Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/31/25: Trump 'Couldn't Care Less' About Inflation, MAGA Signalgate Stupidity, Trump Promises Third Term

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump says he couldn't care less about prices going up, maga signalgate stupidity, Trump promises third term.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? It's great to have you back. Nice to be back in the studio here.

Lots to talk about, of course. Wednesday is Liberation Day, Eldon, as I'm personally calling it. Well, it will be for a lot of hedge funds. A lot of 401k holders. Anyone who has anything in the stock market most likely. So we're taking a look at what the plan is even likely to be with regard to additional tariffs and how the markets are reacting and all of that good stuff. Also, some new polling numbers with regards to how people feel about Trump and Trump's handling of the economy.

We're looking at the very latest, of course, from the Signalgate fallout, which just continues. Now, Waltz is apparently on thinner ice. so we'll see what's going on there. Trump says that he's going to run for another term. That is blatantly unconstitutional, but he says he's going to figure it out and he's going to try. So we'll see how that's going to work out. I'm taking a look at how Zionism has been used to usher in an authoritarian crackdown. Jonathan Allen and Amy Parnes are joining us to talk about their new book. I'm very excited about this.

So they've got all the inside scoop about Biden dropping out, about Kamala switching in, about Obama's role, about Trump's campaign, all of the things. So they're going to be spilling the tea from their new book.

We also have Ben Wickler, who is the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Big Supreme Court race in that state. Elon Musk was there last night trying to gin up support for his preferred candidate. So we're going to get a look from Ben Wickler there in the state and what that all means. So lots to get to this morning. Yeah, it's exciting. And Emily's actually down in Wisconsin right now. That's right. She'll have some on the ground reporting for that on Wednesday's show, which we're excited. Wisconsin native. Yeah, Wisconsin native. I've never, I still am wrapping my head around the like almost hundred million dollars or so that have been spent on a Wisconsin Supreme Court race. It's completely outrageous. Elon put

in $20 million to this Supreme Court race. Yeah, he personally put in $20 million and then on the Democratic side, it's like $26 million. I'm like, this is insane. Is there really that much at risk? Apparently, yes. So we'll get to it. Yeah, it's a real sort of referendum moment, bellwether of where things stand politically. So a lot of eyes on Wisconsin. All right, let's start with the tariffs, as Crystal said. Liberation Day, it's coming. And let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Trump is in his masterful communication strategy, says this, I couldn't care less if foreign automakers raise prices due to tariffs. So this was a phone interview yesterday with NBC News. He was asked

specifically about potential price increases. The president said he could not care less if automakers raise prices after he announced a 25% tariff on foreign-made automobiles. Asked what his recent message was to motor industry CEOs and whether he had warned them against raising prices. Trump said the message is, congratulations, if you make your car in the United States, you're going to make a lot of money. If you don't, you're probably going to have to come

to the United States because if you don't make your car in the US, there is no tariffs. When pressed to see if he told the CEOs not to raise prices, he said, no, I never said that. I couldn't care less if they raise prices because people are going to start buying American cars. I couldn't care less. I hope they raise their prices because if they do, people are going to buy American-made cars.

We have plenty. Asked if he was then concerned about overall prices growing up, Trump said, no, again, I couldn't care less because if prices go up, they're going to buy American cars. So he said it like four times, not necessarily the strategy I would use whenever we're talking about car tariffs and all of that. I mean, I guess to be fair, we are talking about foreign made vehicles, but the problem is of course that we've talked here about is that many of the inputs, even to our so-called American cars are either from Mexico and or Canada. I mean, you know, the modern car industry, and this is something even the UAW and all of them will admit, is completely globalized. I think to our detriment, but that's a much longer discussion, I think, at this point. The problem is that if you are going to have such a massive shock to the

overall supply chain and tariffs do increase, if you don't see some commensurate policy on the other side of that, well, I think people are going to get very upset. Don't forget, you know, a huge part of inflation and the way that people experience inflation over the last four years, it was eggs and it was gas. But we also don't seem to remember that 2021 to 2022 spike of overall used car market. Yeah, that's right. If we think about it, if we do have a situation where the overall aggregate price of cars does tend to increase, we will see a similar rise in the value of the used car, which is actually very difficult. That's almost 70% of the entire car industry in the United States.

And, of course, it just makes it even more inaccessible. Parts and all of that could become more expensive. So bad for manufacturing, possibly, if we do see overall price increase, of course, very important for our manufacturing supply chain and then huge consumer problem as well. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot to unpack here. I mean, first of all, obviously, this is not how the tariff program was sold on the campaign trail. Trump was definitely not running around going like, your prices are going to increase. Yeah, I mean, he was pledging. Inflation, we all know, was a big political problem, a big reality problem for the Biden administration.

So he was promising to lower prices. Now that he's won office, he's like, I don't care if prices go up. I don't care if they go up on cars or go up on anything else. So obviously directly contradictory to what they were selling on the campaign trail, which was always preposterous. I mean, you know, Sagar was always honest, even as he was supporting some of the tariff regime that like, yeah, prices are going to go up. But they tried to pretend like, oh, no, that's not really going to happen. And that's not how it works. Obviously, that was a lie. And now we're getting the truth from Trump here with regard to

how this is going to be put into place. The auto tariffs are the sort of thing, if you're just focused in on that, that I could theoretically support if it was focused on the auto industry, if it was done in an intelligent way, if it was paired with industrial policy that would actually be targeted and aimed at building up our domestic auto manufacturing industry. That is not what's happening here. That's not happening with cars. At the same time that they're instituting these tariffs, they're of course taking a hatchet to the federal government.

They're going the opposite direction of having any sort of industrial policy. They're going back to austerity, to deregulation, all those sorts of things. And then of course, we're not just talking about auto tariffs. Actually, we don't really even know what the tariff regime, nor does anyone else in the administration apparently, that's going to be instituted this week. But the indications are from Jeff Stein and other reporters and from what Peter DeVaro and other White House aides are saying that Trump wants to go really big and he wants to go basically across the board. So this is going to be, if he moves forward and actually implements these tariffs and actually sticks with them, it is going to be a massive, massive disruption.

There's just no doubt about that whatsoever. And Jeff made a good point about how, you know, this sort of conversation about tariffs and what purpose they even actually serve for Trump in this administration, it's kind of coming to a head this week. Because one theory from the business community and from Republicans who are more uncomfortable with tariffs is, oh, he's just using these as a negotiating tactic. Okay, so, oh, he threatened Mexico with tariffs, and then he got some concession from them, and he's just using them as a negotiating tactic. Okay, that's one theory. Another theory is, no, he's using these to totally upend the current economic system. They're going to be put in place. They're going to be permanent. And it is going to cause a massive reorientation. And, you know, also, look, when you're talking about putting tariffs on

goods that are food and, you know, all sorts of things that working class people need to make ends meet, it's effectively a tax on working class people. So the other theory of the case is this is short-term pain for long-term gain in terms of theoretical increased industrialization within the U.S. I'm sure there are some other theories out there as to what's going on, but those are sort of the two competing possibilities of what Trump is doing here. And this week, we will get a sense of which one is actually correct. And this morning, if you look, it's which one is actually correct. And this morning,

if you look, it's about 8 a.m. right now. Futures are down in the stock market. The stock market was down last week. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of fallout from whatever happens to be announced on Wednesday. Oh, there's no question about it. On the strategy front, I still don't think we can really read anything into it because originally we were doing Canada tariffs with Mexico. Then we weren't. And then we were, and then we weren't again. And then even on the reciprocal tariffs, the way that he sold it at the State of the Union is we're going to do a reciprocal tariff with every other country. Again, I actually think reciprocal tariffs is not a terrible idea. A reciprocal tariff is the idea that if you have a country has a tariff on our goods,

then we are just going to simply have the same one. Okay. I mean, you know, it doesn't seem so unreasonable. But then he was like, well, actually what we're going to do is narrow the tariffs to 10 or 15 countries. We're like, okay, so now we're moving away from that. And now the latest is actually we're going back to a 20% ring around the United States tariff. And you're like, huh. All right. So my point is not only can I not keep track, I don't even think anybody in the White House knows, which is obvious. Here is Pete Navarro. He is the advisor to President Trump on trade. He's been kind of a longtime trade guru, fought a lot with the more anti-tariff people in the first term.

Here he was on television immediately after the Couldn't Care Less interview came out. Here's what he had to say. You heard Lucas's reporting there where the president says he doesn't care if the prices go up on US cars. So what's the message to the US consumer? The message is that tariffs are tax cuts. Tariffs are jobs. Tariffs are national security. Tariffs are great for America. Tar tariffs will make America great again. Okay. I mean, you know, not a lot going on there. Let's go ahead and see how this is working out at a polling level. And this does not shock me at all. I just have to say, coming on the heels of Trump being like, I don't care if prices go up, for him to be like, oh, it's a tax cut. I mean, it's just preposterous. It's totally preposterous. This is why messaging and all this stuff matters,

because what people can really pick up. Most Americans do support tariffs in principle, as long as they are correct, targeted, made in a certain way. I support tariffs in principle. The UAW, let's be clear here, is openly supportive of all of these auto tariffs. Just to be 100% clear about what it means. The problem is always the back and the forth, the chaos, the lack of the process. And it's not just me who is saying this. It's not really just nerds, political nerds who read the news. What do people, what are people the most sensitive about? Price.

Now, let's put this up there on the screen. Here is from the CBS News YouGov latest. Expectations versus now. Trump's policies are making you financially, okay? So in January, they expected 42% said better off. Views now, 23% better off. In January, worse off was only 28%. Views now is 42%. And then the same is 30 to 35%. So there's been a massive drop off, basically a flip from the better off to the worse off with the plurality there now saying that they believe that the policies are going to make them worse off. Let's go to the next part. And this is actually the single most dangerous thing right here. Who is more responsible for today's inflation? 38% say Biden's policies, 34% say

Trump's policies, both equally is 19 and 9%. You are some 50 so days are into your administration. You've been approximately in power for 10 weeks. People are going to cut you a break. People cut Biden a break for nine months. Please do not forget that. But the more that you have this and you can speed it up yourself if you, let's say, have yo-yo tariffs that are in place and not in place and constantly back and forth. And oh, I don't know, the S&P is currently on track for its single worst quarter in the last three years since COVID. Add some more on top of that and you see an overall drop in your 401k. Let's say that you begin to see stagflation. You have high inflation. Unemployment begin to tick up. You have consumer demand that

begins to drop. You have a home price, which isn't budging. You have the Federal Reserve, let's say, which has already said they're like, oh, well, we're going to keep things kind of where they are right now. You're in a bad situation. You're going to have high interest rates. You're going to have very sticky inflation with tariffs. And you're going to have chaos in the government. People are not going to feel a lot of confidence. They will ditch you very, very quickly. And I think that they are on track for that right now.

Well, I mean, think about it. Like, he makes it impossible for people who even want to defend what he's doing. I'm like, listen, I'm ready. I'm ready for a real tariff regime. I'm ready to go. If it was something that, you know, made sense to you, you would be here defending it. But how can you? Because you don't even know what you would be defending.

Exactly. Right? So you can't. It's stupid. And, you know, that goes for all of his White House officials, too, who have to make up preposterous things like, oh, this is a tax cut when it's the polar opposite of that. I mean, this is, you know, Peter Navarro in that same interview, he claimed that Trump's tariffs are going to raise $600 billion per year, $6 trillion over a 10-year period. This is what Jeff Stein is

saying. Seems to reflect our reporting that Trump wants to go absolutely enormous on the tariffs, regardless of short-term economic consequences. Hard to overstate how big $600 billion per year is. Would this be the biggest tax hike in U.S. history? Jeff Stein is asking. At the same time, to your point about stagflation saga, here is a headline from CNBC this morning. First quarter GDP growth will be just 0.3% as tariffs stoke stagflation conditions. So stagflation is low or no economic growth and high inflation. And that very much seems to be the trend that we are headed in. You know, economists are increasingly saying that there are more and more warning signs of recession, not because any of it is inevitable,

but as a direct consequence of the policies that are being put in place from Trump. You know, when we looked at that JL Partners word cloud, when they asked people, and JL Partners is like a right-leaning firm, when they asked people, hey, what's the biggest screw-up from Trump so far? Overwhelmingly, the word that jumped down at you was tariffs.

Because you're right, if they are sold correctly and if they are applied, like, for example, people are pretty supportive of tariffs on China. OK, China, you know, we lost a lot of our industrial base there, put some tariffs on China. People see it as like a global competitor, try to reindustrialize, get some of those manufacturing jobs back. People can be brought on board with that, even though it's still not an overwhelming support, but it's, you know, you can be sold on something like that. This, how can you even sell people on something that is so chaotic and so nonsensical? And especially at

a time when the landscape, the economic landscape is very different from 2016. The number one concern now is inflation. That is very different from how things were at the beginning of the Biden administration or certainly at the beginning of the first Trump administration. And so it is remarkable, you know, politically to see the way that Trump is taking on so much water with regard to his economic handling, which again is very different from how people have felt about him this entire time. So it's going to be, this is going to be a very interesting week on the economic front as maybe we finally get some sense of, is this just a threat?

Is it a negotiating tactic? As many people on Wall Street are hoping, in spite of what Trump has very consistently said in his, you know, consistent talk about how much he loves tariffs and how big he wants to go and all of the leaks from internally about how he's pushing Ains to go bigger and bigger and bigger. Is this a negotiating tactic or is he serious about implementing this massive tariff regime, which will have immediate, very significant consequences. That's right. Well, let's put the counter up there because this is the one where, you know, you always got to stick. Let's put it up there on the screen from CBS. Overall job approval, 50%. I mean, that's high for Trump. That's the highest it's ever been. 50% approval,

50% disapprove. He was underwater for basically his entire first term. So, you know, you really got to keep that in mind. And, you know, Andy Kaczynski flags this while he continues to not only have higher approval at any point, and even if Americans are souring there, Americans continue to approve of his immigration policy. Immigration is probably the only thing that's really saving him right now. And if you think about it too, what you are watching is you are watching them try and do these wild experiments economically. As things become more real, let's say that they do continue this strategy. And let's say the S&P is down, let's say, I don't know, 20% on the year. And then you start to do a tax cut, which we'll talk about it probably tomorrow at some point, but there is beginning to be an internal realization in the White House. They're

like, hey, we got to do something over here. Because if we not only hurt the economy, but then extend massive tax cuts for corporations and for the rich, all while we don't, let's say, or all while perhaps like making more stringent work requirements or something for Medicare, good luck. Now, that's in a nine-month situation. You could easily be in your 30th percentile of approval because you would not only have a tax bill, you would have a lower economy. So you would have people who would have higher prices and a tax extension of lower tax cuts. Now, they're possibly floating something about higher taxes on the highest income Americans. We'll see. I'm not going to hold my breath, but it is interesting at least that they're considering something like that.

Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case,

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Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here.

If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like,

oh, dad, all I was doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh my god, it's go time. You actually sent

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I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment that was you know dying this is a story all about trust and about a woman named sarah cavanaugh i've always been told i'm a really good listener right and i maximized that while i was lying listen to deep cover the truth about sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. in the future, it's not good, especially if there is a major drop in the overall stock market, because we already know that they have a nine-month to one-year deadline. The tax bill

has to be extended by the 2025 calendar year. There's no option. That tax bill is going to be unpopular. No ifs, ands, or buts around it. And so with this, what I would want, if I'm going to extend a massive tax cut, would be what? I'd be like, I need boom in stock markets. I need 25%. I need low employment. I need low inflation. I'd be like, don't worry. People are not going to care as much, right, if things are all good.

But when things are bad and now people are starting to tune in more to the economic news, which they do, they certainly are, maybe not in the ways that everybody may want. But people are paying attention, I think, especially to this. And that is where I could see, I mean, look, it's not only blowout midterm territory. That's where you start to deal with like real threats to your overall agenda and presidency just for the next three years after that. I mean, we're going to get a lot of political intel this week because you have not only this Wisconsin Supreme Court race that we're going to talk to Ben Wickler about, which right now Polymarket has what the liberal had, like an 86% chance of winning. It's not that big of a market. Let's be clear. It's only like $450,000 or something. I mean, the presidential markets was like hundreds of millions, so it was much more

efficient. Yeah. It could be wrong. I'm just saying. Right. Yeah, sure. Fair. Absolutely. Fair enough. But it's not looking great for Republicans in the state of Wisconsin, which is why Elon went there yesterday to try to do this rescue effort and giving out his million dollar checks, whatever. You also have this, these two special elections in Florida, one of which is apparently uncomfortably close in the seat that Mike Waltz, who's now, you know, obviously a national security advisor, he is he vacated that seat. He had won that seat by 38 points. Yes. Thirty eight points.

And they are worried about that seat. Like that alone tells you everything. Now, expectations are, listen, this is a very red part of Florida that the Republican is going to be able to pull it out. He's also himself this very like bombastic and controversial character. And so doing himself no favors, apparently in this campaign, the, you know, people are not happy on the Republican side with the way that he is conducting himself. But the fact that that seat is in question at all is crazy. Elise Stefanik having to be pulled, how much did she win her? That's like a plus 20 Republican district. Again, should be a layup,

should be no problem for Republicans. And they had to pull her UN ambassador nomination because they were worried that they could lose that seat. So we already know. Now, listen, caveat, these are low turnout elections. Democrats are very fired up. The Democratic base now is filled with high propensity voters, a shift that's part of the realignment as, you know, the voting coalitions have moved around and Democrats have more college educated voters tend to be higher propensity voters. But when you're talking about a midterm election, you're still talking about it being important that you have those high propensity voters

and who is really super motivated and also who is depressed. So if you have a cratering economy, you know, a stock market that has fallen, economy that is either in recession or teetering on the brink of recession, prices that have skyrocketed, stagflation, and all of it is laid at the feet of Donald Trump, even people who are like more or less his supporters,

they're not going to be super psyched about coming out to vote for more of this agenda. At the same time, just in terms of additional economic news, you continue to see consumer sentiment falling off a cliff. You also continue to see things like delinquencies on mortgage payments, delinquencies on car payments going up and up. So the indications are pretty dire. It's not like the economy is on really firm footing here for people to be able to absorb the type of shock that Trump is planning to put into place. So that is the landscape here and it is going to be a wild ride. I guess the only thing that you can say is because he's not actually he's never been committed like officially to any of this stuff. He's always been willing to pull back as you should all hope

for that. Let's say there's a 20 or 30% correction and you get into a full blown panic on Wall Street, which look, I shouldn't downplay any of this stuff because there's real shit that is a result. Not only is 401k, I mean, that's just at a personal level for everybody who is out there. That means, think about it, whenever your market cap and your stock and all that stuff goes down, what do people usually do? They pull back, not only pull back spending, they fire a bunch of people.

So there's real jobs, millions of jobs that are on the line here. Oh, yeah. So I can't sit here and just be like, oh, let's all just hope for a correction and all that. Don't forget, depression goes up, the suicide rate.

If you really want to see something depressing, go check it for 08, 09. It's a disaster. Every single time, every major U.S. depression from the Great Depression forward. In fact, the highest, one of some of the highest suicide rates the United States ever had was during the Great Depression. So you can go and see it for yourself. There's real human consequences to a lot of this. And, you know, you can't screw with people's lives generally. And, you know, even on the tariff point, this is the last thing I'll make, is, you know, as you said,

even with the China stuff, it's not all that popular. I mean, it's around like the 50th or 60th percentile. I'm not gonna sit here and pretend it's like 90%. I think the immigration stuff is way more popular than anything on tariffs. The problem that I always come back to is we are sitting on 50-some years of a policy and of an agenda that has been sold to people. Now, think about the amount of deprogramming that it takes to say, no, TVs being cheap is not the most important thing. Buying a new car every five years is not only financially responsible, but it's also something that, you know, the new bills and whistles and all that from China, that's not the be all end all of what your entire life is supposed to be about. Same with the new consumer

goods. The American dream is not built on cheap, you know, MacBooks like this from China that you buy every two years or an iPhone, which is basically the same over the last 10 years that you just renew all the time. It's about being able to have children if you want to, staying in place if you want to, moving if you want to, being able to buy a house and to pursue whatever it is that you want to do and not all the accoutrement that's in your house. But that's been the standard of living now for 50 years. That's two generations that effectively that have been brought up on this. So you would need not a massive cultural project, like something from the White House, which is disciplined, which is

different. You would need like an entire apparatus that is united in this discussion. And you can't just sell it within all the bounds of chaos, because if you do, what you risk is actually getting it totally affirmed of people saying like, no, no, no, no, no. This is not only what I know, but this is what I want. And then we're never going to get back. This will be looked at as an aberration, not as something else. Yeah, no, that's right. I mean, you also, you have to sell people on a new and different bargain that is better than the one they have. And instead, what is being promised is just like,

we're going to hike the prices of the things that have remained to be relatively inexpensive. And we're not going to help you on health care. We're not going to help you afford a house. In fact, the tariffs are going to make housing even more expensive because many of cheap consumer goods where China basically like exported deflation on these cheap consumer goods. We're ending that bargain. But here's the new bargain. Here's what you get. You're going to be able to afford it. You're going to be able to send your kids to college. It's going to be more affordable. You're going to be able to get help. None of that is being offered. So it's just we're going to hype prices and you're going to suffer.

For what? Nobody could really say. I mean, there's just no narrative that is being offered here that makes sense to people whatsoever. And so, yes, I actually am for a new economic, you know, grand bargain, so to speak here. I am in favor of that. That's not what's on the table. What's just being offered to most people at a time when they already are really stretched thin because of the inflationary effects, because also because of decades of wage stagnation, because of decades of union busting, destroying worker power, because of decades of, yes, while those consumer goods were cheap, all of the building blocks of a middle class life, housing, education, health care, have skyrocketed in price

so that it is so difficult to afford on one or two incomes. It's almost impossible for many people to be able to afford those things on two income households working full time. So, you know, that's the landscape into which they're saying, and by the way, suck it up and pay more for your car, suck it up and pay more for these consumer goods, clothing, food, et cetera. And yeah, that's not, it's not a good deal that's being offered. That's on the table right now. No, it's not. And you actually need to offer something very, very different. Uh, as I said, otherwise you're basically think about it with Trump's chaotic strategy, which is constantly pulling back and saying something and then pulling back, then you will

not only inflict damage in the interim, you won't get the end result that you were trying to do, and you will turn the public that is against you. And I think that's really what they're flirting with right now. And America really, I mean, let's think about it. When's the last time they had a full-blown, COVID is a little bit different because COVID was like, you know, it was a pandemic, et cetera. And the economy, the stock market drop and all that was like relatively short-lived.

We have not had prolonged stagnation for a long time. Even 2022, I think was the last year that there was a drop in the overall S&P, but then you had two rip-roaring years after that. I mean, we have not had, you know, a couple of years of like actual decline in a long time in this country. And if you, you know, remember what things were like in 08, 09, it's not a surprise that that is where so many, not only the populist movements come from, but that is where the millennial generation and

all of that really became disconnected from the overall American dream. And then the split that has happened since then has been devastating. So anyway, look, there are longstanding social consequences. You don't need to be a historian or any of that to see multiple times in the past when things like this have happened. And so they want to save not only their political future, but really, I think that the contract that they're trying to sell to the country, they're trying to sell to the country, they're going to have to do something different, but there is no indication of that whatsoever.

Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Catherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders.

I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still

somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened.

And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem.

My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh, dad, all they were doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh, my God, it's go time.

You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms, Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her, until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real?

I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Turning now to Signalgate. Okay, so the idiocy continues in the White House. Remember, if you all recall, the Signal Chats leak. Mike Waltz says that Jeffrey Goldberg, the neocon journalist over at The Atlantic, that his number got sucked into his phone. Obviously, it was preposterous. He says he never met him. The photo came out showing the two of them together at an event over at the French embassy. He says, I did never have talked to him before. Well, Goldberg is basically saying that's bullshit to basically every single claim that Mike Wallace has made.

Let's take a listen. This isn't the Matrix. Phone numbers don't just get sucked into other phones. I don't know what he's talking about there. You know, very frequently in journalism, the most obvious explanation is the explanation. My phone number was in his phone because my phone number is in his phone. He's telling everyone that he's never met me or spoken to me. That's simply not true. I understand why he's doing it. But, you know, this has become a somewhat farcical situation.

Okay. Let's parse some language, shall we? My phone number is in his phone because my phone number is in his phone my theory behind all this and I'm curious what you think Ryan basically said this as well it's obvious Waltz has been leaking to Goldberg now for quite some time the screw up here was so big that Goldberg had to burn him

but he had to burn him in such a way that he can't fully cast the blame. So he can't come out and just be like, look, this is ridiculous. He's been leaking to me for X, Y, and Z number of months. So he has to say careful things. My phone number is in his phone because my phone number is in his phone. Not because it's like he's had my phone number for a number of years. And obviously we've been in communication. I mean, the meeting thing, this isn't the other thing about Goldberg. He puts it in the story, but he's very sly. He's like, yes, we have met, you know, once.

But he didn't talk about some of the actual circumstances. And then the photo comes out from 2021, literally of the two of them standing right next to each other. And then you add Mike Waltz's sketchy behavior on top of all of this. I mean, it's so preposterous for everything that is happening right now inside. And unfortunately, I think it's starting to fade away. Like, I think that MAGA and Trump are basically getting away with it. They're like, we're going to weather the storm. No scalps for the enemy. And I'm like, do you guys not understand how this is going to land to people? I mean, I know it's weird to say, the Signal story is the biggest story of the Trump

administration. All the data shows us that. And I think because it's funny, like there's an element of hilarity to it about texting the wrong person or whatever. And everyone can like somewhat relate to it. And everybody likes to see people in power just be like them. But that's not the point. The point is not about all of that. It's really about the lies, about the sheer idiocy behind the scenes and how they insult our intelligence. Like to take to the national airwaves and say that somebody's phone number got sucked into my phone. I'm just sitting here being like, do I, am I taking, I feel like I'm a Zoolander. Like I'm like, am I taking crazy pills? And the craziest part about it is, you know, I think you originally made this comparison

of making fun of Joy Reid and be like, oh, it's just like those Russian hackers who hacked her old blog posts. I'm like, they genuinely think not only are you so stupid that you're just going to sit there and take it, but this is an indictment of the entire like MAGA ecosystem, which is either silent on it and or just backing Trump up. Actually, it's Goldberg's fault. I saw somebody say, like, he should have left the chat immediately. What?

What? Yeah, yeah. It's like, no, guys. The point is, is he's a CIA cutout because he left the chat. You don't leave the chat. You stay forever. And then you leak some stuff to your colleagues or whatever. I just, I really, I'm so stunned by how they're trying to give them a pass and they're like, no scalps or whatever.

And it's like, well, hold on a second. Like, I thought that we're supposed to have merit or whatever. federal employees who have been screwed by either work, you know, coming back, chaotic procedure, no office space, which even though they were called back, sheer stupidity. I know several people who have either taken the buyout offer, et cetera. So you're firing tens of thousands of people, including park rangers and the nuclear scientists who are then rehiring on the theory that all these people are dead weight. And then you have this guy, the most basic screw up of all time for the top national security advisor, and he gets a pass. You don't think that people aren't going to see this? Yeah. You know, at a very, that's my thing about fairness as well. If you're going to fire

all these people, then you should actually be even more ruthless with the people and yourself. But no, they're setting a different standard. And it's like, okay, I think America should really pay attention that the sheer idiocy, the stupidity, the lying, the expecting you to, you know, if you're MAGA out there and they're genuinely, they think you're a fucking idiot. Like that, I want you to be clear. Like that's what they think of you. They think you're so dumb. And you know, to be honest, many of them are right. Uh, will just serve as some sentinel and be like, actually, it's the left that's the problem here, that's demanding a scout. We don't play by their rules. I'm just like, okay, then, you know, just have a moron at the top of your national security advisor. I'm

sure the entire country will be better off for it. I can't believe it. I really can't. Tribalism writes Roth's brain. It's amazing. It really does. Yeah. And I mean, I think the reason that, so first of all, that interview Mike Waltz gave to Laura Ingram, it felt like, I guess he didn't think he would be pressed at all by her. And so even the basic question of like, yeah, but how did, like, why was this number in

your phone? He had to come up on the fly with this, like, oh, well, maybe it got, like, sucked into my phone. And then I loved when he was like, we're going to get the best minds on it. Like, we already know what happened. Elon's technical experts are looking. Again, stop. Like, we all know what happened here. It's you and Jeffrey Goldberg have the same ideology.

Like, you're allies. You may be on different political teams, technically, but in all of this, you are allies. So it's very obvious what happened here. You know, I think with regard to—he feels like he has to lie about it because he feels like the biggest sin for Trump in particular would be being friendly with Goldberg, somebody that he hates. It does say something, though, doesn't it, about the whole relationship with him and Goldberg, where that is, like you just said, you do have the same uniparty ideology. And all the reporting from behind the scenes is that Waltz, quote, annoys his colleagues because he's constantly talking about bombing Iran. And or, you know, it's like, or he's like, oh, actually, you even saw in the chats, right? Like, he's like a brain dead idiot being like, actually, my freedom of navigation, please.

You know, sitting in there. Anybody from the Atlantic Council could have written something like that. It's just the way that this has all gone down just demonstrates also the stupidity. Why did Trump, you know, Michael Tracy made a good point because I was like, oh, this is a person who's out of step with the Trump admin. And he was like, you know,

that's not even true because Trump picked him. I go, you know what? You're completely right. Trump picked him for this job. So what are we all supposed to sit here and think?

And the person who supposedly was, you know, is closest to Trump, Stephen Miller, who sort of like was speaking for Trump in coming in and say, okay, well this is, you know, sorry, J.D., about your concerns. But this is what

the boss actually wants. Steve is Stephen Miller. And Stephen Miller is there backing up the yeah, no, we're going to bomb them. We're going to bomb this apartment building. Yay to, you know, the death and destruction. And great job, everybody, even though, you know, not a word is said about the fact that this policy, which, by the way, they've continued to bomb and has continued to not work. This policy was tried in the Biden administration. It was a failure. There is no even expectation that it's going to be successful this time around. It's just like bombing for idiotic and facile and borderline insane the foreign policy, the standard foreign policy thinking is in this administration. And

it's a carryover, this particular policy carryover from the last administration as well. And it also really gives you a window. This is something I was talking to Ryan and Emily about on Friday. It gives you a window into like, OK, J.D. does his little like, well, you know, this is really like kind of Europe's problem. He's shot down by everyone who cares to weigh in in that threat. You're right. There should have been like it's not just Mike Waltz. There should have been. Theoretically, Pete Hegseth has had this come to Jesus moment. Now he's Magan. He he's Megan, he's America first and he's against the wars, blah, blah, blah. He's not backing him up. There's no one in that chain. Tulsi Gabbard's on that chain. She's not backing him up. Steve Witkoff is in there. He's,

you know, running around Moscow at the time. He's not bad. Nobody in there has anything to say other than yes, go team, bomb the apartment building, get the bad guys, way to go. Not a mention of the fact that the policy will accomplish literally nothing other than complete and utter, you know, other than death and destruction and doing Israel's bidding. Let's linger on that. This is a very important point. What was the easiest thing to do? The lowest common denominator opinion in Washington is bomb the Houthis and or let's stick it to Iran. Even, J.D., if we're all being honest, the Europe thing is probably just, I have no inside knowledge. I'm just telling you from what I think. It's very

obviously, it's like one of these like, yeah, but my Europe, you know, Europe is bad. And that's why we shouldn't do it, which is like obviously something that you use because you know, it's a framework that everybody has to be built into. It's fine. You know, you don't hate the player, you hate the game. But, you know, as you said, it's the one voice. And then Miller comes in, shuts it down. Mike Waltz comes in again with some literal copy pasta from ChatGPT about freedom of navigation, about why we got to do it. Pete Hegsett's like, we're going to go. We should go right now. And we've been bombing Yemen now for multiple days. That's, you know, nobody just sits there and go, hey, did it work? You know, what happened? How much did we spend on this operation? You know, tens of millions of dollars. We have now spent and

discharged more missiles against the Houthis than in all the previous 30 years of combat from the United States of America. We don't sit there and just take any stock of any of that. It's like, it's so ridiculous. And it shows you too, that the hardest thing to do is to even use some fake argument about, like, maybe we shouldn't do this. That is the difficulty. That's the difficulty in Washington today is to actually preach restraint even couched in political rhetoric. That is actually the sickness at the heart. And it also shows you all, going to war, it's easy.

You know, every time I've read about the decision to go to war in Iraq, you would think that it would be difficult. No, no, no, no. It was the easy decision to make. Not only was the psyop to American people in on it, the media was bloodthirsty. Congress wanted to do something.

It took lone voices of courage to say, no, we should not do this. And even they failed or didn't prevail or were compromised, you know, in their own way. Yes, sure, it's great to be vindicated years later. It doesn't matter if you don't say anything at the time. It's just you're done. And we're going to end up in a disaster. I really fear that's where we're next. Tomorrow we're going to cover this Iran situation.

Things are not good right now. You know, the rejection of negotiations and all that. I know what the solution is. We all do. We know where things are going to end up. It's the easiest path of least resistance for them, but definitely not for us. And all done so casually. I mean, that's what like the emojis. That's why everybody's sort of sticking on that, understandably, because yeah, it feels like, you know, a group chat you'd be in with your buddies or your family or, you know, I said on Friday, like your kid's soccer team coordinating snacks for the next game or whatever. Like, it feels so casual. And yet 50-some people were killed in this strike. Like, you know, fist pound, emoji, fire, American flag.

There's not a care or consideration over is like, who is this target? Is this what's the club? We're talking about a civilian apartment building here that we're collapsing. We're all just like celebrating like that's fine. And, you know, I know that our foreign policy has killed many civilians, but they always tell us, oh, we take all the care and consideration. And, you know, pulling our nation into a potential war with Iran to be taken so casually and with so a total lack of regard for what the policy is even going to accomplish. That to me is what is so unsettling here. And then, you know, the use of Signal itself, I feel like that hasn't gotten commented

enough that Pam Bondi went on and was like, yeah, we're going to keep using Signal basically. It's being used intentionally to avoid FOIA requests. I mean, they are, this is a way to try to subvert the legally required records keeping that, you know, is congressionally mandated. And I think it is standard protocol. No one on that chain is like, wait, why are we using Signal for that? Shouldn't we be using more secure channels? Also, it was weird how many people were on the chain. Like, why is the Treasury Secretary on the chain? You know, like, OK, it has to do with freedom of navigation. So for him to understand the overall plan, fine. Does he really need to know like what time and where and what type of

military hardware is being deployed, et cetera? The whole thing is just total amateur hour. You know, I said on Friday, it gives like children playing war games. And I think that's also, Sagar, why it has so broken through with the American public and so captured people's attention because it does like there's a when you're on the outside you have this idea that serious people are making serious decisions with a lot of thought and you know a lot of intelligent argument about how exactly to do these things and then when you see the reality of it you're're like, holy shit, these people are nothing, they're nothing special and this is being done incredibly casually. If there is one thing that I could

take away, it's that guys, Washington, this is how it all works. I want you all to know that. America has been too psyoped from all of these movies into thinking that we have great men at the top. We once did, but that's been a long time coming and everyone sits in the situation room and very seriously sits there and deliberates. It's like, no, this stupidity is actually how

our entire government is run and has been for a long time. Put B2 up there on the screen. It's possible that Mike Walsh could not be long for this world. Nobody really knows. It says, in private meeting, Vance and top advisors suggest Trump oust Walsh. So the tell that J.D. actually did tell him to fire Walsh is that, quote, Vance's office did not respond to comment on this. So if he had said it, then he would have denied it, right? Or if he hadn't said it, then he would have denied it here. It was buried down at the bottom. But that's a classic little Washington way in whether you can tell if something is actually true or not. Inside, apparently, both J.D., Susie Wiles,

and who else in here said that they wanted to fire, so basically the top advisors for Donald, oh, Sergio Gore, who is the top personnel official at the White House, PPO director. All of them said, sir, you should fire him. He clearly is leaking, he's lying, and he has committed like a very basic act of appearing like an idiot. It's just incompetence. It's not something we want. And Trump is like, yeah, but I don't want to give Jeffrey Goldberg a scalp. It's like that is the priority, you know, in his mind. And it's not the foreign policy view. It's not anything else. It's just the fact is, is that he doesn't want to appear as if he's giving too much away, you know, to the liberal media and its calls for...

And he specifically hates Goldberg over the Suckers and Losers article. The Suckers and Losers story. That's right. Right. Yeah, I mean, I read an article this morning. Actually, let's go and put that one up there on the screen. B5, please, just so you guys can see. From B5, here, Mike Wallace is losing support inside the White House. What they point out is that, you know, his position is tenuous.

Trump has apparently been furious with him. But, and this was my big takeaway, is that he's like on the phone with his advisors. Trump says that he does not want to recreate the stories of his first term and, you know, Willie Nillery firing people and having personnel issues. And so in this way, though, this is where the stupidity of it comes in. You are actively keeping someone in place who absolutely deserves to be fired just to avoid, you know, the story of somebody leaving. And they think that it would have been a cascading effect. I couldn't disagree more. The fact is, is that Waltz's lies and then the insistence that no classified information was shared is actually what made the story 10 times

worse. If they had just come out the day afterwards and be like, National Security Advisor Walz offered his resignation this morning to the president. The president has accepted it and he wishes him well. It was obviously a mistake. The National Security Advisor takes full responsibility. I genuinely think the story would have gone away. But all the stupidity of it, they can't, they really believe that by going on the offense constantly that they can just survive these things. But my point is about survive to what end? To keep a neocon leaker in his job just so that you don't own the Atlantic? It's like, but you know, the other irony here,

nobody's getting owned more than anybody who doesn't want to go to war with Iran. Like, Jeffrey Goldberg is actually succeeding in keeping somebody like Mike Waltz in his job. If you decide to, you know, own him by not firing him. Okay. Good luck to you. Yeah. And I don't think this is going to put Mike Waltz off of leaking future things to Jeffrey Goldberg either. There are ideological. Goldberg has gone out of his way to try to protect Waltz. Absolutely. The fact that he hasn't already pulled up like here's a picture, another picture of me with. Right. Here's our chats. Right. Here's the other things that he sent me. Oh, you want to say, buddy, that you don't

know who I am? Here are the receipts. Here is the proof. Like the fact he hasn't done that is a incredible kindness to Mike Waltz, because that actually would pull the pin on him. If it was shown and Trump believed that they were in regular or semi-regular communication, like I think that would pull the pin on Mike Waltz in terms of his future within the Trump administration. But he's not doing that. He's just saying like, it's not true. We do know each other. My phone number is in his phone because my number is in his phone. Even with regard to how he handled the release of this, getting out of the chat to begin with, then he initially doesn't

want to actually release the details, which proved that this was clearly classified information. That's the other thing that is so dishonest, pretending like these war plans or attack plans, as they want to say, like this isn't classified information is also so insulting to anyone who has a brain and knows even the first thing about how Washington works and how much of this information is classified. But, you know, Goldberg did his best to try to protect these guys, and they just forced his hand at every single turn. So I was going to mention, you know, there was a, to your point, Sagar, about how they're handling this so differently than the treatment of any other lower level federal government employee. There was a DHS staffer that accidentally included a reporter on some details of forthcoming ICE raids.

And it was a much lower level screw up in terms of like the consequences. And that DHS staffer was immediately put on leave and had their classification threatened. Like they're- Yeah, good. That's, you know, it was, look, you messed up and now you're going to be out of the job and you are not going to have access to this sort of classified intelligence again. But for Mike Waltz, because he doesn't, you know, because Trump doesn't like Jeffrey Goldberg, he's hanging in there. Now, I will say, I think, you know, maybe if down the line, if he screws up again and there's some other excuse to get rid of him, I do think that he's a little tenuous at this point. I think that's what you could say. But no, the handling of this

has been incredible. And it is also crazy to me that it is kind of the biggest, like Trump, given everything that has happened in the Foreign Alien Enemies Act and the, you know, the economic crashes and all of these, the roundups on college campuses, everything that's been done. And this is the thing that has really broken through because it's a clown show. It's just a clown show. That's it. That's right. Look, all of those are substantive stories of which people, what's the normal response from somebody who doesn't know a ton about it? Oh, I don't know that much about it, you know, or something like that. That seems complicated. People inherently have a reversion to what? To controversy or to something that seems like very complicated.

But with this, yeah, there's no complication. Finally here, I just wanted to show you in terms of what it looks like for the people who are out there trying to defend this. This is the best that they've got. Some idiotic whataboutism that again, just deeply insults your intelligence. Here's Greg Gottfeld. Let's take a listen. And we were all smeared for speaking the truth that was clearly on display for years. And now these same jackasses are telling us that the Signal app story is a grave concern when they hid the fact that Biden was literally a concern for the grave. A little turnabout in language. All right. I liked it. There has to be a penalty for this cover up. The scandal isn't that they elected a

vegetable. It's that journalists knew it and refused to act like journalists, even as the facts got worse. And that penalty should be a complete loss of credibility, not just now, but forever. The rest of us from Trump on down to his supporters have earned a free punch, meaning every time they shout scandal, we get to hit them with ridicule. I mean, you expect us to care about some group chat regarding a successful strike against terrorists after gaslighting us about a senile old man for four years?

F*** you! I mean it. Yeah, that's the guess that they've got. Oh, you gaslighted us, so now we're going to gaslight you. Right. We get a free punch. We get to not care about the scandals of this administration. You just know there's a bunch of boomers out there eating that up.

I was getting cheers in the audience. I also love a successful attack. By what measure? How is this a success? Although the bomb went boom. Okay, congratulations. Guess what? You accomplished literally nothing.

Yeah, that's what counts for success in Washington. Yeah, apparently. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there.

Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into,

call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much.

And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Stephens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then Me Too happened. And then everybody else wanna get pissed off

because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh dad, all they was doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh my God, it's go time. You actually sent it?

Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect podcast network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying.

This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get to Trump 3.0.

Yeah, so apparently in this interview with NBC News, Trump made it quite clear that he plans on seeking a third term in office. Let's put this up on the screen. Kristen Welker was doing the interview here. She said, are you joking about this? He says, I'm not joking. When asked to clarify, I'm not. It is far too early to think about it. When asked whether he has been presented with plans to allow him to seek a third term, Trump said, there are methods which you could do it. He also was asked whether that could involve running J.D. Vance and then him basically like sort of taking over for J.D. Vance. And as they said, a possible scenario in which Vice President J.D. Vance would run for office, then pass the role to Trump. Trump responded that that's one method, but there are others too

asked to share another method. Trump simply responded no. So Steve Bannon has been out there saying similar things, you know, seeming to, I mean, he has said quite clearly that they're going to figure out a way to get Trump to run for a third term. The constitutional language is as clear cut as it could possibly be. There is literally no ambiguity there. Did you pull it up? You want to read it for us? Yes, I can read it for everybody. I was looking at it this morning just to get the exact text.

No person shall be elected to the office of president more than twice. No person who has held the office of president or acted as president for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected president shall be elected to the office of president more than once. This article shall not apply to any person holding the office of president when this article was proposed by Congress, shall not prevent any person who may be withholding the office of president or acting as president during the term within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of president or acting as president during the remainder of such term. So the background is 22nd Amendment was passed. Congress in 1947 was ratified by the states in 1951. 1952 is the first presidential election under the new rule under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who subsequently was elected to two terms. And

the background of it, as we have discussed here, the 22nd Amendment was, in my opinion, a severe overreaction to FDR seeking the unprecedented third and fourth terms. The Congress at the time was very upset at how much power FDR had accrued under his, what, 12 or so years while he was in office. They wanted to make sure that it never happened again and to try to ratify the two-term norm that was set by George Washington actually into law. But now it is the law of the land. It is the Constitution of the United States. I was thinking, you know, even in terms of how that whole, like, J.D. would run and you could hand it off to him.

Yeah. As the Constitution makes clear, no person who has been elected president twice can serve again as president. So he would actually not be in the technical line of succession. Right. Yeah. So you could you could not even, you know, constitutionally put Trump as like the VP on the ticket and then have J.D. step down, et cetera. Well, even if Trump stepped down today and handed it over to J.D., he still would never be elected or be eligible. Right. Because it says

no person was in elected twice. Elected there. The definition is ratified victory by the electoral college, which has now happened twice. Let's go ahead and listen to some of the ways that Steve Bannon has been talking about this because, I mean, I have been taking seriously this possibility for a while because Bannon has been pretty consistently talking about it. And, you know, there was even at CPAC, there was a whole booth set up there about we want Trump to be, you know, our Red Caesar, we want him to be able to serve a third term, etc. And listen, this is a man who, when he did lose the election in 2020, refused to accept defeat. Like, he did not want to give up power. And so I don't think any of us should expect that he's going to be willingly, like, accept giving up

power this time around as well. So I think you have to take seriously now that you have Bannon and you have Trump being quite clear that he intends to seek a third term. You have to take it seriously and start thinking through the scenarios of how he could even theoretically try to accomplish this goal. With all that being said, let's go ahead and take a listen to C3 Steve Bannon talking about this possibility. I'm a firm believer that President Trump will run and win again in 2028. So I've already endorsed President Trump. A man like this comes along once every century if we're lucky. We've got him now, he's on fire, and I'm a huge supporter. I to see him again in 2028. And obviously, anybody who doesn't like what you say, but judges is at a function of a lack of intelligence, doesn't know anything about you.

I don't make that mistake. You're a smart guy. Oh, you know, he's term limited. How do you think he gets another term? We're working on it. I think we'll have I think we'll have a couple of alternatives. Let's say that. We'll see. We'll see what the definition of term limit is.

All right, well, so you're talking about litigating this issue, because I don't want people to listen to our interview and say, Bannon's cooking up an insurrection. Bannon is cooking up, you know what I mean? I want people to get a straight take on where your head is. What do you suggest? Chris, as you know, I've had greater long shots than this. We supported President Trump after the election. I realize you don't believe the election of 2020 stolen. We do, we firmly believe that.

We're not prepared to talk about it publicly, but in a couple of months, I think we will be. But you are not suggesting revolution or overthrow or anything that people would condemn. Chris, we just won one of the biggest sweeping victories. We're in the middle of a 1932 type realignment if we can continue on and continue to have populist policies, populist nationalist policies. We have African American men coming to our side. So again, I mean, I guess they're going to try to come up with some sort of like cockamamie legal theory. But even that, because the language is so clear, I'm not sure how they would do it.

You know, I have been thinking about this. One of the things that I did consider is that you, whether it's J.D. Vance or Don Jr., you run someone who basically is like a puppet figure. I mean, this is kind of what Putin did in Russia, right? Oh, like a Medvedev. Like a Medvedev. And it's like, okay, he's technically the president, but Trump is the one who's really pulling the strings. And, you know, if that's the plan, then it sort of makes sense that he withheld his support from J.D. Vance as his successor because J.D. Vance has to prove himself that he will be a total, willing, compliant puppet for Trump. Well, if that's the case, you should just go ahead and pick your son, Donald, because

no self-respecting person, I think, would take that. Maybe that's why he isn't getting behind J.D. I consider that possibility. I also thought through, like, you know, Trump has been, they've been threatening the courts and trying to, you know, pressure and bully them and defying, I would say, some of the court orders. They have been using the weight of the federal government to punish states for doing things that they don't want the states to do. You know, launching investigations, withholding federal funding. You see the same playbook with regard to media outlets,

with regard to law firms, with regard to universities. You could use some of that pressure to, like, you know, let's say, okay, Trump runs a Republican primary. He wins the nomination. Then it comes down to, are states going to put him on the ballot? You could use some of that pressure

to try to coerce states to go along with this. But I don't know. I just my mind is not devious enough to come up with the scenario of how this ends up working out for him. But like I said, I think you have to take it seriously, given that this is not a man who willingly gives up power. And he's saying quite openly. And I think one thing we've learned about Trump 2.0 is the things that he says he's going to do and many things beyond that he is entirely serious about. I think it's possible. I also think that his ego is just so fragile at the idea of having to pass on power. And all presidents who are two-termed struggle with this, right? Like Reagan famously,

he's like, he didn't particularly love the HW and he didn't really want to hand the reins over. His wife wouldn't even give him a tour or whatever. Psychologically, these people are crazy. I mean, you really need to think about it. And so that's what it takes to why he doesn't want to endorse J.D. or Don Jr. or anybody is because the idea that you could hand over his life's accomplishment of getting elected president of the United States twice or three times, I guess, in his mind over to somebody else is just so psychologically wounding because it's a subservient position. And it's one that he correctly views as when you do that, you no longer are the kingmaker, right?

There is a transition there where whoever he endorses then becomes the preeminent head of the party and you lose a lot of your control and of your power. That is ultimately what I think drives him. As you've said too, though, I mean, I think that, look, if we were going to say realistically the way that this would ever happen, let's put C4 up there on the screen, where there's been a amendment to the amendment that has now been introduced. And it says, introduced a House resolution to amend the Constitution to allow a president to be elected for up to, but no more than three terms. The language of the proposed amendment reads as follows. No person shall be elected to the office of president more than three times, nor be elected to any additional term after being elected to two consecutive terms, and no person who has held the office of president or acted as president

for more than two years of a term to which a president was elected president shall be elected to the office of president more than twice. Which basically means what? It means Obama and Clinton and Bush could not run for a third term, but that Trump could. Obama specifically is the target there. I'm not sure that Trump could beat Obama.

See, I don't know. I think Obama's hold is gone. I think his 20-year psyop in the American people has finally ended. Just because of that Democratic poll where people are fed up with him. Michelle's doing her dumbass podcast about whether you should,

what was it? Whether you should recline your seat on a commercial airliner. Lady, you have never been on a commercial airliner for the last 20 years. You know, just- Do not lecture us.

Just as a digression, our guests that we're having on Jonathan Allen and Amy Parnes, great reporters, both of them. One of the tidbits they have in their book is that, you know, when, remember when Obama was going to endorse Kamala and it like took a long time and he did that like weird scripted video, whatever. Apparently one of the requirements is Michelle did not want to be in the video. Wow.

That's kind of interesting, right? I mean, there's a lot of rumors swirling about how their marriage is going, et cetera. So I don't know, that kind of fueled, it was like—made me think about that, but then also made me think about, like, I guess she just, like, doesn't really like Kamala maybe, too. I don't know. That's definitely possible. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, to be honest, if you read both of their books, I have no idea how either of them is still in that marriage. It's totally insane.

I mean, it's just one of those where he literally is running for office, and she's like, I don't want you to do this. And he just does it anyway. And you're like, okay. I mean, she's like, I don't want you to do this. And he just does it anyway. And you're like, okay. I mean, she's like, I don't want to be first lady. He's like, okay, suck it up. I have no idea. Why would you stick it out? I don't get it.

On the other hand, like you had to know this was who you were marrying. I guess. Yeah, I don't know. You know? It's one of those where she's like, okay, then I'm just going to move in my mom. And he's like, okay. Listen, you know, don't judge, I guess. Whatever. in my mom. And he's like, okay, I, you know, it's, listen, I'm, you know, don't judge, I guess, whatever. But if you read behind, between the lines of, but you really should read the chapters

of his rise in his book and in her book. And if you read that, you're like, this is nuts. This is a total digression. Yeah. But anyway, to get back to the cool point here, I think Trump is going to try to run for a third term. I don't know how it's, I don't know how, I don't know what argument he's going to make. I know Republicans will go along with whatever it is that he says, um, and, uh, try to make the case. I haven't been able to figure out what exactly strategy they'll deploy. Apparently they haven't figured out what strategy they'll deploy, but I 100% think that he is serious about this. He doesn't want to give up power and he doesn't want to be a lame duck. You know, midterms, they're going to get, they're going to get shellacked in the midterms. Like, they already know it. I mean,

they already know they're going to lose the House at the least. And it could be a bloodbath. We're going to get a little bit of a glimpse of that this week of just like how bad it could end up being for them. And if there's a recession, if there's a stock market crash, all of those sorts of things. So midterms are likely to go poorly for them. And then you've got, you know, Trump on his way out. This is an old man, too, by the way. Like, we forget he'll be, I think, 82 in 2028 if he were to try to run again, et cetera. But yeah, you could imagine Republicans starting to agree, maybe create a little bit of space and think about who's going to be next and start positioning themselves and start trying to make the break, et cetera. I mean, you still see Ron DeSantis doing

a little bit of this already down in Florida. He doesn't want any of that. He wants to keep a firm grip on power. Bannon has also said he believes Trump will be, you know, arrested and imprisoned if once he's out of office, if he doesn't run for a third term again. Trump probably believes that as well. So he'll feel it is like existential too. And so I do think they'll try to pull it off So he'll feel it is like existential too. And so I

do think they'll try to pull it off and they'll use whatever tricks in the bag, legal, illegal, constitutional, unconstitutional, moral, ethical, unethical, or, you know, otherwise that they can to try to accomplish that goal. It's look, I've said before, I want the 22nd amendment to go away. I think it's anti-democratic. It's one of those where, yes, as horrific as it may seem for many of our liberal viewers, it doesn't make any sense to term limit somebody if that's the person who is being democratically ratified. You also should remember that if Obama had been allowed to run, he almost certainly, at the very least, he would not have been Hillary Clinton. Would he have beat Trump in 2016? I don't know, okay?

Nobody will know for sure. I think he probably would have had a better chance, I think, been Hillary Clinton. Would he have beat Trump in 2016? I don't know, okay? Nobody will know for sure. I think he probably would have had a better chance, I think, than Hillary Clinton. Because it was pretty close. It was close. Right. And Hillary was a horrendous candidate. Yeah, and if you just think about it. And Obama was still popular.

If you just think about it. I mean, there's actually an argument to be made that we would be living now in the last term of the Clinton administration if there had been no 22nd Amendment. Maybe not. It would have been the best, but we wouldn't have been in Iraq. So maybe it would have been okay. You know, it's like, listen, the 22nd Amendment has cost us a lot of really stupid presidents or has actually, sorry, given us a lot of very stupid presidents. Bush is almost certainly 100% a result of that. And the yo-yo effect of that is likely due to the 22nd Amendment. I mean, even if you go back to 1940, if FDR had decided not to run for his third term,

we could have been in a very, very bad situation, which was his argument there at the time. So anyway, I democratically am very against the 22nd Amendment. I mean, we don't have term limits in Congress. We're going to have term limits for the president. It's preposterous. It was just obviously done to screw over the legacy of FDR. Yeah, that's true. No, I mean, you know, I have a thoroughly unprincipled position on this, which is that I also, in theory, want the 22nd Amendment. But this guy's got to go.

Then beat him. This guy's got to go. We've got to be done with this man. You can beat him then. One last thing. Put up C5 on the screen. So, you know, the public, like, you've got to go. We got to be done with this man. You can beat him then. One last thing. Put up C5 on the screen. So, you know, the public, like, you got to give them credit. At the time when the media was all like, oh, Biden, he's fit as a fiddle and sharp as a tack.

They were like, come on. And a majority here also, like a very clear majority. I think those who think that Trump is not going to run for a second term, it's like 30 some percent. But in any case, 52 percent are like, yeah, he's going to try. Yeah, he's going to try. And I think that's probably where the smart money is. He's out and out saying it. So I don't know why we wouldn't take him seriously at this point, given that he's definitely meant many of the things that he has said here coming into the second term. So, well, we'll see. I will enjoy tracking this. My hope is that they are able to pass a complete, if they are able to amend the Constitution and to finally repeal

this amendment. In fact, the trade I'll take is that we'll bring back prohibition and then we'll take this one away. So that's what we'll do. I do not accept that deal. That's the biggest mistake. The biggest mistake we ever made was repealing prohibition. Yeah, that's right. This country's full of drunks, but you know, whatever. All right, you guys will get over it. Just like they did in prohibition. Some people will figure it out and the overall drinking rate will go down.

It was better for all of you. Sorry, it's true. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there.

Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I also want to address the Tonys. On a recent episode of Checking In with Michelle Williams, I open up about feeling snubbed by the Tony Awards. Do I? I was never mad.

I was disappointed because I had high hopes. To hear this and more on disappointment and protecting your peace, listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us.

To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.