Breaking News from Pod Save America - I Got Ted Cruz To Criticize Donald Trump On Crime and January 6

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

Ted Cruz just admitted that Donald Trump is WEAK on crime and Republicans are crashing out. Jon Favreau and producer Elijah Cone react to the latest MAGA meltdown. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last night, you spent two hours deciding what to wear to the party. This morning, it'll take you two minutes to list it on Deepop and make your money back. Just grab your phone, snap a few photos, and we'll take care of the rest. The sheer dress and platform heels you'll never wear again, there's a birthday girl searching for them right now. Your one-and-done look is about to pay for your next night out, or at least the right home. Your style can make you cash. Start selling on Deepop, where Taste recognizes taste. All right, before I went to bed last night, I decided to set a fairly obvious, I thought, transparent trap on Twitter.

I threw out some bait, and I caught a big one. I brought Elijah here to talk about it. Elijah, I figured, who else could I get in crooked media to talk about my Twitter fights? That's a sicko, just like me. I figured you were the one. I'm honored, John. Look, I mentioned we should probably have one of the other hosts on. He said, I don't want to make them relitigate my Twitter fights,

but I know you'll be down and you were right. So with that, let's pull up the tweeting question. Let's pull up the bait. Here it is. John, if you do the honors. So here's what I did. It says, real talk. Democrats should just admit that some politicians have been way too lenient

in releasing dangerous criminals from prison these last few years. Just a few of the crimes committed by people they let out early. Violent assault, sexual assault of a child, solicitation of a minor, possession of child pornography, domestic abuse, aggravated DUI and reckless homicide, attempted murder, stalking, and burglary. All right, so I'll let you guys in on the bit if you haven't figured it out already. I did this because, you know, all of Maga Media, Trump, everyone else, they're all up in arms because there was a horrific grisly murder on a subway in Charlotte back in August. The video has been released now, and so that's why this is kicked up again.

They're all just blaming or non-Democrats. There's no one's saying, hey, it's this policy that led to this specifically, or it's this politician that pardoned this person. But it's all Democrats' fault. Democrats are weak on crime. Everything is awful. And Democrat, you know, Stephen Miller said that we're a domestic terror party, you know, all this kind of stuff. So I thought to myself, it wasn't just like a bit that I wanted to do, because I thought about the January. 6th pardoned and partly because Trump won and partly because we just all have the fucking

memory of a goldfish now. The story that the right tells and even, you know, I think it doesn't get covered as much. The story about January 6th now is it's a bunch of rioters. Maybe they hit some cops and but it was just a lot of people trespassing and anyway, he pardoned them and that's that. And it was reported at the time, but I don't think what people remember is that a lot of the people who were pardoned, not only did they violently assault police officers, but they either had a ton of other criminal charges in their past or went on to commit crimes either after January 6th or after they were pardoned by Donald Trump in 2025. And so I decided to throw this tweet up and see see what people would say.

And you'll never guess, Elijah. Yeah, you sent it over last night and I was like, all right, that's great, but come on, man, no one's going to fall for that. And lo and behold, lo and behold, let's go out and pull it up. There's Ted Cruz.

I saw it before. I went to bed at, like, late last night for me, like 10.30 or 11. And I wanted to text you about this. I think I did. I think I might have texted you this tweet. I'm like I hope he's not up but and of course at like 4.30 in the morning I woke up I was like because I'm like what else? What do we got here?

And sure enough Ted Cruz, Ted Cruz responded true, true but by some politicians you mean Obama Biden and every Democrat in the Senate, the same people you've been supporting in every single election. Here's what's interesting about Ted Cruz. He said true so he does think that some politicians have been way too lenient in letting out those people who've committed all those crimes, like Donald Trump, is the person. Ted Cruz has not said a single word since Donald Trump gave those pardons to the January

6th rioters, not a word about it. No comment from him. This will be the first comment that he made accidentally inadvertent. He has an inadvertent response to Trump's January 6 pardons. That's the first time he did that. Yeah, I mean, do you think reporters should be asking these Republican politicians more when they ask about, or when they start talking about people being let off too easily going back and committing crimes? Is this something that people should start asking more? I certainly think that if you're going to posit that crime is a better issue for Republicans and Democrats are on the defensive because Democrats have been too soft on crime and we go back to the George Floyd protests and we talk about defund the police and all that shit. then it's worth pointing out that the one politician in America who has let out more violent criminals directly with his own actions than any other politician in America this year is Donald Trump,

the President of the United States. No one has single-handedly released more violent criminals from prison than Donald Trump this year. I think that's a worthwhile fact, right? Absolutely. It's a good. And look, the murder in Charlotte, fucking awful. I hope that guy goes away forever. And I think that like, I always think we want to add more police to the streets. I think that happens to be a good idea. I also think, you know, police reform is a good idea as well. And we should be able to have, we should be able to have law enforcement in this country where it actually fights crime and also respects the rights of every American. I think you can do both of those things. And I think we should. And I think people who live in. in high crime areas are right to demand more resources and more police. But this idea that, oh, you know, Democrats all let this happen. And now every time there's a grisly murder in the country,

Republicans are just lazily going to say this is Democrats' fault without even citing a policy or anything that led to the murder. If there's a Democratic governor who lets someone out of jail earlier, pardon someone, and then they went and committed a murder, by all means, criticize that person. But that's not what they're doing right now. So, look, Ted Cruz wasn't the only person to fall for this. Unfortunately, some mainstream reporters took the bait. Here's Politico reporter Rachel Bade.

At John Fabs isn't exactly from the right, and yet. This was one. There's a couple different brands of replies to this, which I found fascinating. It was a real interesting sociological experiment to look through some of these replies last night. So you had like your Rachel Bade's, I saw Tapper retweeted, but I can't tell. if Jake got the joke or not, but he retweeted Rachel, sort of Jonathan Carl. Actually, Jake retweeted mine. Jonathan Carl retweeted Rachel Bade, which is more on brand, I guess. And these journalists do believe the Democrats, it's sort of like a thinly veiled belief that Democrats are bad on crime.

That's the, just sort of revealing that, you know? Yeah. And they're very excited when they can potentially do a left-on-left story. But no, didn't get the joke. Well, that brings me, to the second brand of replies, which was from the left. Oh, right. I don't have any from this. No, that's okay. You don't need to because there weren't any, like, there weren't any real prominent ones because most people, most people get, got it. But there were a lot of, like, why are you criticizing Democrats at a time like this? This is why your party is worthless. You're worthless.

This is why you're losing. Stop accepting Republican framing, which I have to say. Like, even if you don't get that it's a bit, we should. should condemn politicians who let violent criminals out, right? And a totally legitimate response would have been which Democratic politicians actually did that, please cite them. That's totally legitimate, and maybe that's

what I would have said. But that's not what a lot of people do. They just went right to, like, you are fucking horrible. And this is why your party's losing. Yeah, I saw a couple of like, now do January 6th. And that was tough. There was a lot of that. I was like, yeah, no, that's the fucking point, guys.

That's the point. Yeah. And then, all right, this is the last brand, the right-wing response. This is Stephen Miller, not that Stephen Miller. No, this is my old friend, Red Stees. Yeah. And I wanted to go with Oilfield Rando, who, if you're real sick, as a right-wing Twitter personality, I don't know.

Are you familiar with Oilfield Rando? You know what? You are now more online than me. Congratulations. I do not know about Oilfield Rando. Well, look, a bunch of right-wing pun is sort of crashing out about your tweet, and then this guy who's like a right-wing Twitter personality was saying like, this is actually a great troll from a lib.

He's talking about January 6th. So shout out you for having a rare great lib troll. Because I had gotten in too many Twitter fights with Red Stees, Stephen L. Miller, years ago, and you guys all were making fun of me for it. I finally blocked him, so I did not see the, I did not see his response. I did see one of our friends from the Ruthless Pod. Yeah, comfortably smugged, did one. And a lot of, it's interesting, the MAGA replies, not a lot of, welcome, welcome to the coalition, good point.

I like to see a Democrat making that. There's a few of those, to be fair, but most of them were like, fuck you too late, you deserve what's coming to you. I'm like, what's coming to me? You should be in jail too. Yeah, they're crazy. I was going to include comfortably smogs, but then I saw that toothless pod had fallen out of the top 50 news again, so they don't get to be mentioned. It's called toothless? Yeah, I call it doethless because they're so fucking weak.

Okay. We have one more tweet from a right winger. Let's go out and pull that up. This is from Donald Trump Jr. He's trying to pin it on Roy Cooper, who was the governor of North Carolina, and is now running for Senate. They're trying to make it into a political issue here. I'm in North Carolina.

And he ends his point with, we're done with politicians who coddle criminals. Calls coming from inside the White House, Donald Trump Jr. And it's also just like the Trying to tag this on Roy Cooper Okay The guy who murdered this woman Last, I believe his He was serving time

For a lesser charge And his he had served his sentence And so he was released again Who was supposed to say You've served your sentence for Again it was like it was the misuse of 9-1-1 Because he's clearly Mentally incapacitated

or he has mental health problems or whatever has some real problems this guy clearly and so he calls 911 and says something crazy to the cops and the cops are like okay let's charge him you're not supposed to misuse 911 so they charge him for that you can't lock someone up for 10 years for misusing 911 so they have to release them they put they they they they they send him to a treatment facility and then his mother is very worried because she thinks he's he's violent and then he goes and does this which is fucking horrific. But like, Roy Cooper didn't do any of that. No, it's crazy because, like, I'm here in North Carolina and the, you know, Republicans are all saying, like, no one is talking about this story. And then the local reporters are all frantically saying, like, we talked about it for a long time. You guys missed it. And you're right.

I mean, this guy. August 22nd. Yeah, he got, he served time for robbery. And then he had a bunch of other charges, but they don't say them when, you know, Republicans make this point because they're all very small, like misusing 911. And yeah, it's just a, I don't know, it's just a tragedy. John, do you feel, how do you feel? Like, you set out bait online and you got Ted Cruz to take it.

How do you feel now? Do you feel fulfilled? No, you know what? You know what? I will say this. It's almost 11 a.m. or 10 a.m. of Pacific Coast time. The dopamine hit has worn off.

I don't think... Hopefully some people, like that oil-filled guy, was like, hopefully a couple people looked at and were like, that is pretty fucked up what he did to the January... Like he let the January 6 people out. It is. It's fucked up. Because, again, I do not... I mean, the serious point here is I do not want us to let go of the argument

that you cannot call Donald Trump tough on crime and Democrats soft on crime when the way that Donald Trump feels about crime is crime committed by people he doesn't like or people who oppose him, he is going to crack down on crimes committed by his supporters or his rich donors or whoever else it may be, totally fine, and he's going to let them commit whatever crimes they want. So it is, that's his rule of law.

That's what he's doing right now, and it's not about tough on crime and not tough on crime. Well, do you want to take us on with the call to action here? Yeah, the call to action is to, if you want more content, about the fights that I've had on Twitter, please subscribe to Potsame America YouTube channel. And we have all kinds of fun content on here, and you'll also be able to get ad-free episodes, now also on video of all your favorite podcasts,

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