if he does.

This morning, he witnessed uh An Israeli assault on a on a convoy, a tank shelling that killed some of his friends, that nearly killed him.

He is he is, He is safe.

He is obviously shaken up from the last couple of days of violence. And he'll'll join us if he can. Hopefully, hopefully he can. But if not, Sharif will be with us. Who has been editing him, you know over the last several months.

How hold this up a back ar agon.

Maybe he's twenty three now three? Okay, maybe twenty two.

He does amazing work.

Yeah, this is this is a guy who all he wants to do is be a soccer journalist.

Yeah.

Football, we will call it football for him.

Yeah, give him on.

So Chuck Schumer is having a hard time selling his new book, and man, Ryan, it just keeps.

Getting trying to compete with Ezra Kleine. You can't. I mean, what are you doing, Chuck?

You can't compete with what he was thinking? Did they know? Did they really?

Did they not realize? Do not come out the same day.

As as But Chuck Schumer managed to get booked everywhere yesterday. By everywhere, I mean the CBS Morning Show and The View and Chris Hayes. So we have some highlights and low lights to share of Chuck Schumer's media tour in the last twenty four hours and some really interesting, I think discussion points about where the Democratic Party has had it not in the long term future, I mean that too, but also just in the near term. Here and Ryan, we have, thanks to you, Alvarro Badoya, the FTC commissioner who was quote unquote fired by Trump yesterday. That is in dispute whether Donald Trump actually has the authority to fire him. Even some people on the right will say he doesn't have the authority because of Humphrey's executor, which is a case I know we'll get into, but they're trying to push that into the Supreme Court, like many of these battles, which are intentionally designed to test sitting precedent.

Right, there's supposed to be three Republicans and two Democrats on the FTC. Trump just fired two of the Democrats who were Senate confirmed. Like you said, quote unquote fired one of them as commission Badoya I the breaking points guy and drops it and dropsite. And so he's going to be on the show later today talking about, you know what his approach to the FTC was, and what it means that now there will be only actually two Republicans because they haven't even confirmed the third. And why which faction within the Trump coalition may may have driven this move.

Yeah, this is going to be a really interesting conversation. So very happy to have him here. Let's begin with Russia so we can put a zero up on the screen. This is a New York Times headline, just about sort of a TikTok everything that we know so far about this deal. As the New York Times says, put An agreed on Tuesday during a phone call with Trump to temporarily halt strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure. According to the Kremlin, that fell short of the unconditional thirty day sees fire that Ukraine had already agreed to at the urging of the Trump administration. They reportedly spoke, according to the Kremlin, again for more than two hours. Mister Trump, the Times continues, has stated as desired a broker truth as quickly as possible, while Putin has seemed to be seeking more concessions. Zelensky replied on Tuesday evening that Putin had quote effectively rejected the proposal for a full cease fire backed by the US and Ukraine. Now, Trump sat down with an interview sat down with Laura Ingram for an interview on Fox News last night, where we learned a little bit more about how he saw that call yesterday. This is a one will rolled Trump on Laura Ingram from the White House.

Russia has the advantage, as you know, they have encircled about two five hundred soldiers. They're nicely encircled, and that's not good and we want to get it over with. Look, we're doing this. There are no Americans involved. There could be if you end up in World War three over this, which is so ridiculous, but you know, strange things happen. And I think we had a great quote, lasted almost two hours, talked about a lot of things and toward getting it to peace, and we talked about other things.

Also, here's an interesting exchange between Ingram and Trump actually about what the Kremlins said after the call regarding aid to Ukraine.

Let's take a look at this.

A two negotiables mentioned by Putin. It was reported that I think the Kremlin media actually stated that he demanded an immediate cessation of aid to Ukraine in order to get to this multi step deal.

No, we didn't talk about AID. Actually we didn't talk about aid at all. We talked about a lot of things, but AID was never discussed.

So that's Trump directly disputing the Kremlins report of what happened on the call. And just lastly, let's roll this clip of Donald Trump talking about Russia and economic power.

This is the eighth This should be a three.

Next clip here, China needs us in terms of trade very badly, but we have to straighten out the deficit. We have now more than a trillion dollar deficit with China. It's not even unbelievable, and we're going to be doing something about that. And with Russia, they would like to have some of our economic power.

Finally, Ryan, let's put how Donald Trump reported untruth social about the call on the screen.

This is the next element.

He says, quote, my phone conversation today with President Putin of Russia was a.

Very good and productive one. We agreed to an immediate seasfire.

On all energy and infrastructure, with an understanding that we will be working quickly to have a complete ceasefire and ultimately an end to.

This very horrible war.

Continues to say it never would have started if he were president. Many elements of a contract for peace were discussed, including the fact that thousands of soldiers are being killed and both Putin and Zelensky would like to see it and the process is now in full force and effect. But Ryan, interestingly, while the process does clearly seem to be unfolding, full force might not be the best descriptor. If you're Trump, It's one way to spend it, but might not be the best descriptor. Given the way that Zelenski responded to news from the call yesterday.

Well you can tell Trump felt pretty good about how it went because he if you noticed, there was only one word in all caps in that truth social and it was end.

It's going to end the war.

Obviously, lots of exclamation points, but you know that's what that's what you're gonna get. Of course, when you know, you can kind of check his emotional register by mapping it to the number of all caps statements if it's if it's shot through with all caps, like he is feeling besieged and angry and how dare people be, you know, doing these things to him when all he wants is peace for the world. So in that sense, it seems like he feels like he's he's getting somewhere.

You know.

They also, you know, he also talked about something that he understands, which is entertained sports and entertainment, as you know, through at a by the Bilateral Cultural Exchange of Joint Hockey Games.

Put this one up, put a five.

In March twenty twenty two, the NHL told the KHL, you forget.

It, like, we're not partnering with you. Guys. You can't. You can't invade Ukraine. And they've been they've been kicked out of the Olympics.

Russian agents weren't allowed to work with the NHL teams anymore. You may or may not know, ice hockey is a rather big deal over in Russia, and so Trump here is floating the possibility.

Of thawing that.

To use a terrible pun, Wow, I didn't do that on purpose, but after I.

Got there, I'm like, look, but we got.

To go bad joke Wednesday.

I guess, accidental dad joke.

So that's actually more like bad news anchored jokes.

Someone writing the teleprompter script.

I just kind of slipped onto that one. So the the problem here that the US is facing, as Trump clearly articulated to Zelenski in the White House, is that we don't have any cards like he's he says, he doesn't, you know, he told Zilenski doesn't have any cards. US really doesn't have any cards either, except for the economic power, which, by the way, can we just underscore the irony here that Trump wants to destroy our trade relations with Canada, Mexico, Europe, everyone else around the world except for Russia.

Kind of hilarious, It is funny, okay, whatever. So the problem is.

Especially because he doesn't he blame the lifting of sanctions of Nordstream two, and many people in the right dope myself included the Biden administration's lifting of stanctions on Nordstream two is one of the key factors that pushed Putin to invade uk de.

Yeah, one of the many incoherent I think the approach is where Trump is both uber hawkish towards Russia and also then a dove when it comes to war, like he wants confrontation right up until the edge that he doesn't want war, but then he says that Putin was justified in the invasion because of the hawkishness of US foreign policy. It's like, wait, wait a minute, you're one of the most hawkish never mind. So Putin has a bunch of demands that are rooted in the fact that they are winning. And that is the fundamental structural problem that Trump is facing and trying to wrap this up immediately so we can put this up on the screen. The conditions that Putin is insisting on. The key condition is the one that Trump says. They didn't even talk about a complete cessation of foreign military aid and sharing intelligence information with Keith. You know, hopefully they're recording these conversations, because if historians are going to rely on the competing words of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump to get an accurate rendition of how the conversation went. God help us, he said, he said, God, God helped the historians. So then the second one, Putin says he wants to stop the forced mobilization in Ukraine and the rearment of armed forces. So stop drafting people and stop arming Ukraine. It's pretty huge demand. And then any settlement should be complex, stable and long term in nature and must take in to account the absolute need to eliminate the root causes of the crisis. It must also consider the legitimate interests of Russia in the area of security. So the easy part of that is, you know, that means kind of no NATO. What it's subtly suggesting is that they don't just want the area that they currently hold, but they want, you know, deeper into eastern Ukraine, which their argument is, you can either give it to us or we're going to take it. And if we take it, it's going to be bloody and we're going to take a lot We're going to take a lot more with it. And so basically he is saying that if you're going to give up, we're turning Ukraine into a complete vassal state that will that we can basically manipulate, you know, politically from Russia, which is, you know, in other words, it would be like a country in our sphere of influence like this is. You know, that's how we That's how roughly we would handle Guatemala or something along those lines. So how much how much Trump cares about this, how versus how much the kind of US deep state cares about this, I think I guess would indicate whether or not the US is gonna be willing to capitulate to this. On the other hand, the encirclement that he talked about is very real.

And this is the other thing that poods talking about. He's like, what about these guys.

So we're like encircling these guys, We're about to capture them. So if we do a ceasefire, they can just walk out, And that isn't that is a legitimate questions like how does that work? Like they invaded that in that part, they invaded the curse region of Russia. They just walk out. I don't know, what do you think?

Well, let's even put this last element back up to keep this conversation going about Trump and economic power.

This is an.

Interesting juxtaposition here where you have Scott Besstt on April second, each country, we'll get a tear of number, and then White House future with an improved bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia has huge ups. This includes enormous economic deals. That's you know, we have all kinds of sanctions on Russia and who knows what Russia's tariff would be potentially if this economic relationship is blossoming under Donald Trump. But right, it's kind of I think it's interesting from the perspective of like what Donald Trump's foreign policy is, because it's very like we talk all the time. He's not a John Bolton type neo conservative ideologue, but he does believe in economic power as his like source of creating world peace, which is not an insane It's obviously not an insane idea that when you have economic ties to different countries it deters violence, but it's also sort of not where the right is anymore. And if that's you know, Gaza Riviera in Russia, if that's part of I mean, I think maybe that's being hyperbolic. But if Putin, does Putin respond to that in a way that Donald Trump actually wants him to.

Does he respond to the.

Prospect of economic opportunities with the United State, it's the same way that Donald Trump wants Flatimer Putin to. I think Putin has ambitions beyond I guess the economic ties with the United States, in that he wants regional power.

And I'm not saying he wants I don't think she.

Already has a virtue of being powerful.

Yeah well yeah, but I mean I'm not saying that to say he has this like design set on Western Europe. But you know, he's his ambitions are not purely economic.

Sure, And yeah, they clearly want influence in Western Europe. Yeah, there's no doubt about that.

But yeah, hence Northstream too.

Yeah, and we you know, in we potentially there was an opportunity to try to end this in March of twenty twenty two.

The US decided not to do that.

Whether they could have actually ended it or not isn't open question which will never be answered because we didn't.

Pursue it, and now it has not gone well.

Like the US put whatever it could up against Russia here, you know, one hundred.

Plus billion dollars put in a hundred plus billion that was worth of weapons.

They drafted everybody they could find, and they're they're losing badly, and they hoped that they would weaken Russia.

Russia came out stronger.

I mean, Russia has been weakened absolutely, I.

Guess if I mean certainly they have. They've lost a lot of men.

They've lost a lot of men. Their economy is not incredible.

Their economy is not incredible.

But geos politically, are they weaker today than they were February twenty two?

I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I think they're probably in a better position.

Yeah, okay, I mean I think I guess that's fair. But there has been a cost to There's been a cost to them, right.

But I think they sanction proofed their economy in a substantial way. They did not get the collect apps that that MSNBC promised this audience. Yes, yeah, there was no real split with China tighter than ever.

Maybe I was gonna say, yeah, that's a that is a great point.

So Joe Biden does not have a PhD in foreign affairs.

He's just that good.

He's so his just crushed it.

We learn more about Joe Biden's successes with each passing day.

All right, well, let's be he.

Showed up for Saint Patty's Day. It was like his first comment on anything.

I didn't see that he when he just put on the sweet or.

Something to celebrate Saint Patty's Day. He just put out like a social statements.

But nobody saw him in the wild, I don't think so.

Okay, so that would be maybe he was at some bar in Lewis, Delaware.

Would you do.

I wore my o'kelly's shirt from from Guantanamo Bay. There's an Irish bar on Guantanamo Bay.

So your fun. Let's move on to the raging battle over whether it is a good strategy not a good strategy for Republicans to start impeaching judges who block or obstruct Trump's attempts openly to exert the unitary executive theory of power, meaning you're trying to take some power back, as the right would argue from the court administrative state. This is a really interesting exchange between Laura Ingram on Fox News and Donald Trump on Fox News just last night Tuesday night, where Ingram pressed Donald Trump on whether he would defy court orders. That's obviously at the center and Crystal Densager have covered this of the debate over what happened with that migrant flight that was ordered by a judge to be turned around landed in Al Salvador. This was Venezuela migrants alleged to be members of the gang Trende or Raguar, designated by Trump administration as a foreign terrorist organization. So Laura Ingram pushed Trump on whether he would defy court orders.

Let's take a look.

This is leading people to wonder whether there are court orders that you will defy because you believe that the judge has no jurisdiction or their political questions and not justiciable at all. And what would you say to that, Are there circumstances where you would defy a court order?

Well?

I think that number one. Nobody's been through more courts than I have. I think nobody knows the courts any better than I have. I would say the Chief Judge does, but nobody knows them better than I have. And what they've done to me. I've had the worst judges. I've had crooked judges. I have judges that valued Mara a Lago at eighteen million dollars because that benefited his case, because he wanted to see me convicted of something. I have judges that were had relatives making millions and millions of dollars on the.

Election, ruling on the election going forward.

I had judges what.

You defy a court orup?

We all know that was out.

I never did defy a court orner, and you wouldn't in the future.

No, you can't do that. However, we have bad judges.

We have very bad judges, and these are judges that shouldn't be allowed. I think at a certain point you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge, the judge that we're talking about. You look at his other rulings, I mean rulings unrelated but having to do with me.

He's a lunatic inger.

By the way, was a clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas. A good bit of interest in some of these legal questions. But a lot of people, as a lot of people on the right now do Justice John Roberts, Chief Justice John Roberts, I should say, reacted. He released a statement, a very very rare thing. We can buy the next element up on the screen yesterday midday. He says, quote for more than two centuries, that has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose. Now here's how some people on the right reacted to John Roberts deciding to take that leap and actually issue a statement. This is Mike Cernovich who said Trump has the political capital and then some to ignore judges who tell them to allow terrorist gangs to remain in the USA. It's not a close call. John Roberts lives in his DC media bubble and overestimates his power.

It's all made up.

Trump can take it away easily, Jeremy carl He replied, this is actually a pretty funny one. John Roberts is George Bush's worst mistake outside of the Iraq War, and he still got time to take the lead. So this was pretty a pretty common argument Ryan on X yesterday that the Sternovich point about impeachment should be pursued by Congress. You obviously, like Congress really doesn't have the votes right now. There's no way to imagine that you could go get some of these impeachments through Congress. But Trump sort of throwing cold water on it in that primetime inner with Laura Ingram was quite interesting as well, because this was some of his like loyal mega media defenders who spent the day saying impeachment is a perfectly reasonable rational response. Here you have Trump instead saying, Nope, not going to do it.

You can't do it, And.

Yeah, there is history on this, That's why he's saying for more than two hundred years, and not for the entire history of our country. I think it was under Jefferson should have looked this up before we started the show. But there was a judge that I think it was a Federalist judge that was ticking Jefferson off, and his party tried to get rid of him and tried to impeach him. I think he was saved by like one vote. And that set the precedent where Congress decided, look, we're not we're only going to impeach judges for corruption, like we're not.

If we don't like your ruling, we're going to appeal it and we're going to push it to a higher level.

And so since then, basically no political part has ever tried to impeach a judge because they didn't like they didn't like the ruling. I heard the Cernovis of the world complaining where was John Roberts when AOC and the rest of the Democrats were saying that they were going to pack the courts, And I would say, okay, fair question. The answer is, that's not out of the realm of American historical precedent.

Like FDR, that's right there in the.

Law, like the the number of Supreme Court justices is not set by the Constitution, it's set by Congress. FDR, when he had a political fight with the Supreme Court, threatened to pack the court.

There was public outrage at him.

He backed down, and the court, kind of intimidated by his move, started letting a bunch of the green new Green New deals, the New Deal, the Blue New Deal stuff through.

Yeah, so they let that.

So they let that stuff go through, and so then a fine, so, but but it was a it was a push and pull of politics. It is also true that there was an effort to impeach a judge in whatever eighteen two or whatever for something they disagreed with, so Republicans could try again if they won, which is what gets me to Trump. I think he's like, why are you talking about this because you don't have sixty seven votes to do this. It's like this Elon, it all came from Elon Musk or it's probably a reply.

Well, he started echoing Bukele.

He actually like, get out of here, bou Kelly. We're not taking constitutional advice from seriously.

Seriously.

But Musk was quote tweeting approvingly the Boukell plan to you know, crack down and restore democracy.

Kelly did that, but bu Kelly.

Bu Kelly certainly did not invent an executive or getting rid of his independent judiciary like, that's that's like textbook.

And yes, obviously, if.

You want to set up a dictatorship or some type of extremely powerful like executive, you get rid of the judiciary that does That doesn't take a constitutional scholar to figure out.

But but yeah, they don't. They don't have the vote.

So his is to me, the almost more interesting answer there was about would you ignore one? Would you ignore a ruling? And he says, well, I never have, but he doesn't say he wouldn't. On the other hand, bro, yes you did. You just ignored one like yesterday? Are you acting like Monday? The acting like you were not told to not deport these guys to the El Salvadoran torture chambers? Well, hold the judge to f Off.

Well, it was I think that was actually Another interesting part of what he said is he's maintaining and a lot of people in Mega world aren't maintaining that I shouldn't say Maga world in this case in the White House are actually maintaining that that was not done intentionally, that it just was happenstance.

And so dude, what's that Huh, you're breaking up? Breaking up? Can't hear this ruling? Also it is I hope that's.

What actually happened.

He's like on Air Force one here.

Also, it is important to point out Trump has named it the Gulf of America, so therefore not international waters.

Right. Interesting, Well, where's fact check that for me?

I mean things can be called America.

It was the Gulf of America.

Then he might have an argument, but it's not the Golf of Mexico anymore. It's Gulf of America. Go look up of there.

Also would even on that they're disputing whether or not the like verbal order. I mean, it gets into like insane arcane legal questions whether the verbal order the time that the verbal order came out versus what time the written order came out compared that to the flight logs, and when all of.

The process was able to We don't need to get into it.

But also we have we have learned that as suspected, they made some mistakes. Somebody who came in legally was seeking asylum just an artist has nothing to do with this gang. So on the flight and who knows if who Kelly has tortured them since then has killed them. To me, the people involved in this when Bush used to do it, they would call it an extraordinary rendition. We have rules against torture, and so what Bush would do is he would send people, mostly to Egypt and elsewhere and say you torture them, Therefore we're not torturing them. We now understand that no, that doesn't count. Like that, that doesn't get.

Around the constitutional prohibition on torture.

Well, and we're referring to is these reports. This is one from the Miami Herald, that is the Venezuelan's alleged ship and gang members Trenda Arragua. They're families who have seen them in the actually the Bu Calai video. Speaking of Bu Cali, the video that Bukelly released of them getting off of the plane in Al Salvador, they sort of spotted their family members and have said they're denying actually that these family members have any ties whatsoever to trendday Ragua. We can put B seven on the screen. This is getting back into the tattoo debate. This says quote relatives that he had several tattoos that are testaments to his love of family. One bears the name their daughter. Another on his arm whereads Forte call Mama Strong Life Mom. A third show's two classed hands representing him in his partner next to the date they began dating. But it gets into that question again, Ryan, of whether people are being swept up into these deportations because they have tattoos that are identified with trenda arraguall which is something we do repeatedly here cited by the administration as reasons for those reasons for the deportations.

Now you've met you've done some reporting down on the border, You've met ICE agents, Right, would you want your fate in the hands of the Think about the ICE agents you've met, all right, and it's a meritocracy.

Yeah, these are the people.

Who wound up as ICE agents, Right, did you want your fate in their just turning hands? And the question that they have to answer, this ICE agent, who's you know, working down in southern Texas or wherever they are, has to look at a tattoo on a Venezuelan person's back and they have to distinguish whether that tattoo is a trendy al Wagua gang affiliate affiliated tattoo, or it is some other ink that the person found to be attractive the day they went or like for many people, the artist just drew it because like this is you know, you go in you're like, you're an.

Artist, give me what you got.

So the fate, the question of whether or not you will be hooded, have your head shaved, tortured, and potentially killed in an El Salvador in prison is going to be answered by one ICE agent looking at your tattoo and deciding whether or not that like, is that is that enough due process?

You think?

I hate that?

How confident would you be that that ICE is going to get it right? One hundred percent of the time.

I hate the Salvadorian involvement here obviously hates that there are any allegations of torture. If I were concerned about due process, I would not enter a country illegally or stay in the country illegally. And that's one of the questions that I have right now is whether these hundreds of migrants or what people.

Were What if you were told here's the process, Well, that's what I'm wondering.

Asylum, That's what I'm wondering.

You report to this particular spot, you get a number, then you show up for court.

Yeah, that's what I'm wondering.

That's the process. That's you're told that's the process, that's the legal process.

Yes, and then some myce agents has actually I'm kind of think that tattoo might mean you're in a gang. I'm going to tend you to bou Kelly to check out.

We were talking about this months ago.

I think one of the biggest challenges or tensions in the Trump administration's deportation policy is that the United States of America under Joe Biden unfortunately opened up an actual legal asylum process, and that's where you end up having, you know, some roughly eight million according to the New.

York Times New People a net.

Of migrants coming into the country just under the Biden administration, a huge, huge chunk of that close to half. I would say, it's hard to actually know exactly how many were people who came in and legally applied for the asylum process. Across the border you claim asylum, and Joe Biden had opened up people's ability initially when he was president. This is one of the things he cracked down on over the last year that brought immigration numbers down dramatically. So that's what I'm actually genuinely interested about with this number the hundreds of migrants, is whether any of them were here because the Biden administration said, claim asylum and coming out of Venezuela, the American government.

Oh yeah, that the American government. That's like torturing and killing, and it's you know, it's a most awful government ever. Come to the United States.

Will give you, it will protect you right, literally give you temporary protect a status right.

Yes.

So, and I would say the administration, I don't think this matters to most voters from my perspective, someone who's like in media, I don't think the administration has done a very good job explaining exactly what these migrants are accused of, because that distinction, to.

Means really really important.

Whether they cross the border illegally, state illegally, and then committed various crimes, didn't even show up for asylum hearings. That can be reason enough, in my book, to deport people if you're obstructing the process that you're benefiting from all of those things. That's what I'm curious about. So I don't think the administration has done a particularly good job. It's very there's a humorist because they know the public is completely on their side about deporting military age men who came to the country and are tatted up and likely.

You know, I think krystill mentioned this the other day.

If there's several hundred, as her estimate the investment she cited said, several hundred trendy Aragua members in the United States, that's a significant gang cell spread out throughout the country. It's not millions, but that's a significant gang cell spread throughout the country that people want to get the hell out of the United States of America. So I think because the administration knows the American people are rightfully supportive of that, they aren't really eager to pony up the evidence.

And the problem for me is that on the right, there's this recognition that the government is inherently incompetent and fallible. Yes, like it.

Anybody who's gone to the DMV, who like you, show up in a sold security office if it's still open.

It sucks to dealing with the government.

They're often there, they lose stuff, they lose stuff on purpose, you know, they say they're open, and they're not open. Like you know, there's a lot of legitimate criticisms that people have of the government from their immediate interactions with them. Right yet, and this is why I'm making fun of the intellectual capacity to the ICE agents.

Yet we expect then the government to.

Be infallible when it's picking up a venezuela and off the street, and to be certain that they are not grabbing a citizen, not grabbing a Green Heart cardholder, They're not grabbing somebody who legitimately and legally applied for asylum and has a case that is still being adjudicated. We know that in Chicago they picked up a brown guy and who turned out to be an American citizen, and he spent the entire night in detention.

So they botched the Khalili arrest, right, they showed up.

They showed up, arrested Khalil thinking that he had a student visa, telling him they were revoking This is a Columbia protester or thing that they were telling him that they were revoking his student visa, and his lawyers like, bro, he has a Green card and they're like, well, we're revoking that too, Like they didn't even know. So you want to enable these morons with this unchecked power, Like that point of due process from the right is you don't trust the government, like you don't you think they might make mistakes, and so you want to check because sometimes you can't get a do over, like if you accidentally, as they appear to have done, using accident very generously to them, Yeah, accidentally send people who are here legally and going through the correct process, and you send them to a torture chamber and they're tortured.

There's no do over.

You can't undo that you've destroyed that person. And maybe they get killed.

And maybe they're actually legal avenues they can pursue.

Depends but will I don't know.

They didn't have jurisdiction over the Gulf of America. How do they have jurisdiction from this dungeon.

The due process question is an interesting one because as long as you've established people are not in the country legally.

But that's the thing. Do we trust that they even established.

To establish that, That's what I'm saying, Yeah, I haven't seen enough, frankly from the White House to just trust that they established that, especially frankly after the Khalila grass Rest, where they did not know. There's the report of them on the phone. This is a report from his wife, who can hear them on the phone being like, oh okay, well take them in anyway, like that's the exact word anyway. So no, I mean I don't have a ton of trust in the government. So why I always say the most hillbilly thing that jade Vance has ever said is that he hates the cops.

Get the apologize for it.

But it was like an old post of his yes, and yeah it's yeah, I mean I don't disagree with that. I also think it's fairly important to get a hold of the eight million people, and that's going to make for some really unfortunate and sad and heart wrenching stories. But you know these if people are legitimately members of trend Ragua, you know, the government should make that very clear.

They should show what their evidence is.

Otherwise it's like you're just throwing people to El Salvador.

So yeah, I don't That was a.

Very real moment from from jade Vance because that is one of the key divides is of where you are in your in a soak and basically a social classes. When you see a copy, do you get scared, do you not care or or do you feel more comfortable?

Yep?

And the feel, the immediate feeling that you get puts you in a very particular place, and for Jdvans to understand that he should then understand that when you see that cop, that cop should not have the unilateral power to pick you up, hood you and send you to All Salvador to be tortured and then figure out later whether or not they did it right.

I think Sager was getting at this the other day.

But I think one of the tough things here is I care significantly more about the fact that Joe Biden let in eight million migrants than I do about And that's not to say I don't care about both.

You can care about how met that point too. I don't understand that point.

It's like, okay, okay, that's you can hate that, but like it is what it is like now here we are do we have or are we country of civil liberties and constitutional protectionis or not? The part that kills me, Like it's all the problems I have with the United States. At least we have these civil liberties. That's always the thing that has separated us from the rest of the world. The First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, all of these different protections that we have against tyranny. We don't get universal health care, we don't get a decent minimum wage. Yeah, we have complete total economic procarity, but at least we have these other things.

If we don't get that, then just give us China, like, just give us some economic security. Then if we're going to live in a totalitarian government without any individual freedoms, I think.

The point Scacer was making either about the left broadly, not about even Crystal, is that sometimes it feels like concern trolling that after eight million plus people coming illegally, you have case studies like Lake and Riley, and the left is most angry. I'm not saying this about you, but like that's what I think people are reacting to. The left is furious about potential likely illeg lemore's not getting due process right.

The left gets angry about different things than the right. Like that shouldn't be news to people.

But part of our civil liberties are based on having the rule of law. And as soon as you start eroding the rule of law and letting people hide out in sanctuary cities over the course of years, that's a significant I mean, that's a significant threat to civil liberties of Americans, a significant threat to like and Riley and to other people who have found themselves in.

The crosshairs of this. So I mean.

That is legitimately tough for me. I think it is possible to care about both. I do care about, like genuinely care about not disappearing people into a Salvadorian prison.

I also, I mean, you can't put these guys in front of a judge and be like, here's how we know they're part of a gang.

Or at least put the evidence out, like let the public know how you know that.

Yeah, I mean I would, I mean preferably before you send them to the dungeon.

Yeah, well, just don't send them to Al Salvador for it was a stupid a little bit. It's a stupid stunt. It's just Yes, I don't disagree with that at all. Well, I guess we've found some common ground there.

We go against no extraordinary renditions to torture chambers, right.

So let's stop fueling the boukel A pr stunts.

That would be great.

Let's move on to this Brian Dropsite reporting out of Gaza over the past couple of days, and we have some incredible guests, hopefully two guests, but at least one guest lined.

Up for today's segment.

We're fortunate enough to be joined by Abu Baker Abed joining us from Gaza, and Shreif abdel Caduce, editor at drop Site News often edits pieces by Abu Baker Abed.

Thank you so much to both of you for joining us.

Now you have wo com Thank you and.

So Abu Bacher.

We had an entire segment planned out where we want to talk about all the different updates that have been happening in the last couple of days. But then this morning you witnessed news that is now kind of trickling into the international consciousness, which was this shelling of a UN building.

So can you can you.

Describe for us where you were, why you were there, and what you saw.

Yeah, the first thing that you have to know is that Israeli tanks have been chilling ceaselessly thecent parts of Derribella, so very expectedly. We know that the buildings along the eastern outscuts we had why those shells. Eleven thirty I was out for an emergency exactly eleven thirty in the morning Gauzza time, and I was along Salahadeen Road on the eastern outskirts of Derbella. Then I had a massive shell which is like a booing sound, a very very horrifying sound, and it flew over the card which I was in and then it had uan compound and we saw the smoke, the cloud of smoke that emanated or went out from the belt in itself. And after that we went all the way along the Salahadeen road and we saw one of the two convoys two vehicles of the World Health Organization along with the U and convoy were one of the vehicles of them, so three vehicles and another ambulance which had a UK our UK logo on it, so it was it was for a medical organization based in Okay, which is cured US. And the foreigners, the foreigners, the medical staffers from outside cars that they've come in to take the casualties in their rushed to a lax Marto's hospital in Delnbella and just surrounded the place and they took the casualties. So understand that what we saw is that one of the foreign workers was killed, five were injured. But we have another report that another one was killed as well. But so far we understand that one was killed, four were injured. And this is what happened until the place for one hour of one complete hour, we saw, I saw the events myself, and I saw everything, so it was very clear it was a shell by Israeli tanks. And the arbitrary shilling has even caused many casualties over the past two days, so it's very expected.

And the IDF is firmly and plainly denying that they struck this, that they struck this UN building. How can you how can you be sure that it was a UN building that you saw get hit? How could you be there was an IF shell?

Yeah, there were. There were flags of you and over it. And we know since the UN got into Gaza, they have marked their places with either fences or flags of the place and with their vehicles parking in front of those buildings. And we understand that this is not the only building inside the real Bella because since the start of the war on Gaza as Gaza, as we wrote to drop Side News with ref the first story, we reduced together that de Rebella has the last standing city in the BC's territory. So the U and and the other international humanitary organizations make sure that they are going to be stationed in the most or in the safest place inside Garza that is Derel Bellach, which has been the least head of the course of the genocide. That's why it's not the only building. We have our Hustines Street, which is in the middle of the real Ballad that has several organizations like WFB and Honora as well as you. And but the fact is that this was along in Alberque area, along the eastern outskirts of the Ballad, the eastern part, and it was marked clearly with flags, and there were cars parked outside the parked outside the building with clear logo like emplacent with logos of the U. And at the same time the building itself has many flags over it, so it was clear that you I'm building and I know by the way from before this attack and before this head, I was very aware of all buildings that are working inside the back because I'm in the city and have been observing that over time, and they know where the buildings are, the organizations that were Yeah, that's why I left. That's why I'm telling you that was clearly you building in Israel hit it. But I think Israel as making the point based on the arbitrary shilling that they did not deliberately hit it, and this is something I might agree with because it's been arbituaries. I'm telling you, it's been random. So that's why they are claiming right now that they haven't hit the pace, but are really in the end, even if you purposefully or or not purposefully hit the place, it is you. It's a tank from your side, so it's not going to be on the other side. Because amass again has a fight back as single pology in Israel on Israel, despite the fact that they have killed more than four hundred and twenty people in because over the course of the past two days. This is apart from the fact that they have killed one hundred and fifty during the cease fire. So it's very clear that they hit this place. They must be held accountable for it, and they really must. I don't know what they have to do, but of course Israel it's responsible for that, and they can make sure that of that because I was in the place and I saw that myself. So there is no way that this can be debunked at all because in the place and it survived it very very miraculously.

And sure, if what can you tell us about the I guess what we're hearing from Israel, what we're hearing from other involved parties. You know, the first person story they're from Amba Baker is unbelievable, and having reporting from him, what else do we know about how other people are reacting or other entities are reacting to what happened.

Well to this story. The news is just coming out. So far, the only official statement we have is from the Ministry of Health saying that one person was killed and four were injured in an attack on what they described as you in facility, and these really military denying that. But we have to say that this comes in context of this renewed genocide within a genocide that began yesterday with Israel, you know, unleashing one of the deadliest wave of bombardment since this began seventeen months ago. The Ministry of Health just put out the latest figures. Over the past two days, four hundred and thirty people have been killed, including over one hundred and eighty children, which is one of the highest death holls of children in a single wave of airstrikes ever. And you know, once again we are timelines were filled with the images of dead children, of dead babies, of families being wiped out of the whales and shrieks of parents, and it came without warning, and it came across all areas of Gaza, very heavily, in the north of Gaza, where the Minstery of Health has also put out the kind of numbers of where people were killed, and it was one hundred and fifty six people were killed in Gaza, the Governorate of Gaza, which is where Gaza City is and Jabellia. This is an area that was already completely devastated by the Israeli military assault. And it's also the area where over half a million Palestinians had returned to following the seasfire, many of them returning and with no like creating makeshift shelters of putting tents on the rubble of their homes, and that's where they're living. And this is the area that was heavily bombed yesterday. And you know, I was Buckra called me when all of this began, and we spoke and he was seeing helicopters flying low outside of his window, relentless strikes and so forth. The next morning I contacted another drop Side contributor, Hasam Schabbat, who's in bit Hanun, which is all the way in the northeast an edge of Gaza. He replied with one word death.

That's what he wrote.

Another Drop Side contributor, journalist Russia Bujalel, who is among those people who went from Deer to Ballach to Gaza city after the ceasefire went into effect, an air strike hit right next to her home, collapsed onto her home. She somehow miraculously survived with her husband and five children, and she wrote a dispatch for that on drop site that you can read. But you know, and I think it's important to understand when we're talking about context, this seems to have been Israel's plan all along. You know, the seasefire that went into effect, that was agreed on and went into effect in January nineteenth. This was supposed to be a three phase deal, the first phase being forty two days. But we know that Israel was really only intending for this to be a phase one deal. As of Bboker mentioned, we saw them violate the seasefire nearly every single day since January nineteenth, killing Palestine in Gaza on a regular basis. Of over one hundred and fifty have been killed even before this massive aerial assault on Tuesday, morning, They refused to allow in the agreed upon number of tents in Tagaza. They did not allow in a single mobile home as agreed upon in the deal. They didn't allow builldozers and other forms of reconstruction equipment. And during all of this they also refused to hold negotiations on Phase two. And Phase two the negotiations was supposed to start in February third, and it was supposed to entail the release of all the remaining Israeli captives in exchange for a substantive number of Palestinians being held by Israel, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and the beginning of a permanent ceasefire. And this is something that Niahu has said plainly that they do not want. Hamas spent weeks calling for serious talks on the second phase to begin. Israel simply did not allow the negotiations to go forward. After the first phase ended. In early March, Nataniahu said, Israel agreed to what has been described as a new US proposal in which Hamas would release half the remaining captives that it has in return for a seven week extension, and kind of that's it. Nothing in return, and of course this was not part of the agreement that was set Hamas rejected that, and then you know, Israel reinforced a total blockade on March second. Not a single truck has been allowed into Gaza for the past seventeen days. No food, no medicine, no fuel. They cut electricity which affected a desalination plant, which severely limited the availability of water to hundreds of thousands of people, mostly in the Rebellachnunis. Prices are skyrocketing people can afford. So this is that, you know, a policy for starvation that is being reimposed, and we reported at drop site they also have started denying doctors in international humanitarian aid workers entry into Gaza on relief missions unprecedented rates. And then you know, on Tuesday we saw this deadliest wave of bombardments. And we've also seen that the Israeli militaries as sent out ordering people to evacuate, mostly along eastern Gossapa near the border in places like bit Hanun, places like Rosin and hanunis forcing people into the center of the territory. And this indicates that Israel is renewing plans for ground operations because this is what we saw last time, and today we have the Wall Street Journal reporting citing you know, Israeli security sources that they are planning to escalate a major ground operation using an even bigger force that they used last time, because much of the manpower that they needed on the northern border with Lebanon they don't need that there anymore because the attacks with Husbal Law have ceased. So you know, this is where it stands now and it's it's very ominous.

And a obacca.

You were telling me just before you came on that that your indications were as well that it looks like a ground another ground invasion is underway. What are you seeing that makes you believe that what the Israelis we're telling the Wall Street Journal is accurate.

Yeah, because I think the shelling has intensified over the past twelve hours, particularly during the night hours, as we've been hearing that it's not all about this because when we see like the plumes of smoke from the skyline view that we're seeing at the moment because or have a highest point, I have one of the high spots that it can really climb up and see the sky from wearing out departments. So the eastern parts of the Aribella need to remind people that they have been utterly oblterated during the genocide. In the israeliancursion of East A Rebella last August twenty twenty four, every place, every ench in the eastern parts of Therebella was totally annihilated, didn't flat into the ground. And at the same time, when you see this, you know, when you see this increase of attacks and this increase of shells across those regions, you feel that there is going to be a military ground operation, not necessarily in the revalat because in the eastern parts and at the same time shere we've told you that the eastern parts and the northern border regions of Gaza and Honey Units. When we took about high units, we took about three areas in the east can units, which is which are near the borders like Abasan and Venezuela. So they have ordered all people living there to evacuate. That means they are preparing from military ground operation, the same as having the bit Layah and here there and central Gaza, the northern regions and Olbrich Camp. And in fact, the fact is that during the ceasefire, when we talk about the ceasefire, the so called seas fire. Israel has called many people, over twenty people in Oldberich camps northern regions, and I went one time to those places and I saw military forces there myself in Alberich Camp Northern as.

The violation of the fire agreement right now, Yeah, and.

During the violations of this is fire. This is absolutely a big, big indicator of an intent to military for military ground operations. Let me just because I wanted to make sure that I remember this or I mentioned this because here we've talked about that, we talked about the incident of attacking you in convoy. Now this really military has given approval for the entry of one of the ambulances from outside Gods or the Egyptian border to help treat the patients, the foreign patients inside Gods and take them outside Gods of the treatment. When the attacks happened, the convoys that were taking children, injured children, women who have been waiting desperately for evacuation, for medical evacuation during the past fifteen months has halted. And the whow the humanitary organizations haven't done any haven't really exerted any efforts to make sure that this process can be resumed. So when you talk about this that the lives of foreigners are much better or more important than the Palaestini children, women who have been I've been suffering every single day and people are and that comparison of so why the WHO and the humanitary organizations have worked so hard to make sure that they are going to take the patients, the foreign patients, or the war wanted from their workers, the foreign workers outside Canso. But when it comes to Palestinians, we're talking about more than twelve thousand patients inside Gaza. They are in disperate need of evacuator right now. Forty percent of them have been have died, and many of them five to ten have died when they reached the hospitals outside Garsa, like Egyptian Jordan, because of the continuous procrastination Manisulian military and the delays and the restrictions. This is a very very important point. And we took about another point that she have mentioned and quite elaborated on the overpricing. Right now, there are completely different prices we talk about.

Can you talk a little bit about what the effect has been of the blockade going back in the place on March second, Like, what was it like before and what's it like now?

Before the prices were quite reasonable for the entirety of the population people could really afford. But right now we took about an onion for two or for five dollars, sorry, an appliant for three dollars, a tomato for two dollars. We're talking about one of each type. How can people really afford? People are fast in here. They are spending almost twelve hours without a single without a single plate, and at the same time they don't have anything for sure, So the both meals that you should have very peacefully now they don't have them. A lot of families cannot really afford, not all families to have the ability to bring their to bring their kids and flood every single day. The insanity of these price is now. Right now, as I was rowing around and going inside gazas markets here and there are about high unison talking to people from northern Gaza. There is not a single bag of flour in the territory. There is not a single cooking oil inside the territory. So how can people really cope with that? When there is a cursive there is no single type, one single type of fruits is not found inside Gaza. Discursive vegetables are insane. We're talking about just very past quantities of vegetables like zachinia, like tomatoes, potatoes, and they're not even available, and their prices are extremely exorbitant. Like you talk about one putata for five dollars, Oh my god, how can people really do that? In the United States, It's not the same thing. I think you can buy a kilo for five dollars. So if people in the United States can't really afford that, how can people of Gaza who who eighty percent of them eighty percent of them have lost their work since the genocide started, and they are they have tried to get back to a sense of normality when the ceasefire started, but now their hopes are dented, their lives are shattered. You to gain I know people very one very important point about this. I know people personally that they were searching for the loved ones under the rubble before the start of the series of the tags that were killed yesterday. So instead of having retrieving the bodies of their loved ones and their families from under the rabble after they have been there and stuck there under the rubble for months. They are now killed, and they are now both buried in the same graveyard. This arbarity that we're trying to tell you and trying to tell the one is what we need to talk about. There's nothing about Hans here. There's nothing about the ongoing violations and the ongoiving escalation that we are living through. Most of the population here like sorry, what it really does want to destroying Gaza? I drove in northern Gaza, I drove in communits and drove in central Gaza. What else is there he wants to destroy? In Gaza? There is nothing like utter devastation, utter obliteration of every means of life. And there are no buildings. People are living in the wreckage of their horns. People are trying to salvage the ruins of their arms. How how what do you want to destroy? Really? Really, what do you want to destroy? What do you want at home? Do you want to kill? You want to kill the entire population? Do it with a new clubal bound. That's what people want because they cannot really take any more seconds of this brit in, this Polgorism. It can't really go on like this, but the word has allowed this. Our world has allowed this in the United States because I told you I need to remind you bout Ryan and Emily. We talked about tron Blost November. I told you that he's not good. He's not going to get he's not going to be good for Palestine, he's not going to do anything. He's not someone who wants to stop WAS. He wants to break out WAS and that's what we are seeing right now. And we talk about his clients to ethnically Clan's cass. So this is absolutely share hypocrisy and shared poperism that we haven't seen before. And he's much much worse than Joe Biden. That's my vote.

Sure, if I actually wanted to ask you about that, because as people try to maybe find, you know, or think about where there might be a light at the end.

Of the tunnel that would turn to politics.

And I'm curious what you make about how potential ground invasion it sounds like from both of your reporting and as Ryan mentioned, that does seem to be on the horizon. How does that affect the Trump ad minute stration, which Donald Trump has been unorthodox in some ways, criticizing nt Nyahu for quote public relations crisis, He's obviously sensitive to seeing, you know, the awful images and stories like Abba Baker is just there people being pulled from the rubble and being killed while they're trying to pull their own deceased loved ones from the rubble. At the same time he is, you know, has Mike Huckabee and you know Tom Cotton surrounding him. So it's just a it's so so very hard to predict, but you followed this closely. What could happen? I guess politically if if Israel does move back into a ground invasion.

Well, as you mentioned, Trump is very hard to read.

He you know, says things, kind of shoots off the cuffs, says, you know, we're going to think that Cleton's guzza, and then kind of seems bored about it and doesn't mention it. Again, It's hard to know where he stands. I think we do have to acknowledge that the initial sees fire phase that did go into effect. I don't think it would have happened unless Trump was president. He wanted, you know, sometimes he does the right things for the wrong reasons, and he wanted some kind of optics for the day before his inauguration and you know, him and his envoice, Steven Whitcoff, did kind of force this through where the Biden administration completely failed in that and just allowed Israel to continue.

And Witkoff went to Gaza, talked to Hamas. People didn't want him to do that.

He's sort of willing to push the envelope, I guess a little bit more than a conventional.

One in the US is negotiating directly with Hamas now, although apparently the Biden administration did that briefly as well. But you know, after these attacks on Tuesday, the Israel said that they had received the green light from the White House. The White House has voice it's approval of this new stage of Israel's assault on Gaza. Natania who took to the airwaves and said that this attack was only the beginning. Those are his world, his words, and that all further negotiations about the ceasefire will take place under quote under fire. So this is all happening with the approval of the White House. So it does seem that we're entering kind of this new normal phase where Israel is going to attack in these different ways. We may be seeing the beginnings of a major ground operation and that's where the negotiations are going to be. There isn't going to be you know, the second stage of a seasefire, any talk of a permanent halt to the conflict, any talk of permanent withdrawal. As I said, like at the same time, Stephen Woodcoff in his comments over these past few weeks, seemed much more reasonable than Anthony Blincoln was as Secretary of State under the Biden administration. He was saying things that seemed reasonable about Palestinians will be allowed to return to Gaza, that we will get to a permanent cease fire, that we do need to re built. However, none of this this seems to have all broken down, and basically Israel has completely, uh it violated the ceasefire, made very clear that it was never going to get past this first phase. And now we're kind of we're seeing what everyone predicted, a massive re engagement of this violence and trying to force Hamas to release all of the captives, which I don't think Hamas would do there if there's nothing in return. And so you know, we're in a in a moment now of just increased violence and death. They were just you know, as a book is describing these attacks. There was this incredible wave the other day, but they're they're continuing all throughout today. They bombed tents in moas Can units, killing a family there, and yeah, it's it's it's very it's quite frightening to see where this could go.

We'll put Abu Baker's dispatch down in the notes, as as well as some of the other pieces, including Sharif's recent peace about you know, doctors and nurses being being kept out of Gaza. But Sharif, thank you so much for joining us, and Abu Baker, you know, please please stay safe.

And thank you for all you're doing for us.

After Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer cave to Republicans allowing the spending bill to go through, blocking Democrats from their effort to force a government shut down, things have gone from bad to worse from as he has canceled his book tour, citing security concerns but citing actually there would have been a bunch of protesters yelling at him from the left from the Democratic Party at his events, and now Nancy Pelosi is clowning him for his failure to do his job.

Let's roll the former House Speaker here.

Well, I'm concernative as the next time, concernative.

Of the future.

Last week was the last week. We're long edge to the future.

And this morning King.

Jeff's Chuck Schumer in this kind of an event in New York where I came, said that he had companies and shop tumor. So we're to the next stage on this now.

But your question it is about when comes next.

I myself don't give away anything for nothing.

I think that's what happened the other day.

We could have in my who perhaps gotten them to agree to a third way, which was a bipartisan CR for two week four weeks in which we.

Could have had bipartisan legislation to go forward. I'm an appropriator, cenistorship is an appropriator, and with the Appropriations Committee, they may not have agreed to it, but at least the public would have seen they're.

Not agreeing to it.

The plan she laid out there, by the way, is precisely what Republicans did with Biden and a Democratic controlled Congress in twenty twenty one. Chris try to do a partisan CR. Republicans said, no way, we're not participating in that, and they forced Democrats to do clean. Sorry, cr So it's not a radical strategy that she's laying out there. Schumer has avoided politics and pros and other bookstores, but he hasn't avoided the cable circuit or the network circuit.

Here he is on CBSS.

In your own party, they're saying, look, it's time for you to go.

They're no longer trust your leadership.

They want somebody else in there.

What do you say about that?

Here's what I say in your own party saying that's to go.

Here's what I'm saying. I'm the best leader for the Senate. We have a lot of leaders. You know, when you don't have a president, there's not one leader of the party.

There are lots of them. We have a lot of good people.

But I am the best at keep winning Senate seats. I've done it in two thousand and five to just in twenty twenty. No one thought we'd take back the Senate under my leadership.

We took it.

So we now are executing going. We have a great we're moving forward. Hakim and I have a plan.

Here he is on the view also getting.

And it gives me no pleasure to say this to you because we are friends. But I think you caved. I think you and nine other Democrats caved. I don't think you showed the fight that this party needs right now because you're playing with by a rule book where the other party has thrown that rule book away. True, and so in my view, what you did really was in supporting that gop partisan bill that Democrats had no input in. He cleared the way for Donald Trump and Elon Musk to gut Social Security, to gut Medicare, to gut Medicaid. Why did you lead Democratic senators to play by that book that the Republicans are not playing by it?

Okay, first, I'd say, Sonny, no one wants to fight more than me, and no one fights more than me.

You got to fight smart.

And then Jen Zaki former Joe Biden White House spokesperson.

Experience is a good thing. It's important, But seniority and keeping people in charge simply because they have done it before should not be the only thing. Chuck shar was a hell of a majority leader in his prime urban politics. When he was majority leader, when he was the aggressive Senator, when he was the aggressive member of Congress who is dominating media coverage, arm twisting Republicans and members of his own party and raising an absolute boatload of money for Democrats.

But he is not in his prime.

The Republican Party is not the party of McCain or Romney or even George W.

Bush.

Feels to me like, instead of just making tweets the martyrs of the message, which by the way, is important too, maybe it's time to spend more time to throwing out the hard copy of the old playbook.

And a pretty fascinating exchange here with MSNBC's Chris Hayes.

All of those things you enumerated, which all sounds like good politics to me, are the kinds of things that you'd be doing if Mitt Romney were president. That there's this weird asymmetry right now, which is that they are acting in this totally new way in which they are ambitiously trying to seize all power and create a presidential dictatorship in the United States of America, and the Democratic opposition is acting like, well, if we can get their tool rate down a few points, then what then what happens?

Well, what happens is, look, first we get it way down, he's going to have much lef we this worked in twenty seventeen you say, now it's a different government. It's different though, Oh it is different. God, but healthcare, we beat them. Taxes, we beat him, and guess what we did. Guess what we did, Chris. We took back the House and won in the Senate and that, and then we were allowed to do all those good things. This is not the only tactic. We have to stand strong in certain instances and not give them the votes at all. Let me, but there are instances with this the two work together.

First of all, I don't know what he means by we beat them on taxes. I truly have no idea what he's through his six trillion dollar tax cuts.

He might be talking about some small ball things that we don't even remember.

Or maybe he means because he doesn't care about policy, maybe he means, yeah, they let them pass the tax cut bill and it hurt them in the midterms.

And so we beat them. That's what he means on the wow, on the issue of taxes.

If that's what he means, we're another level of metah.

So the reigning critique, as you saw from all of these different mainstream, you know, center left anchors, is that he's out of his prime. He's out of time. He's an anachronism. He was very good from two thousand and five to twenty twenty. That's that's a really good run. And he he was he was good at raising money, and he kept Democratics competitive and in a Senate that is unbalanced, and.

Kept them unified. And it's unbalanced in the sense.

That smaller states, small rural states get the same number of reublic of senators as like California and New York get And so you know, you have as as the Democratic Party, you have to you know, significantly over perform in order to just stay even to his credit. Yeah, like it's yeah, two thousand and six, two thousand and eight, twenty twenty, Yeah, great, but it's now twenty twenty five. And to me, the most revealing exchange there was with Hayes where he said it worked in twenty seventeen, so like he's going back to his twenty seventeen playbook.

Well, I don't know, what did you think?

And how are how are Republicans seeing this, like how do they see his resistance?

That's a really smart point because I think one of the central divides among Democrats last week was whether or not to recycle the twenty seventeen playbook, which is you look like, from their perspective to voters, the adults.

In the room.

Do everything you can to look like the adults in the room, the people who are not the obstructionists, the people who are serious about doing business, so that you can frame Republicans as the un serious teenagers to quote Alyssa Slocke and kind of should probably equipple with my characterization there. But they're the ones who look like the you know, wild rabble rousers too. That's another quote actually, So I think that that was the playbook in twenty seventeen when Democrats were confident that Trump was going to sort of hoist himself by zone boitard and would inevitably crumble and melt into like a puddle of just political and viability. And that never happened, partially because Democrats never bothered to muster a serious response. Their response was just Trump is really bad, and now the question is, okay, so.

What are you proactively? What do you want?

What do you want from Republicans in a spending bill? You know you weren't going to get it, But the opportunity to shut down the government was an opportunity to fundamentally tell the American people what you think should be in the damn bill? What do you want Republicans to come in the table? Come to the table on So to me, that's that's a great point that it really was the split. Do we throw out the quote unquote resistance playbook that really banks itself on just resisting, not being sort of proactive about that resist since and you know, we talked about this last week. I think it was an insane, insane failure to learn from the lessons of the Tea Party about shutdowns and about populism, and just a complete wasted opportunity for Democrats. But I think part of it is because Schumer, even invoking the year twenty seventeen there tells me they are still stuck on this idea of just being the smart resistance and not even MSNBC is interested in that anymore.

Yeah, and it's certainly true that going into a government shutdown is not without risk for Democrats. Yeah, although you know, I've spoken to a ton of federal workers.

You and I live in here in Washington, d C. You know, a lot of the people we meet are federal workers, all of them wanted a government shutdown, even though it meant there was a possibility they might not even get back pay.

You know, you could.

Imagine Republicans saying, no, our line in the stands, we're not even gonna We're not even gonna do backpay, even though we've done that for every shutdown before. And and despite the fact that there was so much uncertainty around what would happen in a government shutdown, all of them were like.

Do it.

Just just put up a fight because if the second he passed that cr through the Senate that night, you know, Trump put forward the plans for this you know, massive reduction in force.

For you know, put.

Out memos saying, you know, just let it's time to absolutely completely gut the federal government to the greatest extent possible by the law. And the law that they had just passed made it that much more, that much easier for them for Trump to accomplish because it included some included some provisions that would allow them to sequester even more money. And because you know, people like russ Vote were we're telegraphing we we don't see this spending figure as a mandate. We figure we see it as a sealing we're not going to spend this, and we're going to use the authority that you grant us through this cru to destroy the administrative state. And they did it, and Democrats did it anyway. So and now the whatever is coming at federal at the federal government from Trump in the next couple of weeks I think is going to be very very very bad.

For federal workers.

Now maybe uh people will you know, maybe you love it as a member of the public, but you know, from the perspective federal workers who who really do believe that the federal government should work, they think it's the thing. It's going to destroy all of these different agencies that do have actual.

That they do have actual roles.

To play in a functioning government, functioning public. And now they've just kind of seated all at until September yeah to Trump.

Yeah, where they.

Could have had a fairly easy I don't mean this pejoratively, but a political.

Prop to trot out from now until then.

And I actually think they would have gotten something small from Republicans out of this.

And small victories or even that. And Schumer is.

Out now saying I don't know if you saw him say this. Republicans were telling him it would have been a six to nine month shutdown. What the hell are you talking about, bro, I don't like, I don't know what Republicans are genuinely telling you that.

But they're messing with you, Chuck.

It would have been a Saturday Sunday shut down because you could.

Have controlled that. What are you talking about?

A weekend shutdown was like the lowest risk. It was absolutely a risk, there's no question about it. But for risk averse Democrats, this was like the warmest pool for them to dip their toe into being like actually a party of taking risks, and they couldn't even do that, even when you have EM's, NBC and Nancy Pelosi, Jen Saki, all of these people saying, maybe our strategy needs an update, Maybe we actually need to give the bass a shot in the arm here that we can, you know, rally hundreds of people at protests over the weekend. We can tell people that we fought, we can get some small concession.

They had leverage. They didn't have a lot of leverage, but they had a tiny amount of leverage. And you should use your tiny amount of leverage when you.

Have it, otherwise you're gonna make your base more and more angry.

And that's Brendan Buck.

Buck out.

Yeah, we were talking about this.

Brendan Buck, who is a Paul Ryan stratagist, wrote not Bad for The New York Times, agreeing with Chuck Schumer, because he was saying that was the successful He said Republicans actually ended up giving too much to the Tea Party, like Republican leadership Paul Ryan, John Bayner were too nice, too indulgent of the Tea Party. It's again, no, the reason you ended up with Trump is because you guys were trying to block the Tea Party, which was representative of your own party's base, your voters. It reminded me of the Sam Goodaldig research paper that we covered about a year ago, where he showed the people from the poorest districts are in the are represented by the Freedom Caucus, and they're represented by Justice Democrats, and that's bipartisan. And these are the people that Washington is trying to treat as unserious. Quote rabble rousers is how Brendan Buck refers to them. So if you want to if you want to judge the wisdom of the Schumer strategy, look no further than the fact that establishment Republicans who now have zero influence in Washington are saying he made.

The right move right.

Yeah.

I mean it goes back to that calculation that some establishment figures and both parties make. Would they rather win but empower their left or right flank? Yeah, or would they rather lose and disempower them? And for Brennan Buck, He'd have rather lost but maintained the cohesion of the kind of chamber of commerce wing of the of the Republican Party.

Yep. Maybe Schumer's trying to make that calculation.

On the other hand, Schumer's also taking the bullets for his entire caucus.

It's not as if.

Schumer pushed his caucus to cave like they all wanted a cave.

No, I mean not all, not all of them. A lot of them wanted to fight. More than ten wanted to cave, and more than voted to cave wanted to cave. And so Schumer here is being.

A kind of good soldier for his his own, you know, cowardly caucus that that wants to cave but wants to pretend that they don't. Now they can be mad, and then they tend to be mad at Schumer.

Over it.

Democrats should be furious with the way leadership has handled the entire Trump era, and I feel like that hasn't broken into the like main discourse. Now.

It's pretty bad.

Yeah, they have no idea what's coming for them.

They lost to this guy so badly.

Republicans lost to him badly first, and it was a year's long lesson in what not to do with your party's populists for Democrats, like it was handed to them on a silver platter by the way Republican leadership treated mostly not just Trump, but Trump's voters.

Because Trump's voters took.

That as a message that they were being rejected. It's the same thing with aost's voters. Now, it's the same thing with the voters of people who were like, you're doing nothing, You're laying down, what are you're doing. They take that as a front to them, and they're not wrong to do it. So good luck with that truck, Schumer.

Yeah, right up.

Next, Donald Trump fired both Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission.

One of them, Alvar Badoya, joins us. Next. Stick around for that are seemingly out of nowhere.

President Donald Trump fired both Democratic commissioners on the FTC, that's the Federal Trade Commission. Lena Khan is no longer there, so that means that it's there are just now two Republicans because the third has yet to be appointed. Among them are Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Badoya. You can put up the second element here, former commissioner. I'm just going to call him commissioner because I don't recognize the commissions right, I don't recognize the validity of these firings. His statement that he put out last night. Can move on to E three as well. Lena Kahan standing up for the former Democratic commissioner as well, so that the administrations illegal attempt to fire Commissioners Slaughter and Vadoya is a disturbing sign that this FTC won't enforce the law without fear favor. It's a gift to corporate lawbreakers that squeeze American consumers, workers and honest businesses. Joining us today for his first interview since this illegal firing is Commissioner Badoya.

Commissioner, thanks for joining us, Thanks for having me.

So this was always considered to be a possibility. But on the other hand, there they could easily have three Republicans. All they have to do is hole to vote. They can get the third one, so then they have three to two.

You know, you guys can complain.

And also, you know Andrew ferguson the FTC Chow, You guys work with him fairly well, like when he was when he was named the chair over Holyoke and over other possibilities. It was seen in the anti monopoly circles as kind of a win for the Van swing because he's closer to you guys and Lena Khan than anybody else. And oh, this, this bipart is an anti trust thing were we're actually going to go after corporate power. Might actually be gaining some steam here, and they don't need to fire you because, like I said, they can just out vote you every single time if they don't like where you come from. So did you expect that they would do this? And how how did you learn? Did you learn? From Fox News?

I thought it might happen.

I was surprised at the moment it happened, because well when did I learn? I was I just left work and I was at my daughter's gymnastics practice when Commissioner Slaughter called me and said, have you checked your email? And there was some guy at the White House claiming that the President was firing me. Look, I think timing is important because if this were just a unitary executive thing, we would have been on that checklist week one or week two along with gwyn Willcox at the NLRB. I think instead you got to ask who this is helping and why they did it when they did, because this doesn't help Maga, this helps Musk. I think you got to think about the billionaires over the President's shoulder at the inauguration.

Three examples.

I am currently suing Amazon and not one, but two lawsuits. I am responsible for enforcing a privacy consent decree against Elon Musk and X, and I am a judge in a matter of FTC staff is trying to ramp up the privacy protections that apply to its users. Who else have we been investigating pharmacy middlemen who allegedly, you know, send kids with cancer home and say no, no, no, you can't get your cancer medicine at that independent pharmacy. You got to get it in the mail and the pharmacy we own.

Can we pause for two seconds on the pharmacy middlemen?

Sorry, constantly in the Lame Duck between the election and the inauguration of Donald Trump, there was pharmacy middleman reform included in that legislation that was about to pass when Elon Musk jumped in and stopped it from passing, and a new bill passed. I understand since then something like three hundred plus pharmacy pharmacy closed as a result. Can you tell people, just very briefly, like who are the like?

Absolute?

What's going on?

Absolutely?

So.

It used to be that there were multiple health insurers and lots of independent pharmacies, and over time there grew to be this middle layer of these entities called PBMs pharmacy benefit managers. And frankly, when they're all independent, it's great because they cut good deals for the insurers from the manufacturers, all right, But what happened It started to be that each of the big three insurers bought or got their own pharmacy middlemen, and then those pharmacy middlemen have their own pharmacies, often mail order, sometimes not. So what happens a lot of those multi billion dollar companies don't consider it profitable to serve rural America, urban America.

It's the independence that serve those looks.

My first trip as an FTC commissioner was the Charleston, West Virginia meant a strip malle with a bunch of pharmacists who who took care of a lot of folks during.

COVID when no one else did.

And what those folks say is, yeah, I got people showing up my pharmacy with prescriptions for cancer medicine and they're told go home wait for it because the PBM says, I can't give it to you.

You need to get it from their pharmacy.

I met with pharmacists in Louisiana who said after IDA came through, there were about twenty four pharmacies served two parishes. People were showing up at the four pharmacies that were open, including like three or four independents, and they got a screen that said, you cannot give this a person their insolent prescription. They need to go to the pharmacy we own down the street, which is under three feet of water.

That is who we're.

Talking about here, and you guys are coming, We're coming after that.

We have been in the middle of a I think more than a year long market study into the pharmacy benefit managers. What's more, me and Commissioner Slaughter are sitting as judges in a case in which FTC staff alleges that these mintlemen are competing not to lower the price of insulin, but to raise it. And if our lawsuit to be clear that we are still Commissioner's fails, I don't know what happens that lawsuit.

So I'm curious about this timing question as well. That is very interesting.

And you know, Ryan mentioned some of the common ground between you and Andrew Ferguson and common ground that Andrew Ferguson had found with Lena Kahan, But you guys had a dust up recently over I think it was diversy equity inclusion stuff at the FTC, which Andrew Ferguson said he would strip out. And I'm curious also if maybe because it tracks me as you know, Sinder Pitchai had is trying to have a great relationship with Trump despite the Trump DOJ originally filing the Google anti trust suit and all of that, So they had to have known. I mean, Ferguson has been no friend of Amazon and Jeff Bezos.

They had to have known some of this was coming.

I wonder what you make of the case that maybe they realized you wouldn't be cooperative with them.

At all, that there wouldn't be and who is they?

Just people like whoever was pushing for you to be quote unquote fired.

He said, well he's not getting Yeah.

Look, I don't know who the day is, but I can tell you how I spent the last couple of weeks. About a week and a half ago, I called out Jeff Bezos by name for his blithe statement that the Post editorial page wouldn't focus would focus on free markets and personal liberties. And I said, hey, man, when I think about free markets and person liberties, I don't think about the Post editorial page. I think about the vending machines and Amazon warehouses that dull out painkillers and not potato chips. Bernie Sanders put out a report showing that people are literally working so fast, so hard their hands stopped working, their shoulders stop working, the dis and their back bulge and break, and it called him out. I got twent five million views on it. That was the last thing I did a little before that, I pressed Chairman ferguson who you're right was did a great thing in ratifying the merger guidelines, which had special protections for labor in them. That was a good move, and I respect them for it, But my beef with him, as it were, has been that he is in a position to do extraordinary things for affordability in this country, and I was disappointed he spent the first four weeks not saying anything about the price of eggs, about the price of milk, about grocery prices, and I was pressing him to investigate the price of eggs and calling out the fact that eggs in this country, our ability to get them is controlled in part by what appears to be a duopoly in Europe that controls the supply of layer breeder hends.

Since then, DJ said they're investiating.

I think it's a great move, but I think it's pretty notable that the firing comes now after I've been calling out duopolies and agriculture and the way mister Bezos treats his employees on the warehouse floor, and not in week one or two.

Along with Gwyn Wilcox at n.

RB, I think your point about the timing, which and we picked up on, is really important because I can easily be persuaded that a president should actually be able to control like the various agencies, then the executive like if Bernie Sanders had magically won the White House, I wouldn't want, you know, some like retrograde commissioners on the NLRB and FTC thwarting the Bernie Sanders' agenda that the people had elected. So on a level of Princeville I've met up, most of our viewers would probably can agree on a level of principle. Fine, but so your point about the timing is right, because if that's the principle, then he just like day one, he gets what he would fire you on day one.

But the maga world, that of which.

You know jd Vance is a strong element, has liked your work, has liked Lena Khan worked, has liked Jonathan Cantor's work over at DJ Doha, Mecki's work. And so therefore you stuck around for a while. The fact that you're now getting booted, I think has some political implications raises the question that Emily was asking, like, well, where did this come from? Because let's say, what is it goes back to my original question, what is getting rid of you accomplish? And I'm curious, like, so on the commission, let's say you're reappointed.

Right, you're back there.

I would imagine that you would you know, you might disagree and might agree with Ferguson and some of the others. They can then move to vote three to two and move something forward. But you would be party two deliberations. You'd be able to come on this program and talk about what's going on, and you might also hear, oh, hey, by the way, we got a call from the White House that said that these deliberations are out the window.

We actually want you to drop this case.

So having you there is kind of an intel for the public because you'd be able to say, actually, Ferguson is Ferguson is for this enforcement action against Amazon or whatever, or Facebook or Elon Rusk.

But Elon Musk called precisely, so is it so? What? What? What would be the role of a minority commissioner?

Yeah?

Are you a potted plant? Or is there some reason for you to be there?

No?

I think I think there's two elements that need to be uh looked at here. The first is our ability to keep suing. The folks were suing in the face of this claim by the President that he can give us the boot any time for any reason. Right, Because, like you said, Chairman Ferguson has said, I'm going to keep on suing Amazon. I'm going to keep on suing Meta Excellent. What happens if he gets the phone call that says, well, actually, you know, we just nominated Jeff's guy for OSHA.

And the other thing he said is you got a pesky lawsuit.

Because literally they just literally.

They nominated the guy to run OSHA, the one agency that's consistently called out the horrors on Amazon warehouse floors. The guy is a former Amazon executive, that's right. And so hey, you know, Jeff is also saying he wants this lawsuit to go away. And by the way, what's that lawsuit about. That's about small business sellers. If you're a small business owller, you have to.

Be on Amazon. It's a monopolist.

It is forcing them to pay up the fifty cents on every dollar they sell on the site and making it impossible to offer lower prices.

Right.

And so whether or not Chairman Ferguson wants to bring the lawsuit if you get fired for just saying no, what's the point?

Right?

And so it's more it is both calling out misconduct, but it is also about about laying the groundwork for overt corporate pardons and corruption. You know, I saw Roli Chopray talked about this when he was on earlier.

Yeah, And I'm actually surprised Ryan you mentioned you could see the sort of unitary executive theory about control over some of these independent agencies from the president. I'm surprised that you say that. I'm really curious what you make of that, because that, to me seems like maybe the biggest ideological difference between me and you guys is that, you know, Eric Schmidt, who's been very good on anti trust from a kind of populist perspective, did a thread agreeing with Andrew Ferguson yesterday where he goes back to Humpty Humphrey's exactcutor says it's bad law undermines the president's centralized authority is granted under Article two and creates very power on accountable federal agencies. That is the key to the entire fight against the administrative state, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But that is the project of the conservative movement is saying this is the growth under Woodrow, Wilson and Franklin Dola Roosevelt that has created, as they we say, on unaccountable bureaucrats whatever, and so by firing you, for example, the president is reasserting whether or not he had any quibbles with you.

He's this is a matter of taking Humphrey's.

Executor to the Supreme Court. I'm curious what your defense of these independent agencies is. I think it's a good one. I disagree with it. I think it's a reasonable one. But these these agencies existing as independent from presidential.

Power, who is Eric Adams? Pardon me, who is Eric Schmidt? What does he care about?

Right?

I'm pretty sure he doesn't care about the small businesses we're trying to defend in the Amazon case. I'm pretty sure you know, a world a merger goes through if a billionaire donor has the president's ear is a great world for the Magnificent seven. It's a shitty world for startups and small businesses. But I have some news for mister Schmidt, which is, if the president can fire me for any reason at any time, he can also fire Jerome Powell for any reason at any time. And so I, frankly don't care about mister Schmidt, not one bit. I do care about a bunch of retirees who have their four oh one k's loaded up with a bunch of stocks in the stock market, and I am deeply sympathetic to the chaos they're experiencing right now, and so I agree with you. Look, I understand folks who want the president to be empowered to have their agenda be made law. Understood, But this is about corruption, it's about chaos, and it is about having happened. My worry is that what happened with Eric Adams at DOJ happens at FTC. Let me make one concrete example. So you guys know about Kroger Albertson's merger. So we had one of the largest grocery chains in the country try to merge.

With so Wisconsin native here.

Oh yeah, one of the third or fourth largest grocery market chains. And most thousands of small towns that had taken the biggest chain merge it with the next biggest chain. We had an executive under oath say they're jacking up the price of milk and eggs above inflation. We had union leader saying, I can't negotiate higher wages if I can't point to the guy down the street paying higher wages. You would not believe the amount of political pressure that was sent to us in the form of letters, some folks saying, yeah, block at other folks saying, including prominent Democrats, let this thing go right ahead, right But we still blocked it because we can call balls and strikes without fear that some mega donor is.

Going to give us the boot via the White House. And this was under Biden, it's under Biden.

And what happens with the next mega grocery store mercher, I'm worried that it's not going to matter if it jacks up prices, It's not going to matter if it pulls down wages. What's going to matter is what billionaire donor has The press Sident's here and I'm glad you raised Joe Biden because I think this problem of money in politics is not limited to the Republicans. I think a lot about what happened during Vice President Harris's campaign when what Chircon did for the American.

People was wildly popular.

Who likes not being able to cancel a subscription unless they call on Tuesday mornings, you know, between ten am and noon.

Right that's the breaking points. Premium policy that you have to get Saga on the phone.

That's right, you have to tweet it him and you have to follow you back.

Who likes non competes, Who likes cancer companies trying to cancer a corner of the market on cancer tests or companies trying to monopolize treatments for pompies these nobody? And yet Vice President Kamala Harris would not say I will keep Lena khan on as the chair of my FTC.

What's that about? It's about money? Yeah, ahead and read Hoffman, Yeah she did, indeed.

Yeah, yeah, read Hoffin out there saying so where does this go? Now? Are you what you do? Filed suit?

And what are you doing today?

Like what are you going to try to go back in? Is it like an USA A D situation?

Good question.

So I'm not going to put the security guard at the front desk in the position of having to listen to me or listen to the White House, Right, I'm not going to do it to that guy. And so what I'm doing is calling out the fact this opens the door to corporate pardons, that this was not an effective legal firing, that I remain an FTC commissioner and will soon be following filing suit to make that clear for everyone involved.

And what's the legal argument?

So much as people are trying to overrule Humphrey's executor, you know, in their heads, Humphrey's executor is still good law. And the day the Supreme Court says it's not and the President says, you're gone, I'm gone, no problem, right, But until that day, I am still there. I will say something about Chairman Ferguson, who I do agree on and I think genuinely cares about working people. When he was nominated to the Senate, he was asked, do you think Humphrey's executor is good law? He said it is, and he also said the only people who can change Supreme Court law is a Supreme Court. Right, So I believe in that. Uh uh, And that's what I'm gonna go to court to try to reinforce.

You think this was a Trump kind of pushing back on Robert's statements, Like Robert Roberts came out with a statement saying, you can't, you know, stop all this tweeting about impeaching judges, and then Trump kind of ramps it up. I mean, who knows, because you know, Trumpe's whoever he talks to last.

Yeah, I mean, Harry's executive is such a it is seen in the conservative movement as such a foundational ruling for the creation of everything that Elon Musk right now says he opposes and he's a crony capitalist.

He's not. Yeah, we don't even.

Get any of that.

But you know, it's just to me. I imagine they always, you know, Russ Vote and Stephen Miller always envisioned somehow finding a way to get Humphrey's executive, which is why Ferguson was asked about it, because it was and this is a target of the conservative legal movement and the conserv the greater conservative movement, and has been for decades.

Yeah, I guess, I mean guess the last point. I'm curious for your take on this.

My I I like, I agree with the principle that a president should be able to be the president and execute you know, his his vision within the law. My concern from the rights attack on the administrative state is they're they're not worried about more efficiently creating an executive that can enact you know, legislation and the will of the people. They want to destroy the administrative state. They want to end the capacity of the government to be able to govern, so that even if there is a will from the public to go after corporate power, all of a sudden, they don't have the capacity anymore to do that. Right, what from your perspective inside the government, what is it?

What will?

What would it take to denude the FTC of the capacity to actually take on corporate power even if Ferguson wanted to.

Well, look, this is a great first step in that effort.

I watched the Republican Party, you know, as closely as maybe not as closely as you do, but but quite closely. And you're right, there is an element of rural pharmacists, rural grossers, working people, people in unions who voted for the president because they wanted to make sure they could pay the rent. Right, That is not the wing that won here.

You're right.

You know, there's you know, there's folks who want to have a unitary executive, but there's also folks who want to marry that executive with corporate Yes, and just look at the numbers here, they are grotesque. You have Elon must donating two hundred and eighty million dollars to the president. Again, I'm the guy who enforces the privacy rules against Elon Musk. You have Jeff Bezos million bucks of the inauguration, twenty million dollars for the First Lady at least that was the cut, oh the documentary, and just licensed episodes for the Apprentice. You know you think he's not going to place a phone call to the White House saying, look, I got too longlawsuits against me from the EMPTC would be great if that was one.

You think it's not going to happen.

And if you look at the law, because we've been talking about Supreme Court precedence. Corruption isn't just about the actual act Eric Adams style of quid pro quote. It is also about avoiding the appearance of corruption. And that is what's being defeated today. The ability for us to have the appearance of independence and not be a fair minded people trying to promote a fair market and call balls and strikes. That's what's happening here. And if we lose, but we will contest this and I think we'll win.

Super super interesting. Thank you for giving us your first interview. Thank you. Eager to see where this goes.

Catch them tonight on Aaron Burnette and later Chris Hayes tonight.

I'll be on for with Chris h Okay looking forward to that.

All right, that was alvar Obadoya. That's it for us.

Still going through those JFK files.

You know, it's right we forgot to cover that. Well, it's not we were We didn't forget.

We didn't forget, right, but we'd plan to cover it. But the volume of documents and the ostensible lack of redactions is fairly impressive. It doesn't mean we're going to get, you know, significant new information out of it, but we did want to read the Jefferson Morley statement ring you sent this morning, and I think it's helpful.

Jefferson Morley is.

Probably just say it's fair to describe him as the pre eminent living Kennedy assassination researcher. He wrote, quote the first JFK files release of twenty twenty five is an encouraging start. We now have complete versions of approximately a third of the redacted JFK documents held by the National Archives. Rampant overclassification of trivial information has been eliminated, and there appear to be no redactions, though we have not viewed every document. Seven to ten JFK files held by the Archives and sought by JFK researchers are now in the public record. These long secret records shed new light on JFK's mistrust of the CIA, the Castro assassination plots, the surveillance of Oswald in Mexico City, and CIA propaganda operations involving Oswald. The release does not include two thirds of the promised files, nor any of the five hundred plus IRS records, nor any of the twenty four hundred recently discovered FBI files. Nonetheless, this is the most positive news on the declassification of JFK files since the nineteen nineties, and that is a better sort of report from the trenches. I'm sure Jefferson Morley was up all night. This one was last edited at nine forty two pm. Put that statement out on X with the Mary Farrell Foundation.

Me CNN finally reached out to him.

Fabulous, wow, interesting, but kind of a mix. It sounds like a mixed bag, but one that's mixed enough to be positive. So it's a crazy volume of things to go through. There was all kinds of like armchair quarterbacking happening on X right now. People are the old Ramparts magazine excerpt that people have been circulating thinking that it's some new evidence of CIA connections to I think it Israel in that case. So there's there's a lot of stuff floating around, but I think it's it's valuable to wait out.

So much of this was already released.

Like you said, though a third of the remaining documents that we know of, there's we can get into what we don't know of, So that's good, and keep it coming. Jeff was telling me after this is over, he wants to get back to kind of broader reporting he was doing in the nineteen eighties before spending forty years dedicated to this.

Great to have him back in the game.

I mean, and I'm just looking forward to seeing more and more from him on this. The last thing I wanted to recommend was I meant to mention this in the Black when we were talking about the courts, but over at the Volot Conspiracy, Josh Blackman had I thought a very interesting case. He said, the constitutional crisis is a coin with two sides. Trump causes judges to overact, and the judges caused Trump to overreact. Any resolution must be bilateral, not unilateral. Roberts could deescalate the situation by promptly reversing some of these out of control lower court rulings, but instead he would rather sit on his hands and pontificate. I've long said that the Chief Justice is living in a different reality than the rest of us. This episode proves it. There are three co equal branches of government. The judiciary is not is not supreme. And the only reason I wanted to point that out is it's true in conservative circles, especially conservative legal circles, people are increasingly very frustrated with John Roberts and see him as somebody who's like.

Would maybe be described as like.

A I don't know, a dispatch or Bulwark reader, or somebody who's kind of it doesn't understand what time it is to borrow the phrase from a lot of people on the right, and I don't think Vulock the black men writing in the Bullock Conspiracy's entire is either entirely wrong to or be frustrated by Roberts jumping in here and not jumping in when their efforts to impeach Clarence Thomas or whomever else. If your Republican appointed justice. Seems like those concerns would maybe prompt equal responses.

But anyway, this is a huge trend.

However, Okay, last however, let's do it. The effort to impeach Clarence Thomas was over corruption. And so from Robert's perspective, where he's saying, there, we do not impeach judges over rulings, that actually stands outside the.

Scope of that.

Like, oh, I see what you're saying.

They were going after Clarence Thomas.

And I'm sure Roberts was actually very upset, yes, with Clarence Thomas, for constantly getting caught taking all of these trips with billionaires who had business before the court, and they just had business before the court, Like we're like central to the entire political strategy of revamping the court buying his neighbor's house, and like this is old school corruption. And so it is not out of the norms or the precedents of American jurisprudence to impeach judges over corruptions. So I think that that's why Roberts could be forgiven for not jumping out and saying, hey, we don't impeach judges for corruption because actually we.

Do black men.

We're not going to black man addresses that and the pieces by saying that the AOC wasn't THEOC one wasn't like good I don't know if you would use this for but good faith because it was just Thomas, and we could have an entire argument about this was just Thomas and Alito and not Sida may Or Ginsburg, Katanji Brown Jackson, who had had similar disclosure lapses that I think they corrected.

Yeah, so anyway, right, but there's a disclosions and then there's taking a bunch of gifts from people, like it's there's an effort to like shoehorn it into a paperwork violation, or it's like the problem was robbing the bank, the problem was not filing PaperWorks saying that you rob the bank.

Read the face right, right, and I we'll argue about it later.

Maybe we're canna argue about that in the future. All right, Well, thank you so much for tuning in. That was a long and duendum.

Sorry everyone for taking this down the rabbit hole, but you know, right, sometimes it's fun to tag things on a little bit.

Yeah, right, And we'll see you on Friday.

Sounds good,

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