Breaking News from Pod Save America - BOMBSHELL Trump Scandal Shocks Pod Save America and Brian Tyler Cohen

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

Tommy Vietor and @briantylercohen  break down the biggest political stories of the week — including Trump’s shocking new scandal and what it means for 2025. You’re 30 seconds away from being debt free with PDS Debt. Get your free assessment and find the best option for you at https://PDSDebt.com/rank. 00:00 - NEW Trump Scandal 06:18 - White House Construction/Destruction 11:20 - Ad Break 12:40 - Redistricting Battle Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Brian, even in a week with so much damning news coming out of the Trump, administration, this one still floored me. Liberal tears is brought to you by PDS debt. Breaking news, President Trump just pardoned one of the most powerful people in the crypto world. Binance founder, Chang Penzhou, who pleaded guilty to money laundering in 2023. He was sentenced to four months in prison after reaching a deal with the Justice Department. And it comes after a months-long lobbying campaign from Binance to try and secure this pardon for Jav. So, Brian, this wasn't just any settlement.

It was for $3.4 billion with a B, the largest settlement in U.S. history. The Treasury Department said Binance willfully fail to report financial transactions associated with al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Hamas, fund company. And they never reported transactions with websites that sold child sexual abuse materials. So why would Trump, pardon the Binance CEO, you ask? Because of a bribe. Trump's crypto company, World Liberty Financial, worked with Binance to facilitate a $2 billion. investment into a Trump family crypto offering called USD1. And long story short, that investment will make the World Liberty Company about $80 million a year in interest payments alone. And members of the

Trump family have talked to Binance about taking a stake in the company itself. Brian, I'm going to lose my mind. Why doesn't anyone care about this staggering corruption right before our eyes? I kind of reject that premise. I don't reject my premise. It's already rejected. I think people do care. First of all, they just largely don't know yet. And I think that's by design. I mean, we've heard for years about the strategy of flooding the zone with shit. And so there's so much happening that this feels like just one more story in a barrage of, I'm sure what we'll see is 10 other stories today, especially as it relates to corruption. But on the corruption front, I think people do care.

I think they do see when Trump tries to pilfer the U.S. Treasury for $230 million because he just decides, apropos of nothing by fiat that he's entitled to money that people care. I think that when people see Christy Noem get two Gulfstream jets for $173 million that people care. I think when people see him build a $300 million ballroom and tear down the entire east wing of the White House so that he can have more opulent parties for himself, I think people care. I think when he doubles his net worth because he's hosting crypto dinners while he's supposed to be being the president of the United States that people care. So this is just one small part of a larger hole. and it wouldn't be so egregious, if not for the fact, that all of this is happening when Trump came into office promising to be some populist champion.

Like this guy was talking about housing and rent and groceries and the price of a fucking egg and forget the price of any of those things going down, but he's just keeping more riches and wealth and opulence onto himself. And so it's impossible to ignore all of this stuff. Yeah, he only cares about the price of a Melania coin. By the way, this $2 billion investment that involved to finance was from an eminent. Amirati state-backed entity. And shortly after, they funneled $2 billion into Donald Trump's wallet.

The Emirati's got a bunch of advanced AI chips from the United States. Funny how that works. But you mentioned this lawsuit that Trump is doing against the Department of Justice. So he's suing his own DOJ for $230 million. That means taxpayers like you and like me will get to foot the bill. And the best part, Brian, is the settlement of any claims over $4 million have to be approved by the Deputy Attorney General or an Associate Attorney General. But that's some good news because at least there's a backstop, right?

At least there's somebody who's going to be able to say no and put their foot down. Oh, wait, the current Deputy Attorney General is Trump's former personal criminal attorney who worked on these cases. Cool, cool, cool, cool. No conflict there. Yeah. Do you like getting sued by your own president? Well, you know what? I've come to expect nothing less.

I mean, the reality is, like, why stop it a quarter of a billion dollars? I know, sir. If there's no backstop other than Todd Blanche and Pam Bondi and otherwise he's got carte, to just make himself even more wealthy at the hands of U.S. taxpayers. Why not just go for an even bill? Why not go for $5 billion at that point? I know. Well, that's a really good point.

And just for those who don't know about this story, and the first claim seeks damages for the FBI and special counsel investigation. It's a Russian election tampering interference in the 2016 election, which happened, by the way, and we should have investigated that, but Trump is still bloodhurt about it. And the second complaint accused the FBI of violating Trump's privacy by searching Mar-a-Lago. Where they found hundreds of thousands of classified documents that he took. They're very well secured next of the shitter at Mar-a-Lago. But in Trump's mind, these are like horrible sins that need to be righted by nearly a quarter of a billion dollars.

Yeah. And the great irony of that is that all of this is happening while we have no money to pay for any of the other things. Like no money to pay for health care for 17 million Americans who are going to lose Medicaid, no money to pay for those 24 million Americans who rely on the ACA. Doged USAID. Kids around the world are starving. People can't get their HIV medication. There's government officials that are furloughed right now.

There is people that are going to lose their access to food stamps to the tune of $350 billion. No money for any of that stuff, but plenty of money for Donald Trump to just write himself a check. And you got some money for a ballroom, although it's a little different. So folks have probably seen by now the images of the East Wing of the White House just being ripped apart. In July, Trump said the construction on this new vanity ballroom he's building would not impact the current building. now the White House says, cut to the entire East Wing will be demolished in the next few days.

It's gone. I think we can put a picture on the screen right now. There is no East Wing of the White House. RIP East Wing. We also learned that the ballroom is going to cost $300 million, which is $100 million more than we were told initially. Which is so weird because he was pretty buttered at Jerome Powell for the out-of-control spending on an already existing project to modernize the Fed.

That was apparently grounds a lot of, lot of people thought for Trump to be able to fire Jerome Powell. And yet now we've got, you know, a project that was supposed to be 200 million. That's suddenly 300 million. And, and that's totally okay because it's for dear leader. Yeah, Mr. New York, real estate guy, just, you know, 33% increase on the price tag right away. So it's paid for by private funds, not by taxpayers, but that, of course, creates a lovely new way for companies and individuals to bribe our president. Here's a quick clip, Brian, of Trump talking about the construction. You probably hear the beautiful sound of construction, to the back. You hear that sound? Oh, that's music to my ears. I love that sound. Other people

don't like it. I love it, Josh. I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money. Didn't really like hearing him climax there. That's a little uncomfortable moan. Usually you listen to that in private, right? In real time. So the spin aside, the White House's feelings in political heat about all of this, we're going to put up some changes to the White House website that kind of shows you how they're responding. We got a racist photo of Obama. There's Clinton and Monica Lewinsky for some reason. There's the cocaine and the West Wing story if you scroll over.

And there's Hunter Biden in a bathtub. So that's apparently relevant to the construction of the East Wing. Brian, I saw some folks, you know, from the left on Twitter, kind of freaking out about this. Initially, I couldn't really bring myself to care. But the images have gone super viral. There's new polling that says 53% of voters disapprove of demolishing the East Wing, while only 24% approve. Do you think it matters?

Do you think we should be talking about this stuff, Democrats, I mean? I think, again, it's important as a small part of a larger hole that, like, while Trump should be focused on anything else, on anything that impacts real people, on protecting health care, which right now people are getting their notices that show what their health care costs are going to be for 2026. And enrollment is opening on November 1st, and like, nothing is happening on that front because Trump is focused on this stuff. So whereas Trump should be focusing on anything else, this is where his full attention is. And it goes to show that when he cares about something, it gets done. Like he's not going to let the courts or prosecutors or judges or Democrats or the law or the

Constitution stand in his way. He will get whatever he cares about done. And he's getting this done. He's, you know, he had an idea to build a ballroom. Five minutes later, the entire East Wing of the White House is gone. So where there's a will, there's a way, which underscores the fact that when he doesn't care about something, it doesn't get done. And the fact that we aren't seeing any progress on health care.

The fact that we aren't seeing any progress on food stamps, the fact that we aren't seeing any progress on returning manufacturing to the U.S. or tackling high inflation or tackling flat wages. The fact that nothing is happening on any of those fronts is a testament to the fact that he just doesn't give a fuck. Because if he did, very much like the ballroom on the White House grounds, it would get done. There would be movement.

The fact that nothing's happening goes to show that he just doesn't care. Or maybe just a TDS. you don't get the method to his madness. Look, it's a side point. Maybe people don't care about this, but it is a national landmark. It is the people's house. We own it. It's the government's house.

It's not Donald Trump's house for him to demolish or not. Also, and just on that point real quick, like, that's the part that I was trying to reconcile. Because on this, to answer your question from before specifically, like, I look at that. And I think it's so offensive, but I don't know if it's because I'm a partisan or if it's because it's just an offensive image to look at. But I can't imagine that somebody, out there, whether it's the fact that he's, you know, focusing his attention on this and not them, you know, I can't imagine that anybody looking at this is going to approve of just the White House being demolished, you know? Yeah, look, I think like the casual, like, swing voter who maybe gets

a couple of political stories in their feed a month, it probably sees this and it's like, why is he doing that, you know? If anything, they're like, they're not like mad or happy, they're just like, why? It's also worth noting, Brian, it's a little morbid, but building a new ballroom doesn't suggest a guy who's planning to leave in three years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I think we would reject that premise. I don't reject that premise. That premise is accepted.

Look, I know that this could fall into the bucket of like, oh, the hysterical libs. But like at what point do we have to just listen to the words that he's saying and the fact that he's handing out Trump 2028 hats and stop giving him the benefit of the doubt that he doesn't deserve? I mean, you're not going to build a ballroom because you want to enjoy it for like 18 months before you're out of office. Or at least he isn't. So I think this is just the umpteenth example of the fact that this guy is going to do everything in his power to stay in office. And the reality is that very much like none of the Republicans are willing to stand up to him now, very much like none of the Republicans are willing to say an ill word of him,

even as he tries to take a quarter of a billion dollars from the U.S. Treasury, they're not going to say anything come that time where we're going to rely on Republicans to stand up because Democrats are in the minority everywhere. and they just don't have the political capital unto themselves to be able to stop him. Lowe's has the brand's pros trust to get the job done. You can now shop new Catalyst Fencing Solutions

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Remember when Elon Musk was sending out those emails being like, tell me what you did this week? Trump would be like, pardon a guy who bribed me, suing myself for a quarter B, building a gigantic new ballroom to throw myself fancier parties for more rich people. Not the best message. No, especially when it comes to the fact that like this guy ran as a populist.

Like the most gilded age president in the history of the United States. Shits on a golden toilet. Yeah. Allegedly. Building himself a $300 million ballroom. And maybe an arc. to Trump, which hopefully we'll get to see soon. Liberal Tears is brought to you by PDS Debt.

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Virginia will be the second state after California to make this kind of move as we speak, California voters. Are voting on Prop 50, which would authorize redrawing our maps if you're a California voter. Get your ballot in right now, pretty please. Democrats currently hold six of Virginia's 11 congressional seats.

It sure would be nice to have nine of them. Brian, I assume you love this move, but can you give us a broader state as well about like on the state of, of all things redistricting. Yeah. So redistricting right now kind of looks like this. Texas redrew its maps.

So there's five seats in Texas. California neutralize those five seats with our own redraw. Again, as Tommy said, if you live in California, if you know anybody who lives in California, get those ballots in because Prop 50 passing is the whole ballgame. The whole ballgame. If there is no pushback against what Texas Republicans are doing, then that's basically the Republicans allowing themselves to engineer a minority, a permanent majority in the House. So those are neutralized.

But then we have other Republican states that have come forward. We had Missouri that redrew its maps. So they get another seat there. We have the Republicans in North Carolina that did the same. We have Kansas Republicans. We have Kansas. We have Ohio. We have Florida.

We have Indiana. There's all this pressure from the White House on Indiana Republicans. Yeah. And the reality is that while we heard West Moore and J.B. Pritzker say the right things a few months ago, we haven't seen any movement thus far. And so we have no other states that are neutralizing what's happening across this raft of Republican states. we need some movement across across those other states. Hopefully, if we see, again, going back to the to the Prop 50 in California,

if we see a windfall for California Democrats, hopefully that'll give something of an incentive structure for these other Democratic governors, Democratic state legislatures to say, oh, look, there's very little downside to actually doing this. And in fact, there's a ton of upside because people see that we're fighting. That's a really good point. We need Prop 50 to win overwhelmingly so that other, you know, want to be 2020. candidates. Let's just be honest about it. See what Gavin Newsom is doing and they think, aha, this is a really popular thing. Democrats want this. They are desperate for leadership.

They're desperate to see anyone in the Democratic Party that is fighting back against Trump. And maybe now is the moment. Right. So it's not just about winning 51 to 49. In fact, I think that will be detrimental to our cause because then they'll see, okay, it's just bare, it just eeked out a win there in California, in California of all places. It needs to be like 7030 so that these governors see like, hey, there is a ton of incentive for me to do this, not just because it's popular right now, but because, you know, all of them have political aspirations. They all look in the mirror and they see themselves as the president.

And this is a great way to kind of launch their campaign and get a ton of positive reinforcement for it. Do you think they salute themselves? I would presume they do. Do you think they whistle? Anyway. All right. Everyone, thanks for watching this Pod Save America episode on YouTube.

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