Breaking News from Pod Save America - Trump PANICS As Republican Infighting EXPLODES

Episode Date: December 5, 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. Tommy Vietor and Brian Tyler Cohen dig into the Republicans' explosive infighting and the latest revelations in Trump-Hegseth scandal. CHAPTERS 00:00 - Republican Infighting 07:50 - Ad Break 09:20 - Trump-Hegseth Scandal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brian, Republicans on Capitol Hill are furious and the nys are out for Speaker Mike Johnson. And the person slashing the shit out of him in the back is a member of the Republican leadership. Liberal Tears is brought to you by PDS debt. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik. Here's what she told the Wall Street Journal about Speaker Johnson. She said Johnson, quote, certainly wouldn't have the votes to be Speaker if there was a roll call vote tomorrow. And I believe that the majority of Republicans would vote for new leadership. It's that widespread.

She said, whereas Kevin McCarthy was a political animal, Mike Johnson, Johnson is a political novice, and boy, does it show. And she said that Trump certainly doesn't need Johnson. And when Johnson responded to this story, she responded back on Twitter, just more lies from the speaker. Does that sound like a good, healthy professional relationship to you? I think the worst part is saying that you are a novice relative to Kevin McCarthy's political animal. If you were a novice compared to Kevin McCarthy, that does not speak well on you. And look, this is, obviously, it's not going to be a surprise, this is all born out of a swipe against her own ego.

I mean, Trump was asked in the Oval Office while he was standing next to Mamdani if he agrees with Elise Tophonic that, you know, he's a jihadist from New York. He says, he says no, but she was asked by name. And like, what a swipe against Elise Tophonic? Like what a blow to her and her ego that when she had this opportunity to have some backing by the president of the United States, the guy who she blew up her entire reputation for, he just kind of left her twisting in the wind. Yeah. So just to back up the tape a little bit. So Lisa Zafonik was the number four ranked Republican in the House. Trump tapped her to be his U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

Then they pulled her nomination because they realized they were not going to win that seat if there was a special election. So then she's back in Congress. So she just like take one for the team, basically. She had to take one for the team, and Speaker McCarthy made some, like, fake job for her, which we'll get to in a second. So she is furious. She feels like there's no loyalty. Now she's trying to run for governor. It doesn't seem like it's going very well.

But she is sort of like lit a fuse, and it exploded all this discontent about Speaker Johnson on the Hill. So the Wall Street Journal, they said Johnson's standing with Republicans is in a state of collapse, is how they described it. So Elise Tophonic was mad that Johnson wouldn't pass. a bill she authored that would require the FBI to notify Congress if they start investigating a like a lawmaker, like someone running for president or a political candidate, which seems like a bad idea. I feel like there's a bunch of corrupt elected officials. We shouldn't have to notify Congress so they can like go tell Trump.

Right. But we know why she's doing this. Republicans are also mad that Johnson sent Congress home for two months during the government shutdown. But remember, like, that was just part of the Epstein files cover up. It wasn't really his call. Yeah. She's also mad that apparently moderates.

a vote on the ACA extensions because they are correctly worried that, you know, healthcare premiums doubling might be bad for them politically. In an election year? In an election year. Yeah. I mean, that seems like a very reasonable complaint. And then the New York Times had another story on this that said Johnson is having particular challenges with women in his caucus.

He apparently won't engage with them on substance. And they think it's because he's like a creepy evangelical and has some very backwards view. So this is directly from the story. In a recent podcast interview, for instance, he said, Speaker Johnson, that women were not able to compartmentalize their thoughts and that a member, the member who he would trust most to cook him Thanksgiving dinner was Representative Lisa McLean of Michigan. Yikes. Yikes. Wait, so when you empower a like a theocratic Christian nationalist, you mean they bring with them, theocratic Christian nationalism?

Wait, are you saying the guy that installed the don't jerk off the porn app on his. phone and his son's phone is a weirdo when it comes to kind of social norm, social cues. I think in large part the fact that there's so much discontent in the house is owed to the fact that Mike Johnson's entire speakership has just been kind of a love letter to Trump. It is contracting every ounce of his power to Trump. And it's to the detriment of everybody in his conference. I mean, think about what he's done for Trump in blind deference to Trump that now falls on the shoulders of his own members.

He has refused to release the Epstein files for 11 months. You think that Americans don't view the Republican Party more broadly as a bunch of pedophile protectors right now? He has contracted the ability of the Congress to implement these tariffs instead letting Trump do it, which of course caused a trade war, which is raising the prices of everything, which would be bad enough unto itself, but even worse in the face of the fact that Trump and Republicans ran on affordability. and so just on issue after issue after issue, because Mike Johnson just has slavish devotion, slavish fealty to the White House, it's these members who are getting screwed as the result of it. Like Trump's not on the ballot,

but all of these people are. And when you have swings now that we're seeing 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 points in these districts across the country, we're not just looking at like a small blue wave. That could mean, you know, 30, 40, 50 seats could be up for grabs. It's not just that small sliver of purple swing seats. If we're seeing swings that big, then a lot of these members can be in trouble. And that's owed to the fact that when Mike Johnson had the opportunity to have a backbone,

have some semblance of a spine, every single fucking time this guy just defers to Trump. Yeah, the legislative branch might as well not exist anymore. And meanwhile, Trump is like, here's what I need you to do. Cover up the Epstein files. We're going to cut Medicaid. You've got to eat these tariffs, swallow them hard. We're going to allow health care prices to skyrocket. Oh, and by the way, when voters say they're concerned about affordability, I'm going to tell them it's a hoax.

It's a hoax created for the Democrats. Where's the win for Mike Johnson? What does Mike Johnson get out of this other than a pat on the head from Donald Trump who, by the way, like, Donald Trump will show affection and loyalty to Mike Johnson now? But if Mike Johnson thinks that he's special and that Donald Trump is never going to throw him under the bus, might I redirect Mike Johnson's attention to George Papa? Adopoulos, Gordon Sondland, Michael Cohen, Marjorie Taylor Green, Kaylee McInany, like over and over and over. Donald Trump has thrown everybody under the bus that doesn't show blind, absolute loyalty to him. And he's not special. He'll be in the same position as all of these people are.

And the only thing more pathetic than the fact that Mike Johnson will continue to show loyalty to Donald Trump, despite the fact that this guy is a one-way street for loyalty, is the fact that he thinks he's somehow special. Yeah, he is a puppet who is expected to do and say everything Trump wants. dissent will not be okayed. So this is amazing, Brian, so in New York Times story, a senior Republican congressional aide pushed back really hard on Elise Stefonic.

Here's what this person said. After Mr. Johnson has provided Ms. Tefonic with office space and a budget for what the aid described as a, quote, fake job and a fake title, he would have expected her to be more gracious. Yikes. Yikes. Again, this woman was the number four

in the house left to do this job for Trump, had to come back to Congress. She has this new fake job. It's the chairwoman of the House Republican leadership. But like, I mean, that is such a disrespectful, obnoxious thing to say. And, like, buddy, your, your speakership, like, rests on all of these people voting for you to be speaker. You cannot lose anymore. Yeah, but you know what?

I would have an easier time feeling bad for Elise Daphonic if she wasn't just, if she wasn't just as she absolutely suck as bad as she did. Like, this woman has zero dignity, zero integrity. like she went from a very moderate New York Republican. Like friends with Pete Buttigieg in college. Yeah, yeah. Like a New York Republican, basically a Democrat anywhere else. And now she is like the most obsequious Trump hanger on that you could possibly find.

And so like, you know what? If you don't respect yourself, I don't know how you'd be expecting anybody else to respect you. Yeah, I can't help you lady. Liberal tears is brought to you by PDS debt. The system isn't broken. It's rigged. And if you're buried in debt, that's exactly how they want it. Big banks profit when your death.

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PDS debt.com slash rank. Okay, so the only person having a worse day than Speaker Johnson is Pete Hegseth, our secretary of war. Secretary of, anyway. We were not going to show you. We're not going to show you the clip from South Park about how Pete Hegseth is a fucking douche. maybe we should just drop it in a little clip right here. Pete Hexsathe's a fucking tooth. Okay, so Pete is trying to dodge two distinct bullets today.

So the first is this question over whether he ordered an airstrike on a boat in the Caribbean. That was a war crime. And the second is the Inspector General's report on SignalGay. That was when Pete Hexsath used his personal phone to share obviously classified information with a bunch of people that included his wife and the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic. Again, still can't believe that happened. So let's start with the war crime question. Here is Congressman Jim Himes from Connecticut, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, talking about a briefing.

He just got from a guy named Admiral Bradley who was in charge of these operations. Admiral Bradley has a storied career, and he has my respect, and he should have the respect of all of us. But what I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things that I've seen in my time in public service. You have two individuals in clear distress without any means. means of locomotion with a destroyed vessel were killed by the United States. Under the DOD manual for abiding by the laws of armed conflict, the specific example given of an impermissible action is attacking a shipwreck. Any American who sees the video that I saw will see the United States military attacking

shipwrecked sailors. Bad guys, bad guys, but attacking shipwrecked sailors. People will someday see this video, and they will see that that video shows, if you don't have the broader context, an attack on shipwrecked sailors. All right, so what Congressman Himes is talking about there, Brian, is a video of these two airstrikes on a boat in the Caribbean that was carrying 11 people and reportedly drugs, and all of them were killed. So the first air strike killed all but two people.

They launched the second air strike to kill the survivors. So just for context, Jim Himes is the head of the Intelligence Committee, the ranking member on the Intelligence Committee. So that means he's read into some very sensitive shit. And he just looks rattled there. Yeah. I think it's, I mean, it's clear what Heggsath is trying to do here. And it's clear what he's been trying to do all along,

which is, you know, clearly recognizes that he's stepped in it in terms of this, you know, second strike where it goes against all of the rules of engagement that say that you, you know, if somebody, they say specifically if you're, if somebody, they say specifically, if somebody is shipwrecked. But what Hegeseth is doing could not be more transparent in saying we approve of the actions of Admiral Mitch Bradley and I stand behind him 100%.

I stand by that guy who ordered the thing. His unilateral decision to do this. Great leadership from him. It was excellent. No one else was involved and we applaud the fact that he took such initiative him and him alone to do what he's done. And I mean, clearly, like the fix is in, I don't know what Bradley is thinking here,

but anybody with half a brain has got to see, you know, that he's throwing him under the bus and doing it to protect himself. Yeah, I hope what Bradley is thinking is I better hire a lawyer because he could be in some serious trouble. So, yeah, the Pentagon. Let me ask you about that. Like, okay, so you say he could be in some serious trouble. Whose job would it be to prosecute these people? Because if they're all under the thumb of this administration, I mean, at some point, you know, we've seen the extent to which Trump has filled all of these roles with lackeys and sick of fans. And so if Trump doesn't want these people prosecuted, regardless of the fact that these are pretty egregious war crimes, that it's the plain black and white, you know, letter of the law, like that all of this stuff was ignored.

Where does that, like, post-Trump? Look, if he were to court martial him, I think it would have to be a post-Trump thing. There's also, like, international law. There's the Geneva Convention. There's the Hague. Like, do I think that's likely in this scenario? Right. Are we going to extradite the former Secretary of Defense to?

No. Probably not. And like then there also is the question of Trump's pardon power and whether he might use it here. Right. So like, but like that setting all of that aside, I do think it's worth just talking about like it seems quite clear that as you said, like Heggseth is real worried. He's pointing the finger at Bradley. And I think he should be worried. I mean, I think all I think all 21 of these strikes that have happened in the Caribbean are illegal. Because like the legal pretext is this claim that we are under attack by drug cartels and that is patently absurd that this is like somehow self-defense. But this this double tap strike on this one boat with 11. people on it. Like, I don't think all 11 of those people were, were drug dealers. I think there's

probably, like, innocent people who were being trafficked on that boat. Well, either way, even if they were, I mean, they're not judge, jury, an executioner. Exactly. Like, that's the whole point of a rules-based order. Yeah. Look, it's not a capital offense, drug dealing. Like, so the, like, the Pentagon argument is like, the drug cargo is a lawful target because the cartels would sell the drugs and then use the profits to buy, like, military equipment to wage war against the U.S. or I guess they said like the weapon that the cartels use are the drugs themselves because it's killing Americans.

Again, just twisting themselves into pretzels. And then, but they claimed that the second strike had to happen because the cartels could have picked up the survivors, grabbed the remaining cocaine, sold it somewhere, and then use those funds to like continue their attack on the U.S. You can write an entire episode of like Law and Order SVU. You know what I mean? But that doesn't, but like, it's fiction until it actually happens, but that doesn't negate the fact that there are rules in place expressly to prevent the exact thing that they carried out.

It is crazy. It is outrageous. It is clearly a war crime and is not going to prevent fentanyl deaths in the United States. But this action is getting some defenders in the kind of maga media world. No. Let's watch a clip from Megan Kelly. So I really do kind of not only want to see them killed in the water, whether they're on the boat or in the water, but I'd really like to see them suffer.

I would like Trump and Hexeth to make it last a long time so that they lose a limb and bleed out a little. Like I'm really having a difficult time ginning up sympathy for these guys who 10 seconds earlier almost got taken out by the initial bomb, but because they managed to get ejected a little too soon, had to be taken out in the water. I realize legally it may make a difference, but truly, Mark, this is a tough case to really gin up the sympathy.

these are the American people. Look, I know from actually conversations with her that this is like, she's a really deep anger and personal concern about drug dealers because she is a friend. Fox News host Eric Bowling, whose son, took what he thought was a Xanax. It was laced with fentanyl. The kid died, right? So like, there's, I think, an understandable anger at fentanyl dealers. Well, look, if she has that anger, which I completely appreciate, then why is there not the same

anger at the fact that Donald Trump just pardon some narco-terrorist who was responsible for far more deaths than those 11 people are. Yes. First, yeah, my response to her would be like, fentanyl is a scourge. We should stop fentanyl. Fentanyl is getting, you know, it's put together in Mexico with chemical ship from China. It's not coming from Venezuela. What's coming from

Venezuela is cocaine. And basically, by the way, like a pretty small percentage of the cocaine that's trafficked the United States. Second, like, it goes back to what you said. So the Coast Guard should interdict these ships and then arrest these people and prosecute them in a court of law. We shouldn't just kill people, especially like, we shouldn't

kill anyone, whether or not you're a drug runner, without going through a legal process or some sort of legal justification. But I was especially horrified by this first strike that we're talking about here because there were 11 people on that boat. And I just, again, I do not think that there were 11 drug dealers on a boat, right?

There's like precious space on a speedboat. You save as much of it as you can for the drugs. The rest were probably people being human trafficked. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's also important too, to not normalize this idea that the Trump administration or any administration can just engage in extrajudicial killings because they've decided to put forward

whatever unconfirmed story they think justifies their actions. And especially with an administration that will gladly abuse any ounce of power they're given to just give them carte blanche to say, okay, you can just blow people out of the water and just kill people, murder people, wherever you want, because here's the story you're putting forward is a dangerous precedent to set for Donald Trump's White House. Yeah, and look, there are the people watching this who are pointing their first. finger at the screen yelling in me saying, what about Obama in drone strikes? Like, first of all, I agree with you. I think there were too many drone strikes. I think it should have been

reined in earlier. But those drone strikes were authorized by Congress because we were at war with Al-Qaeda and associated forces. There has been no congressional authorization of this made-up war with cartels. We're just killing people at random in boats in the Caribbean. And also, you know, you made a really important point about Trump's pardon of Wanda Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, who was convicted of conspiring to traffic 400 tons of cocaine to the United States. But then Roger Stone writes a letter to Trump on his behalf and probably gets paid off by God knows who and all of a sudden that guy gets a pardon using. But he did call him your excellency. That's true. He was supposed to get 45 years in prison. Okay. Disaster number two for Pistol Pete is

Signalgate. So the Defense Department's Inspector General released this long-awaited report on signal gate on Pete's use of signal on his personal phone and putting classified information in it. So I'm going to read one passage to you, Brian. They say, the secretary sent non-public DOD information identifying the quantity and strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory, over an unapproved, unsecured network approximately two to four hours before the execution of those strikes, using a personal cell phone to conduct official business and send non-public DOD information through signal, risk potential compromise of sensitive DOD information, which could cause harm to DOD personnel and mission objective. So pretty clear cut. Pete was putting, you know,

sent in his wife, sending the editor chief of the Atlantic operational details about where we were about to bomb and when in Yemen. But the Pentagon says that Pete didn't actually mishandle classified information because even though he copied and pasted classified stuff from a sentcom email, he magically no longer made it too sensitive to disclose because he has declassification authority. so it was okay to send. So I feel like you seem satisfied by that explanation. Look, I think what we're seeing here is just desperate scrambling by Heggseth. You'll notice that yesterday, the day before this report came out, Pete Hegseh tried to front-run this thing by going on to Twitter and writing no classified information, total exoneration, case closed,

Houthi's bombed into submission. Thank you for your attention to this IG report. So really trying to do the exact same thing that Trump impression and also borrow. some of what Bill Barr did in the lead up to the Mueller report. Mueller report being released. And I mean, it's just the complete antithesis of what this report actually says, but this is what they do. I mean, it's just straight, I mean, it's just straight gaslighting to people and treating his supporters and Trump's voters like they're abject morons.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I guess, look, Mike Walts got pushed out of the White House because of the Signalgate. Hegsafe has survived so far. I guess we'll find out if Trump still likes him enough. You know, I feel like we're in a world where we are so far into this theory by Trump that any admission of fault or any capitulation is viewed as weakness. And his whole thing is strength. And he has to double, triple, quadruple down now because his poll numbers are down.

And so he doesn't want to show any weakness because there's already some blood in the water. And so there is a part of me that thinks that no matter how bad it gets for Heggseth, that what's worse for Trump, as far as he's concerned, is some admission of fault. Yeah, definitely. And so that's what having Heggseth resign or firing him would show. And so he's just going to double down. He has no choice but to keep him. And in some ways, like, look, Heg Seth is creating terrible headlines for him.

You know, Cash Patel is creating terrible headlines for the administration. Dude, at least they're not talking about the Epstein files. But also, like, the more hobbled they are, the more in debt they are to Donald Trump. And he knows that, like, they can't resist any order he ever makes. So I don't know. Maybe there's some methods of the nadness. unfortunately that will not end well for us. All right, thank you for watching this episode of Pod Save America here on YouTube.

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