Breaking News from Pod Save America - Top Trump Appointees Totally Embarrass Themselves In Must-See Hearing

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett react to Kristi Noem and Marco Rubio's awkward and tense hearing before a Senate committee. Photos courtesy of AP Photo Archive Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, love it. So every so often, Trump's cabinet goes to the Hill just to perform for dear leader, and I guess to get the shit kicked out of them by Democrats in the committees that they go testify at. Yes, it's over. Today was one of those days. Oversight Theater, I would say. Oversight Theater. So a bunch of them went to the Hill today. But we have a couple clips from Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem and Secretary of State slash National Archivist. slash USAID administrator slash national security advisor, Marco Rubio.

We're going to kick things off with Christy Noem. I don't even know how to describe this clip. Let's just listen. So Secretary, Noam, what is habeas corpus? Well, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their right to. Let me stop you, ma'am. Habeas corpus, excuse me, that's, that's a constitutional right to.

incorrect. President Lincoln used it. Excuse me. Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people. If not for that protection, the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely for no reason. Habeas corpus is the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police

states like North Korea. As a senator from the live free or die state, this matters a lot to me and my constituents and to all Americans. So Secretary Nome, do you support the core protection that habeas corpus provides, that the government must provide a public reason in order to detain and imprison someone? Yeah, I support habeas corpus. I also recognize that the president of the United States has the authority under the Constitution to decide if it should be suspended or not.

It has never been— It has never been— It has never been done. never been done without approval of Congress, even Abraham Lincoln, got retroactive approval from Congress. This president has never said he's going to do this. He's never communicated to me or his administration that they're going to consider suspending habeas corpus, but I do think the Constitution allows them the right to consider

it. When we saw what happened with, how many times has habeas corpus been suspended in our Once that I know of? Four times. I'm not certain if those were- But the instance that you were referring to was one where the courts subsequently show that Congress is the one that has the ability. Do you know what section of the Constitution, the suspension clause of habeas corpus is in? I do not. No. Do you know which

article it is in? No, I do not, sir. Okay. Well, it is in Article 1. So, uh, not just incorrect definition of habeas corpus, the opposite of what it means, actually. Yeah, the opposite. It's opposite. You know, the right against cruel and unusual punishment is the right for me to punish you cruelly. It's, it's... She's a first-class moron. She really is. I mean, like, you're running the Department of Homeland Security. You are, your department has swept up numerous people and sent them to Seacot in El Salvador. And you've been in court. I believe her name is on some of the cases that went to the Supreme Court where they say, habeas corpus requires that you give these detainees, these people that you're trying to deport. Ample notice. Does she not read the opinions?

Does she not hear the news? Yeah, I don't. She got midway through. She said she supports habeas corpus, which I think, having been reminded by Maggie Hasson what it is, she remembered that she's supposed to say she's kind of in favor of it, at least ostensibly. They, the argument that like, well, Lincoln did it, you got a problem with Abraham Lincoln. What was going on when Abraham Lincoln decided to suspend habeas corpus? Was there any reason the courts might not have been functioning, that there might have been extenuating

circumstances when Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus? might something have been making it a national emergency that required going, that required leaving behind the courts, something happening? Yeah, they use Lincoln a lot. You can tell that, I mean, it's really like a Trump level of knowledge from her. It's just like, she probably was in a meeting,

and Stephen Miller was like, habeas corpus. We're going to help us just deport people. And so she's like, oh, yeah, that's the thing you can use to deport people. And they're like, don't worry, don't worry, Lincoln, Lincoln. Well, and I'm glad that Andy, Kim followed up on that because, yeah, it was in the middle of the Civil War. Congress was out of session, which is why Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. And there was also like basically a rebellion around the Capitol, Lincoln was, and they didn't have time to bring Congress back in a session.

And then, as Senator Kim points out later, like, after the fact, the courts ruled, oh, yeah, by the way, it's good that Congress, when Congress finally came back to session, that they voted to a firm Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus because Congress needs to do that because it's in article one. The whole discussion of habeas corpus is an article one, which is about the powers that Congress has. You can't, the president cannot fucking suspend habeas corpus. Eric Larsen wrote this book called The Devil of Unrest about the run-up to the civil war and the amount of danger that Abraham Lincoln was in just going to the capital to be sworn in as president as we slowly marched towards this conflict and as the South slowly got, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,

slowly more and more radicalized in favor of going to war. They're all dancing on the head of a pin. It is so absurd on its face to say that we are in such a dire situation, such an emergency under such an invasion, that the president has no choice but to suspend habeas corpus, that the courts can't function, that this is beyond our ken without giving the president these broad authorities. Even before you get to the who has the right to do it,

Congress approved it under Lincoln, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Yeah, I think it's actually being undercovered and appreciated how fucking crazy this is. Because I think that Stephen Miller is really serious about it. A lot of the crazies from Project 2025 have been thinking about this for a while. They want to do it.

And I think they're relying on the fact that habeas corpus has a weird word that not a lot of people know what it means. And they think it just applies to non-citizens and immigrants. It's like, no, no, no. If Donald Trump decides to suspend habeas corpus is not only unconstitutional, like that is the end of the system that we once had, right? Like, we can talk about backsliding and constitutional crises and all that kind of stuff. But if the President of the United States says, oh, by the way, we can round up anyone and do whatever

we want with them, detain them, and they'll never have to see the inside of a courtroom to challenge why they've been detained or arrested or deported or whatever it might be, like that's just that, like Maggie Hasden said, that is North Korea. What's also chilling about it is they want this confrontation. Like they want to suspend habeas corpus. They want the left to freak out about it. They want to test the courts on this because they are basically creating the circumstance. They are lying about what is happening in terms of deportation to claim that they have no ability to do the deportations they want to do without suspending habeas corpus.

Even though they have basically not gone too far beyond like, Biden-level deportations while at the same time doing these cruel, capricious rounding up of random people and shipping them off to a foreign gulag without going to the courts at all to create this test case. They basically created this test case. And then they go out and they say, well, if we can't have a country, if we can't, if we can't do this without the courts. So they, there are a lot of legal ways Donald Trump could be deporting far more people. There are a lot of legal ways Donald Trump could be, now that he has claimed to have shut the border and actually gone farther to shut the border, that they could do the deportations that they set as their

goal. They are choosing this fight. They want this. Don't ask Christina know about any of those other legal ways, because I'm sure she does not know. She doesn't seem to know a lot of stuff there. Marco Rubio came back to his old stomping grounds today as well. Got into a bit of a heated exchange with Chris Van Holland, Democratic Senator from Maryland. Let's take a look. In the case of El Salvador, absolutely, absolutely. We deported gang members, gang members, including the one you had a margarita with. And that guy is a human trafficker, and that guy is a gangbanger. And the evidence is going to be clear. In the days of the day you're going to see who you went to the door. I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman,

Mr. Chairman, he can't make unsubstantiated comments like that. Secretary Rubio has the floor. Secretary Rubio should take that. testimony the federal court in the United States because he hasn't done it under oath. And if you tell me that you're coming to the United States to lead campus crusades to take over libraries and try to burn down buildings and acts of violence, we're not going to give you a visa. Is that what Ms. Ostork did? We're not going to give you a visa. Is that what she did? Come on, Mr. Secretary. And every single one of these

cases, the factors are different. The bottom line is if you're coming here to stir trouble on our campuses, we will deny you a visa. And if you have a first amendment apply to, we will revoke it. And I, we're going to do more. There are more coming. We're going to continue. to revoke the visas of people who are here as guests and are disrupting our higher education facilities. People are paying money. These kids pay money to go to school and they have to walk to a bunch of lunatics who are here on a few papers disrupting the foreign policy of the United States. I want to do more. I hope we can buy more these people. In fact, the other day.

He's definitely blowing something. I, I have, I, it's out. I had it watch that in full. It is outrageous. I am so angry. Van Hollande did great. But fuck. Marker Rubio is just, he's gone. He is gone. He is gone. It's also, it doesn't even like, this costume doesn't even fit on him well. No. Like you can tell, he's just doing the MAGA talking points. It's the thought, that whole thing was for audience of one. I mean, most of them are like this, but for Rubio for sure, because, you know, he wasn't in the MAGA clique the whole time.

So he's trying really hard to fit in. And so he is just reading the talking points just for the boss. So that, so he gets an out-a-boy from Donald Trump. He's probably in this, you know, competition with J.D. Vance, who's going to be this, They're doing a little succession fight there. But that was disgusting. It's the, like, you can see in Van Hollen, too, he, he, they were, they were, he knows Marker Rubio. They served together.

Marco Rubio used to be regarded as a serious adult. He was one of the responsible ones. And now he's saying you went down there to have margaritas. He knows, he knows, he knows that's a lie. He knows that's, we're going to see the evidence soon, never, that no one has ever, the government has never provided. any evidence in court. And said they don't have to. Said they actually have state, they have the right not to they never need to show that evidence. And remember

in one of the last cabinet meetings, someone asked Rubio about this and he was like, well, I'm not going to court. I don't have to talk to a court because we get to do what we want because it's foreign policy. So we don't have to face a court. So I'm not going to tell you and I don't have to tell court. So Rubio is basically like, I'm not going to go, show, the government's not going to show

evidence in court. We're not going to testify in court. What we're going to do is continue this fucking show trial where we try Kilmar-Obrigo Garcia in the court of public opinion with whatever propaganda we want. And then we're going to pretend that the Supreme Court didn't order that he be returned. Or that we try to try to get him back. He's a human trafficker. He's a gangbanger. We know that. You don't because we won't tell you. You need to take our word for it, even though we've lied about virtually every other person that we've deported in

this way, at least some of the more public cases about it. And, and be on notice that if you ever are worried that we're taking innocent people and disappearing them, be careful. Because if you come out and say, you have a problem with that, we are sitting on secret evidence to prove that you're defending a gangbanger, that you're defending a member of a violent terrorist organization. We're not going to show it. And in fact, we've decided that a hearing before Congress and a federal court. Neither of those are the time or the place to share that information, not sure what the other venue would be to share that information. And then on top of that, he goes into this ridiculous diatribe about people with student visas. And Van Halen, Van Hollen rightly

says, well, what about Ramiza Ozturk? All she is shown to have done is written an op-ed, that then Rubio then says is associated with the kind of people, doing the kinds of things on campuses. This is the thing is like he didn't even, he couldn't even try to defend the Rameza Osterk. No. Kidnapping. Who's now been freed? Who's now been freed? Because all he can

say is, no, no, no, it's protesters who are burning buildings. What about this person who just rode an up and did anything else? Can't answer the question. Cannot answer the question. They cannot defend that stuff. All they can do is talk over people asking the questions and then avoid answering the actual question.

And then when, and then you see the Justice Department lawyers, when they're in court, they can't avoid answering the question, so they give normal answers. Yeah, it's similar actually to what happened with some of the questioning of the election in 2020, which is these guys would go on television and make all kinds of outrageous claims, but they're members of the bar. They have an obligation, they're officers at the court, and so they go before the court, and the judge says, well, was any of this true? And they're like, well, I can't defend it. I can't say it. It's also why the January 6th hearings were so bad for the members. So they've had to completely rewrite the story of January 6th.

then bury it because they know that it was really bad for them and that everyone saw it. And when they go, you know, when they do the hearings and when they sit there, like, they can't, they can't just lie or avoid the question. Yeah, there's something about the way, I mean, I've always felt this about Rubio, that at least, you know, that you can see, you're right, he doesn't wear the costume well. He's kind of, it's interesting watching him get older. Yeah. There's an exhaustion in his eyes and a tiredness in his expression is slumping.

I'm still not too tired to want to be president, though. You can tell, I can still see that. No. That fire burns brightly. Yeah, it's in there. It's in there. That's why he's doing this. It's interesting to just have, we've now watched Marker Rubio from young rising neocon, cosmopolitan star,

who set out to change the face of the Republican Party, moderate on immigration, to become this sort of, this sort of like goblin-like figure sitting there hunched over. yelling at Van Holland, lying, knowing he's lying, all for the sake of Donald Trump's approval, a man who to this day, Marco Rubio will not say is responsible enough to be in charge of the nuclear weapons. There's a, I guess we didn't include it for a time. I forgot to mention it, but there was a Jackie Rosen clip where she's talking to Rubio. We love Jackie Rosen. We were in Nevada campaigning with her. And she starts by being like, all right, I'm going to play Jewish mother right now to you. And she said, I'm not even mad anymore about your complicity in this administration's destruction of U.S. global leadership.

I'm simply disappointed. I wonder if you're proud of yourself in this moment when you go home to your family. And she says, she's like, and she goes, I don't recognize Secretary Rubio. I know you know this in your heart. It's that. Interesting. He didn't say anything. I just saw the clip.

I didn't see his response to it. But it's an interesting tactic to take. You know, like these people did, like the Senate is a clubby institution. and they all know each other well even when they, I mean, it's not unlike the Supreme Court. Like, they all have to work together and they probably think each other is, some of them are crazy, you know, depending on which side you're on. But like, they looked at one of their own and decided like, wow, this one has gone crazy.

It's, um, as part of the Handmaid's Tale, I think about, which is where Margaret Atwood talks about, um, how we think that the way you understand somebody is by getting to know the real them and that, you know, there, yes, this person may do terrible things and their, job and maybe awful in the government, but like they treat the dog well and they take care of the house and they do sweet things and like, no. Like, you may have known this man and they may be disappointing to you, but the Marco Rubio we see there, that's him. That's him. Yeah, that's him. Anyway, subscribe to the POTSave America YouTube. Is that it? That's it. That's it. That's all we got.

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