Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar3/24/25: Glenn Greenwald Debates Saagar On Deportations, Bernie Rallies Thousands As Schumer Flails
Saagar and Ryan discuss Glenn Greenwald on deportation, Bernie rallies tens of thousands as Schumer flails.
Dave Weigel: https://x.com/daveweigel
Glenn Greenwald: https://x.com/ggreenwald
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Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday.
Have an amazing show for everybody today. We have the bro Show Ryan people live for the Pound as.
They today, We've got a great show for everybody today.
Man, this is tough.
Crystal's on spring break with her children this week, so she's having a great time and we hope that she's staying offline, even though we know she's she's almost.
She's going to be living on She's going to be making.
A lot of tikeboks.
Okay, So if you want to see when she's up to you can go and follow her TikTok account. Let's see what we got here, the toughest part of the job. We're going to talk about deportations. I know everybody wants to hear more of that, except this time we've got that's it. That's that's the whole show. The whole show is just deep joking, joking. We've got Glenn Greenwald on the show. He's going to yell at me.
I'm joking.
We're all going to talk about it. We're going to talk about it, and we're going to have a.
Great conversation around some of the Eagle issues due process, what all of this means, how it could be done differently, the implications, et cetera.
I'm really excited to talk to Glenn about that.
We're going to talk about the rallies that they covered a little bit on Friday. Bernie Sanders really barnstorming the country, bringing you know, tens of thousands of people to various different rallies, some of the biggest rallies he has actually ever done in his entire career. Interesting juxtaposition with Chuck Schumer and the Democratic strategy. We're going to talk about corruption. Elon Musk Starlink is set to get billions of dollars in government contracts. We are going to talk about Steve Witkoff, who recently appeared on The Carlson Show sounding a little bit of a different tune now on the Israel conflict. Appears that they definitely got to him on this one, as the war continues on the ground there. We're going to talk about the economy, some various different signs inside of that. Perhaps the most troubling one to me is the fact that you can now finance your uber eats order. Can't think of a single worst financial decision, and yet I'm sure it will be overwhelmingly popular. Finally, we're going to talk about soda. Ryan, You and I just love this story. You know, a bunch of conservative influencers allegedly got caught taking money to shill for Big Soda on foodstamp program. So we can talk about the efficacy of that, but also more what it says about the growing you know, right wing influencer dumb as we see it interact with the corridors of power. Right, Shall we do that? Okay, let's go ahead. Glenn Greenwald is standing by. Let's get to it. We're very excited now to be joined by friend of the show, Glenn Greenwald. He's here to yell at me, and he's here to school me. Is here to educate me on my misgivings, my wrongs that I've made here on the show. But more importantly, he is here really as somebody who I just looked top act so deeply on these issues, who's thought a lot about it.
So, Gwenn, it's really great to see you.
Greatest, see you soccer. I obviously have a lot of things to tell at you about. If we did them all, it would take three hours. That's right, to focus on just one or two.
That's right.
We're going to focus just on one or two.
Let's start with Tom Homan here, responding to criticism that these migrants from Venezuela who were declared terrorists by the Trump administration were deported to an El Salvador in prison with no due process. The response there from Tom Homan is that many victims of illegal immigration and crime themselves were not given due process. You had a very interesting response to that, So let's play the clip and then we'll hear your take.
Let's take a listen.
How do you determine or how do your people in the field determine that somebody is a gang member?
Doctor's various methods. I've noticed in the immedia storyc a lot of them don't have criminal histories. Well, a lot of gang mergers don't have criminal histories, just like a lot of terrorists in this world. They're not in any terrorist database, right. We only know that information within databases based on for instance, most terrorists we arrest, they are identified US gemer, are later identified through a Title three investigation or through an undercover operation. They're not in any terror screen in bass In screening database. We know that a lot of gang members I started as a cop nineteen eighty four, many gangmers don't have a criminal history. We have a kind of social media who has count of surveillance techniques. Who had to count on swarren statements from other gang members if you had to count on, you know, or wire taps and Title threes. Everything involved with the criminal investigations come into play. So just because someone doesn't hasn't been arrested in charge of the crime yet, doesn't mean they're a member of a gang.
But how do you I mean what we've heard from lawyers representing some of these people, is that they deny that they're members of this of this gang or either you know, trynd to de Aragua or MS thirteen. Do they get a chance to prove that before you take them out of the country and put them in to a notorious prison in a country that they're not even from.
Did they have any due process at all?
Confidence? Due process? Where's Lake and Rhine's due process? Where are all these young women that were killed and raped by members TDA? Where was their due process? Well?
Well, the people that by the.
Subway, where's her due process? The bottom line is that plan was full of people, says as terrorists number one, number two. Every every Venzowhelan migrant on that flight was was was a TDA member based on numerous criminal investigation, on intelligence reports, and a lot of work by Ice officers.
Glenn, what do you make of that argument?
First of all, it's kind of weird because the older you get, the more you realize that history really does just repeat itself, and not by century, but even by decade.
We're back in two thousand and two where we're hearing all of the arguments from the Bush.
And Chainy administration that they have the right to do anything they want to people. They and they alone have decided our terrors, and that includes putting people into prison and definitely with no due process, torturing them, kidnapping them, rendering them whatever else they wanted to do. And when people objected and said, wait a minute, these people don't even have an opportunity to go into court and disprove or contest the accusations that you've made against them that they're not part of a terrorist organization, what we heard was, Oh, don't worry. We vetted these people, and we can assure you that these people are not just terrorists, but they're the worst of the worst. As it turns out, many, according to Colin Power Chief of Staff Larry Wilkinson, most ended up not being part of any terrorist organization. They were picked up randomly, the intelligence was wrong, sometimes vindictively. People reported them to the US military all kinds of reasons. The government makes mistakes, and that's the whole point of due process is we don't trust just one branch of government to do something as cataclysmic as throw people into a dungeon for a life without even bothering to have to present evidence that they're guilty. And giving the people who are so accused the opportunity to contest it. And the other point that he made that makes absolutely no sense, and a police officer should know this better than anyone is due process is most necessary for people who are accused of horrific crimes. Lincoln Riley's killers didn't just get thrown in the dungeon because the government decided that they were guilty. They were given lawyers, formal charges, went through all of our judicial procedures, were found guilty in a court of law and sentenced to life in prison without paroles. So the idea that of course no murderers, no kidnappers, no rapist give their victims due process, But we still give due process to the people who are accused of criminality before we could punish them, because the founders knew first and foremost that humans are not infallible, and they're going to make mistakes. And we've made mistakes all the time. Even with due process, we've convicted people wrongly and and justly. Imagine how many mistakes get made when you just hand over the power to government officials and the execus the branch dec and who is and is not guilty, with no opportunity for the person who's accused to disprove the charges, and that is exactly what's happening, Glenn.
I think what's made this so difficult for me is it feels dispositionally as if the law is something that is being almost used in a process way, not just due process, but it's one where it feels as if the constitution and the law seems to apply only for deportation, but it didn't necessarily apply let's say, when people were being allowed into the country, and then we're victimizing people who were here. It does feel, at least to me, as if this argumentation and this love of due process, et cetera, only comes into play whenever it's the you know, supposedly sympathetic group here, let's say, of migrants. When we don't necessarily hear the same for let's say, people who are coming here illegally committing crimes, then it's like, oh, well, of course this is something that is naturally to happen. They have a lower, let's say, crime rate than the natural born population.
The implication that you shouldn't even.
Worry about So for people like me who have really complicated feelings about this stuff, how should we feel watching this and trying to balance those two issues of wanting let's say, mass deportation the selective application, let's say of concern.
What would you say to those critics, Well, the.
Whole reason Trump has made the specificted to issue of mass deportation and he won twice, and pulls clearly show in addition to that that people support mass deportation was because the idea was that people entering our country illegally have done something wrong, have done something criminal. So the idea is though, oh, because they didn't give us due process, or they didn't get due process.
We should now relinquish due process.
Is essentially to say, let's copy and replicate and adopt the worst abuses of the policies that Donald Trump, for a decade has been most harshly criticizing. I think the bigger point, though, is that when Donald Trump has stood up for a decade now and argued for mass deportation, typically, mass deportation, not just typically, but almost in every case means that you take somebody who is in your country illegally and you send them back to their country of origin. You send them back to where they're a citizen, or where they came from. That is always how deportation works. The reason this has become so controversial is because the Trump administration is not picking up Venezuelans or others and sending them back to their country of origin. They're sending them on purpose to a third country that these people have nothing to do with. They're not citizens of Al Salvador. Most of them, if not all of them, have never been to Al Salvador. And the reason we're sending them to Al Salvador is because we know they have a repressive prison system, probably the worst in the world, where they're not only going to be humiliated in torture and script of all human rights, but it's extremely unlikely that they're ever going to leave. So this is a radical departure from what we think of and called deportation. This is consigning somebody not just to life in prison, but to one of the worst prisons. Life in one of the worst prisons that people very readily leave. And if you don't believe that the government, the US government under the Constitution, owes people the right of due process, of a hearing, of an opportunity to disprove the accusations, not before we deport them back to their country of origin, but before we send them on purpose to a hellhole of a prison that they're likely never going to leave prison for life without even an inkling of a process, a requirement the government showed the evidence and the opportunity of the person so accused to contest it. Then you don't believe in due process at all. Then you simply believe in an authoritarian government that can just accuse people in secret of being guilty. And that's the end of the story. And that has never been the founding value of.
The United States.
You mentioned the Benjamin Franklin quote that I had cited, where he said, it is more just to allow one hundred guilty people to go free than to punish wrongfully a single innocent person that comes from blode which is the foundation of American and British law. Thomas Jefferson is attributed to say something very similar, but certainly all of his writings and all of the founder's writings, that was the idea. Let me just give you a quick example. We impose limits on police officers that make it more difficult for them to catch violent criminals. They're not, for example, allowed to just burst into houses where they suspect that somebody guilty might be there, they first have to.
Go to a court get a warrant.
And we require that, even knowing that sometimes it's going to mean that violent criminals get away because we're putting barriers in front of the police.
But we're a country of liberty.
We've decided we would rather have those liberties, even if there's a cost to it. And due process is exactly that, and it's something foundational to the United States, and it can't be waived simply because people are frustrated with the legal immigration, especially when it's not sending them back to their home country but putting them into a horrific prison in a dictatorial country in El Salvador, where you've seen all the video of things that they do to these.
People that would never be permitted in the United States.
And there's also that famous quote, you know, people who trade liberty for security will get will get neither. Just to sketch in how that unfolded in this moment, we can just very quickly run through a couple of the examples, because we're talking about it, you know, the question on principle, but also in practice, we see exactly what unfolded role A two really quickly.
This is just like a gay barber who is.
Like, we're we're asking people to just use their common sense. Does this dude look like a thug from the trend a Aragua gang.
It's like, no, it looks like.
James Charles is one of those gay like beauty influencers.
Is like welcoming with open arms, openly gay flamboyantly gay hairdressers who fled Venezuela claiming persecution on LGBT grounds. You think that's a likely member of a trend de Aragua gang. And then or shouldn't there at least be a hearing about that?
Firstlet's determine if he's guilty, let's hear the charges. So then A three.
This is one we wrote about over at drop site. Herse Barrios Rays Barrios. He's a professional goalkeeper who protested the Maduro regimes, kicking off his opposition from the presidential ballot.
He had a hearing scheduled.
For April seventeenth to make his case for political asylum. He was actually removed from maximum security prison after his family was able to get an affid David from the tattoo artist. It was like, no, this crown is related to Real Madrid, his favorite soccer team. So that Ice is finally like, okay, we'll let him out of maximum security prison very quickly. They instead they just supporting him and taking him out. DHS stood behind that one in a comment to us, saying, you know, we feel like the tattoo was gang related at the same time, and you can put up a four. While I'm talking about this, they have a not Actually this is just a bunch of other people who was their family are saying, no, these are just tattoos.
These guys are nothing to do with gangs.
DHS has said one hundred and one of the people this is an this is for his this guy's for his autistic brother. This is like the autistic like awareness and acceptance symbol. One hundred and one of the people that were deported. They don't claim we're in a gang. Yet every time we come with evidence that this guy is not a gang, DHS responds, they're actually in a gang. Now, I don't really have a question because I agree.
With you on this one.
I'm just just be a pot plant for the rest.
Of this conversation. I just wanted to add that.
I think this is all fair, and this is what I think makes the difficulty. Again, I'll just explain, you know, for me, I feel as if that the law was not applied for several years millions of people illegally entered our country, and you know, any often the discussion for those years, if we brought up someone like Lake and Riley or the victim of crime in that respect, it was, oh well, that is simply the consequence of Ryan, let's say, in your case of our meddling in Venezuela, almost as if we deserve it right for that to happen, or and or lawlessness.
Of not you know, taking the names of many of these.
People, or you know, not pursuing deportation or detainers or the willful either you know, expulsion from let's say, from prison during without bail. And it seems that as if you know, here, you know, we can highlight these examples, of course, of which, look, it is clear that there were like terrible mistakes. And I don't even disagree with you Glenn on a human level, and I think I am coming around to your point of view. It just does feel, you know, for in terms of let's say, the sympathy and who we decide to like look at these things has eroded much of the discourse around this, and so both at an emotional level and also with with Ryan's what Ryan is saying, because I'm sure there are a lot of people who listen to this who probably initially had my response as well, what do you think that they need to hear both about not the not only equal application of the law, but why it is so important what you're saying.
So I do absolutely agree that we have democratically ratified a program of mass deportation. There's all polls showing across political lines that people believe that the massive info of people into our country who aren't documented, who have no right to be here, who cross the border illegally, is a huge problem and needs to be rectified. And again, I think Trump has won a democratic mandate to mass deport people who are in the.
United States illegally and to close the border. I don't have any doubts about that.
Whether I agree with that policy or not, that is the democratic decision. There is a process in place though, that is designed to do that. You can deport people. Obama and Trump in his first term and Biden in his first term deported a lot of people, and you can deport a lot more legally using the legal mechanisms that are set up.
The problem with Biden was not that there.
Aren't legal processes sufficient to deport a lot of people. The problem is that the Democrats had no political will to do so. They were controlled by pro immigration groups. But if you want to, you can abide by the law and mass deport at the same time and minimally safeguard human rights and the ability of people not to be wrongly accused.
And I don't think we.
Would even be having this debate saga if not for the fact that Trump gets in. There hasn't really been mass deportations, by the way.
Well there has not.
The number that's very important.
There has not been messed right, And what we're getting instead are distractions from kind of exploiting the idea of mass deportation, first to go after people who are in the country legally green card holders and visas who are being expelled for the crime of criticizing and protesting against Israel, which I know you do not support, and so part of that is an exploitation for a completely different issue. But the other part is deportations are not about sending people to prison for life. That we've never regarded life in prison as an appropriate punishment for people who enter our country, especially in a country that's not theirs. That is only appropriate prison for people who are proven to have committed violent crimes. And there's a lot of doubt about whether the people sent to El Salvador were in fact guilty, and even if there was a doubt, even if they all seem kind of guilty based on this very tenuous art of interpreting people's tattoos, which, by the way, liberals did with Pete Hegstath in a way that turned out to be completely misguided. There was a New Yorker fact checker, Talia Levine, who accused an ICE agent of having a Nazi tattoo.
She had to quit because she misinterpreted the tattoo.
These are very very thin reads on which to proclaim somebody guilty. If it had just been the kind of deportation that Trump was promising, I don't think there'd be a controversy. The problem is is that these are not deportations in the traditional sense of the word. And we should have learned from the War on Terror that if the government says, trust us. Everyone we're punishing is guilty. You don't need a hearing, you don't need to see the evidence. We know for sure people are going to be wrongfully accused. And there's a big difference between I mean just sending them back to their home country, although that could be pretty devastating for people here a long time or married to an American citizen, as monkalides, but it's still way worse to send them to a dungeon in Alsawador with no due process.
Glenn, what is the legal process that the government has to follow. Let's say, like I know, this happened with a lot of GETMO detainees, where we're like, okay, we want to send them back, but then their country's like, no, we don't want them back. So and this was some of the wrangling that I've seen as well, that while the Venezuelan government has agreed to accept some deportation flights, let's say, in the case of many of these migrants to the United States, if they did not want to accept, then what process must the government follow. Because it does feel a bit preposterous that if the government doesn't want to accept them, that they have to let's say stay here on the dime of the US hax.
Bear Well, Guantanamo is a perfect example.
You may remember that at one time there was an excess of one thousand detainees at Guantanamo, again who we were told were the worst of the worst, the incorrigible terrorists who would never be recuperated.
And now there's fewer than forty people. What happened to all of those people.
Apparently they got released because the government realized or they proved in court that they weren't actually threats a terrorist threats, they didn't belong to a terrorist organization, and sometimes their countries didn't want them back, but the US used diplomacy and was able to place them all all throughout the world. They didn't get sent back to prison. They were put into other countries. Some of them are like in Caribbeani. The United States is a very powerful country. We have all sorts of ways diplomatically to do deals with other countries, including with Venezuela that has now said they're going to accept the deported Venezuelan citizens. So this was not saga, an attempt to just be like, oh, we don't really have anything to do with them.
Because Venezuela won't accept them.
This was a huge rush that was designed really to be deterrence, to say, if you come into our country illegally, we're going to make examples of these people, and we're going to make videos of it with them being humiliated and stripped of their humanity.
And it was done in a very rush fashion.
There was no real attempt to diplomatically negotiate with Venezuela or anybody else who might take them. The whole cruelty and horror of the process, again without due process, was part of what they were purposely trying to do, and that is not an appropriate means of the justice system to make, you know, That's what monarchs used to do, is they would cut off people's heads who they heard were criticizing them and then hang them in the town square as a warning to others who might do that. That is not American justice, That has nothing to do with our value system.
It's a huge assault on it.
And I think there's obvious ways for the US government diplomatically to get these people back to their home countries.
Last question for you, Glenn, from me is why does due process for illegal immigrants matter? That's something that I really struggle with is just this idea. You can come to the United States, you can violate our laws, you can then receive better treatment, you know, than you would in your own home country. And we're almost like a victim of our own compassion and of our openness when we didn't enforce the law and then are required to enforce the law once you are here illegally.
Why do you think that it matters?
And I did not even realize until I started listening to you that the precedence for due process for people president of the country illegally goes all the way back to the eighteen hundred. So it's pretty clear that we have been grappling with this question for a long time.
But it's obviously been politically controversial.
So why do you think it matters even for illegal immigrants, for, of course, people like mack Mud Khalil and others.
The Bill of.
Rights was never intended to be, and the courts have never interpreted as a kind of list of privileges that only a certain group of human beings possessed, namely American citizens. In fact, the Fourteenth Amendment was deliberately written to say that any persons inside the United States, not citizens, but persons, not even legally here, but just persons in general. Human beings have the right of the equal applipation, equal protection of the law. They have the right of due process. And that's why this is not something of liberal courts in the nineteen sixties, as you say, it goes back to the eighteen hundred and again when the United States put obviously all non citizens in Guantanamo.
The Supreme Court in two thousand.
And eight ruled that even though they're not in citizens, because they're under US sovereignty, they have the right of habeas corpus, the right to go into court and to demonstrate that the charges against them are illegal. And the reason is the Bill of Rights is not a list of privileges assigned to particular people. It's a constraint on the US government with regard to everybody under their control.
And the reason is is because.
It's simply so inherently morally unjust, horrifyingly unjust to do something like throw someone into prison for life without any opportunity for them to prove that that is an unjust punishment. Deportation itself, real deportation, send them back to the country, has a very minimal standard of due process. It's just a kind of immigration court within the Justice Department. And as long as they're here illegally, in the go can prove that they'll approve them going back to their country of origin. You don't have to prove guilt or crime. The prime is entering the country illegally. We're talking about something much much different here. And I think that's the reason it has become so alarming. And it's not just alarming in these cases, but as a precedent that will obviously expand outward in a way that we saw happen repeatedly in the Cold.
War, the War, and terror in every other abuse of civil liberties.
The only other point I'd make is these are radical ideas. Free speech, protection of people who are accused of crimes, of due process, for every person, whether they're a citizen or not. Like we are unique around the world in defending these liberties. It's and like I said, it is like you go to other countries, they are like this full First Amendment thing you have, this is a radical idea and it's just not accepted in a lot of other places that you have these liberties. And so in dark times like this, you got like, that's when you really have to them or then we're just like what are we then? Anyway, So that's my only point. I don't know if any final.
Thoughts, Glenn, any final thoughts here.
No.
I think it's a crucial point, and I would just add one thing, which is that one of the ways that governments traditionally try and get around the constraints on them from the Constitution is to try and say we're in war time and therefore we can't afford those And as I'm sure you know this seventeen, this Alien's Enemies Act was invoked only three times in history of the war of eighteen twelve, World War one, world War two, where even.
Then it was very sketchy.
Courts were very skeptical of the right to deny view process based on it the idea that mass immigration is some kind of a war in the traditional sense where Congress declares war against the foreign power. That in itself is extremely dangerous, because that is what we saw in World War two, an attempt to impose a war paradigm.
What really was a.
Criminal problem of international terrorism that we could solve with due processing courts, And if you just allow the government to declare war willy nilly, and therefore all the powers that go with it, the constitutions is going to become illusory because the government can just get around it by saying, oh, we're at war, We're war against this problem, this problem, this problem, and that I think is maybe the most dangerous theory that the Trump administration is promagating.
Well, Glenn, you've always given me a lot to think about. I think I think you have convinced me. But it's a difficult emotional process to get here, and I really do thank you for coming on the show, for being willing to do this, and for just continuing to always stand up and you believe, and you're one of my heroes that's out there.
So thank you.
Thanks Zager.
I appreciate your having me on knowing that we were gonna that it was gonna yellow you.
Well, it's good.
It's good for me. I think it makes me stronger. Right, all right, we appreciate you, Glenn. Thanks very much.
Good talking to you guys.
All right, let's go ahead and get to these rallies, and then afterwards we're going to talk a little bit to Dave Weigel, reporter at Semaphore who actually was on the ground for some of these and he spoke to the participants involved. Let's put the first part up here on the screen. This is just some images that came out of these rallies all across the United States as part of the quote Fight Oligarchy tour by Bernie Sanders. I mean, look, you got to respect the game. Crowds matter. As we learned in the twenty sixteen presidential campaign, both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump were able to bring out just tens of thousands of people aren't really normally engaged in politics. And what's fascinating about this one, Ryan, is not only the sheer crowd size, but also the makeup of those crowd sizes. So a Bernie AOC rally, you and I've been covering this for a while. You know, it's got a certain esthetic, it's a it's got a certain group like they're fishheads, as Ryan can announced this time around. Though there's some moms there, there's some people there that are traditionally part of the progressive left wing movement. And something that we always respect here on this show is not only crowd size, but the ability to build new coalitions. I mean, Donald Trump is very effective at Bernie Bernie in his waning days arguably the most impressive feat of his political career so far.
And you have some right wing commentators, influencers whatever you want to call them, who are throwing cold water on this and saying, according to our cell phone analysis of these characters who are out there protesting, you know, these folks have also gone to Black Lives Matter protests as well, like a if you're American and you're remotely on this in the center or the left, you were out of Black Lives Matter. They were like, that's twenty million people or something a lot. It's basically everybody that's right. And they said, and it's not grassroots, because we have identified that this organization, Indivisible, was involved with helping to organize these rallies. Indivisible is an organic, grassroots organization that does yet some like foundation funding, but that doesn't mean it isn't a membership based and like powered organization where you have like an Indivisible and Chevy Chase and Indivisible and all of these little tiny neighborhoods have Indivisible chapters. Those are generally normy Democrats, like those they came out of the Women's March era. So the fact that they are at a Bernie AOC rally does not undercut the kind of potential that it shows. It actually fuels because it's like, oh, now you've got the normy dams who are showing up at a Bernie rally.
That's that's a change well run.
As you and I know, oppositions always like to downplay the grassroots elebrate and actually like the TV this exactly. And so let's take it back to twenty and ten. And so I was a student here in Washington. We were a wash in crowds. We had the Glenn Beck rally. I'll never forget. That was actually while I was moving into my dorm, my freshman year dorm. I was stunned. I was like, oh my god. I was like, something that is happening here in Washington. The entire city is taken over by all of these like anti Obamacare protesters, Glenn Beck's rally. I mean that was hundreds of thousands of people. What was the comment, Oh, they're being bust in by the Koch brothers. And it's like, yeah, that might even be true, but guess what, They're still showing up to vote, Like as most people like. It's pretty rare to actually physically being paid to go to a protest. Not saying it doesn't happen, it certainly does. But at a mass level, no, that's not true. Providing organization, bust is and all that is a long standing part of all political coalitions that Donald Trump campaign use that to a great effect. Of course, try to make sure that your rallies are always crowded. This is like standard political stuff. The fact is is when you have all these people here, it means something. Now we don't know what yet, but it definitely means something to me.
One fun irony, though, the only person who really flagrantly actively paid people to be part of their political operation is Elon Musk.
He's like, I'll, I.
Will pay you one hundred dollars.
It worked off though, and it worked out right, So it's hilarious that he would be like pointing fingers at this. But you're you're so right. And at the time I remember the left saying this is all Coke Brothers stuff. And my argument to the left was this type of cope screws you because you need an objective, clear eyed analysis of your opposition or else you're not going to see what their assets are, and you won't be able to come at them and defend your own position. And the Kochs were funding the Right for decades at that point and had never managed to bring hundreds of thousands of people out to the MA all. So the fact of the money is sometimes necessary to get the people out there.
But it's not sufficient.
Yes, you have to have actual or people need to be pissed off, people to be mad that people need to be politically engaged.
And these foundations were funding Indivisible to the tune of a couple hundred thousand dollars two years ago, but they weren't pulling all.
This money mattered. Joe Biden will be president or Comma can still be president. And I say, as we were knowing people sa Kamala Harris would have gone exactly, people matter, actually matter more than anything. And so we've got this some clips here from Bernie Sanders, which I think if I had to, you know, as people here know, I've got the softest spart of mind of all the Democrats, it's Burt Bernie. For me, he's the OG. I have a very difficult time, especially when he goes the route.
Yeah, that's we'll talk about that so especially as old school.
So I just think the guy I don't know, there's something about him tugs at my heart strings. And something I appreciate the most about Bernie is to me, Bernie just feels American, and that is what really hit home in some of these speeches.
Let's take a list.
We don't want a king in the United States. We all the throw a kaing.
Money.
They control our economy, they own much of the media, and they have an enormous influence over our political sicemy. But from the bottom of my heart, I am convinced.
That they can be the.
We need a democratic party that fights harder for us too. That means our communities, each and every one of us, choosing and voting for Democrats and elected officials who know how to stand for the working class.
Our job is to break up the big corporate monopolies that are screwing us every single day. Bring down housing prices for good, bring down grocery prices for good, require good living wages for a fold day's work. Put power back in the hands of everyday people from Arizona to Texas, all across America.
All right, So very I mean look, you have to respect it.
And like I said at the top there for Bernie, I remember his most effective political ad, the America Ad twenty sixteen. Also here, you know, bringing back to the spirit of the American Revolution and or the labor movements, something that he's very intimately familiar with and he's been rawn on for quite a some time. And I do think that that is a very potent political message right now, and it's I think important for him, you know, with the Oligarchy tour there, not only against Elon and some of the political feelings, but in terms of like where this movement can go. Because again, as you and I know, the reason why the Tea Party was funded to the tune that it was was to specifically direct grassroots anger, which let's all be honest, people didn't care about Obamacare, Okay, they just hated Obama. What they wanted to take that feeling around that and channel it into an agenda that was well planned, right, so you could give This is where leadership really matters at a political level, not only in terms of the organization at the top, but electing and selecting candidates that specifically agreed, let's say, on the debt ceiling or Obamacare and all that and telling them what their mandate was.
So, yes, you need to fight. You need to fight specifically on a set of issues. Now.
Last time around, the Donald Trump resistance of twenty seventeen was built physically around Donald Trump. It was specifically built around, oh, we need to impeach Trump or show he's not democratic. That doesn't mean anything, right, and especially if it's built on a bullshit lie, which is what Russia Gate was this time around. Though, if you have an actual critique right of what a policy level is, that will lead you. That's the decision tree from which everything happens. If and when you do get elected in two thousand and twenty six for the mid terms, what type of hearings you call? Are you going to be doing Russiagate hearings or are we gonna, let's say, a Starlink hearing.
I can tell you which one's gonna be more politically palatable. By the way, it's definitely going to be the latter one.
Yes, And that was Greg Kasar at the end there, who.
I didn't know he had that in him. He's actually not bad, I'll be honest. After he was on the show, wasn't that a brestpot. Yeah, we hear like we had him on we had him on a Friday Sue.
Yeah, yes, and he's really he's in his element when he's fighting the billionaires and the oligarchs.
Did you see John Ossoff? Yes?
I did.
I was stunned the actually to see because I'm like, okay, that's where you know, my critic cat comes and it's like, all right, dude, you know we're talking about oligarchs and Billy. It's like, come on, all right, let's let's remember a little mister Ossoff's career here in Washington and exactly who we got him elected.
Well, now I'm ann asof hipster here asoff defender. He when he was a Hill staffer, he's parties right yeah, and yeah, like he was we can say this at this point now I know like Lee fond knew him well, and he was he was one of the Hill staffers who was the most aggressive against surveillance, civil liberties.
The NSA CIA.
He was he was a threat to that national security, a deep state.
He was also working.
He was also doing like documentaries in Africa about colonialism and corruption and prison conditions, and I think the as off you're seeing now.
Is the actual one.
And politically he's liberated the not the Obama impersonating one of like the twenty seventeen House race, but his last couple of Senate runs, he's been like, if that's the Democratic Party, huh, Like that's a that's a cool Democratic Party. And so if you missed as he was saying that, he was making the point that the Trump cabinet I think is worth something like sixty billion dollars before you get to like Trump in Elma. He's like, they are the elites that they're telling you that they're coming after, and I don't know if it's too late. So part of this almost feels like poignant, like now now the Democrats are finally getting it, when you know, there's been room on the left for this, and there's been a hunger on the left for this class based Bernie Sanders, the millionaires and the billionaires, the one percent that analysis the occupy flowing out of the Occupy Wall Street analysis.
That's it's been there, and then it.
Got diverted, you know, you know, first by the Hillary Clinton campaign and then by the kind of greater wokening yes from twenty seventeen.
Well, I don't think it's an accident.
The Greater Wakening actually happened the exact same year as Occupy twenty eighteen. That was the exact time that we both had the Occupy Wall Street movement and you had the Greater Wokening. The Great Opening is a term that actually does have meaning. By the way, you can go and look at the skyrocketing use of you know, quote unquote.
Work terminology that it does not an accident.
Also that twenty fifteen, the Obergerfel case happens in the entire landscape social politics in America.
Changing.
Our system is so our capitalist system is so good at protecting its own interests that it's able to kind of produce these antibodies to actual threats to it. It spotted a real threat to it in the form of Occupy and Bernie and this energy and the anti body was this Great Wokening.
That's an interesting yeah.
And so now now has the antibody faded, But it might be too late, like now maybe the oligarchs are in firm control.
Well, I think what makes it too late are not only.
We have a terminal condition.
We had not only an eleven year legacy here of the Great Wokening, which is if you think about that, that means that a eight year old at that now grew up and became politically conscious in a quote unquote woke period, and attitudes have significantly changed among So we didn't unfortunately, and on Thursday and have time to go into the analysis there the best analysis the twenty eight million survey of voters, and specifically how different white college educated women are than the rest of the population, white college ADKA and women of corps being one of the bedrocks of the Democratic Party, and especially with the divide in income and in class that we now see where a lot of lower income Americans or and or non white Americans find themselves Republicans or at the very least Trump voters and Trump not as Trumps skeptical, whereas like resistance in and of itself is kind of cringe and is basically what the home of the liberal base now.
Well could a lot can change, of course, you know, people change all the time.
And think about what the Greater Wokening left us with in twenty fifteen.
As Sanders is rising, the big problem that was associated with him, according to all his critics too many young white men was toxic who were angry. They were supporting Bernie bros. Now the problem Democrats has that they are all Trump supporting.
Yeah, you're right.
It is funny because though that prototypical Bernie Brow is now the prototypical podcast bro who is the you know Republicans. Literally the Joe Rogan pipeline is is real in Rogan's kse. I would say, actually, in a lot of these guys cases, people who are a lot I know quite a few of them, Like they're not Republicans by any of they don't really care about tax policy or.
Something like that.
They're much more uh, either radicalized on social issues and or just very anti establishment. They feel like the left is just too deeply tied to the overall like commanding heights of stablishing.
And I understand.
And they gave up on the idea that there could be collective change in this country, and so they've channeled that energy inward.
They're going to work out more.
They're gonna worry, worry about theirs they take.
Because Trump is what. Trump's a wrecking ball, right, It's like, well, that's the best that we can do. It's kind of a screw you to everybody. It was interesting. Now the media is taking notice.
Here we have ABC News John Carl talking about Bernie Sanders and his rise.
Let's take a listen.
How's the Democratic Party doing challenging us?
They got to be a little tougher, but being a bunch.
Of dormant stranded when everything.
So you can see people are mad. But Bernie, this is again got to appreciate the guy. Bernie has an actual worldview. He doesn't just go with the tides. Okay, he does sometimes, if we're all being honest, on Ukraine, on a pro live, a few few of the things, especially on blmun guns. Yeah, but on immigration, he's always had something to say. And that's why there's a lot of people on the left. They don't know what to do with this Bernie, the guy who he's always been. Let's take a list.
Is there anything that you think Trump has done right?
Yeah?
I mean I think cracking down on fetanyl, making sure our borders are stronger.
Look, nobody thinks it legal immigration is appropriate.
Oh interesting, okay, And people were like, oh, what about you in twenty twenty. Yeah, like the inauthentic Bernie on immigration was the twenty twenty one who went with the Democratic tide, which was produced by the Democratic outrage at kids in cages and child separation and real.
Searching insane moment too, because that was when you know, this idea that Elizabeth Warren makes up a story about how Bernie was sexist to her like eight years ago or whatever.
That had actual currency.
You know, it's like actual currency not only in his campaign, but in the broader media environment, and I would say at least with a limited portion of the Democratic base. Now, you know, those of people who watched this show always thought it was bullshit and that it was an invented smear. But you know, let's not, you know, make it up like it was a scandal at that time in terms of the right going right in Iowa the same in particular, when we think about the campaign in twenty twenty was really just a meeting of forces that were really, in my opinion, it's not meant to co exist, like you come off this great awokening me too. All of these other social in my opinion, like insane like periods like literal temporary mass psychosis mirrored or sorry paired with an original like economic populace campaign of twenty sixteen, which had nothing to do with any of that. If anything is like diametrically opposed, I would say that the great failure of his twenty twenty campaign was the inability to reject a lot of that and to return to his roots to the America AD and also just not being able to prosecute a kay. This is his own personal failings in my opinion, where he's independent, he calls out the Democratic Party, but Joe Biden. I mean, if were all recall my great friend Joe, they're like, well, what was up with that? You know, he can't it doesn't work that way, or if it does, and you're actually just one of them, which is what I think a lot of people also feel. Also one of the reasons why, you know, his campaign and his willingness there at the end basically just endorsed Biden for nothing.
Remember what he said.
He's like, Joe, I understand that you also want to cancel or raise the fifteen dollars minimum wage.
And he's like, yes, Bernie, I do.
Didn't happen, right, It's one of those where and then didn't really hear much about it.
You know.
The entire time he was a good soldier for forty, which is a weird role to see him.
I think a lot of people felt betrayed by that.
Oh yes, you know, his image took a big hit on the on the left, and but you know, I think people are like, don't expect him to run for president again. Yeah, so there's a little bit more grace and also there's nothing else to cheer for, and so I think I think AOC is stepping into that as well, like she also you know took, you know, has been has taken you know, huge, huge hits from the left for years. Yes, but there's nothing else out there, And so a lot of people like, all right, well, so did she say that she's saying the things again.
Right, but you know, why should you have trust now, right because she said it before? Well, I think, and she ran for the oversight thing, and she was a good soldier. She endorsed Biden, She even defended Biden after. You know, she was more vociferous in defense of Biden then Nancy.
Plus, I don't think you're going to get a world where people blindly trust either, right. But I think it's like, if you're involved, you know, you need a horse. There's nobody else riding this is it right?
All right?
Well?
Yeah, as I always say, you go to war with the with the troopers that you have. These are the We've got Dave Wygel standing by. He's going to break a lot of this down for us. He's got some great reporting on the subject. Let's get to it. Joining us now is Dave Wygel. He's a fantastic national political reporter for Semaphore, a great friend of the show.
Good to see Dave sit here.
Thank you so, Dave.
He wrote some really interesting stuff here about Tim Wallas. We just talked a lot about Bernie Sanders, but Tim Walls is also holding town halls and meetings, and he's been on somewhat of an apology tour. I guess you could say, let's put it up there on the screen whilst on governing under Trump.
I'm not going to enable him.
So what did you learn at this rally or with in Wisconsin? Tim wallss was there? It was and I told you so tour? It was an apology tour. What is his theory about where things went wrong? And also how is he positioning himself visa VI Bernie and AOC.
Well, he doesn't really have answers to what went wrong. That's part of it. It was this town hall style event. The questions were a little bit coordin not coordinated, but vetted before they were asked.
The crowd was all Democrats.
There were couple of Megan, I didn't see them at a friend from Wisconsin paper saw maget people trying to get in and they want.
To live in.
So it wasn't it was asking what went wrong without bringing people in who voted against Democrats.
Maybe not that effective.
And the Wall general theory a little bit of self serving, which is that he has a political style, a very blunt political style, sometimes goofy, often goofy that he thought would have was hemmed in by the Harris campaign.
The policy part of it.
He just thinks Democrats didn't do enough when they had power to convince working class voters that they're on their side. That rhymes with Bernie's saying, and that's irritating to lots of Democrats because they look at the Biden agenda and say, we actually did. There's the faction of Democrats say we listened too much to the Warren staffers and the Bernie staffers and did as much as we could off your policy agenda, and the Teamsters went from endorsing us to unendorsing us, even though we shoveled money at them and saved their pension. Yeah, so he didn't have answers. He just had a they should have listened to me more and they should be more more populist TBD or victory.
What is the kind of Bernie Warren Wing response to that, because it is the case that they pushed through basically whatever they could, Like, certainly on a ron klaym, Bernie was calling Joe all the time and and it was, you know, Joe Mansion slowing things down.
Cinemas, that's slowing things down. What does the Bernie wings say to that that, Like.
It's mostly that part.
It's that it's the cinema and mentioned slowed this down and more real populism hasn't been tried. We should be What if we were defending right now child it expanded child tackles right, What if we're defending right now dental care as part of medicare. That's that's kind of the Bernie answer. Because his speech is shorter than some of the speeches he gives. His policy agenda is not just you should have elected me. It is implying we can build on some of what Biden did, but not saying and Biden did some things right. The only time he mentions Biden is criticism of the funding for Israel war machine.
That's all.
That's all he does interesting and he brings up Biden.
But it is it just it just says, yeah, and we need to keep building and doing more progressive things.
But no mention of the Biden agenda.
Dave, how are you thinking about this moment? So I knew you and I talked a little bit and I was like, man, this minus touched thing, like as somebody who does this for a living. I'm like, this is crazy. And I don't see a lot of elite media grappling with that. I think it's because not only are the outside but they're not like capital d Democrats, as in they're all like yay Schumer. They're like, no, actually, Schumer, screw you. How are the people in Washington, Tim Walls and all those other people are they picking up on that? I can see that with Bernie and with AFC, they're aware of this burgeoning online resistance, but I don't see the bubbles up here yet.
The difference between Democrats on their strategy is really fighting or building right now and fighting later.
That's basically it.
And that's another harmony between Walls and Sanders and frankly people showing up because what was interesting in these crowds, the Walls crowd was all people who voted for Harrison Walls, the Bernie crowd. Remember the first eight people I talked to in Greeley, which is the University of Northern Colorado, the probably the most conservative district.
Tea campaigned in every weekend.
The first eight people had not voted for him in any of the primaries, and I was kind of I wouldn't say it was looking for people who might not have, but I was saying, oh, you're a woman in your sixty probably you know you have resistance gear. You probably weren't a huge Britney fan. And they weren't. They like AOC, but they say, just Democrats aren't doing enough to fight. Where are they? Where are they not stopping this? Why can't they stop this? Why can't they fill a buster? I mean that was the question I had for Walls.
So you dealt with this.
You got elected in two thousand and six, and people were furious that you didn't cut off funding for the Iraq war, and he had he had an answer, but the answer there was, yeah, I just take the l and win the two thousand and eight election, and I fun the war in the meantime. And that's just not satisfying these Democrats. They look at Trump and say, not only is he rude, does he offend our values?
But he wins a lot of what he wants.
He's not trying to do anything like omper Pelbambcair wouldn't win that right now, but he wins, and they want someone who wins.
And that's the difference.
It's not how have you scored your Medicare for all planned, is like, are you convincing me that at the end of the day you actually scored a hit on Trump's in some way?
Yeah?
Yeah.
And so you were seeing a lot of these people then that are into that funny category that I started seeing emerge right after AOC, one who were like Norman Democrats who are like, I don't like Bernie, but I do like AOC, which is the reverse of some people on the left who are like I like Bernie, but I don't like AOC. And in both cads you're like they pretty much just saying the exact same things more or less.
Some emphasis varies here or there.
So are those people now who are like, I don't like Bernie, but I like AOC. They kind of like Bernie a little more because he's maybe less of a threat and he's not going to probably run for president. And could you imagine these like centrist ish whatever you want to call him, resistance democrats really getting behind AOC as as a party leader type figure.
Oh, as a party leader, so some of that, yeah, they see as a senate candidate. Sure, But I started asking people at the Greeley and the Denver rallies, and I feel a little bit, even though it's part of the job, I feel weird asking normal people about presidential elections three out of advance. But okay, it'll be in the conversation. I leave this rally and people says, you're running for something.
And I was struck.
The same people I was finding who had strange new respect for Bernie or AOC, they were already worried that she was not electable nationwide, like, oh, she's not white guy, and maybe that won't work, and she said some left wing things, maybe that won't They really were snake bit by the Harris experience. And that's a bit ironic that Kamala Harris, who the ungenerous version of what she did in twenty twenty is endorse a lot of left wing ideas that she couldn't commit to or believe in, and they haunted her for six years. That was the worry they already had about AOC, but as a leader in the party. Yeah, so they were cheering for their own senator. She was shouting out every center who voted against the CR for example, and they liked that she was saying, there are Democrats doing the right thing. We were talking about a handful of Democrats who are not doing the right thing and a one hundred percent majority of Republicans doing the wrong thing.
You need to get rid of the content of her speech.
There was I'm a working class person who Republicans make fun of because I'm working class and I know these policies work, and we did get Republicans were bad for them. So there was nothing she said that was even testing, like are you be on this so you're willing to go and endorse this policy? I ran on twenty eighteen, even when they talked about green jobs it was a green jobs program. They did not mention the word green new deal, and she already was I wouldn't. I'm not trying to say it cynical, but she already was not mentioning the sort of you know, bingo car jargon that made a lot of sense to people in twenty nineteen. Like he didn't say medicare for all, you didn't say green.
She wasn't doing that.
She was saying, here is a almost, here's an inspiring populist democratic agenda. Take it if you want it, and I'm here to give speeches about it because I can get crowds.
That was what the opera was. Yeah.
Interesting, Let's compare that to Chuck Schumer and his theory of resistance. Let's take a listen, we'll get your reaction.
Our plan, which we're united on, is to make Donald Trump the quickest lane duck in modern history by showing how bad his policies are. He represents the oligarchs. As I said, he's hurting average people in every way, and we are through oversight hearings, we're exposing what he's doing through the courts, which I mentioned. We've had some real success through legislation and through organizing and all the districts throughout the country. So that I believe that when because the Republicans are already nervous, you know a lot of them said don't hold town hall meetings. I believe by twenty twenty six the Republicans in the House and said it will feel like their rats on a sinking ship because we have so gone after Trump and all the horrible things he's doing, and they will see it hate it.
So Dave, that's like the process theory of resistance that's not working for a lot of these voters.
No, and he answers the questions that are asked. He doesn't pivot because the interviewer might say, but you be tell us what you're doing to fix this problem the party. But there's not the democratic agenda there. And that is when Schumer was on the rise, and Schumer and ram were in this kind of the same train going together in two thousand and four to two thousand and five, they led with policy. They said, well, the Iraq war's unpopular, that's taking care of itself, and we need to come up with some sort of agenda that we can run on everywhere in the Ohio River Valley in the six six or six And that's a deep cut in the Yeah, oh yeah, I thought I had deep custods.
And the super view of things.
Yeah, you do this, you make them up popularly, come back and say, if you're ready to come back to Democrats, here's our offer. And the progressive populist version is they already assumed that Trump's beat. There's all these voters who less than before, but who assume this thing that is not going to go well. They want him to sha break up the system. They'll be ready once the system's broken up for something else. And we need to tell them right now because they look at Democrats and don't take us seriously. And that was the other part of what Sanders was saying. More in interviews, he said this to Times, said to me that he's just trying to find more candidates to run for office, and he had the Denver He said, AOC's an inspiration people can do what she did. Find their friends run as maybe independence, not independence, running as a spoiler, an electing a Republican independent, saying the Dan Osborne model in Nebraska, though it didn't work, Sanders Motte, which does work. There might be people who just think the party is so toxic that you need to run outside of it. And that is not fixing the party's problems with Trump. That is saying we need to replace the Republicans with whatever chess piece is available, can be a Democrat, can be independent, the whole Trump bad thing. All Right, people know that we're not getting in with that argument. We probably gonna say that I've talked a lot.
Is that half to see?
These speeches are about things Trump is doing, but they're focused on He is firing FTC commissioners, he is firing federal workers to enrich his friends and his donors.
It's much more coherent than he'll become unpopular later.
Yeah, it's very smart.
Now.
The last question here is exactly about that point.
I don't remember specifically at this time in the Tea Party did they have announced candidates. How soon should we start to look for those primary races which became such an important part.
Of the narrative.
No, very good question, because I think candidate filing in these Virginia races this year, that's wrapping up without much of a challenge the internal party. It'll be later later this summer we'll see some of that. I wasn't even with Sanders, and Asca wasn't seeing much of a tumult for we need to primary a lot of Democrats because they just aren't. Look at the cr vote in the House, in the Senate that says there's somebody going to may probably primary Brian shots over that.
They're not giving them a lot of material to do that.
West Worth, the Tea part at this point, had people all these problics on the record for tarp right, there was something you could easily go out and tell people they screwed you.
A ultracks such a good point. I didn't think about a litmus test.
Yeah, there's not the same litmus test for their candidates, but I'd say later in the year. Uh, and they the the challenge of getting the progressives through the primary process.
Justice Democrats are still trying to do that.
These groups are troops, still trying to do that, but they really are trying to win an argument first, so that even the moderate candidate is going to end up like, look, there's all these people who are not on TV every day but voted with Maxie Waters on everything this year. And that's that's more of the thinking, how do we have a coherent popular agenda that is rooted in Elon Musk is trying to rob you that somebody can run in a plus four Trump seed. We're not necessarily going to say you didn't sign our petition. We want we want to win that argument so that every time every Republicans are being asked there, asked if they support Doge in a negative way everywhere they go there is it's whom the Democrats going to tax the rich and give us benefits. So yeah, long answer to your question, I would say in a few months, but it justice Democrats recruitment was starting much earlier, a couple of cycles ago. Right now they're looking at the field and saying, also, what is Crypto, what is APAC going to do and try to undermine us. We need a robust theory for these candidates before the money comes in and makes them not electable.
Yeah, smart, Yeah, all right, Dave, thank you so much for joining us, man. We appreciate it.
