Badlands Media - Devolution Power Hour Ep. 462: Midterms Don't Matter, NDAA Freakout, and Lame Duck Lies

Episode Date: May 31, 2026

Jon Herold and Chris Paul open the Saturday show with Trump's "I don't care about the midterms" clip still rattling through the community and immediately connect it to Trump's statement that the Great... Big Beautiful Bill put four years of legislation into one bill because congress is ineffective and Trump already got everything he needed. Chris Paul delivers a full argument: if you pass everything in one bill and you don't care about the midterms, the logical conclusion is that Trump never trusted congress and never intended to rely on it. The Atlantic's "Trump might already be a lame duck" article gets a thorough dissection as pure narrative seeding, with the guys noting that the outlet is simultaneously running Trump collapse and Trump dominance stories in the same news cycle because they genuinely do not know what the results will be. The NDAA Section 224 US/Israel defense cooperation provision gets a fair reading, with Jon pushing back on the viral "full merger" framing and arguing it is disclosure of an already existing relationship. The Ken Paxton Texas win raises the age of Trump vs. age of Trumpism question. The aliens.gov rug pull, the summer ICE protest cycle, CIA gold bars, Fort Knox, and Polymarket as a measurement of narrative consumption round out the show.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 The Badlands, one of the Badlands, explain those badlands. That's a hell of a name. Every four years we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power. Today's ceremony, however, has very special meaning. Because today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C., D.C. and giving it back to you, the people. For too long, a small group in our nation's capital
Starting point is 00:00:43 has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. This American carnage stops right here and stop. and stops right now. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it's going to be only America first.
Starting point is 00:01:26 Well, good evening, everybody, and welcome to the Saturday edition of the Devolution Power Hour. As always, I'm joined by Chris Paul. Chris, how's your weekend going, man? Everything is just great, John. Yeah, it's been a fun weekend. Lots of interesting news stories. I think we're going to have a lot of fun discussing. We're almost like we're bombing our way to peace right now with Iran.
Starting point is 00:01:57 Yeah, or we're piecing our way to more bombing. Or bombing a way to more piecing. It's kind of hard to figure out what's going on over there. But, you know, we'll see how much time we spend on that. I think the more interesting thing. from the week has been two rulings that have been reversed against Trump, and they're both kind of retarded. And simultaneously not retarded, yeah.
Starting point is 00:02:20 Yeah, it's probably actually, we'll see, we'll talk about it. We got the new NDAA we'll discuss tonight. People are freaking out over the story in there, the section of Israel and U.S. potentially basically becoming one army, which isn't quite true. that's how people are framing it. So we'll discuss that. What else we got? We have Fort Knox audits on the table again.
Starting point is 00:02:47 We got Trump's True Social. He's going ham today. What else? He did the one where he's peeking over the mountains in Greenland again. Did he do that again? What the hell? Yeah, same post. Is my audio sound low?
Starting point is 00:03:06 I can imagine mine might. Are they talking about me? No, I'm good. I think you're talking about me. You sound fine to me. Okay. If my audio sounds low, go to your volume knob on your device and turn that up a little bit. That's probably what it is.
Starting point is 00:03:21 But yeah, man, what else? There's one story I was going to talk to about. Did we talk last night on Onlylands about the alien rugpole, the aliens.gov? I don't think that we did. We could talk about that stay, too. I'm totally down to do that. Did you see the little video that the White House posted yesterday? Kankan and I played it on a day.
Starting point is 00:03:39 but where the little flying saucer comes down and uses like a tractor beam. Did you see that? Yeah, let me pull that up. That's so funny. Hold for processing while I find that. I think I've got it right here, by the way. Well, if you do, that's good because people are still saying my audio is low. So now I'm...
Starting point is 00:03:58 Yeah, this will take me two seconds. I'll just do this. By the way, if we've been having some issues with Rumble lately, and so I just want to remind everybody, we are live on YouTube. YouTube. You should probably just have that open in the background anyway because it's very helpful to us. But we're also live on Twitter,
Starting point is 00:04:17 Twitch, Instagram, what else? Kick. And I even got the substack going tonight. So we are like all over the place. Pretty much everywhere but TikTok. Okay, you got it already? Yeah, there it is. Razel Minuene
Starting point is 00:04:37 says, is this another echo chamber that bans you if you have a dissenting opinion? no it is not but it depends what that dissenting opinion is yeah the aliens are here the flying saucers to remove an alien and send him back over the border do we even have a border wall yet i don't think they finished that have they uh who knows man we should probably check that out sounds like a big deal for a while yeah it was almost finished and he just left that one part it open so that 20 million aliens could get under Joe Biden. But good thing those alien spaceships can just take them right back over. That's super funny.
Starting point is 00:05:29 But the aliens.gov thing is, I love it because when that website was first discovered, everybody's like, guys, this is it. We're finally getting the UFO disclosure that we've always dreamed up. We're going to get the spaceships. We're going to get the anal probing. We're going to get it all. and the disclosure starts coming out and it's retarded. And then also now aliens.gov is all about illegal immigration and nothing to do with actual UFOs. And so it's been quite the rug. It's great stuff. But yeah, is what it is.
Starting point is 00:06:01 It's good for people to know that there are alien arrests being made in their towns. How many are in your area? I have 68 in Bismarck, North Dakota. I think I had 65. It seems like awfully similar. amount how big is the town you live in right that 68 and 65 are very similar well i'm just wondering if they're totally made up numbers oh no i wouldn't suggest that no i live in a small i i don't even know if you'd call it a city how many roughly 10 000 oh see i have like 70 000 yeah maybe even
Starting point is 00:06:38 close to 80 well i don't know if they're counting Canadians in these numbers so that's true Well, how about we get a quick word from a couple of our sponsors? We got quite a few tonight. So I think I'll do two now and I'll do two later. And then we can kick things off. I mean, we could probably just kick things off by scrolling through Trump's true social for a little bit. Because there's so much fun shit in there. That should be our backup show, whatever we don't know what's talk about.
Starting point is 00:07:08 I do that every day on my show. That's a segment. I go through, there's never an update on the Doge website. Then I do silver prices. And then I do Bitcoin price. And then I do gas prices. Yeah, there hasn't been an update. Guys, is tomorrow June 1st, by the way?
Starting point is 00:07:21 Yes. No, Monday. On Monday, June 1st, it will be six months since the last Doge website update. Oh, no. They have not saved us more than $215 billion since January 1st. Well, that would be five months. Damn, five month anniversary. You're right.
Starting point is 00:07:45 So did you see that our boy mom in New York City? is starting a coge what's no yeah what is that it's doge but with the sea communism i don't know let me let me see if i can find it i know i posted it earlier in the week yeah i've not seen that i thought he was like doing a commission on government efficiency that's retarded i thought he was like doing a like hey apartment complex owners we're taking your apartments now and giving it to the people who live there pretty much he wants to take more of their money but make sure that it's spent more efficiently yeah i've have heard that the government is really good at making sure money is spent efficiently so that'll work really well well when you're planning on taking more
Starting point is 00:08:35 of the people's money it's good to let them know that you're not going to waste it even though you know that you are going to waste yeah are they doing the uh billionaire tax too like california's planning on i don't know attention of that yeah My favorite I Gavin Newsom story this week was him being like if that IRS slush fund it's given to anybody in California, those tax dollars, we are going to tax it 100%. We're just going to straight up seal. They're not even hiding it anymore. Well, I love it.
Starting point is 00:09:06 Do it. See the court battle over it. I love how they say that Trump can't charge tariffs. And then they just go out declaring 100% taxes. Yeah, it's ridiculous. But the slush fund doesn't even exist as of right now because a judge reopened the case. Instead of a settlement where the government would potentially pay less money, the judge is like, yeah, we're going to reopen this $10 billion case.
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Starting point is 00:11:57 But probably my favorite, I mean, and this is hard to choose. But a couple weeks ago, maybe even last week, we talked about the drone, the drone port on top of the White House. We got a glimpse of what it's going to look like now. I love that it just has the most basic font ever and it just says drone port i wonder who does these memes because this is what they all look
Starting point is 00:12:22 like they have a picture of something ridiculous and then just the text above it's like trump is making these himself yeah he could i mean maybe he stands there or sits there with um the dictation feature and it's like uh the white house roof but all whites with drone port Oh, so funny. I want to go through a couple of pictures before we come back to the 250th celebration. He did all the whole she photo album. He did a few of them. He did a man.
Starting point is 00:12:56 He did Prince Charles, a couple of those. Oh. Do you not see these? Well, sometimes I scroll past when they're just pictures. Yeah. Unless they're like him shooting off his lasers from the space station in the sky. Yeah, what about this one, the master and commander look? That's pretty awesome, especially because he's talking about people getting discombobulated.
Starting point is 00:13:21 Hell, yeah. I love the two ships at the bottom, too. I feel like this one on the right is probably no longer being used, but right now that ship could take on the entire Iran Navy since it doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, they're all at the bottom of the sea floating there. Yeah, this is one we could talk about since we're on it. Trump posts this time to physically audit Fort Knox, and it's linking to a story of the CIA officer who was arrested after the feds fined $40 million worth of gold bars stashed at his home. The whole auditing Fort Knox thing started in like March of 2025 or something.
Starting point is 00:13:59 I don't even remember who was the first. I think it might have been Elon Musk was the first one to mention it. And then Trump's like, yeah, we'll definitely do it. And then it's never happened. I feel like it can't be that difficult to just go there and audit it. But what's weird to me about this story is if anybody's read the CIA thing, he didn't get the gold from Fort Knox. Like he was running ops and they gave him money, which you're supposed to go use to make payments to informants or part of the ops he's doing. And he asked for gold bars and he just never used them.
Starting point is 00:14:30 He just kept them. And part of the story is like, yeah, it's really weird. Normally we just use diamonds for that. Like, why would you use gold bars? Why is the CIA getting money in the first place to pay off for for ops like this? Like how much money they're they spending on just their ops? It's so weird. Like this is two people that they're running their ops with like informants or whatever they might be.
Starting point is 00:14:51 Yeah. So nothing to do with Ford Knox yet Trump is saying let's go out at Fort Knox, which I bet we never will. I just, yeah, I mean, you're asking the right question. Where is all of that meant to be going? Obviously it didn't go to a place. but to have gold bars because you need to run intelligence hubs. Like who's getting the gold bars? Who's on the other end of that?
Starting point is 00:15:15 I think it was, Burning Bright and I did, gosh, I can't remember the, why can't I remember the name of the film? 13 hours, I think it's called, the Michael Bay film where he does the Benghazi. That's right, yes. And there's a scene in that where one of the intelligence agents is getting some Middle Easterner to relay information and they give him like a Lamborghini or something.
Starting point is 00:15:43 And so just thinking about like that model, that's what this sounds like. Yeah. I don't know. It's also stupid. But hey, the more people talking about auditing for Knox, I don't think that's a bad thing because I would love to see it happen at some point. I think we supposedly have at prices right now like $670 billion there or something.
Starting point is 00:16:02 But Trump is loving sharing these memes too. like this is what happened under Biden this is what happened under Trump Biden Trump Biden man in the in that toothpaste one like in the first picture it's the toothpaste in prison and the second picture it's the criminals in prison that's so so funny and Trump talks about that in his speeches too yeah he's got a little Colgate up on the side man the same font in all of these. It's like he's putting them in a word document and that's where he makes his memes. So ridiculous.
Starting point is 00:16:47 CDC prisoner? CDC isn't that like Center for Disease Control? I mean, it could be like Colorado Department of Corrections. I don't know how that. I guess it could be. Somebody stealing TVs versus somebody getting arrested in the condom. aisle. Good stuff. Biden doesn't arrest the looters stealing high-priced merchandise.
Starting point is 00:17:18 Trump has four cops slamming the guy to the ground for pocketing the cinnamon. Fourth of July is coming up, though, and if people keep stealing the condiments, man, those prices are going to be out of control. It's the only way to keep those prices down. So my favorite parts at that time of the years when they're like prices under Biden for Fourth of July was $8. But this year it's $7.94. It is going to be such a thing too. And then we're going to hear the word affordability, affordability, affordability.
Starting point is 00:17:54 You've heard Trump say, I think we heard him say this week, that the whole affordability thing is a hoax. And it is a hoax. It is a mass coordinated messaging op that they're using. worldwide to suggest that what's happening now with the economic realignments is crushing everybody, which is not to deny the fact that some of these, that some prices for things that we pay for, especially gas, are really high, but those are certainly manipulated in ways other than just the Iran war. Yeah, I mean, I get what you're saying because it is an op, but also the people pushing it. Like, okay, the way for Trump to win this is just to make everything.
Starting point is 00:18:36 thing free okay we actually do want socialism that's what we do want that's like the end game from what these people are you want oh god no i mean they don't they're not saying that but that's basically like the message yeah prices suck right now gas prices are did come down like 20 cents this week the national average but i'm hope selfishly i'm hoping that they stay barely high for just a little bit longer because i don't want brian to be right because gas is going to be down to 240 by july 4th and i just can't live with myself if he is right about that one. Trump keeps saying he's going to, that they're going to come right down once the whole war ends.
Starting point is 00:19:11 I wonder if that adjustment that you saw this week is kind of preparation because they don't want to make it obvious that the prices are being manipulated high to make Trump look bad, which I think, I think that's absolutely happening. And of course, I know that's a conspiracy theory and the rest of it. But I mean, it's a fair one. let me show you this let's see where it's at today actually yeah week ago it was at uh $4.52 right now the national average is 435 it's come turning down all week do you know do you know the uh how much that equals john is that 17 cents well you know it yes that is 17 cents yeah
Starting point is 00:19:59 man we can decode the shit out of that if you want to i can open my cambo and everything But maybe we'll save that for later in the show with some of the other fun stuff. Have you ever watched the show Madman? I have not. Oh, it's fantastic. But I just realized that Don Draper's New York apartment toward the end of the show, 17B. Thought about decoding that. Is he?
Starting point is 00:20:25 That's how long the plan's been going since Madman. Go to the plan? Probably. I did I saw a video today where somebody was like the cue's no longer happening because Trump's ruling got reversed or something well didn't you send that video yeah I don't even know if I don't even know if it was a video I just read the text in the post um but yeah it was uh like that Trump's going down with the ship that the ends not for everyone and what that means is that Trump is going to be the bad guy in the end and actually that's that's a point of view
Starting point is 00:20:58 It's totally worth talking about. Oh, yeah. I think we have talked about that before. Like Trump final boss type of situation. Yeah, and I don't think that that's what it is, but it could be. And it also could be like, so Peter Thiel, for instance, went to Stanford and studied there, he claims with Renee Gerard, who's a philosopher. and one of the one of his key ideas is about proud dynamics and the purpose of a scapegoat and he relates that to christianity and the rest of it but uh i could imagine peter teal if he was somehow behind writing a certain part of the great reset script and it seems like that's entirely possible yeah um that part of that would be to have a scapegoat that you can load
Starting point is 00:21:54 all of the responsibility for all this bad stuff that people are upset about, load it all into this one character and then flush that character, all of that goes away with it, and then we can have the preordained golden age. And then after having that thought, I was thinking, it's interesting because we talk often about how they're trying to kind of turn Trump into Hitler, and then Teal actually just escaped to Argentina this past week. And interestingly, his dad, Klaus Teal, took the family out of post-Nazi Germany and moved them to kind of a Nazi enclave in Namibia. So the fact that he is going to the place that Nazis escape to is not entirely surprising. But I was thinking that Hitler is kind of, so part of what René Girard talks about is that like Jesus Christ,
Starting point is 00:22:49 was the perfect scapegoat in one of these scenarios because he was, and different than other scapegoats in prior lore and mythology and the rest of it because he was legitimately actually innocent. And most of the scapegoats bear some responsibility and are just given all the responsibility so that no one else has to take it. And I was thinking, you know, Trump is probably
Starting point is 00:23:16 in the middle there somewhere, but you know who's on the other, of the spectrum from Jesus is Hitler. And they, I mean, Hitler's responsible for all the evil. And if evil arises in the world at any point, you can say it's like Hitler, that is Hitler. It's just the like inverted scapegoat model. It's Gerard's scapegoat model for Jesus inverted. And so I could expect that that's how they would want Trump's role in that script to end.
Starting point is 00:23:48 is that kind of like him taking all the slings and arrows for us it would be that yeah well that's another decode man you're just on on fire right now with the decodes um a couple more true social posts get in loser we're going losing i think that's a classic meme look at all those losers in there trump by the way i think endorsed nancy mace's uh challenger for a primary i think that's yesterday and then Nancy Mace was out saying that she has seen the names in the Epstein files and that it will shock you to see the names and that seems like the next level of that anti-Trump op and yeah i think all these people were like trump supporters yeah massey has been saying the same thing about those names yet for some reason has never like you can you see the names why aren't you telling us them like why not come out and just be like yeah let me shock you with these names that are going to shock you well they ruined the uh the very serious investigations that are ongoing yeah you know i do
Starting point is 00:25:00 wonder though would trump have endorsed nancy mace had she actually shown her tits on the floor of congress like she promised because she kind of rug pulled everybody with that one yeah yeah in the day um but then uh sometimes you just need to stop and smell the flag this is a great one. And then fourth. Yeah. I thought he was going to be on the other end of that. But hey,
Starting point is 00:25:34 maybe it's good there. He just kind of depends where you got room for it. Yeah, they should have made his face a little bigger than that. Yeah, they probably should have made it not look like they just took a picture and superimposed on there. Like it doesn't look like it was carved into the side of the mountain like the rest of them.
Starting point is 00:25:47 but hey it's just a picture it's not the real thing quite yet another good one is this one trump energy 2026 you got some b2 bombers and uh below got some revolutionary war fighters dude did you see there's supposedly a video game coming out i just saw this yesterday where it's like 500 years ago europe like people fighting with swords but you are a time traveler with like real guns and cars and you fight against people with swords and shit sounds like sounds awesome. And this picture just made me think of that. That's great.
Starting point is 00:26:25 It's like Grand Theft Auto set in medieval times? Yeah. Or not quite medieval, but whatever. Let me see if I can find, let me see if I can find the game. Oh, shit, what was it called? That's not like a mainstream game, is it? No, it's still in progress.
Starting point is 00:26:43 But it's supposed to be out soon-ish. King makers, that's what's called. Here's the official trailer. Do you take all your futuristic? Oh, well, whatever. What was it? Now, I was going to ask you a question about it, but I can just watch this. Yeah, and this is all I know about it, so I don't have any answers.
Starting point is 00:27:03 We don't know where he came from, but I'll tell you, he built our village into a city. He's the one who trained our army, who grew us into an empire. I don't know where he's from. But if you think you can stop him, you're already dead. You get the idea. I mean, it looks fun. Yeah, it does. I don't know how we got there, but I think that's all the true social pictures.
Starting point is 00:28:09 It was the B2. with the Revolutionary Warfighters. That's right. Yeah. He's crushing it with these pictures. He is. Trump Peace Prize. Oh, by the way, it was a while ago on my show.
Starting point is 00:28:22 And maybe I wasn't even the, I'm sure I wasn't the first one to talk about this. But it was back when he got snubbed again for the Nobel Peace Prize. And I remember specifically saying, like, Trump is going to create his own, like, Nobel Peace Prize competitor called the Trump Peace Prize. Nice. And I need to find, somebody needs to find that and clip that for me. because that would be fun to post. And he got the, he got the FIFA Peace Prize.
Starting point is 00:28:49 Oh, that's very, very prestigious. That thing was super demonic. Wasn't that the one where like the zombie hands are coming out and grabbing everything? I don't remember. I don't remember that. I do FIFA Peace Prize trophy. Yeah, here.
Starting point is 00:29:07 Wow. How could you forget? And it's funny because it's FIFA where they use their feet to kick the ball, but this is all hands. Real students, they didn't think that one through. But let's read this. So a lot of attention today on social media in the last couple of days. I think it was Martina McBride or something, which I can't even think of a single song that she sings, but she apparently backed out of the America 250 party, which has led to other people backing out of the America 250 party.
Starting point is 00:29:39 And so instead of that, we're going to get Trump. Hopefully he comes out and actually like sings or something, but it sounds like you might just do a speech. this is what he said. I understand artists are getting the yips having to do their performance on a Wednesday. So I'm thinking about bringing the number one attraction anywhere in the world, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the greatest president in history, the goat, Donald J. Trump. Talks about himself like this, to take the place of these highly paid third-rate artists and give
Starting point is 00:30:15 a major speech rallying the country forward like i have done ever since being president two years ago the united states was dead now we have the hottest country anywhere in the world i don't want so-called artists that get paid far too much money who aren't happy i only want to be surrounded by happy people smart people successful people and people that know how to win so by copy of this truth i'm ordering my representatives to look at the feasibility of doing an america is back rally on wednesday washington dc same time same location only great patriots invited it will be a wild and beautiful celebration of america president donald j trump and this is meant to be this coming wednesday uh or was this like a wednesday and closer to fourth of july anyway i think it's not for a couple wednesdays yet this reminded me
Starting point is 00:31:06 immediately of the post announcing the uh the gathering um on January 6th, 2021. Everybody got to be there. It's going to be wild. Yeah. I love how he truce. He's like, you know what? I have this great idea.
Starting point is 00:31:25 I'm going to do this. By the way, hey team, I haven't talked to you personally yet, but please read this truth post and do what I'm asking you to do by copy of this truth. I did see some people like Matt Walsh. Let me see if I can find it. I'm just thinking of this now, but he had some super gay posts. in response to this. While you're looking for that,
Starting point is 00:31:48 damn it, I just completely forgot what I was going to say. This is what he said. I found already. There you go. I'm actually pretty pissed at how badly they bungled the America 250. First,
Starting point is 00:31:59 they tried to invite Millie Vanilly and a bunch of other absurdly washed up geriatric one-hit wonders. Then when that didn't work, they decided to convert the event into a Trump rally where Trump will talk about himself
Starting point is 00:32:09 for 90 minutes. This should have been a massive raucous celebration of the country and its 250 year history now it will be a political rally identical to the 10 million other ones we've already seen so that's just matt walsh going back to his normal form as somebody who like despises Donald trump and all his supporters yeah it's really crazy that these people like ever pretend that they are aligned and it's always like conservatives have to rally around this position that we have well we all have to be unified you magas you have to
Starting point is 00:32:43 agree with us and soften your tone. And then as soon as it's something that he doesn't like, it's like he's out front leading the charge. Everybody who spends all their time on Twitter and farms attention by getting angry at Donald Trump loves this sort of thing because they get to amplify this. Oh, it's his very responsible middle of the road approach. I know that people will find this appealing and unoffensive.
Starting point is 00:33:11 What I was going to say, though, is that I find it interesting that that's kind of like this allusion at least to January 6th. I mean, he's framing it the same way. It's going to be in the same place. He's inviting a bunch of people to the heart of Washington, D.C., the federal city, which is basically being taken over. We're in the midst right now of, and it looks like the most sci-opi thing imaginable. It's even being covered nonstop by BG on the scene. But they're doing ice protests.
Starting point is 00:33:45 Yeah, that dude like films every live action sciop all around the country. I don't know how he gets to all these things so spontaneously. But yeah, he's there filming the ice protests in New Jersey. Oh, I did see that. So we're getting, we're having a protest movement kicked up. And remember five days ago, was George Floyd Day. So we're on exactly the same timeline that we were on in 2020.
Starting point is 00:34:17 And then in 2022, they tried to do the same thing with the early release of the Dobbs decision that came out like a month early around the same time. And they had, what do they call them? I don't remember the Jane's Revenge or something like that. in the uh that that was going to be like the protests the female protest movement um protesting the dobbs decision and the uh the overturning of robes versus wade but they always want to start up these protest movements for the summer during an election cycle because they think it's going to be divisive they can create all sorts of derivative content about the left and the right and how different they
Starting point is 00:34:57 are and it just serves to reinforce that that political divide that doesn't really exist because because it's the unit party. Yeah, it's also interesting, speaking of all that, like the protests and most of the time we see these things, they're funded, right? Like people get paid pretty well to go and do these things. We also just saw that, or I saw that they're going to be doing some more no Kings protests. I don't remember what day. It was either Trump's birthday or the America 250 celebration. But this week, we saw that Reed Hoffman's NGO is on trial or at least being investigated as part of the E. Gene Carroll situation. So that's kind of notable, I would say, that Trump has said
Starting point is 00:35:36 they're going to be digging into the people who are funding these protests. And he's been saying that for a while ever since Charlie Kirk was shot. And they made the big push about Antifa, which we don't hear much about Antifa ever since then anymore. But yeah, until now. I mean, Pesopic was on abandoned this morning talking about that exact thing. And they were like, Trump designated Antifa terrorist organization after the Charlie Kirk thing. It's like, wait, didn't he do that? that many years ago. And of course, if you look that up, it gets fact checked and it's not officialish. Yeah. Well, and that's true. He's he tasked twice the DOJ to look into Antifa to see if they should be designated as a terrorist organization. And then they finally were. But the way
Starting point is 00:36:21 he did it even wasn't it was what did he do? And now I'm trying to remember it. Well, kind of. But he had the, I remember me and Brinneberg were talking about it. I can't remember. I'm going to look it up but the way he did it it's like well this doesn't he can't do anything here with this like i think he charged him as or he named him as a domestic terror organization which there wasn't any like laws in our books on that anyway like it's also weird and so silly but yeah there's one more post here from matt walsh i'll read i think this is the one he had even before the last one i read you really can't imagine a better way to celebrate our nation's 250th birthday than listening to trump giving a speech for the 10 000 time not sure i believe you at any rate america
Starting point is 00:36:59 America's birthday should not be about Trump. He isn't the star. The country is. So he's big mad that Trump is going to do this. Super gay. If Trump saves America from this global entity, he is
Starting point is 00:37:15 absolutely the star of the 250th birthday. Oh, 100%. He probably won't have it saved by then. But still, and give the man, the man do whatever the hell he wants. I just love that it pisses off everybody. That's what I love about it.
Starting point is 00:37:29 off the left and it piss off the uniparty and it pisses off conning grifters like Matt Walsh like I love it they can all stay mad yeah could care less but let's move on let's go to speaking that people hate and Trump we could dive into this article for a little bit oh yeah in the Atlantic Trump might already be a lame duck and then we could spin this into that video clip that you sent from let's let's maybe do those two first and we'll get to this okay let's do that do you have those pulled up because i yeah well the i which one are you talking about because it sounds like maybe you're talking about one that you've already seen and i'm talking about two that i saw on uh that bannon had as part of the cold open this week but i think it's like
Starting point is 00:38:14 it's post paxton um election coverage and i thought it was just exemplary of the thing that we were talking about a few times over the last couple of months about how this seems like it's going to be a replay of the 2022 election cycle where we're going to get the big red wave and then all of a sudden we don't get the big red wave and it's all Trump's fault for pushing the MAGA candidates to the four and then the next step is to try to get rid of Trump because he's now ruined the Republican party and so I thought both of these were pretty much in line. Let's do those and then let's do the the big beautiful bill one. Okay. And then they'll knock because they're all right the other cool actually and then we got to do the uh hold on let's have uh even
Starting point is 00:39:03 damn it i'm gonna find that out the clip let's let's just do this one right now shit man we're uh we're editing on the fly yeah that's okay all let's do we i'd rather have a problem of like having too much to talk about that we have so much shit to like pull together than not have enough to talk about yeah we thought that trump was a passing moment and now it feels far more existential I mean, that's one thing. Okay, we're going to keep talking about the Talarico strategy. But Jim, what about you?
Starting point is 00:39:30 What are these? I mean, this was an absolute shalacking blowout. I don't know what you want to call it. What do you think it means? Well, it means that Donald Trump is clearly in charge of the modern Republican Party and he gets whatever he wants, whenever he wants it, in the primary. Now, the problem is, we're about to go into a general election season, and he continues to want to nominate the worst candidates.
Starting point is 00:39:47 You talked about this earlier. They're spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to prop up Trump's slate of diluted Republicans here. And the question is, in the general, They will need every single dollar they can get their hands on. You know, and Jen, you talked about the turnout, and I think it's really interesting. In the elections, we've seen over 100 elections since Trump came in office, Democrats are overperforming by about 10 points. But when you look at why, it is because Republicans are not turning out in massive numbers. Their people aren't angry, as Chuck was saying.
Starting point is 00:40:13 They're getting kind of everything they want. And that's with normal Republicans. You put a guy like Ken Paxson at the top of the ticket. It's not that suddenly a bunch of Republicans may vote Democratic. Maybe that happens, but probably what happens is that a whole bunch of people just don't vote. and we'll take it whatever we can get it because when you try to get to 50 percent you'll take it any way you can get it i mean it's just the same election analysis year after year after year after year after year turn out in demographics they they don't have anything else to say about any of this and
Starting point is 00:40:42 as soon as you know that elections are rigged and truthfully much worse than that none of this shit makes any sense i mean this stuff is just so dumb but you can see immediately like we're being told Trump is backing bad candidates. They're going to make his base, they're going to please his base in the primary, and then he's going to get slaughtered in the general. And then just, you know, comparing this to the Massey thing the week before and the whole narrative still coming out of that that is being pushed pretty hard by people, by Massey himself, by people around Massey. They're really sticking with this. I think I saw Joe Kent video a day or so ago and reinforcing the same thing.
Starting point is 00:41:23 It was boomers who voted against Massey because the boomers, they're just suckers and went along with Trump. But all the young people came out and supported Massey. Okay, well, did that happen? Did young people come out and support Massey in the fake election? And then if the boomers are so powerful in Kentucky and they're the only ones that get motivated to come out and vote, why didn't John Cornyn win in Texas? Oh, it's just the Trump endorsement? And I'm fine that it's the Trump endorsement. But the idea then that it's also this demographic thing, I just don't get it, man.
Starting point is 00:41:56 Ken Paxton is like the young guy there. So I don't know. Yeah. You know, speaking of the elections and the polls and how much bullshit they are, I think it's so funny. They've kind of exposed how fake polls are because they rely more now on Kalshi and Polly Market than they do on actual like, hey, we're going to call the boomers on their landlines and see who they're going to vote for. when anybody can put money into a race and that swings like you could throw $100 into the Nancy Mace race on Nancy Mace right now on Polymarket and she would probably become the favorite because she'd have the most money behind her it's it's completely fabricated and fake it's just whoever has the most money and wants to throw it on a candidate you can completely alter the market yeah but I mean it's reflecting the same thing which is to the extent that polls are real at all and I mean I met Mark mitchell from Rasmussen at CPAC in 2023 Yeah, I interviewed about a show once. Okay.
Starting point is 00:42:50 So, and asked him about some of the problems with polling. And like, they know that it's not really possible to assess the thing that they are claiming to assess because they can't actually get a good sample. But either way, even if they were 100% above board and the polls were accurate and reflective of what people actually thought, that would be a reflection of what they saw on the television and what they believed. believed about what they saw. And by television, I also mean the screen in your hand, the screen on your desk. It doesn't matter which screen it comes through. It's all the same mediation and projection of the same story. So when you're shown the same thing all the time, if you believe it, if you're the kind
Starting point is 00:43:35 of person who forms beliefs that way, well, then you're going to reflect what you're being shown and then the polls will actually measure how much the extent to which you are believing the stuff that they are showing you. And so the prediction markets kind of do reflect that same thing. I take your point 100%. I'm just saying this is like this is the more indirect thing that these things actually measure to the extent they measure anything. I feel I feel like you're only taking my point closer like 98, 99%. No, no, 100%. I don't know. I'd have to go to polymarker right now. You'd be at like 98% on how much you're taking my point. And I could start a market if I wanted to on that right now. Well, fair enough. I'll buy the other side just in case I don't know my own intention
Starting point is 00:44:18 and then I can make a lot of money that way. But I will say so the way I see the polls, and everything you said is right. I take what you said at 100% also. But the like with how much they can fabricate reality and like that's what the media is for, it's for the they push narratives that they want people to believe, right? And so if you are willing to watch the mainstream media and believe what they're saying, they will push a fake narrative like, hey, look at the polls. here this is you're going to win and then they just make the outcome reflect that and people will believe it because people can't think for themselves you know what i mean and that's why the biden situation the 2024 election 2020 election as well was so damaging to them because nobody believed any of that
Starting point is 00:45:01 bullshit that biden got 81 million votes by the way did you see uh jill biden this week yes yeah yeah i've never seen biden like that before or since i thought he was having a stroke And then my favorite quote from the whole thing was when she said, I wanted him to have a cognitive test, but his people were like, now we're not going to do that. Why would you not want your guy to take a cognitive test unless he's not cognitively all there? Did you read Trump's post in response to all that? No, but I did read his medical charts. We read it last night. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:45:41 He has got a 30 out of 30. The, uh, in his response, I think it was yesterday in the morning, like early. But he, um, shit, man. I'll see if I can find it. I keep, I keep thinking about too many things at once and then I, I lose the thing. I think, here's what he said. Do you write these things down? No, because we're kind of moving quickly here.
Starting point is 00:46:08 I had a notepad just for this reason. I usually type them into the chat with you and then never send them and delete them and print something else there and I am forgetting the point again just kidding I'm not um the uh it made me think of the auto pen because Trump was like I was the only person uh nobody knows what caused Joe to act that way except I do yeah I did read that that was a great one we got more from Trump already on true social he's rocking him right now huh he is wonder if we can get any boops we should ask her something so we can get a Boop. It talks about E. Jean Carroll accusing seven men in the past of sexually assaulting or
Starting point is 00:46:50 raping her. Not one police report exists of any of these incidents. George Conway and Reed Hoffman found a habitual liar to attack Trump. Wow. Let's see what this video is. That's actually so messed up, honestly. What's that? Just E. Jean Carroll's record of claiming that she was sexually assaulted. I'm a big fan of them. The times does that happen? that's a lot of times but i'm a big fan of like hey we're going to start persecuting people who lie to start case oh it's glum back i don't give a show about i'm back hey you want you want to this is one of my we can just show this really quick this is one of my favorite joe biden moments ever this is our boy blue going as hard as possible i remember that yes so good oh it's amazing and
Starting point is 00:47:43 And because people like us are like, hey, there's something wrong with that, guys. Everybody can see there's something wrong with that, right? Then you get the debunking articles where they're like, no, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's just a camera angle. No, there's something wrong with this. Joe Biden is much bigger than that chair. And Joe Biden is at least three times the size of Jimmy Carter's wife. It's also weird.
Starting point is 00:48:14 So weird. Man, I miss those days, though. We were talking about that the other day. I think Wednesday's power hour. I missed the days of Joe Biden. Those were like, things are just so stressful and crazy right now. I mean, they're still fun. You know, there's still some funny moments.
Starting point is 00:48:28 But the Joe Biden times were just everything was funny. Everything was hilarious. Everything was retarded. Yeah. It was great. I want to see what this video. And we always knew we had better days to look forward to because Trump would be coming back. And now, now there's nothing.
Starting point is 00:48:44 It's just a black void in front of us, knowing that Trump is not coming back again, even though he's here right now and probably will come back. You know, it's like Andy from the office says, don't you wish you knew we were in the good old days as they were happening? It's a quote like that. That's it right now. Or was that the Biden years? We don't know. But I want to watch this video because it's 24 seconds.
Starting point is 00:49:10 so it's 17 plus 7 and there's one two three four five six it looks like seven planes in here so i don't know something's going on it's not going to load for me it only does it when you click into that actual posts i've noticed that on truth social oh more than yeah so it's just some plane do they normally have v2 bombers flying with the air force one Hard to say. I'm not, it's not my area of expertise, but I think the answer is probably no.
Starting point is 00:50:14 I don't know why you'd even say that if it's not your area of expertise, but you had another, what did you think? I said, I'm just guessing. Okay, you have another video. We have two more videos. Three.
Starting point is 00:50:24 Three more of it. Holy shit, we have so many videos. They're all short, though. That's okay. That's in Texas, desperately trying. That's what Eugene Carroll said. to seize defeat from the jaws of victory. Well, Texas is always fascinating.
Starting point is 00:50:41 It's not least because you think about the last 60 or 70 years, when John Tower won LBJ seat in 1961, it was a signal of what was about to happen over the next couple of decades in Southern Republican politics, first Republicans since reconstruction with John Tower, which encouraged people like a young George H.W. Bush to challenge Ralph Yarborough in 1960. begin to make the state a little more competitive.
Starting point is 00:51:09 And you wonder, even in this deeply polarized world, whether a nomination like Paxon begins to put the country, begins to put Texas and parts of the country back in the beginning of a post-Trump place. To me, it doesn't look healthy, but go ahead, John. But the central, central question is, of the last 11 years, will we know in 2028, whether this has been the age of Trump, which is indisputably, it's historically, or is it the age of Trumpism? And that test begins this fall.
Starting point is 00:51:45 I've said it for years now. He's cogent. But I undersold him when I said he was cogent. He's far beyond cogent. In fact, I think he's better than he's ever been. Love that, man. That's not really. interesting is at the age of Trump or the age of Trumpism.
Starting point is 00:52:07 Yeah. So and Trumpism, Trumpism would be that that the MAGA movement and all that continues on after him and they think maybe they're going to stomp that out and it looks like
Starting point is 00:52:21 that's what the attempt is from people like Marjorie Taylor Green and Thomas Massey and then on the other side people like Roe Kana and you can kind of see that whole thing wanting to form back together. And And that would make complete and total sense if you're joining the kind of the more blatant, great resetters and the people downstream from them.
Starting point is 00:52:42 And then the tech oligarchy on the other side and the Unip Party right establishment who kind of came together behind Donald Trump in 2024. And then you've got like some of the Maha people who, again, just got on the Trump train because they couldn't deal with the social consequences of voting for Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. But that's the sort of way you could see things coming back together. They're going to say, hey, we've got all that popular stuff you guys liked. We got that covered in our little unity movement. And we're just going to keep winning elections.
Starting point is 00:53:15 And the system keeps churning. So I could totally see that. You know, this may make a good guard panel, like age of Trump versus age of Trumpism. Because I do see a lot of people in the movement too who like, it's the cheerleaders versus the doomers. And what is it in between? what are we actually trying to do to see a lot of cheerleaders who for them it's like it is only the age of trump nothing else after trump matters like they can't they can't think that way um that could be interesting yeah but okay next video um yeah well before that yeah uh what i'm gonna pull up the uh
Starting point is 00:53:52 the one about trump talking about the midterms this week okay i know you guys kind of talked about that the other day but i i took this i think in a slightly different way than than some other people did. I think this is actually a very revealing statement. And pairing this with the one big beautiful bill thing. Yeah. And his talk about staying longer, I think makes sense. Let's go ahead and listen to this.
Starting point is 00:54:19 And then we can. Okay. In free fall, they have 250% inflation. Their money has no value. their whole economic system is broken down. They thought they were going to outweigh me, you know. We'll outweigh him. He's got the midterms.
Starting point is 00:54:38 I don't care about the midterms. Look what happened last night. That was the prelude to the midterms. People understand it. They know that very simple. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I'm doing that for the world. I'm not doing it just for us.
Starting point is 00:54:53 So he doesn't care about the midterms. He's talking about the Paxton victory as the big deal. Now, Paxton has, part of Ken Paxton's main story is that he has defeated the Bush legacy in Texas. He has defeated George Prescott Bush, I think it was for AG the last time. And Trump has gone after the Bush thing all across the country. And so much of the neocom movement on the unit party right in the region. Republican Party is downstream from George H.W. Bush and then continued by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and then, you know, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and the rest of the guys that he had around
Starting point is 00:55:40 him. And then we still see kind of the downstream effects with the neocons today. But you have two sides of the unit party in Texas. And if one side of the unit party, if the Republican side of the unit party is legitimately defeated in Paxson is in there and we're still pushing forward with these elections, are they going to have to try to tell us that they're going to try to have to sell James Tala Rico as winning in Texas? And now all of a sudden, he has a girlfriend and he eats meat right off the bone. Like the guy is such a, like, for me, obvious character. Oh, yeah. And are they going to be able to do that? And if they can't, does that mean that the Unip Party is just done in Texas.
Starting point is 00:56:27 I doubt it. If that's the case, then we're potentially moving into a different world. If you think about the possibility that Trump would have to chip away at these things over many cycles, and I, you know, the elections are fake and fine. But he's putting out front like, here, look at this. You don't even have your uniparty dynamic anymore because they do need the uniparty dynamic on both sides to make it work unless they can really sell people that an election was won. And man, I don't know how they do that with, with Tala Rico over Paxton in Texas.
Starting point is 00:57:06 This doesn't make sense. But it comes down to like, how many times have we come across a candidate who we're like, yeah, this guy's, he's finally one of us. Like he's not uniparty, he's going to do what you want. He's great. And then he gets in there. And he's no different and no better than anybody else. And so like with Ken Paxson, he says a lot of right things. He's done a lot of cool things.
Starting point is 00:57:26 He's been a solid AG that the enemy establishment does seem to hate him. But it also makes sense that they would probably have characters out there that they frame as like their enemy to so that they can be propped up by our side. So I don't know if he's one of those guys. And Tal RICO is it's funny. They're calling him a tranny. I think Trump himself has been like he's a tranny, but he's, I don't know if he is. But his girlfriend met, he met his girlfriend at a gay bar. and she's a vegan.
Starting point is 00:57:52 That's like the big attack they're using against him right now. Yeah. Yeah. And all of that seems very silly. Yeah. As far as Paxton goes, I mean, he was the guy that brought the lawsuit after the 2020 election, you know, the states challenging the results of elections in other states. And we were told that that was dismissed and went nowhere.
Starting point is 00:58:14 Well, there's a lot of things from that period that we still kind of leave open questions. And I don't know if that's one of them for you, but it certainly is for me. And, you know, I can totally get down with what you're saying about Paxton. And maybe that's maybe that's true. Maybe that's the right take ultimately. And we'll find out hopefully this fall. But I hold out hope that there's something else going on there because Trump, I think when he makes a comment like that in that cabinet meeting where he says, I don't care about the midterms, well, of course he doesn't. What he needed to prove is already proven.
Starting point is 00:58:48 And, you know, I hope that the midterms are canceled. But, yeah, I found that powerful. Are you on the Paxton rug? Did we finally find a rug you're on? No, no. I like Ken Paxton, but I assume the story's going to play out however it plays out. So I'm not, I'm just trying to figure out what the hell's going on in a bigger picture way. Yeah, no, you're making good points.
Starting point is 00:59:13 When it comes to the 2020 election stuff, a lot of those lawsuits, were designed to fail. Like they weren't written good. And that's like one of those, was it, was that on purpose because Trump wanted it that way? Or was that on purpose to sabotage Trump by people who weren't actually trying to help fight the election stuff? Like how many times have we seen people who claim to be out there fighting for election integrity and election stuff? And they all end up being ops and they're none of them are good people. We don't know if that's Kempax.
Starting point is 00:59:39 And again, again, I guess I'm just kind of playing devil's advocate here because sometimes I feel like my role is to center people with their, you know, beliefs of one side. or the other with anybody. I personally like Ken Paxton. Had you made an argument on the other side of it, I probably would have made the argument you made. But it's, I don't know, we'll see what happens. I think you're making a good point, though, is this a race where they're kind of screwed,
Starting point is 01:00:03 kind of like they were with Trump? Like you either expose your election fraud or you lose, you lose Texas. But then they just move into, I think you said this on a power hour a couple weeks ago with Spencer Pratt. Okay, he's good, he's well-intentioned. He gets in there.
Starting point is 01:00:16 Is that another situation where he could, expose election fraud but then he's up against the full weight and force of everything the establishment all the levers of power they can throw at him and nothing really happens you know so i guess we'll see yeah we'll see um let's let's quickly watch this one and then then we'll get to the last one they said he won't be able to do that there's no way he's going to be able to do that in his first term which is my first term of numerous terms by the way you know we're a three-term president we just don't want the results we don't want We won three times, but we only want the results of the first and the third.
Starting point is 01:01:02 We have a hat. The hat says four more years. It drives the radical left lunatics crazy. I love that clip. I love when he talks like that. Yeah. And one of the funniest things is that the mainstream media thinks that when Trump's supporters act this way and talk about him staying longer and the rest of it, it's an act of
Starting point is 01:01:23 stupidity. They don't understand that Trump is doing. all these really bad things. And it doesn't seem like they're ever going to figure out that Trump supporters are like, no, you are the morons. You don't understand what he is doing at all. And if you do understand what he is doing, all of these moves make total sense and the plan is progressing all the time. And I don't even mean the QP plan. I just mean the way I think of it in terms of forcing the government to revert to something closer to the constitutional form. And we'll get into some of the court cases a bit, which is the same thing.
Starting point is 01:02:02 I mean, I think that that's what he's trying to do and actually take the country back for the people. I take him at his word on that stuff. Is he doing that? Yes, he's doing that. I want to play this clip. It's the old compilation I put together. But when Trump in that video you just showed said, you know, this is our third term, but I don't want the results of that second term.
Starting point is 01:02:21 He said that before, and it was back in like 2023, 2024, but I had strung together a few different clips like that. That's because you know me. I didn't take a salary. I worked my ass off. And we did a phenomenal job. We did a phenomenal job for this country. But for the first time ever, I never thought they indict their political opponent. And what that does is it sets off a.
Starting point is 01:02:51 A chain of events that's very dangerous in future years. It could happen to them very easily. The reason Crooked Joe and his thugs are trying so hard to stop me is that in my first term, I disrupted all of it. Oh, did I disrupt? That was called major disruption. And in my second term, which was sort of having now,
Starting point is 01:03:13 but I don't want the results, right? I don't want the results of this second term. This second term is a disaster for this country. Worst president, think of it, There's never been a president like this. I say that. I thought that was the compilation one, but it's still,
Starting point is 01:03:27 you get the point. That was back before the 2024 election. So a very similar wording from Trump. Love it. And that speech that we just showed and this clip as well is from a speech last week in Suffern New York.
Starting point is 01:03:40 So, I don't know, eight, nine days ago. And by voting against the great big, beautiful bill, one of the greatest pieces of legislation, probably the biggest ever passed because we put everything in four years. That was my idea.
Starting point is 01:03:52 I said, let's add everything because these people are crazy. We might not get another chance at it. We added everything into that. That's four years worth of legislation. That's why we caught the great, big, beautiful bill. Love that clip. You riff on Exx. I know you have a good point.
Starting point is 01:04:06 We're probably going to make the same point. Yeah, I just, if you're getting all the money that you need to do the things that you need to do in the person of Donald Trump in that one piece of legislation that he was able to push through and force everyone to recognize. recognized as legitimate. He's like, this is the only thing I need. Well, it's proof that he has no interest in the Congress. He's not working with the Congress. He doesn't care about the makeup of the Congress, which means he doesn't care about the midterms. Why is all of that true? Because elections are fake because the Congress is illegitimate. And I know still, even with this stuff, people will be like, oh, I can't believe that. Trump's just like shooting from the hip and improvising and saying dumb shit. Like, we can see that the Congress is still there and still doing this. their jobs and we got you know Thomas Massey and blah. Yeah, when he says, I don't care about the midterms and then proceeds to like a couple days later say we did a four, like all everything we needed in four years, we did in this one
Starting point is 01:05:08 bill because Congress is ineffective. They suck. So everything else is an op and he truly doesn't care about the midterms because if he loses, he already got everything you needed it. Right. I did see he signed two other bills into law. I think that was, was that. Just the other day.
Starting point is 01:05:24 I wonder what they were. He signed one bill where he authorized the increase of their retirement age, the members of the Capitol Police. And then he signed the Medal of Sacrifice Act of 2025, which establishes the Medal of Sacrifice to honor certain eligible law enforcement officers and first responders who are killed in the line of duty. So super, I mean, that, you know, obviously you want to pay respect for people who are killed line of duty but in terms of meaningful change that congress is making on the country
Starting point is 01:05:57 those are the types of bills that are not being signed into law but um i think we should do a quick little commercial breaks we got a couple more sponsors we got to get to and then we can come back and talk where did i put here it is we'll come back and talk about everything we just showed you has been setting up how trump might already be a lame duck according to jonathan lemur and michael scherer of the Atlantic we'll pick through some of that article a little bit uh but sponsors we have a couple more we have rumble wallet first let me get this pulled up here one second all right here we go we hear a lot about crypto but here's the part most people miss crypto was created so you could actually own and control your money after the 2008 financial crisis bitcoin was designed as an
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Starting point is 01:07:57 I am a Kung Fu master. Where do you not respect me? You want to fight me? I will fight you to your death. Do you want to tame the mane that is your ugly beard? Do you want your beard to feel silky smooth? You want to make it illustrious like my Kung Fu beard? Then you need. Soft disclosure.
Starting point is 01:08:42 Beard oil. Softdisclosure.com promo code that learns. A soft disclosure on your beard, mini lady come to you. Softdisclosure.com. Just to address a couple comments in the chat, I'm seeing people who are upset. They can't rewind. That's probably our bad. I think when you create the show on Rumble, there's a little box you click.
Starting point is 01:09:24 And I think we probably accidentally clicked or didn't click that box, whatever, whichever one it is. And so after the show's over, you'll be able to. to rewind, but you can also go over to YouTube, and I'll post that link in here right now. And you can watch over there, which you guys should all just go click into there and hit the thumbs up anyway. You wouldn't mind helping us out. That does help with the analytics over there. But all right, let's get into this man.
Starting point is 01:09:53 Trump might already be a lame duck. Victory's first candidates and GOP primaries could serve to hasten the president's political decline. President Trump has never really cared about the Republican Party, per se. He basks in its adulation and it's beneficial to him when the GOP controls Congress. I disagree with that, considering how little they actually get done for him. But he's never adhered to its orthodoxies or honored its heroes. Neither has he been willing to brook internal dissent in the name of the party's big tent. He demands absolute fealty, but displays little loyalty. He can't help obsessing over. his personal priorities such as his proposed ballroom or his retribution campaign against perceived
Starting point is 01:10:36 tormentors to the detriment of his party's political interests on ballots donald trump mega would be more accurate than donald trump republican both would be fake either way vicious slam here they are just taking it to him he doesn't like republicans yeah they're they're just i mean this is all narrative seating for the fall They just want to make sure that everybody knows real Republicans don't like Donald Trump. For the 10th year in a row, this article is out. And who reads The Atlantic? I'm assuming it's mostly establishment left-leaning people.
Starting point is 01:11:17 That's right. Like no mega people read this. So I don't know who their target audiences with this. Like the people who read the bulwark, the people who wanted to go out and campaign for Mickey Haley, that's who the target market is. Yeah, and the reason we're reading it, by the way, is because a lot of what's going on right now is PSIOPs, right? The military spending $340 million on PSIOPs this next year. And we're combating that by pointing them out in these articles, which we'll get to that a little bit later.
Starting point is 01:11:51 With little more than five months to the midterms, that divergence between what Trump thinks is good for Trump and what is good for the Republican Party has never been wider. This was so silly that they think Trump gives a shit about the Republican Party. Yeah. I don't know why they, I guess that's what they're trying to pretend. But. Well, yeah. And they have to pretend that because if that's not the case, then the election narrative doesn't work. If it, if it doesn't matter to the president, whether or not the House and the Senate have majorities aligned with his party, the whole thing falls apart.
Starting point is 01:12:29 like all of this is contingent on all the rest of it. Yeah. Trump's priorities appear in many ways to be hurting the GOP's chances in November when it already faces stiff odds of keeping control of Congress. And this is funny because I don't know, I see odds all over the map. I see some places saying it's going to be a red wave. Some people say it's going to be a blue wave. They can't get their story straight,
Starting point is 01:12:54 which is probably because nobody knows what the hell is going on. The war he started with Iran put Americans' economic struggles front and center when the price of gasoline jumped. Any semblance of a national legislative agenda has evaporated as he pushes long-shot bills that his own party declines to take forward. That's funny. I think he does that intentionally. We've talked about that before when he attaches. What do we talk about with the Save America Act? No transgender for everyone. Yep. No trannies or mutilization. Yep.
Starting point is 01:13:27 His obsession with construction in and around Washington, D.C., it is safe to say, doesn't suggest a chief executive focused on the problems of everyday citizens. I'm going to read this last paragraph. And if I'm being totally honest, the first time I read through this, this is as far as I got because I didn't do the archived link. And that's all it would allow me to. So if there's anything beyond this, and you have highlights for, we'll go through your highlights. Okay.
Starting point is 01:13:53 Meanwhile, Trump is wielded his clout inside the party like a broadsword, endorsing primary opponents and races against incumbent to defy him. Trump has a perfect endorsement record this year, all 118 candidates for House Senate and governor's races. He has backed in primaries have won, according to a Fox News count, though many of these races were not really contested. So it's not that impressive. Even though Trump's power over his party appears at its pinnacle, many Republicans believe that the president has actually accelerated his own political decline. many of those primary winners may struggle in November, darkening the GOP's prospects for keeping control of Congress, and at least some of the defeated incumbents who will serve on Capitol Hill until next January, now feel liberated to push back on what they dislike in Trump's agenda.
Starting point is 01:14:36 Others in the Senate who are not up for re-election are bitter about the president's role in their colleagues' defeat, and have shown little interest in helping to pursue his personal grievance campaign. And this is, I love how they frame this as like, it's Trump's fault. Trump can't get his agenda passed, yet where was it before these primaries? Because none of it was past the way Trump said he wanted it in in the first place. So, but now it's Trump's fault because he primaryed them. Yeah. And what sort of logic would tell these people that the establishment Republicans
Starting point is 01:15:09 in the House and the Senate who feel, uh, insulted by Donald Trump, having them work against Trump is going to make Republican voters want to go out and elect the Republican establishment? Even though Trump can dominate in the primaries, like, that doesn't make any sense. This is totally convoluted. These people, these. So I think that they just run the same program over and over and over again, every single election cycle.
Starting point is 01:15:40 They tell the same stories. They analyze everything in the same ways. They have the same ups and downs that, like the, they want to take. you through the emotional journey. You got to hit all the different story beats. This is going to be the story of this election cycle. Affordability, for instance, is one of them. And they're pushing on the ICE protests.
Starting point is 01:15:58 So the immigration thing. They always do the same stories over and over again. This stuff is just a flop at this point. Because the underlying substance just isn't there. And when Trump, if Trump pulls back from this and says he doesn't care about any of this stuff, how are they going to run this? Who's going to take this seriously? That's true. Well, they will. And they'll use that as an excuse for why they lost.
Starting point is 01:16:22 And is Trump already seating the midterm losses, whatever that even means, by saying he doesn't care? He keeps endorsing people and telling people to go out and participate in the midterm. So he says both things. And I think that that's why we're getting, you just mentioned a minute ago that like some in some places you see that the Republicans are going to have a red wave. In some places you see the Democrats are going to have a red wave. And they have to track both of those. totally incompatible stories all the way through the election cycle and present it so that either way has to make sense because they don't know what the results are going to be it's I think it's amazing this is discombobulator stuff as far as I'm concerned hell yeah master and commander yeah I have more
Starting point is 01:17:09 do you have highlights oh no I didn't highlight this one I highlighted the I think this this next paragraph is good I can already tell yes that's what I was going what happens the problem is he has nobody around him who is willing to tell him sir the stuff you are talking about is not possible and you are shooting yourself in the foot every time i wish they would have said shooting yourself in the ear every time that would have been more funny one republican senate advisor told us he essentially has lame duct himself in pursuit of retribution and either the staff has failed to make a reasonable argument against these actions or they have told him this and he is no longer listening either way the party loses so no one is a no one around trump is willing to tell him
Starting point is 01:17:55 this important truth just like this republican senate advisor is not willing to tell us his name i mean true these people are unbelievable what wasn't maybe this is a staffer that got caught boinkin ben Shapiro in the senate chambers i didn't know that happened you don't remember that story Ben Shapiro? Oh, no, but that does a joke. Oh. I definitely remember the gay staffer pictures thing. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:18:30 Yeah. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah. I look like Ben Shapiro? Kind of. Oh, okay. If I could find the, I think this is the story. There's one story with a bunch of pictures,
Starting point is 01:18:47 and one of them with a blurred out picture looked like Ben Shapiro. hence the joke i'll see if i can find it well i guess is there anything else you want to read from this now we can we can move on i mean yeah let's move on okay got our court cases to talk about we still have we made it through like two of our subjects i mean that definitely looks like the back of bench piero's head right i don't know it's always covered yeah that's true that's true it's not him because it doesn't have the whatever it's called on on the back oh that's funny Let's get into real quick. Let's do this.
Starting point is 01:19:24 The new proposed NDAA for 2027, which I'm not mistaken, both Trump and the military are asking for $1.5 trillion. Because who gives a shit about the deficit and the debt? It doesn't matter. We're getting a new Trump $250 bill. We'll just drop a bunch of those on our defense spending. But the big thing people are freaking out about in this is Section 2.2. 24. Let me get down to the right spot here.
Starting point is 01:19:54 Section 224, this, oops, yeah, this section would require the Secretary of Defense to designate an executive agent responsible for synchronizing cooperative efforts between the United States and Israel, including bilateral defense technology, research, development, testing, evaluation, integration and industrial cooperation. A lot of the framing of this, and I actually have a picture, I forgot to pull it up, but there's a picture of a tweet. He deleted the tweet, and I wonder if this is why. But the first bullet point was full merger, U.S. and Israeli forces operate as one closer than NATO. And that's the framing everybody's going with. It's like the United States and Israel, they're just going to be like one force moving forward.
Starting point is 01:20:46 But that's not at all what this is. It's really the only reason I want to go through it really quick, because what it is is like our military has a whole bunch of technology and Israel has a whole bunch of technology. And we want to merge the technologies, which we're already doing anyway. So I don't understand the big deal. Like we're doing this anyway.
Starting point is 01:21:09 We're going to be doing it anyway. We're not actually combining forces. And by the way, I'm no sim for the Jews. So don't get it twisted, but I am a sim for the truth. And people are, there seems to be an op around this a little bit. Sim for the truth is great. Yeah, I just, I think my first reaction to this yesterday was that sounds like disclosure. This situation already exists.
Starting point is 01:21:35 The idea that we're not like, first of all, so much of our intelligence comes from Israeli intelligence. When we hear these stories about where Iran has things stationed, especially in the those first couple weeks of the war, all of that stuff was coming from Israeli intelligence. So much of what we hear is going on in the world. Like have a Fox News reporting, probably all of Fox News reporting is Israeli intelligence. So if we're operating on Israeli intelligence and we're sharing intelligence and we are sharing the same defense manufacturing base and the same like defense industrial companies like Palantir, for instance, what?
Starting point is 01:22:16 does this change? If anything, like the op that's happening right now where everybody's getting pissed off about it and maybe they stopped doing it because of that, maybe that changes a little bit. But really, like, yeah, we use all of, the only thing Israeli intelligence doesn't have access to is Iran's go-card plans. Like, that's the only thing they can't seem to figure out is when they're going to launch those attacks. But otherwise, they're like freaking everywhere.
Starting point is 01:22:42 The GoCart thing, man, Victoria Newland and Mike Pompeo debate, they did one of those monk debates. There's like this organization in Canada that hosts these debates. And so they debated John Meersheimer and Stephen Wall. And it was really incredible because all of them are pretty middle of the road, globalist, like interventionist normies. and you've got the realists, Mearsheimer and Walt, who, to be fair, gave a much better side of the debate than Newland and Pompeo did. But all of them just kind of accept all the stories about all these conflicts and about all of geopolitics as told in the mainstream media.
Starting point is 01:23:31 And by the military industrial complex as well, I don't know where people think all this information is coming from. I don't understand how anyone could believe that when we get the reporting about all of this stuff, it's from like a reporter deeply committed to the truth. This star journalist has figured out exactly what's going on in the military or going on in some hotspot around the world. That's not what it is. It's think tanks and intel organizations just laundering information to everyone. And then we just believe it and then act as though it's true even though we know well It can't be entirely true we know it definitely can't be entirely true
Starting point is 01:24:16 But it's the best that we can get so we're gonna pretend it's entirely true and then we're gonna have Conversations as though it is entirely true and then we're gonna make big decisions like yes we support the bombing and killing them 50,000 people over there and another 20,000 over there we got to bomb this and nuke that we got to build this thing to stop those guys it's like you don't know any of this shit do you think that's a like a generational thing like because all those people on that stage are boomers and beyond and I think the younger generations who are grown up with technology and like more familiar with AI and all those things they're more apt and quick to question things they've also had it a lot rougher and so they're like pissed off and they have a more I don't know like their their worldview is just much more like
Starting point is 01:25:05 scorned I would say like the government sucks everything sucks like we were promised all these things and none of it's true you're all liars where the boomers and like the mainstream media like that's all just we're gonna trust what this person says because that person said it and that person has a degree and that person is works for this organization that's super trustworthy so all of these stories coming from those sources are 100% true but they're they will never like I think that divide until the boomers die off no offense to any boomers watching we love you but until like that that'll never go away because that's a generational thing well there's
Starting point is 01:25:39 definitely a generational aspect to it but you don't have to be of any particular age to solve the epistemological problem or to be infected by that mental disorder that has been conditioned into us to believe bullshit from authority and you know as based in red pill as the younger generation might be, you know, one of their, one of their, uh, burning bright would say cognitive ciphers. One of the ways that they determine whether or not something is true is just reflecting whether or not it's saying something bad about Israel because they think if someone's saying something bad about Israel, well, then it's got to be true. And this is no defense of Israel.
Starting point is 01:26:18 Israel does plenty of bad things and probably shouldn't exist in the first place. And it's certainly not the biblical Israel. Okay. So I'll say whatever things. But Jesus was a Jew, Chris. Oh yes. That also is incorrect. The word in the Bible is Judean. That's not the same thing. So anyhow, I think it's an epistemological problem with how people come to form beliefs. They will read, I was just thinking as you were going through some of that, the bill there, that like Marjorie Taylor Green comes out and she yells about this thing, joining the chorus.
Starting point is 01:26:57 Like, oh, we discovered that the United States is merging with Israel. And it's Trump's fault. He's the one who wrote this in this congressional piece of legislation. And obviously he's got nothing to do with that. But the fact that she says that's the correct interpretation of this legislation. Now, you're presenting a different interpretation based on reading it. Now, I doubt Marjorie Taylor Green read it because she's on vacation with Thomas Massey and the guy from RSBN down in the Caribbean somewhere and no longer in Congress. So why is she reading it?
Starting point is 01:27:28 I don't know. But she has an opinion about it. And because she was in Congress, that means she's in a position better than you to know what the bill that she didn't read and you did says. And so when people are forming beliefs that way because they see people they trust on Twitter telling them things, like that's not ahead in any way of boomers who are watching Fox News and believing it because Sean Hannity says. Those are the exact same things. And so there's people, there's like based in Redfield 22-year-olds who believe the same bullshit. Yeah. And this is the post that she, that you're talking about.
Starting point is 01:28:07 Section 224 of the 27 NDAA National Defense Authorization Act integrates the U.S. military with the Israeli military. This is what complete capture to a foreign government looks like. And there hasn't been a single shot fired. And this is the story that's making the rounds with what all but fuse. the two countries armed forces together. Again, I find myself having to do this a lot with a lot of these bills that come out. It's like, okay, this is the story being pushed. I'm going to read it.
Starting point is 01:28:35 Let's see if it actually says that. And it never ever actually says the thing that they want. It's all enough. And Roger Taylor Green has definitely been positioned as like the now everything she has to do and say is against Trump. Everything that happens in the world is always like, I'm going to turn this into an anti-Trump story. This is another example.
Starting point is 01:28:54 But I think you're right. Like even Thomas Massey going against this and other things probably hasn't actually read it. And it's a short section, guys, you can all go read it. It does, yeah, like our military and research and all these things, we're going to be doing those together. We already do them together. This is no different than what we do with any of our allies. So the fact that it's in here, like one of two options like we said before, and it's probably the one where it's like, yeah, exposure on this. Exposure, putting in a bill something that's already being like being the case.
Starting point is 01:29:25 it's probably more of an exposure off than anything so i think you're right about that and what what would it mean to be closer than nato like what what's our deal with nato we supply all the troops we supply all the um the direction as we talked about last week of the forces we supply all the money and then we come to the defense of all those countries that are unable to defend themselves so if we had that same relationship with israel that would be a bad thing i get it except we have had that relationship relationship with Israel for the entire time that Israel has existed. So again, what's different? And if that wasn't the case, if we had no connection to Israeli's military or to Israel's
Starting point is 01:30:07 military and we were all sovereign countries acting on our own and something like this came up, I would have the same opinion as people and be like, hey, now we can't do that. But we're already doing that shit. So there's no point in getting upset that we're discovering we're doing it. right there's no point in in putting the blame on this thing but it still does make sense on some level to like chimp out a little bit just chimp out about the right thing yeah also speaking of nato uh in the bill there's a part in here where they try to make it more difficult for trump to withdraw troops not only from nato but also from south korea they have a section in here
Starting point is 01:30:48 where you can use the it would add to the certification requirement in cases involving the withdrawal of members of the armed forces or department of defense equipment from countries within the area of responsible of the u.s european command an assessment that repositioning such personnel or equipment to nato's eastern flank was not feasible so they have to like justify why they would be with drawing troops where's the career part that was the nato one and let me find the career one that that's really something because we've talked about that you know the pullout method yeah um this section would extend to the The prohibition of funds related to oversight of United States military posture and Korean Peninsula. Amounts authorized to be appropriated by this act may not be obligated or expended.
Starting point is 01:31:39 I know there's a part in here we're talked about withdrawing troops. I mean, it's just interesting to hear that that's still ongoing because, you know, I brought that up early on in the Iran thing when we were hearing that we were running out of ammo, how we were shipping some in from South Korea, proxy state known as South Korea. I wonder if this is it. Section 1268. Let me look this up quick because this must be the one where it's like you cannot use funds
Starting point is 01:32:14 to lower the number of troops that are there. Just like you can't use funds to lower the number of nukes that are there. prohibits the administration from using funds to reduce military forces on the Korean Peninsula without congressional notification. So they extended that again. That's what it is. So it was in last year's NDAA and they're putting it again in this one. So yeah, they're trying to affect Trump's withdrawal.
Starting point is 01:32:41 And the last one we should talk about here real quick in this bill is SIOPs. We've talked about SIOPs so many times. There's a section here where we are raising the amount of money that we're putting towards SIOPS, $340 million. This is in thousands. So $340, $609 million. And there's a sub item here that says AI-based I-O agentic assessment. And when I type that into AI to learn what it was,
Starting point is 01:33:14 its best guess was, let me pull this up here. It probably means an AI-powered assessment of information operations using autonomous AI agents to analyze narratives, influence activity messaging networks or threats. In plain English, we use AI agents to analyze information environment and assess what narrative actors, risk, opportunities, influence patterns, or manipulation campaigns are happening. And so they probably also use AI to actually conduct a lot of these siops. And so now they're overseeing the AI to see how their AI sciops are working against each other. Really silly, but it's in there.
Starting point is 01:33:54 Sops $340 million. Eventually, it's just going to be the machine talking to the machine about what the machine is doing. I feel like it already is that, though. Kind of. Yeah, especially the dead internet theory and whatnot. That's interesting stuff. I know we talked about it last night. We don't have to get back into it.
Starting point is 01:34:14 Yeah, it is. Oh, weren't we going to talk paper terrorism? Did you still want to do that? Nah, I mean, I looked up a little bit more of it. I don't know, man. I think maybe I kind of overstated the case on some of it. I thought I was going to be able to find a bunch of examples, and I haven't been able to nail down good examples. And without the examples, I don't feel a need to, like, pursue it on the show.
Starting point is 01:34:35 Although, I'll check into it again this week. Okay. Well, then let's move into kind of the last two items here, I think. We have two of Trump's big cases, the IRS lawsuit. and then we have the Kennedy Center situation. And there are two rulings this week that actually like just the last like 48 hours, I think that that kind of go against Trump a little bit. Judge reopens Trump's IRS suit and questions his weaponization fund.
Starting point is 01:35:10 We talked about this on last week's power hour. So it's fitting we talked about it again right now. The ruling was a blow to both President Trump who had to voluntarily dismiss the suit last week into the Justice Department, which used the suit to establish a fund likely intended for Trump allies. Federal Judge Miami reopened his $10 billion case against the IRS in a striking turnabout saying that she wanted to investigate the grievous allegations that the hasty deal to resolve it was premised on deception. And if I'm not mistaken, the case was originally agreed to and she's like, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, the ruling by judge on Friday to revive
Starting point is 01:35:49 the case shortly after closing it was a big blow to Trump who had voluntarily dismissed the suit last week and to the Justice Department. After the president withdrew the suit, senior department officials released a pair of extraordinary agreements that settled the case by establishing a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who claimed they were victims of the government. Also conferred lucrative tax benefits on Mr. Trump, his family, and his businesses. And then the response came that she wants to dig into the details of the agreement to settle it. And I don't know if there's anything else you want me to point out. Later on it says that she asserted that she was empowered to investigate serious misconduct in any case before her and ordered Mr. Trump's lawyers to tell her by June 12th whether the lawsuit should be formally reopened because the court was the victim of a fraud.
Starting point is 01:36:40 So this can be interesting. Yeah. The fraud would be that the case was. for the purpose of getting this settlement in order for Trump to cover his tracks with the IRS and that the DOJ could settle with Trump on the government's behalf. And so I was thinking about this. And I was like, that kind of sounds like something that we heard about in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
Starting point is 01:37:13 And I'm not thinking of the guy's name right now. If Cancons in the chat, he'll know it immediately. but he's an attorney out of Kansas, I think. And he did, he was handling the man, I think his name is Jesse, the truck driver who went from Bethpage, New York to Lancaster, Pennsylvania with the ballots in the truck. And then the trailer by the morning had disappeared. And he did another long press conference about the influence of Facebook and CTCL and some of the rest of it into the election. And one of the things that he had focused on at one point was that they would have what they call like friendly lawsuits where one party would sue the other party so that the the resolution of their case would provide like a binding legal mechanism to change the system in ways that legislation and regulation could not or would not or had not change the system. And then the other aspect of that was like a consent decree, like the one signed between Brad
Starting point is 01:38:19 Raffensberger and Stacey Abrams. So with a consent decree, the court kind of weighs in and approves like, yes, this is okay. And so then you've got the imprimatur of the court on that. And then that basically becomes law, even though it wasn't legislated and didn't go through the rest of the proper process. So the court is kind of like this tool for legitimization. If you can bring up a case and then have it settled in a, an appropriate way because the two parties agree to settle it that way.
Starting point is 01:38:48 And so the claim here is that that sort of thing is going on that the two parties, Trump and the DOJ colluded to protect Trump from the IRS. And that's what happened with all this. But that doesn't explain the $1.8 billion or Trump asking for $10 billion and this settlement is still coming. So, I mean, there's surely more to this than that, but that's what kind of perks my ear. I think you're talking about Phil Klein, if I'm not mistaken. Phil Klein is exactly what I'm talking about, yes.
Starting point is 01:39:19 Yeah, Phil Klein, Jesse Morgan, that whole thing. I still don't know what I even want to think about this case, because when Trump first sued the IRS for this amount of money, I was like, man, $10 billion for that. That seems like that's a little steep. And there's been multiple times where Trump has sued the government while he's in the government. I've been like, I don't know.
Starting point is 01:39:42 I don't know, bro. Don't love this. but let's see what happens. And then they like the optics of this originally were just not great. Like there's no way around that. Like you, you sue the government, you settle with your own DOJ for a huge number,
Starting point is 01:39:56 even though you're not getting that money. It's a, the optics aren't great. It's hard to argue against that stuff. So there might be something bigger going on here. I don't know where it is yet. I haven't had a chance to actually read through her ruling, which I want to do.
Starting point is 01:40:09 And I haven't looked at any of the other case findings in the case. So maybe there's something more interesting in there. But yeah, I mean, the optics of this aren't great. And I think, you know, there are opportunities where Trump will do things because he knows the optics aren't great. Like he'll lean into them. But then at the end of the day, like, however it gets worked out, it's usually something
Starting point is 01:40:27 that is, you know, okay, well, this is probably more in line with what the actual constitution said we were supposed to do. Is the, is a judge allowed to accept a ruling like this? Like a settlement like this? They didn't do it with the Hunter Biden situation where they tried to do a settlement. and the judge was like, well, no, that's not cool. We're going to keep moving forward. They caught them in a lie and kind of a sweetheart deal.
Starting point is 01:40:51 I don't know. Yeah, hard to say on that. One of my big picture theories since, I don't know, 21 or 22 is that one of the purposes of all this legal stuff is to actually force the process to go all the way through because if you get the right kind of case that can force a decision. on particular issues, you can actually end up busting through a bunch of this court precedent and all of these distortions in the system. And I believe that court precedent is a distortion in the system. The Supreme Court is supposed to be deciding cases relative to the Constitution.
Starting point is 01:41:29 They have no requirement whatsoever, aside from tradition, to go along to follow stare decisis and go along with court precedent. And Thomas is kind of starting to start. started talking about some more of that more recently and some of the older precedent stuff that's been around for like Humphrey's executor since I think 1935. These things are being chipped away and the only way that happens in a way that the public understands them is by cases being brought that can get them to that point. And so some of these cases seem like really contrived. And this is one of those and I just that that's my framing for all this stuff.
Starting point is 01:42:12 I think about what constitutional issues can be resolved when this case is seen all the way through to the end. And if those make sense and align with the rest of what Trump's project is, I have to think that there's at least some chance it's happening for that reason. Yeah. One other way to look at this. And I don't know if I'm right about it, obviously, but just some speculation on my part. there's a real possibility that there are people surrounding Trump that are not actually trying to like work to the benefit of Trump right like they're they're actually working against him even though they're pretending to be allies I've always looked at Tom Blanche a little side-eyed because of the Epstein op like originally is Pam Bondi but the way he was handling it was not great I think that was not against Trump and I think the way it was rolled out none of that played well for Trump and it was like Blanche was the guy running it and um the way this article is framed and I'm and you read through it, if this ends up being something that like maybe there was some sort of wrongdoing here
Starting point is 01:43:12 and it tries, they try to pin it on Trump. It was Todd Blanche and Borch Epstein that were kind of at the center of it. Let me read a little bit of this article. Time was running out. President Trump had sued the IRS for $10 billion and a federal judge was pressing the Justice Department to explain how it could muster an
Starting point is 01:43:28 independent defense of the agency against the man who ultimately controlled it. Behind the scenes, the job of addressing the vexing problem of how to settle the suit fell to tight-knit group of lawyers, all of whom had allegiance to Trump. On one side of the talks was a Justice Department run by Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general who once served as Mr. Trump's criminal defense lawyer. On the other were the president's private lawyers, among them Boris Epstein, who was a former
Starting point is 01:43:52 client of Mr. Blanch's. Mr. Epstein played a, am I saying that right, Epstein? Yeah, Boris Epstein. Epstein played a significant role in moving forward the deal to end the suit, coordinating and holding discussions with all of the sides involved. Mr. Trump, the president's personal lawyers and the Justice Department officials, according to multiple people familiar. They were so closely held that some senior White House officials told others that they were blindsided, learning of them only once the agreement was nearly complete.
Starting point is 01:44:19 In the end, the solution did not give Trump what his lawsuit demanded, which was simply to move funds from the Treasury Department into his own pocket. But the agreement that was reached was still a big victory for the president and his allies, the $1.8 billion fund. This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen people who discuss the internal deliberations there's one more part I wanted to read here shoot shoot shoot highlighted it I'll see if I can find it but is any thoughts on that like they're like could this be an op against Trump potentially I think it's great for you to bring that up
Starting point is 01:44:54 and for that to be one of the things that's kind of in the back of our head I mean we're not going to know until more of this comes to light I mean right now it's just a story among other stories but yes I think that that's an important framework we should think about as more of this comes out. Somebody in the chat the other day, and maybe it's the same person who mentioned something close to this tonight, but said that Ken Paxton should be AG with after whatever happens with the fake election in the fall.
Starting point is 01:45:28 Oh, I love that. Yeah. I love that idea. And it's totally like Trump to do that, right? Like Totally. Take somebody out of Congress. At first there was a hope inside the Justice Department that lawyers would respond to the suit with a procedural maneuver to sidestep or delay the case. But that never happened and left Mr. Blanche and his team in a tight spot. They did not want the Justice Department to go into a court fight and fight the suit as it normally would, but also did not want to settle it by paying Mr. Trump directly.
Starting point is 01:45:58 And in the case, by funneling taxpayer money straight to the president struck them as politically untenable. Some department officials even worried that doing so could under a, future Democratic administration, expose them to criminal investigation of conspiracy to defraud the government. And so they're trying for that via the court right now, it seems. Yeah. I mean, that's straight up what they're claiming is that there was collusion to defraud the government and get this money. Yeah. Yeah, interesting.
Starting point is 01:46:27 So we'll see. We'll probably have more on this in the future as things continue to play out. But let's go to this article then. the Kennedy Center ruling that angered Trump. Federal judge ordered the Kennedy Center to take President Trump's name off the building. What happens next? And his ruling President Trump's name must be removed. A federal judge turned his attention to the statute passed by Congress in an honor of the slain president.
Starting point is 01:46:52 It was signed to law in 1964, only two months after Kennedy was assassinated, renamed what was first known as the National Cultural Center, after a leader who had championed the performing arts. the John of Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts designated by this act shall be the sole national memorial to the late John Fitzgerald Kennedy within the city of Washington and its environs and his ruling the judge said
Starting point is 01:47:13 that the president's effort to rebrand the building after himself flew in the face of lawmakers' original intent he ordered that the 18 new letters added to the center's white marble facade which currently reads the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy's, the memorial center for the performing arts be removed see if you would have just put donald trump we could have had a decode there yeah that's true freaking middle initial
Starting point is 01:47:40 you know what are your thoughts on this okay so there were two things i uh i took a look i have not read the whole thing because it's like 94 pages or something but i took a look at the uh the decision itself and one of the things i found interesting in there is that so one of the one of the members of the board of trustees is the person who brought this case and or brought this suit i should say and some of the discussion by the judge who wrote the decision was about the distinction between they the claim was that the defense trump side brought up that trust funds as described in the legislation that created the kennedy center referred only to the private funds and they were distinguishing between the funds that were appropriated by
Starting point is 01:48:31 congress to run things and the private donations so the private donations part of it i thought was interesting because trump has talked about private donations building the ballroom and some of the other beautification projects around washington dc trump talks about how he's paying for those things he even talks about how he was intending to pay for the kennedy center stuff so that was that was one of the things that i found interesting and then the other one is that the kennedy center is is another one of these quasi-governmental institutions that exists as part of our government somehow, but not actually, there's no designation about which part of our government it is. It has to be under the executive branch. So Congress sets this thing up, but they set it up as independent,
Starting point is 01:49:16 as an independent bureau underneath the Smithsonian institution. And so the Smithsonian as well is something the Congress has set up this cultural, cultural institution, but it's not under the executive branch. And that isn't something that they can actually do. So it kind of is under the executive branch, but it's independent. And we've seen that exact scenario being challenged and being overthrown a number of times in the court system. And it seems like this is part of that. I'm of the mind that where once they tell you essentially that independent agencies, like independent agencies can't have this function or this function or this function. And we're going to get there.
Starting point is 01:50:00 We have to get there with the Fed and with a bunch of these other independent agencies. We talked about this a lot last year. But that's the sort of thing. Like Congress can't set up something under the executive and then say that the executive can't control it at all. That doesn't make any sense. And so I think that we're going to have some of the resolution of these sorts of things. Another case, it seems totally contrived, but addresses some significant issues where maybe if this thing actually goes to the end, something productive will happen. And I hope that that's where it is.
Starting point is 01:50:32 That's like just an optimistic take on what this stuff is. As far as Trump losing in court, I don't think either these issues really matters at all. So I mean- It's also not settled yet. Yeah. Right. So the idea that this is like just Trump getting destroyed. by the courts he's doing all these terrible unconstitutional things and the courts are holding them
Starting point is 01:50:51 accountable like that take makes no sense yeah where i'm at with this is like the why why why why does the kennedy center matter like that should be a private our government should have nothing to fucking do with that we should not have any control or or anything over these private small little groups like this and we shouldn't be funding them because i think half that shit is money laundering and we we just funnel so much money into it um by the way that the Kennedy Center's biggest donor ever is Rubenstein, $110 million or something over the course. And he was like the president of the board. That's who Trump fired.
Starting point is 01:51:27 So what were they using that for then? Like what else was it being used for? Because Trump was like, okay, well, that's fine. I'll accept this court's opinion. And then I will make sure that the Kennedy Center is fully back under the Congress where it belongs. And so that I think is the big move. And how can the Congress run the Kennedy Center? That doesn't even make sense.
Starting point is 01:51:52 Like that's not their role. Like what delegated authority does the Congress have to do that? They probably don't. But I think you're on to something potentially of like whose control was under before? What were they doing? And now is this like stripping that away? Also, isn't it being closed down for like two years for renovations? Well, it was supposed to be.
Starting point is 01:52:11 And now they're trying to stay that as well. But I think it's toward the end of that article. it talks about how like all of that's already in process they're getting ready to close it down so and staff has moved on the rest of it so are is the Kennedy center just going to be like this empty building that is eroding and being degraded in washington dc i just i honestly don't care like i don't care either but jfk sucks that he died like he was a great president all those things but like the performing arts center why does our government have anything to do with that i don't think we should yeah i can get on board with that but i also don't mind this sort of thing i i don't
Starting point is 01:52:58 know are you a fan of the performing arts chris i am a fan of the performing arts generally speaking i'm not sure i'm a fan of the kennedy center or the government having a role in it but uh i don't know I mean when Trump goes to other countries, they have cool stuff. And I am not, I'm not totally opposed to our country having cool stuff when other foreign leaders, you know, whatever. We can have cool stuff, but also our government doesn't have to like own it, run it and manage it for it to be cool. Yeah. And we don't need David Rubinstein involved anywhere. No, we do not.
Starting point is 01:53:37 But he's involved everywhere. Like everything historical, that dude. The dude has like, was it the, no, was it a you who said, who shared that clip of like him owning the Hitler's micro penis or something? I don't remember, but we probably made jokes to that effect. We did make lots of jokes to that effect. But no, he owns a copy of the Magna Carta or whatever, like one of the original copies or the original copy. And the National Archives and stuff, like he's, he's an archives guy. there's been a number of different angles when you you bring up broomstein that definitely adds another wrinkle to it but yeah i think
Starting point is 01:54:16 there's something more going on here man i don't know what it is i can't say that i know what it is but there's like if these were just minor like losses in court would trump spend the time making sure that everyone knows he's super super angry about this thing like hey everybody look at that thing look at that thing i'm super angry about just everybody know that I'm angry about that thing so that you will uh also ingest the rest of that story at that time for when it turns around later and at that point you're going to know you shouldn't have gone gone all in on this is like the slow the slow running slow moving discombobulator yeah discombobulation for everybody love it um i think with that man was there anything else we didn't talk about no we talked about so many things
Starting point is 01:55:05 Lexer ruins, big me for Bill, lame duck. I can't even read my own handwriting here. What does I say? Something 2022, something. I got to be a little more legible. My bad. Okay, yeah, I think I'm good then there. Do you have a potential outro video?
Starting point is 01:55:28 I had a, I have a video of Duncan Trussell, who was like a committee and used to go on Rogan all the time, talking about Peter Thiel and the Antichrist. on my on my desktop but that's about it that would that's about the only thing that i can think of i'm sure i can think of more things while we go through rants or try to at least yeah uh real quick guys don't forget we have our next gart coming up here real soon june 25th through the 28th deadwood south dakota you're you're gonna take a vacation this summer right probably hopefully Why not come and take your vacation and hang out with us? Badlands me. We put on a conference.
Starting point is 01:56:13 We're going to have a lot of great content, panel format. Pretty great discussion. But then also, Deadwood's is such an awesome place and there's so much fun, all sorts of things to do. So you can come hang out with us. It's a great way to spend a summer weekend. Deadwood, South Dakota, badlandsmedia. TV slash events. And also this coming week, we're going to be starting to do our exclusive ticket holder
Starting point is 01:56:35 live streams. I think our first one is going to be Wednesday at like. 2 p.m. Eastern. I'll announce it for sure this this coming week. But you need your tickets to join that whether that's in person or virtual. Those are also on sale badlands media.tv slash events. And we do have a power hour. Oh my gosh, $250 from Shelley. Wow. Saturday power hour says thanks so much for all you do. That is very generous of you. Thank you. Thank you so much. and I think that's all we got
Starting point is 01:57:10 I haven't seen Joe in there in a little bit since last Saturday I guess You need a wellness check on Joe 1027 JAS We got some rants here 12 indie boy says the best part of Gart in person Is the DPH Live with the after hours Can't wait see you live in four weeks
Starting point is 01:57:28 That is a good time Looking forward to seeing you, Ty Babbage says Texas Jules is now a Badlands member on YouTube. Thank you for pointing that out. I forgot to check if we had any super chats. Every now and then we get one. I didn't see it. Nope. A Cigar City Patriot says, and this is
Starting point is 01:57:48 a quote, John and Badlands have put together a brilliant movement that encourages us to organize local events so we can share ideas and experiences that brings truth to light. End quote. And that is from General Kwasse at today's Lakeland's Badlanders meetup.
Starting point is 01:58:04 That's really cool. Thank you for the $50 cigars a Patriot good to see you and that's really it was really cool of a general quas to say and then chloranova novna for 40 dollars says thanks for all of the efforts john and chris the weekly dose of sanity and humor in every saturday dps which makes it a much watch your commentary on trump's true social posts are hilarious we do our best we try thank you and then snow cat operator gifted a subscription thank you snow cat good to see a man let me see if there's anything else I wonder if Trump is
Starting point is 01:58:37 no new post from Trump either so that's everything man tomorrow at I'm trying to think what time at 1 p.m. Eastern we have America First Stories actually interviewed Jessica who works with Badlands that are all good.
Starting point is 01:58:53 We talked about that for a little bit and then right after that I'm probably going to do another gaming stream. So nice. If you want to come hang out while we play some video games come do that. Played a little bit of at the end of the me and first me and DJ played some call of duty a couple rounds and then he had to go
Starting point is 01:59:09 and so I played some of the new james bond game it was kind of interesting wow really i thought that was only on playstation i've steam so i can like download it oh wow cool yeah uh i found uh norm mcdonald talking about meeting trump so maybe we should just play that oh let's do that all right hit the thumbs up everybody appreciate you guys and what's the movie this week for story hour. We are doing the Godfather. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah, it's going to be cool.
Starting point is 01:59:40 Burning Bright's never seen it. What? I swear. Even I've seen that. To be fair, he was talking about saving private Ryan last week, and I have never seen that. What? I hate seeing blockbusters, and I especially went through that period, hating seeing blockbusters, because everyone would see them and talk about them nonstop.
Starting point is 02:00:00 Yeah. And then, like, after you go through that cycle, you have, like, no desire to see it whatsoever. Yeah. I guess I understand that completely. I go through phases where, like, with the things I watch, like, sometimes I want to watch, like, all Vikings and historical, like, combat stuff. And then sometimes I go through a World War II phase where I watch, you know, Band of Brothers and saving Ryan's privates and all those things and just goes through the gambit. And so that's where I saw that. But, yeah, it's a great movie.
Starting point is 02:00:28 So you guys should definitely do that one. Yeah. Sure, we will soon or later. All right, this is what we got everybody. Norm MacDonald, I'm going to end the YouTube so we don't get in trouble over there. But hit that thumbs up and we'll see you next time we see you. Thanks, Chris. Thank you.
Starting point is 02:00:45 You met Trump recently? Is that right? I've got Donald Trump. Just a true story? Yes. Or is this one of your, he has a farm and a goat comes by? I'm not putting up with that shit. I saw a try out.
Starting point is 02:01:00 Trump, he had a farm. He said, I want you to meet my dog. He said. And I was like, well, Mr. Trump, I know you're running for president, but tell me more about this here donkey. Well, he says, if you want to see the donkey, you gotta first meet my three daughters. And the first one's shy, the second one's sexy, and the third one has one leg. I'm making all of this up. I know.
Starting point is 02:01:24 But this is exactly what you do. I don't know. I'll never tell that type of joke, because that's kind of a joke that we shouldn't be telling. You're right. I apologize. But I will say, no, I did meet Trump. This is true. You met Trump. An absolutely true story. I was on another talk show. Not a competing talk show because talk shows don't compete.
Starting point is 02:01:43 Hey, and I think no show competes with this one. No, sir. You say that with irony, but I say that with truth. I agree with you. You've been on the air? 23 years. Yeah. My God, Mr. Carson, seven years shy of Carson himself. Can you imagine? Carson Daily. Carson Daily. Carson Daily's been on 45 years.
Starting point is 02:02:15 But look at this man compared to Johnny Carson at the time. Look at Johnny Carson. Get a picture of him seven years before he retired. Long, white hair, white beard. He didn't have a white beard? Johnny always looked fantastic. Well, have I ever done my Johnny Carson impression for you? No, you haven't.
Starting point is 02:02:37 I'm sure this young audience would love to see it. This is, you can play along. You can be the 911 operator. This is Johnny Carson when he was having his heart attack. He actually phoned 911. People don't know this. He phone 911 himself. He's a very brave man. And so during a heart attack, he phoned 911. So you be the 911 operator. Okay. Say hello. Hello. Hello? This is Johnny Carson. Oh, Mr. Carson. How can I help you? I feel like there's a yak on my chest. Well, sir, I'm going to hang up on you now. That's a good Johnny, but times of change. I know, I know. I shouldn't say stuff like that. Mr. Trump, you met Trump?
Starting point is 02:03:44 I just, I didn't meet Trump. I guess I feel as a closet, a gay man living in a deeply, like a sham of a marriage, I have the right to say more, but I guess I don't. Mr. Trump, this is a true story. Yes, we were on a talk show, not as good as your talk show. He was on first. I was on second. There was only three minutes between.
Starting point is 02:04:05 He stepped out. Secret Service was everywhere. He knows me. I've met him. And I said, Mr. Trump, can I get a picture? He goes, ah, you're funny. I love you. I'll just take a picture with you in a minute.
Starting point is 02:04:14 And then he turned around, and he walked down with the Secret Service guy and got in an elephant. I love that. Yeah. It's like a Buster Keaton film.

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