Breaking News from Pod Save America - Ivanka Trump’s Shocking Island Scandal Reeks of Corruption

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

Protests erupt over Ivanka Trump’s island project scandal. Tommy Vietor and Jon Lovett break down the latest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This Father's Day start with a question, like where did Dad's story begin? Ancestry DNA now has up to $75 off on our Father's Day sale, so Dad can explore his roots across more than 3,600 regions and discover the places and cultures that shaped his story. Save now, give Ancestry DNA from only $69. Offer ends June 21st. Visit Ancestry.ca for details. Terms apply. Love it. Our dear friend Ivanka Trump is back in the public eye. She's apparently following in the footsteps of her father's dearly departed friend, Jeffrey Epstein. This clip will explain why. Let's watch. Working on an incredible project with my husband in the Mediterranean. It's massive in scale. We were on a friend's boat and we stopped for a swim. Effectively, that's how we found it. We swam to the islands. We went on a hike barefoot all the way up to the top and we were just captivated. And it stayed with us ever since.

And over the course of many years, we developed the opportunity to help realize its potential and transform it, but with a lot of restraint and care, because the land is so beautiful. So, love it. After the Epstein debacle and with Americans furious about inflation and the economy, would you have encouraged Ivanka Trump to do an interview about buying a private island? I wouldn't. I'm also, like, where is she? What is this space? this sort of beige white empty chasm. One of those like tech influencer CEO type shows, I think.

Okay, okay. I didn't really care to investigate. We developed the opportunity. Develop the opportunity. To build a private island. I think is it for, it's not a hotel. It'll be a hotel project. Hotel plus.

She talks about it like she discovered it too. Like the locals are like, no, it's just protected because it's like a bird sanctuary. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Christopher Columbus over here. You found an uncharted island in the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean. The Michel.

You're like, in the Mediterranean, you think you found someplace the Greeks miss? So the island in question, yeah, it's an uninhabited island in the Adriatic Sea called Sazan. Imagine Italy. The Adriatic Sea is like to the north and the east. So it's got the west coast of the Adirac Sea is Italy. It's got the Balkans on the east. So Cizan is a little island off the coast of Albania. It's near like the boot of Italy.

Politico reported that Cizan sits in a very sensitive coastal area that's home to hundreds of species of birds, pelicans, flamingo seals and sea turtle nesting sites. I'm sure they loved Ivanka and Jared, like just traipsing around. Yeah. So what's the drug deal that got this couple access to the island? So the land was protected. That somehow changed in 2024. And now it's made available for development.

And Jared Kushner wants to develop a project that includes 10,000 hotel rooms. But earlier this week, Albania's anti-corruption prosecution office confirmed that they're investigating how these environmental protections were stripped away. the deal got a green light. Interesting. I don't understand these people. I don't understand what motivates them, how they wake up every day and decide what they're going to do with their precious time on this earth. They've already stolen so much money. They've already made so much money off Donald Trump being in office. It is so nefarious. They are so rich. They could just be rich for the rest of their lives, but there's something clearly missing. And now they're going to, what,

develop this island into a into a Macau of the fucking man. Mediterranean? Like, fuck you guys. Love you know who's not doing gauzy interviews of Ivanka Trump? Who? Us here. Yeah, not us. Because she won't come on the show. Subscribe to Potts of America here on YouTube because we're trying to displace this right-wing propaganda crap like we just watched there

and stuff from Fox News. And we subscribe to Potta of America. It helps us out a lot, so please do. So here's an AJ Plus report about the local reaction to this project. So for folks listening and not watching, there are huge protests of this project in Albania. there's some of the birds we're talking about getting killed by the development of the project

a bunch of protesters here trying to block the fence line of where this development's occurring chanting about oligarchs and then we'll see one of the protesters is getting the shit kicked out of them by some security guards literally dragged away by his arms Jesus seems like broad popular support for this thing right I just wanted to go back to Ivanka saying, you know, we were just on a friend's boat and we stopped there, you know, and we just thought it was so beautiful. We walked up barefoot because it was so, you know, it's so pristine and untouched. And we decided we are going to put the biggest hotel of the history of the world there. And we thought this is my island now. Yeah, we this is Trump Island.

Yeah, putting a flag down on it. We own this now. This is our land. To your point, the scale of the corruption, it's like, it's. It's so vast, it's hard to wrap your head around. And it's like relentless. Like, okay, here's one story for you. A couple days ago, the Financial Times reported that families in Vietnam are literally having

to dig up the graves of their relatives to accommodate a Trump luxury golf hotel and villa project that's worth $1.5 billion. So that's cool, huh? Taking up Auntie Jane to accommodate Eric Trump's project. Which is strange, right? Because Trump famously doesn't mind having bodies on the golf course. You just leave them there and just use them for T-markers and so on. Some of my favorite ex-wives are on the golf course.

The speed of it and like the rapaciousness of it, the number of different projects going on, like any one of these projects would be like the worst corruption we've ever seen from an administration. And there's dozens of them, dozens of them. I don't understand how they're keeping track of it. Yeah, like last week we were talking about this pro-publica story about Eric Trump. I'm sorry, Don Jr. connected company getting a $620 million. Pentagon loan. And we found out it was because Peter Navarro made a phone call from the White House.

And then the company went from being valued at $200 million to $2 billion to $2 billion to 10xed in six months. They're just getting all the getting's good. It's just. But the idea that Ivana Ivanka is going to be just giving these sort of puff piece interviews. Yeah, what are you doing? It's like, hey, you're thieves. You're crooks and your thieves.

You don't get to pretend you're a business leader. You don't get to pretend that you have some great sense of how to do deals and projects. You're just a thief. You're just a thief. That's what you, you're all a bunch of thieves. Why is she doing this interview?

Yeah, as long as we're dunking on Ivanka, let's just watch one more clip from that same interview. Let me know what you think. And I think we're drawn as people. If you look at sort of pop culture, I think we're naturally drawn to people who are extremely authentic, especially over time.

I think if somebody's in the world. the public eye for a long period of time. And yet so many people I know are really afraid to be themselves. The reality is you're going to get criticized either way. You might as well be the best version of you possible. Matt, I would love to hear who Ivanka Trump thinks Ivanka Trump is. Me too. I would love, oh, you're being your authentic self.

I don't think you're even aware of what that is. What does that mean? How many PR people do you think drafted those comments about being your authentic self? Yeah. The filters on the video, the whole thing is the most. It's just a completely inauthentic presentation of a person. She disappears for years at a time and pops up to do this sort of impression of a thought, thought leader.

Give me a fucking break. You are Donald Trump's daughter. You were in the White House for four years. You spent all your time spinning about how you and Jared were trying to like take things in a more progressive direction. Now your father's like running this fascist authoritarian klepto state that you're kind of a part of, but you're not and you're telling us about your authenticity. Certainly making the money off of it.

Remember when the first term it was like she was like the, also the scale of their ambitions, I will say credit to this family, the scale of their ambitions, in the first term, we spent time talking about how he was making a few extra thousand bucks on hotel rooms because people felt obligated to stay at the Trump Hotel in D.C. She was getting, it was a news story when she got her shoes approved. Trademarks. Yes, the trademarks from China. And now like shoes.

Now we're buying islands. Yeah, fuck shoes. We're in the island business, baby. That's right. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Good stuff. Really fun. Glad we're here. Let's talk about some election results. So we're still waiting for our election results here in California because we love to count our ballots as slowly as possible. California County ballots in New Jersey not allowing people to pump their own gas.

It's like, hey, everybody else figured this shit out. Why does it take so long in California? I know we're mailing ballots. We're a fucking break. It's crazy. But we got some results from Iowa that included one big surprise. So let's start with the race to be the next U.S. Senator from Iowa. Let's start with the race to be the next U.S. Senator from Iowa. The Democratic nominee is a guy named Josh Turrick. Josh won with nearly 63% of the votes. It was a big victory. He is an Iowa state lawmaker from Western Iowa and a two-time gold medalist and four-time Paralympian in wheelchair basketball. Here's a quick video that his campaign put out. Let's watch. I was born an underdog. 21 surgeries by the age of 12. Spina bifida caused by my dad's exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam.

A kid wearing Goodwill hand-me-downs with the wrong color lunch ticket. But I never doubted my right to the American dream. Sitting in my wheelchair, nine years old, watching the Olympics, I dreamed of winning gold for my country too. Guess who? On the left side, Josh Turin. Back to back gold medals. I campaigned just like I played basketball, outworking everyone, pushing the hills, crawling the stairs, all just to have a conversation with everyday Iowans. Did not matter the party, because it's working-class families like.

mind paying the price for Ashley Hinson's corruption in Washington. Hinson helps herself and her donors while Iwans get screwed in every deal. Hospitals closing, gas and grocery prices through the roof, and the farm economy hammered. Iowans deserve a senator who works for them again. So if you are ready to push for change, join me. I'm such a lazy piece of shit. I don't know. What would I What a fucking dirtbag piece of shit. Lazy asshole I am complaining with the shit. Fuck me.

Fuck me. Hate myself. So I was like, Jesus Christ, crawling upstairs to knock on doors. I'm like, oh, God, I guess I should donate 50 bucks to Nithia.

Eat shit me. Fuck you. So, yeah, I feel that when I learned about Josh's bio too. I thought the video is great because it shows who he is, how much that guy's overcome. But also that he's going after

his opponent, Ashley Hinson, with the corruption message. And it's just interesting that that is the message you're seeing from John Ossef in Georgia and now in Iowa in this race. Tells you something about the electorate. Yeah, I saw him. He was talking last night to Chris Hayes about the race.

And look, like, it's Iowa. It's tough. But there are plenty of Obama Trump voters who are still out there, right? A lot of people in Iowa voted for Obama and then voted for Trump. And he's viewing them as getable. And I don't think we know. It's still very tough. But I can't imagine.

If you just were to say, like, who is the ideal person to have be a Democrat? candidate in Iowa, it's Josh Jurek. And who is an ideal opponent to run against? It's Ashley, what's her last name? Hinson. Hinson, yeah. So if you could think of an ideal person to be a Democrat in Iowa, it's Josh Turek, and then an ideal opponent would be Ashley Hinson,

because she is just a perfect person to be a referendum on Trump. Yeah, you make her the Washington insider, and you're the gritty guy from Western Iowa who's won in tough places. And yeah, I think, I'm excited about this campaign. folks should check out Josh's website and maybe support him if you can. There was also a big surprise in the governor's race in Iowa. So on the Democratic side, my buddy Rob Sand was unopposed. He's going to be our nominee. But on the Republican side, Donald Trump's endorsed candidate, Congressman Randy Feinstra lost to a maha favorite and businessman named Zach Lawn. It was 38 to 37.2, so very

close, but still Trump got punked here. And what's fun about this, love it, is it reminds me of being on the Obama campaign in 08 when Sarah Palin was selected as VP because we were like Googling her name to find Apollo. Like no one knows anything about this guy. So we did a little digging. I'm going to give you a bit of a quiz of sorts where I'll tell you a few things about Zach Lon and you tell me if you think they're going to have an electoral impact. Okay.

Cool. First of all, Lon voted in Kansas in 2018, 2020 and 2022 didn't register to vote in Iowa until October of 2024. Do you think Iowans will care if you're a. carpet bagger that recently. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly.

19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. I think it's, let's see what the rest of the list is.

I would say that it would be a problem, but I have a feeling some other things are going to be more of an issue. Yeah, he also was born and grew up in Sioux City. Lon worked for Americans for Prosperity. That was the political advocacy organization found out by the Koch brothers. Then he moved to Kansas to launch a private school financed by Chase Coke and his wife, Annie Coke. So Chase is the son of billionaire Charles Koch. And then Lon and Annie Coke left their respective spouses and got married. So Zach Lawn literally cucked the son of a billionaire.

our Coke, brother. Wow, Cuck to Coke. Honestly, so far, I'm loving this guy. That's so cool. You take their money. You work for their sort of anti-tax boondoggle organization. Then you take more money to open a school. While he's paying you and funding your life, you fall in love with his wife. That's honestly cool as hell. All right. We have some crossover appeal. How about this one? According to the Des Moines Register, Lon invested $1 million into a company that promotes a line of quote, innovative and wearable erection rings and other intimate devices. Love it. Will Iowa select an innovative cock ring investor? You're sort of losing me a little bit on the cock ring, so I'm understanding that he clearly has some sort of focus and attention in the bedroom that

might appeal to, might leave someone to check their pre-up with their billionaire spouse. Right. Maybe he's slinging. Yeah. So far, we got a, we got a billionaire wife stealing guy who fucks. I'm so far I'm not from Kansas. Lon said his wife threw out their microwave years ago because of concern that it could cause cancer. Love it is trashing your microwave kind of an understandable Maha anxiety or does that swerve into weirdo shit

that could drive away voters? I think people like their microwaves and I think people that think their microwave is scrambling their brains. It's like a little bit of a step away from the tinfoil on the head. Don't tell me my microwave's killing me. I like my microwave.

Yeah, microwaves use non-ionizing radiation. It's like Wi-Fi, visible light, same radio waves. This is very well-studied stuff. Yeah, yeah. It's not going to give you cancer. So a little cookie, which gets us into our last thing. So I was watching a podcast he did, the Sean Ryan show, and he said the 1986 vaccine immunity bill, which is formerly known as the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, has, quote, probably caused the greatest amount of suffering of any piece of legislation that we've had in the United States. It's the worst bill ever.

This was a bill signed it to lobby Ronald Reagan. it created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, created a vaccine court to adjudicate claims around harm from vaccines. It was created because there was a wave of expensive lawsuits over the DTP vaccine. Those were later scientifically discredited, but it was going to force these pharmaceutical companies out of the vaccine business entirely. So long story short, this guy seems deep into the anti-vax movement. And it's just a question now of like, is it politically potent anymore?

Like, I kind of don't even know. There's a story just now that Rubio basically is going to put the U.S. back in this international vaccine program as a pushback against RFK Jr. And I do think that there's a little bit of like we've kind of maybe hit peak crank. It's all fun in games until there's measles outbreaks in Texas. And, you know, anti-vax sentiment only works in a world that is completely protected by vaccines because too many people grew up in a vaccinated world in which they didn't have to worry about these things. And the second people actually start to get concerned that these cranks are going to put their kids in danger is, I think, where it starts to become more and more unpopular in the same way that

Roe v. Wade became more popular when it was overturned. Now, that's that cold comfort if we put these cranks in office. But the more power they get, the more it becomes unpopular, I think. Yeah, I mean, he's definitely like a Maha favorite. I think that set. of issues is very potent in Iowa because Iowa is a really high cancer rate. A lot of people blame pesticides, especially the chemical in Roundup. And Trump just gave the manufacturers of gliofosate, this herbicide liability shields under this ridiculous national security exemption. And the Maha folks are furious about it. And so I think the challenge for Lon here is that Rob Sand is actually really good on these issues. And Donald Trump is really bad, as is RFK Jr.

who like basically gave Trump cover for giving Roundup producers immunity. So I just I don't know where the politics will cut on this. Yeah. And also it's a governor's race. It's not a it's not a Senate race or like how where people stand on Trump, who's pro Trump, who's not like it I see why this guy got through. It's less important in a governor's race. But it also means Rob San who's such a known quantity in the state has a real chance

especially this guy's a real crank. So yeah, it's weird. It's like I can't tell if this shook up the race in a good way or a bad way. Like Randy Feenstry was kind of like a lazy. old school politician insider. And I think in some ways Rob would like to run against him. Now you've got this total X factor, this guy. But it's also like, what does the opo file look like? I don't know. I googled for five minutes and read off some stuff about a cock ring and banging people and the microwave. So like you could probably find a lot more. Yeah. I mean, if you look at what like

Turek has been saying as well, what Rob has been saying on the campaign trail, like Iowa, the combination of the tariffs, the Iran war, and gas prices, like the long-term loss of people in rural parts of the country. Iowa is really in trouble. Farmers are really in trouble foreclosures. It's just like a really scary time for a lot of people there. And so I do think someone who they know, who they try. I think this will be decided on the big main challenges.

And I think Rob is better on those things too. But yeah, the fact that he's a crank could only help. All right, so we learned about Zach Lawn. We learned that we're a cockering positive podcast. For sure. We learned that we love banging coax of all shapes and sizes. Yeah. The coaks fuck us.

You fuck a Coke. Thanks for watching this episode of Pod Save America on YouTube. We appreciate it. Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari with Reed Juerlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroote, Ben Heffcote,

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