It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: FEMA Teleportation, Pam Bondi Fired, Iran Ceasefire?

Episode Date: April 10, 2026

The gang discuss the rescue of an US airman in Iran, ceasefire negotiations, a FEMA official who say he teleported to a Waffle House, and elections in Georgia and Wisconsin. Cool Zone is nominated for 3 Webby Awards! Submit your votes by April 16th or we'll hunt down your family.   Behind the Bastards - https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/features/experimental-innovation  It Could Happen Here - https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/limited-series-specials/news-politics  Migrating to America - https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/limited-series-specials/documentary   Sources: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/08/trump-threatens-50-percent-tariffs-on-iran-arms-supplies-his-legal-path-is-murky-00863519 https://www.wisn.com/article/author-of-banned-book-calls-out-menomonee-falls-district/45840156 https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-announces-50-tariffs-nations-supplying-iran-with-weapons-2026-04-08/ https://aomeara.com/section-338-and-the-ghost-of-smoot-hawley/ https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF13006 https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/08/trump-threatens-tariffs-countries-supplying-weapons-iran-ceasefire.html https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF11346 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/elections/wisconsin-supreme-court-election-polls.html https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-scores-f-accurate-pollster-11797710 https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5819659-trump-approval-rating-democrats/ https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5810850-trump-approval-hits-new-low/ https://www.npr.org/2026/04/08/nx-s1-5770114/democrats-wisconsin-georgia-election-shift-overperformance-trump https://x.com/Kalshi/status/2041503849991516661?s=20 https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/polls/tx-primary https://fox59.com/news/indycrime/impd-shots-fired-into-indianapolis-city-county-councilors-home/   https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/2041938354858582151?s=20 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/world/middleeast/shelly-kittleson-journalist-iraq.html https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/browse?sponsor=456810#text=Dignidad  https://truthsocial.com/@greggphillips/posts/116329963429212640 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/us/fema-gregg-phillips-waffle-house-teleportation.html   https://x.com/ElizLanders/status/2041878299454955640/photo/1 https://x.com/jonkarl/status/2041839012097229086?s=20  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-news-conference-iran/  https://www.cbsnews.com/projects/2026/us-military-rescue-iran/  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/6/trump-says-us-armed-iranian-dissidents-via-kurds-kurdish-groups-deny-claim https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/2041422908166127898?s=20 https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/2041429864335446102?s=20 https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/2041073575273156670?s=20 https://theaviationist.com/2026/04/05/u-s-rescues-downed-f-15e-wso-deep-inside-iran/ https://www.nbcnews.com/video/trump-threatens-jail-time-over-f-15-story-leak-260769349590 https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116351998782539414 https://abcnews.com/US/fbi-scene-ice-involved-shooting-patterson-california/story?id=131812411 https://x.com/DaniellaMicaela/status/2041886308964913229 https://x.com/OversightDems/status/2041900181977718843 https://www.nysenate.gov/senators/lee-m-zeldin/about https://www.cityandstateny.com/personality/2026/04/5-things-know-about-lee-zeldin-he-tops-trumps-list-ag/412647/ https://nynow.wmht.org/blogs/politics/why-rep-zeldin-now-running-for-governor-says-he-voted-against-the-2020-election-results/ https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/us/politics/pam-bondi-attorney-general-trump.html https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/07/politics/todd-blanche-nobody-knows-why-bondi-was-fired https://x.com/RepNancyMace/status/2041906771074138402See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of IHeart Media, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing. Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries

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and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey. Listen to Math and Magic on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching the latest season of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, you already know there's a lot to break down. Gorsha accusing Kelly of sleeping with a merry man. They holding Kay Michelle back from fighting Drew. Pinky has financial issues.

On the podcast, Reality with the King, I, Carlos King, recap the biggest moments from your favorite reality shows, including the Real House Wise franchise, the drama, the alliances, and the T, everybody's talking about. To hear this and more, listen to Reality with the King on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. How much you wait, Wanda? Right now, I'm about 130. I'm at 183. We should race.

No, I want to leave here with my original hips. On the podcast of Matchup with Alia, I pair prominent female athletes with unexpected guests. On a recent episode, I sat down with undisputed boxing champ, Clarissa Shields, and comedian Wanda Sykes to talk about Wanda's new movie, Undercard, The Art of Trash Talk, and what it really means to be ladylike. Open your free IHeartRadio app. Search the Matchup with Alia and listen now. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports Network. Hi, I'm Iris Palmer, host of the Against All Odds podcast. Every week, I'm sitting down with exceptional people who had broken barriers even when the odds were stacked against them.

Like chef Victor Villa of Vias Tacos. You know the taquero from the Bad Bunny halftime show? It was great. It was a big moment. It was special. And I felt like I was really representing my family, you know, my brand, my city. I was representing all taqueros, not only of like, you know, the U.S., but of Mexico and beyond. All the taqueros of the world.

Listen to Against All Odds on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. All Zone Media. This is It Could Happen here, an Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout, Mia Wong, and Robert Evans. This episode, we are covering the week of April 1st to April 8th.

The DHS shutdown has surpassed 50 days. Last week, House Republicans tentatively agreed to the Senate deal to fund DHS without ICE and CBP, though this agreement is stalled while Congress is out of session till April 14th. Fox News has partnered with Kalshi to incorporate its political betting data into news coverage. Fox joins CNN, CNBC, and the AP in entering into deals with the so-called prediction market Kalshi. Kalshi announced, quote, prediction markets add accountability by rewarding accuracy. That's why the three leading networks have chosen Kalshi. No spin, no partisan lens, just incentives to be right, unquote.

It's just gambling. It's so cool that the whole world, all media is now just ESPN. Incentives to be right. Again, like, people are, there's, like, one of the sub-markets within Kalshi is people, like, bringing in lawyers to make threats over, like, tiny differences in grammar that invalidate them either losing money or mean that they should have won the art. Like, like, none of this is about what actually happened. It's becoming as much about what you can gain.

or like threatened the news into not reporting as we talked about the week before last with that case in Israel. And insider trading. And insider trading. Yeah. No, it's just turning politics into like a corrupt casino.

Yeah, it's just mob sports betting. It's worse than sports betting because sports betting is actually based on like real odds, right? These odds are completely created by users with their money. Like it's completely manufactured. There's no actual basis for a lot of these bets, right? Like the betting on the like the papal conclave,

there's no basis for an America Pope getting elected, right? There's no actual odds that were like mathematically certain. It's just created through through money. Well, to be fair, the sports odds are also just kind of made up by guys too. But like, yeah, you know, it's just a tiny fit. It's vibes based. Like, it's people looking at horses. It's a lot of what's happening in sports betting. Yes. Yes.

Making a proving or just. I think I saw that something close to a billion dollars was bet on oil prices. as we approached Trump's deadline. We already had that just play the oil futures market. It's too complicated for people, I guess. God damn it. No, it's really bad. According to a March poll from the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project,

sampling almost 600 Texas Democratic primary voters, 76% say Israel's committing genocide in Gaza, 80% support ending weapons funding to Israel. 44% of Talariko voters said his criticism of Israel was important to them and swayed their vote. Over 1 in 5 voters, 22%, said reducing support for Israel was one of their top three factors impacting their vote, while only 2% said the same about increasing or maintaining support for Israel. And 88% of voters said they agreed with a statement Talariko made during a primary debate about cutting off weapons to Israel. on Sunday night, 13 gunshots were fired into the front door

of Indianapolis City County Councilor Ron Gibson who just voted to approve a half a billion dollar data center. A note was left under the doormat that read no data centers, quote unquote. Gibson and his son were home at the time of the shooting.

Yeah, these data centers are really staggeringly unpopular. There's been a bunch of reporting on even the ones that are attempted to be built. something like 50% of them are just not able to do it because of massive public local backlash.

Because it makes life worse around them. Ake power bills go up, they're loud. Yeah, it's like old school, it's like old school environmental nimbism sort of like, I don't want these assholes in my small town stuff. There's just like the anti-AI sentiment in general. They're hideously unpopular

and this kind of stuff is just going to continue as these data centers continue to be built. Okay, time for me. So Donald Trump has said that he will discuss United States withdrawal from NATO for those who work in the New York Times as a North Atlantic Treaty Organization with Mark Rutter, who is the NATO Secretary General during their meeting, which will happen today, which is Wednesday, April 8th. If, question mark, this happens, it would be utterly epochal. Like, it would be one of the two things they're going to point out as, like, the dawning of the new era of. Yes, seismic shift. Yeah, like what geopolitics is.

This is, like, the fundamental bases of this in this week are, like, ceasing to exist. Yeah. Shirley Kittleson has been released by Katie Pazbullah after they made her read a video confession in which she confessed. And to be very clear, this is very clearly extracted. Yeah, it's a coerced confession. Yes. Yeah. I think in this is true.

But in the video, they made her confess to passing information to U.S. consulate in Baghdad. In one point in the video, she said she had been. collecting information on leaders, but forgotten their names, which is very credible and true. Most real confession. Yeah, it's ludicrous. Her release came after Iraq released several Khadib Hasbullah members. So it seems like a straight swap, which is what this was about in the first place, right? It's not about her or her work per se.

It's about her being a trading chip that they can trade. Finally, Republican Brandon Gill has sharply criticized the dignity, slash dignidad act recently. And this has become like something of an online discourse topic on the right. I'm not exactly sure why it's happening now. Rep Salazar from Florida has tried to introduce this act several times in the last few years. We've actually covered it when it was introduced in 2025 on this show. It's a bipartisan act to reform the immigration system that is bad.

It creates what's called a dignity status, which is essentially like, an underclass of people who there is no pathway to citizenship, there is no pathway to voting, but it comes with the right to renew it and the right to residency, right? So it creates like a sub-citizen class. It's bad. It is not a progressive immigration reform. But is Brandon Gill criticizing it from the right? Gill is coming from another perspective than I am. They think it gives incentives for illegal immigration. And it's an amnesty. Okay, yeah, so he's criticizing from the right.

It's interesting to see the split among Republicans. Republicans on this. And that's why I wanted to bring it in, right? We spoke last time about the Florida sheriff's breaking with Trump on mass deportations. There are a number of things which indicate that there is clearly a faction of the Republican Party, which has realized massive deportation of people who have not been accused or convicted of any crime is not a popular stance, especially when you keep killing people. On that note, actually, ICE have shot somebody else. This broke relatively late on Tuesday night. They shot someone in Patterson, California. The person has been identified as Carlos Iva Mendoza Hernandez. He's wanted in El Salvador for questioning a connection to a murder. It is another of those incidents in which they accused a person of weaponizing their vehicle. And there is a dash cam video which has been released, which shows a person attempting to leave in a vehicle.

it's a little hard to tell if the person is attempting to weaponise their vehicle, but it doesn't look that way to me. It looks like that person is trying to make an exit. We have seen a number of these, right, where federal immigration agents have shot people behind the wheel of their car. I should add that

his attorney claims that he is not wanted in connection with that murder and has provided a document from the government of El Salvador, which seems to confirm that. So we have once again the DHS said versus what we seem to be seeing. proved out by documents, right?

Before we get to Iran, which there's a lot to discuss, there is another news story, a little bit closer to us that we think deserves some fair coverage. Statements made on a podcast last year by a top FEMA official resurfaced this last week. Greg Phillips, who is in charge of disaster response, claims that he once teleported to a waffle house in Rome, Georgia. Phillips also says he experienced a separate incident

in which he teleported in front of a church. The fact that this was a Waffle House does lend this story a bit of credibility. I have suspected for years there's some sort of paranormal field around Waffle Houses. Personally, I believe that when you walk into one, there's a small chance

you could walk out of another in a separate location. The Craft Store Michaels has a similar energy to it. Anyone who's gone drunk to enough Waffle Houses knows that that's true. Right. So there is an aspect of the story, which is very believable. But there's some details that Phillips has included that makes me a bit more skeptical of his characterization of this incident. Let's listen to his claim on this podcast right now.

We had a teleport incident, two of them, which transported me about 40 miles from where I was in near Albany, Georgia, to the, to the ditch of a, of a church. I ended up at a Waffle House like 50 miles away from where I was. So to defend these statements, Phillips has taken to Truth Social to share biblical accounts of teleportation as supporting evidence. Of teleportation, great. Employees at the three Waffle Houses in Rome, Georgia were interviewed by the New York Times, and they say they do not recall anyone. being transported there by means of teleportation, nor did they recognize pictures of Greg Phillips. But in a follow-up statement by Phillips on Truth Social, he said he was going through cancer

treatment at the time of this alleged teleportation incident. Quote, I was healed of cancer, and it was a miracle. The podcast at the center of this controversy was part of chronicling that journey, and during that journey, things happened that I can't explain. I was in the opening days of intensive treatment, heavily medicated, not thinking about future headlines. That context was nowhere in the reporting, unquote. I think it is important here that he says he was heavily medicated during the time around this incident. I love how he uses cop voice, like a teleportation incident. Yeah.

But however, I'm going to point out that Garrison, the next thing you're about to read, he was not heavily medicated when he said this. So. Phillips added to this truth, quote, the word teleportation was not mine. It was used by someone else in the conversation. Reaching for language describes something with no easy name. Which is not true. He said teleport. He said teleport.

I think what he means is he wasn't his initial term that then started using it. I guess. He keeps using it. He continues, quote, the more accurate biblical terms are translated or transported. it. Not new ideas for people of faith. If you believe that God moves in ways we cannot fully explain, as I do, then having faith is not a sound bite. It is the whole point. I believe in miracles, all caps. God bless America, he is risen, unquote. Now, one detail from the podcast that has not been mentioned as much, I think offers to help some idea of what's really going on

here. It was an incredibly frightening moment to experience yourself in your car flying through the air. It was possible. It was real. He was teleported in his car. He was in his car, which for me changes this entire thing. Yeah, it really does.

These headlines were kind of imagine as if his body like dematerialized somewhere, rematerialized in a waffle house. Something that's, you know, you know, certainly... He just blacked out while driving. Which is very different.

Which is very different. I went to saw a guy teleport in a car when we were driving around Texas. Yeah, I teleported on Xanax once, about 30 hours into the future. So, the fact that he zoned out while driving and ended up at a

Waffle House, much more, much more explainable, because many people in slightly altered states, downright believable. Up here, outside of Waffle House is in their car. This is a very common occur. This is probably about maybe 10 to 30% of the Waffle House clientele shows up in this sort of environment

where they are not operating on their full faculties either through some sort of drugs, alcohol, medication, what have you. I've seen UFOs at a Waffle House before. No, right. The Womahouses have some kind of pull that I think attracts people like a magnet who are in an altered state towards them as like a beacon. Yeah, that pull is smothered. and covered hash browns.

Yes. Yes. And the fact that they're open at 4 a.m. Oh, in bathrooms you can do heroin in. Don't forget that. Says it on the sign. I also want to make sure that we mentioned that in the same week in which the New York Times, the guy who was writing the headline didn't know what NATO stood for, they also titled, the initial title of the article they wrote about this was,

and I quote, FEMA official says he teleported to Waffle House. experts are dubious this is this might be the worst experts disagree headline ever I think this is good

I actually out of out of the two polls of New York Times headlines this week the data one is is iffy this one fully I fully agree with I fully agree with their choice to say that experts are dubious

about the teleportation this does make me sad because in New York Times is also the outlet that ran what is, in my opinion, the best headline ever written? It was about the fact that moray... Oh, that one's good. Okay.

It was on the subject of a scientific study which looked at moray eels and their ability to climb a ramp out of a pool to eat some food, which proved in theory that moray eels could hunt on land. And the headline was, when an eel climbs a ramp to eat a squid from a clamp, that's a moray. Title from a better time. Yeah, yeah. What a different era. Truly a masterpiece. Yeah, whoever wrote that, I hope you're doing well. We will now teleport to an ad break and rematerialize to discuss the back and forth ceasefire, not ceasefire with Iran.

Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark, and in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on I Heart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

If you're watching the latest season of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, you already know there's a lot to break down. Orsha accusing Kelly of sleeping with a merry man. They holding Kay Michelle back from fighting Drew. Pinky has financial issues. I like the bougie style of Housewives show. I think it looks like it's going to be interesting. On the podcast, Reality with the King, I, Carlos King, recap the biggest moments from your favorite reality shows,

including the Real Housewives franchise, the drama, the alliances, and the team everybody's talking about. As an executive producer in reality television, I'm not just watching it. I understand the game. As somebody who creates shows, I'll even say this. At the end of the day, when people are at home, they want entertainment. To hear this and more, listen to Reality with the King on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Anna Navarro, and on my new podcast, bleep with Anna Navarro. I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your community and around the world. Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all cursing. and asking what the bleep is going on. I'm talking to people like Julie K. Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018. These victims have been let down time and time again for decades and decades by local law enforcement,

by federal law enforcement, by administration after administration. The Justice Department through, I think we counted four presidential administrations, failed these victims. Listen to Bleep with Anna Navarro as part of the My Cultura podcast network. Available on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Iris Palmer and my new podcast is called Against All Od and that's exactly what the show is about, doing whatever it takes to be thoughts. Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers as they share stories about defying expectations, overcoming barriers and breaking generational patterns.

I'm talking to you. people like award-winning actress, producer, and director, Eva Langoria. I think I had like $200 in my savings account and my mom goes, what are you going to do? And I was like, I'll figure it out. We got a one-bedroom apartment for like $400 a month and we all could not afford. Like, I was like, how am I going to make $100 a month? I'm opening up like I've never before. For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media, get ready to see a whole new side of me.

Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the My Cultura. up podcast network available on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast we're back and uh depending on what do you listen to this we may either be back to war with iran uh the straight of hummus could be closed or open we're in like uh just this this beautiful like trodinger's warringer's uh uh schrodinger's ceasefire uh no one knows where it's gonna go after this yeah if you don't open your phone uh then then you don't open your phone uh then you never know how many wars and ceasefires have started since the last time you opened your phone. That's right. They can't make you believe that a war is going on if you choose to not be informed.

Yeah. Other than by looking at gas prices. Yeah, yeah, that is a thing. God. All right, let's try and do this in chronological order because this week has been bonkers. So let's start with last Friday when you last listened to ED. If you listen on the day, we released them. Good Friday.

And that is kind of important because a United States Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle belonging to the 48th Fighter Wing crashed in southwestern Iran last Friday after being hit by a manpads. The man-pads is a shoulder-fired surface to a missile. The plane carries a pilot and a whizzo. WSO as an acronym. It means weapons systems officer or weapons systems operator. I'm just going to call them a weapons officer just to make it easier for everyone. one going forward, and both crew members safely self- ejected from the plane. The United States very quickly launched a massive CSAR that's a combat search and rescue

operation involving helicopters, low-flying aircraft, and close air support from both MQ9 Reaper drones and A10 aircraft. During this operation, in which the aircraft flew within small arms range of the ground in Kuzestan province, several aircraft were damaged. One of the jolly green to rescue helicopters, was hit with small arms fire, and A10 Thunderbolt crashed in the straight of Hormuz, and the pilot was recovered. Another was hit, and the pilot ejected over Q8. But this effort did result in the safe recovery of the F-15's pilot, but not the weapons officer. The following day, that happened during the day, right, in daylight hours, which is remarkable. Like, it is extremely rare to see this happening, right?

Like low-flying helicopters over what is notionally enemy territory in the middle of the daytime. On Easter Sunday, the United States launched a huge operation which resulted in the recovery of the weapons officer. This was preceded by a disinformation campaign, which hoped to make the Iranian state believe that they had extracted the weapons officer by land, which they hadn't. The operation involved a ton of special operations forces assets who flew to an agricultural air strip outside Isfahan. This seems to have gone largely unremarked upon in the reporting. There is some crackpot theory that this was all cover for an operation that extracted enriched geranium from Isfahan because there is a nuclear research facility Isfahan.

I have not seen any evidence to support that. But I think it is likely that they knew of this agricultural airstrip because of plans. which were made for a potential raid on the Isfahan nuclear research facility. During the Operation MQ9 and Reaper drones bombed, quote, military age males who were close to the airmen, Iran had offered a reward of $60,000 for capturing this person before the United States got to them. And it is common for people in this area who, like, if you're herding animals, right, to carry a gun, like to protect their animals or to protect themselves. There were some kind of propaganda videos of like local people looking for the airmen, right?

They were carrying like Iranian flags and their like antiquated bolt action rifles. But it's also very possible that some of these drone strikes may have occurred against people who were just going about their business in the region. Right. Like if they didn't, they said military age males that's a broad remit. And anyone who would doubt that being a shepherd would be a military. age male, right? Would be military aged. Yeah.

Yeah. This is like one of the most sickening terms that U.S. warfare is invented. Yeah, military age male is like any one time, anytime people are using that, like you've got a dozen pass a sniff test. No, it could be anyone from like 14 years old to like 69. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You'll be surprised who looks like an adult when you're a scared man with a gun. Yeah, yeah. Or looking from thousands of feet up on a drone camera, right? Yeah. It's a term invented for, we are just going to start shooting at random people. We have no idea who they are.

We're just going to kill them. Yeah. And it's hideous. I was recently rereading, I think it's called a theory of the drone. It's a philosophy book about drones and drone warfare. And there's a scene in the opening of that, which I think is, which you can probably get the free preview of the book if you have a Kindle and read that scene. But it's very illustrative of how vague this term can be. The rescue operation saw the planes land at an air.

strip, then a little bird helicopter took off, collected the airman who had been evading capture in a mountainous area. He was then carried back by a helicopter to the airstrip, where the two larger aircraft that had bought the helicopter and all the personnel had become stuck. Incredible. Yeah. I mean, I guess normally they would do some kind of soil sampling, but I think there probably just wasn't time.

Yeah. So the United States elected to destroy those aircraft in place and send three. more aircraft to recover their personnel. And we can see that Iran has published footage to that, right? It seems that they also destroyed the Little Bird Helicopters. I've seen some reporting that the Little Bird Helicopters were just like on a one-way flight, that they flew into Iran knowing that their range wasn't long enough for them to fly back and that they always planned to destroy them.

I don't think that's the case. I think they got them out the back of the C-130s and assembled them quickly. That is a thing they have the capacity to do, and that is what makes sense. the most sense. So on that same day, Easter Sunday, kind of a big deal for the Christian folks, Donald Trump trussed the following. Quote, Tuesday will be Power Plant Day and Bridge Day,

all wrapped up in one in Iran. There will be nothing like it. Open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Just watch. Praise be to Allah. I love the president. Yeah, that is a, that is a leader.

of the free world. Yeah. My extremely low-stakes conspiracy is that this was not Trump. This was written by Trump's staff because it's slightly off. It could have been. It doesn't sound like him, really.

Yeah. He's not normally a swearer. Like, he gets angry. Yeah. A lot of stuff isn't really him. No. That's a weird thing for him to throw in. I can very easily believe

that this is, that this is him, like, going nuts on something. Yeah, like, he could have done this. If possible. I think there's a lot of, low chance that this was like a staff written thing. It's just, it's, it's, it's, it's weird

wording from him. Like, it's a strange message. Although the last couple from him have all seemed kind of strange. Yeah, he is just out of it. The one he put up after the ceasefire announcement where he's like, where he puts in quotations that the Navy will be hanging round. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's not, doesn't

sound like him much either. But also like, who else would he let write that? It's, he's just, but it is weird, right? That does not sound like. any previous Trump post, hanging round? To say fuck in a Trump, in a presidential tweet. Like, I don't know why Stafford would do that. No, and I agree with you, James.

These things are usually transcribed. Like, usually he reads these out loud and someone writes them down. And then he looks at them and then, and then they hit post. Like, that's how all of his truths were structured in that documentary. Yes. Does he dictate the capitalization? When he looks them over, like, he may. Okay.

Because he has a fascinating and quite unique approach to capitalization. Specifically, like, there will be nothing like it is definitely like a Trump verbal tick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a super Trump line. Yeah, but then like the next part, I, is weird. Yeah. But hanging round. That's not really a Trump sounding line.

Okay, sorry. It's weird. We've all been distracted. Yeah. So let's talk about what he said on Tuesday, Power Plan Day, Bridge Day. Yeah. He said, quote, a whole civil. will die tonight, never to be brought back again.

That's a Trump line. Yeah. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have complete and total regime change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something... Did they? Maybe some...

Do it? Yeah, I don't know. I'm not so sure. Maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen. Who knows? We will find out tonight. One of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world. 47 years.

of extortion, corruption and death will finally end. God bless the great people of Iran. Real journey that you go on. Yeah. From a civilization will die tonight to God bless the great people of Iran. Nightmarish. I don't know what to make of that. Like it seems like he's just, obviously striking civilian targets.

It is a war crime. It is a war crime Israel does all the time. we covered that last time we spoke. A whole civilization will die tonight. Seems borderline, like, genocidal as a threat. Yeah, and that's not borderline. I think that is. I think that's a threat of genocide.

Yeah. Like, this is, which by the way is also, like, if you say this and then kill one person, like you are guilty of the crime of genocide. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, attempt to genocide. Like, it's not good. It is not good.

Let's talk about what actually happened, right? Since then, just before the deadline, a huge number of strikes hit a run, including the Ministry of Intelligence, building and Shiraz. There's some evidence that may have had some tunnels underneath it. Aerospace Research Institute, Bridges and aluminium factory, Brigadier General Majid Hademi, who is the head of IRGC. Intelligence was also killed in the targeted strike, and we hit Kag Island again. Good. Finally.

Yep. Yeah. Let a lot of people think that this might have been a precursor to some kind of U.S. land operation. However, or nuclear weapons a lot, right? Yeah, right. We've seen this a lot, right? Again, when the president's saying you're going to wipe out a culture. It doesn't make me feel calm. You should assume that the president might actually try to wipe out a culture.

Like, that is my strong stance on this, is that based on what he's saying, it is not unreasonable for people to flip out over this statement. No, it's absolutely not. people should be outraged that a president said this. They weren't really strong enough. It's really bad. It's very bad. Yeah. Like, he should be hauled up in front of a tribunal like Milosevic.

I am not on team. We should just move past this. No, absolutely not. Like, it's easy because everything's so insane to be like another insane thing. Everything's fucking nuts. But this is a guy who has the trigger for all the nukes saying he's going to wipe out a civilization. Like, I would love to be the nothing ever happened. nothing happened here. It's fine.

Like, don't yield a Trump derangement syndrome guy because it's a lot easier. But, like, this is not something anyone should move past. He should go on trial for, like, this alone, like outside of the other stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Each of these tweets would constitute a reason for a trial in any previous presidency. Since then, Pakistan offered to mediate a ceasefire, and these are negotiated to where ongoing as Donald Trump was through thing.

Iran reportedly made a list of its own demands. This is a translation from Persian, so like not a word-for-word quotation, right? It listed these in its telegram channels as control passage through the Strait of Hormuz in coordination with Iran's armed forces, the necessity of ending the war against all components of the axis of resistance, the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from all bases and deployments in the region, establishing a secure transit protocol in the Strait of Hormuz that guarantees Iranian control, full payment of damages to Iran, removal of all primary and secondary sanctions, the release of frozen Iranian assets and property abroad,

and the ratification of all these items in a binding UN Security Council resolution. The parties then agreed to a two-week ceasefire. Trump again shared the news of this on True Social. I'm kind of done reading out his truth, so I'm going to skip that one. That was a hanging-around one. Very shortly thereafter, Israel began a massive bombing campaign. in Lebanon and Iran continued to launch missiles at the occupied territories. Caroline Levitt has said that Trump refused the Iranian plan.

The Iranians originally put forward a 10-point plan that was fundamentally unsurious, unacceptable and completely discarded. It was literally thrown in the garbage by President Trump and his negotiating team. Many outlets in this room have falsely reported on that plan as being acceptable to the United States, and that is false. So she was pretty emphatic about that. Trump attacked CNN for publishing the plan. This morning, Trump has said that the Israeli attacks on Lebanon were, quote, a separate skirmish.

Israel struck Lebanon a hundred times in just over 10 minutes today. They dropped whole tower blocks in Beirut. That is not a skirmish. Nah. He said they're not part of the deal because Osbalah is not part of the deal. Of course, in Iran, state media, are pushing that they have somehow achieved all of their 10 points, which I think were their sort of goals for negotiation or a basis for negotiation.

Trump has said to one reporter that the tolls on the strait could be a joint venture between the United States and Iran, which suggests there's some parts of this deal that are true that he has kind of agreed on. That are at least on the table, right? Like these are the bases, which was how they were initially reported by CNN. and others, that these had been accepted as a basis for negotiation. They have not been accepted whole cloth, some people, some whom I think are acting in bad faith, have said.

Since this morning, the Wall Street Journal has reported that tolls will be paid in cryptocurrency or Chinese one, and that Iran is broadcasting VHF messages. It's very high frequency, it's radio frequency, warning, non-paying ships, crossing the straight-of-hom moves that they will be targeted. Trump approved he said the Strait of Hormuz is open. This doesn't seem like that. The tolls about like $2 million, right? Well, there have been various proposals.

Some I've said $2 million. I've seen different dollar sums per barrel of oil transiting the strait. I guess it would depend. If it's a U.S. Iranian partnership, you know, how are we going to account for the exchange rate? Everyone has to get their peace, right? Yes. Yes, the $2 million number was thrown around a lot. Yeah.

And it's worth noting that the Strait is not. not open. No. It is simply not the number. Israel hasn't stopped launch and strikes. Well, even if they wanted to open it right now, they would have to remove the mines that they've put in it, right? We don't know how many mines there are, if there are.

So there are still ships going through. There's not many of them. Like, there's, I think it was, the number I saw for today was four. Yeah. Yeah. Like, it is, like, it is possible to go through, but four is, like, four is, like, one of the lowest numbers that has happened since the straight was first closed. So it is simply knob and reopen.

Trump says this constantly. It's down to one channel would be my guess, right? Like it's because, and then they're advising those ships, I'm guessing, or sending a pilot craft perhaps to go between the mines. Yeah, I haven't seen any reporting on how they're getting them through. Yeah, I haven't. The extent to which they've laid mines is really unclear. Yeah.

Like, all we know is that they have the capacity to do so and that the U.S. has been striking craft that are set to lay mines. But, like, I haven't heard of any evidence of a ship getting hit with a mine yet. Right, yeah, neither have I. So perhaps they haven't laid any. We don't know what they've done.

They may have decided that that was more than they needed to do at this point. Yeah. Yeah, and so far, all of the attacks on ships have been with other more conventional weapons. Yeah, either sea drones or just missiles, various kinds. Yeah, shooting them with guns in a couple of cases.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Garrison, let's start with this clip of J.D. Vantz talking about the inclusion of Lebanon in this ceasefire. First of all, I actually think, and there's a lot of bad faith negotiation and a lot of bad faith, you know, propaganda going on. I think this comes from a legitimate misunderstanding. I think the Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon, and it just didn't. We never made that promise. We never indicated that was going to be the case. What we said is that the ceasefire would be focused on Iran and the ceasefire would be focused on America's allies, both Israel and the Gulf Arab states. So, yeah, let's talk about Israel, right, a country which famously loves to respect a ceasefire. Israel has continued to strike inside Iran.

It has not stopped since the announcement of this ceasefire, right? It has shown no indication of wanting to stop. It is also continued, as I said. It's massive bombing campaign inside Lebanon. It seems to be the case that whatever was negotiated, the Israelis do not perceive the ceasefire as applying to them. Already, the IDF does not, I should say, rather than the Israelis, right? And therefore, Iran does not perceive it as being obliged to no longer strike Israel.

Yeah, I mean, the whole situation right now is very unclear, and is literally changing by the hour. Yeah, like by the time we're done recording this. Right, yeah. So we're recording this Wednesday afternoon. By the time this comes out Thursday night slash Friday morning, there could be a whole different situation. Yeah, yeah.

I'll try and record a pickup if we have to. But yeah, as of Wednesday afternoon, this is what the sort of ambiguity around the deal looks like and the level of compliance regarding Israel and the United States. Yeah. There are two more things I want to talk about. that have been reported on less. Obviously, this has been reported on widely because it is a threat to all of our lives

if we're going to start a nuclear war. The P.A.K. This Kurdistan Freedom Party says its leader's headquarters. This was initially reported as home. They did send me a text that used the word home, WhatsApp. But I think, judging by what I have heard from other reports in a region,

it's better described as headquarters, were struck with several Iranian missiles. This came after, according to Fox News, the president claimed that the United States sent weapons to protesters in Iran in January, but that, quote, the Kurds kept them. Now, a video of Trump addressing the issue does not explicitly name the Kurds. It does imply that.

They don't have guns. You know, we sent some guns, but the group that was supposed to give, which I said what happened to my people, I said it, I called it exactly. We sent guns, a lot of guns. They were supposed to go to the people so they could fight back. against these thugs. You know what happened? The people that they sent them to kept them because they said, what a beautiful gun. I think I'll keep it. So I'm very upset with a certain group of people and they're going to pay a big price for that. But the Iranian people

will fight back as soon as they know they're not going to be shot and as soon as they can get weapons. This is one of the most surreal things I've seen. It's up there with him and say him threatening to nuke Iran while flanked by the Easter Bunny. I hesitate to use the word lynchian because that work gets misapplied a lot and Kafkaesque similarly And this is not a perfect invocation of lynchian either But it's getting closer

With this sort of One of the more lynchian things to happen in real life It's incredible stuff With like the Easter jazz in the background The crash of vibes Yeah As there's like flowers over the archway Yeah, the Kafka

No, the sort of juxtaposition which I think is the key part of Lidge, is this real with the mundane. And you have parts of this here, where you have this sort of intensity of the stuff Trump's talking about with the Easter Jazz and his purple tie

and the Easter decorations in the background. This is a stunning piece of media. A stunning piece of history. Oh, God. Yeah, I saw this yesterday, and I thought, I need to expose my colleagues to this. Like, one of the most incredible 30 seconds of video to come back to the topic at hand, various Rogulati groups have denied this.

And it would be an extreme logistical challenge to provide weapons to Kurdish armed groups, most of whom have most of their personnel in Iraq. And for them to transit those weapons to Tehran, I don't believe that that would have been something that any U.S. administration would entertain. What guns would they give them that they don't? Because if these groups tend to be pretty well supplied with small personal arms, we're talking about like your battle rifles and, you know, long range precision rifles and the like. What they lack is man portable anti-aircraft and man-portable anti-armor. Those are kind of some of the most precious pieces of gear to them. And I doubt Trump was offering to send that into Iran. Among other things, we probably don't want to be sending a bunch of man-portable anti-aircraft into Iran right now. Like that could backfire. But that's the only shit I could see these different groups wanting to take for themselves.

Yeah, it's especially strange because, like, I watched a lot of videos of armed attacks on, like, Iranian police in January of this year. And they were using very basic weapons to include quite a few of the P.A.K. using pump action shotguns. Yeah. I don't think the U.S. sent them pump action shotguns. No, that would be a weird. The U.S. military doesn't have a lot of pump action shoddies just lay on. around. That's not like the first gun they'd have a bunch of to hand over to somebody.

Yeah. They've probably got more AKs than that. Yeah. And like they were AKs use as well. But like these are very basic weapons, as you say. This doesn't seem like anything that would come from the US. Also in Kurdistan, an Iranian drone struck Zaghazawi village, killing Musa Amwar Rasul, age 39 and his wife, Mousda Assad Hassan. Their children both survived. This is really heartbreaking. And like, they were really horrible. videos of their children, like confronting the fact that they are now orphans, right? And because of stories like this one, which I do not see any basis for, in fact, Kurdistan is being absolutely hammered by Iranian bombs, right?

Little children are losing their parents. And like, I'm really disturbed, as I say, every week by the campus tendency to ignore this or to say that it has to happen because the Kurds don't have a state. or even the sort of blue wave tendency to sort of hand wave this and say, well, Donald Trump started a war, so Iran gets to murder Kurdish civilians. Like, I just find it so heartbreaking. Robert and I both spent time in Kurdistan and the kind of fondness for the people there. But it makes me mad.

It's all pretty bleak and disappointing. Well, you know what else is disappointing? Every week we have to do this. It's an ad break. Canadian women are looking for more. more out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart.

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I'm talking to people like Julie K. Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018. These victims have been let down time and time again for decades and decades by local law enforcement, by federal law. law enforcement by administration after administration. The Justice Department through, I think we counted four presidential administrations, failed these victims. Listen to Bleep with Anna Navarro as part of the My Cultura podcast network. Available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Iris Palmer, and my new podcast is called Against All Od,

and that's exactly what the show is about, doing whatever it takes to be thoughts. Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers as they share stories about defying expectations, overcoming barriers, and breaking generational patterns. I'm talking to people like award-winning actress, producer, and director, Eva Longoria. I think I had like $200 in my savings account, and my mom goes, what are you going to do? And I was like, I'll figure it out. We got a one-bedroom apartment for like $400 a month, and we all could not afford. Like, I was like, how am I going to make $100 a month? I'm opening up like I've never before.

For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media, get ready to see a whole new side of me. Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, we're back. We still have three or four important stories that we're going to do here before we close. James, do want to start with your section on. the threat to press freedom?

Yeah, so I think this is important. President Trump has said that his DOJ will seek to prosecute the person who, quote, leaked the information that the F-15's weapon safety officer was missing and evading caption Iran. Quote, we're going to go to the media company that released it and we're going to say

national security, give it up or go to jail, Trump said. Quote, the entire country of Iran knew that there was a pilot that was somewhere on their land that was fighting for his life. It wasn't a pilot. It was a weapons officer, but airmen, right?

I can't quite find who broke the story because it's not really a story that broke. It didn't require anyone to leak anything to know that someone was missing because the wreckage. And without seeing the wreckage, people weren't really willing to publish the story, right? Because they had no confirmation. And Iran says wild shit all the time. Yeah. The wreckage was photographed and published by presumably Iranians. sources, and it very clearly showed the livery of a U.S. Air Force F-15 based out of Lake and Heath,

which is near Cambridge in the United Kingdom. There were some very early report before we saw photos that the plane shut down was an F-35, and that would have been a single-seater, right? But as soon as the images came out, everyone knew that that wasn't the case. Nope. Was an F-5. Strike Eagle. Yeah, and there are single-seater F-15 variants, but I don't believe any of them are active-duty U.S. Air Force. Strike Eagles will always have two people. It's not a single-seater, right? So nobody had to leak that information for it to be obvious that if they had collected one person, then there was still one person. This does represent quite a serious attack on the First Amendment.

People are killing and dying over Iran, and our tax dollars are supporting that. Have a right to know. Journalism has played a role in the way Americans perceive conflict for a very long time, right? We can think about the Napalm girl photo. I understand that photo now has disputed authorship. We can think about Walter Cronkite, the Vietnam War. We can think about Abu Ghraib. There is no federal press shield law, though, and journalists have been held in contempt

for refusing to reveal sources on that security issues before. This is a serious threat, and it's one that I think everyone should take very seriously. Yeah, well, and it's a very important part of the last little section of the Newsroom TV show. There's a whole plot line about this and it shows. Yes, yes, Gareth, there sure is.

So I just thought that's worth mentioning. You guys have told me not to watch Saks. It'll make me angry and I've respected that. You should not, James. You will lose your mind. It's not good for you. There's a lot of stuff's making me angry right now, so I'm going to give that one.

Too much sorkin at the moment is very quickly becomes toxic. Too much sorkin is really fucked up a lot of people in this country. Yeah. Speaking of things that will really fuck you up, Our beautiful tariff music. Ah, so glad that we're back to talking about tariffs.

So, okay, we have a couple of Iran-related tariff things. Gary, are we playing the nightmare clip? We have to play the nightmare clip. We're playing the nightmare clip. Okay, this is... When inevitably, in the course of humanity, they have to make a museum to explain to people what capitalism was, this is what they are going to show. This is a clip from the quote-unquote news agency, CNBC.

Deadline that President Trump has set, 8 p.m. has threatened to destroy a civilization. How does an investor process that? Is it a bigger upside risk or downside risk? Big upside risk or downside risk to genocide? How do we, how do we do that? She kind of looks up and then just goes right in. Like when they have to like explain to people, right? Like how, how eight billion people were like consumed into these like roles that they were forced to inhabit by the machinations of capital. This is going to be the one. Oh, God.

It turns out the markets responded very positively to Trump's threats to destroy a civilization. It's, I, you know, what if we didn't have market? What if, what if there wasn't a line? I, oh, God. Okay, so speaking of bad things, I guess. So on Wednesday, Trump posted on Truth Social, quote, a country, capital C country supplying capital M military weapons to Iran will be immediately tariffed on any and all goods sold to the United States of America 50% effective

immediately, there will be no exclusions or exemptions. So can he do this? Yes. Key nine listeners may remember that the legal authority he was claiming to have to do this, the Supreme Court may go away. So can he do this? Look, okay, the way he's describing this, right, sounds like he's using trade authority. It may be that buried somewhere deep in the annals of like sanction policy or some shit.

Maybe there's something. I went through all of the trade authority that I know of to try to find any legal authority for this. The short version is there isn't. The long version is, okay, so I guess in theory, maybe if you squint, right, you could use session 301 of the 1974 Trade Act. but that's supposed to be a national security risk from unfair trade practices so it could technically work but the thing is you also have to

that specific one we've talked about this on the show before you have to like set up a commission and do a trade study and there's like all this stuff so it can't work immediately no and Trump doesn't seem like a big set up a commission guy I mean the thing is they actually have done this for China already but I don't know if you squint like really hard Like if you like really really squint at like section 232, like maybe in theory like but no.

Like if you're really willing to believe that like the president has the ability to be like this is what the law says, then maybe the only way I can see this working is if he invokes section 338 which is the this is like the remaining part of the Smoot-Hawley tariff. Now, famously good, smootholy. Yeah, so like, okay, there is a small chance

that, like, you, the listeners may have heard of the smootholy tariffs, and that's because it's the one that, like,

made the Great Depression worse. Yep. And no one's ever used them since. It's not even clear if they're on the books anymore. Because, like, this is a legitimate thing

of academic discussion. It's like, whether these are even still in effect because they haven't been used. They're technically still there, but also, no one has, like,

ever used them? and also there's been like subsequent laws regulating trade so I don't know there's no there's no way he can do this legally that wouldn't immediately fall apart well it wouldn't fall apart eventually to a court challenge except maybe the like smoot holly like nuclear bomb desperation thing I don't know it's very unclear to me whether any of this is ever even going to be attempted to be implemented. He shouldn't be able to do this. It's just Calvin Ball bullshit, but who knows? Yeah, it would be China, or presumably is what he's going for there, right? Like, China's so

weapons to Iran. Yeah. And like, there's also a lot of speculation. Like, I think Reuters reported this that this might be a thing because there's going to be a trade summit with Beijing. But if you're a trade person in Beijing, you also know that he can't do this. So it's not real leverage, I don't know, nightmare. Let's talk about some relatively fun, I guess, news back at home. Interesting, certainly. Yeah. So one of the things that happened this week was there was a series of elections,

and the result of those elections was the Republicans got absolutely hammered, like all up and down the ballot in Wisconsin. They did, they performed terribly in Georgia. So the big Democratic win was in Wisconsin. And so polls had Chris Taylor, who was the Democratic candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, up by about 7 or 8 percent. Chris Taylor won this election by 20. Oh, wow. Yeah.

There was also a full sweep of the whole like Moms for Liberty school board slates in a bunch of elections in very conservative, Wachisha County. The specific one where every single one of them lost and they've fully cleared out all of the Mons for Liberty people was. A very specific one that was famous for doing a whole bunch of these right-wing book bands and stuff like that. And they're all gone. And this is, this is, you know, a continuation of a trend that we've seen over the past couple of years, really, well, like, year, year and a half where all of these weird Monster Liberty weirdos just get clobbered. Now, also in that same county, in the actual, like, mayoral election of Wikisha, like the city of Wakisha, the Democrats won that election, which they haven't done in ages. Yeah, this is like one of the biggest Republican, like, stronghold victories and, like, they will always win this seat. Yeah.

You know, and this is something that, like, everyone from Wisconsin has been talking about, which is if they can't win here, they can't win Wisconsin at all. Yeah. There's no way. Yep. Right. And again, like, you know, I'm going to get into this more in a second, but, like, the Democrats were projected to win this seat. And this is obviously a by-election. And this, this Supreme Court seat that they won is, like, them getting to 5-2.

so it wasn't like the majority seat in the way that the last one of these elections were. But they were projected to win by like seven and they won by 20. Yeah. Yeah, that's big. Wow. Which is astonishing.

Part of, again, you mentioned a bunch of these like school board elections in Wisconsin. It's not just Wisconsin. I mean, in a lot of the most conservative counties in Texas over the last like year, basically every school district that was taken by the Moms for Liberty types has been completely, like they have been completely thrown out. And that has been happening around the country. There's a lot that people are focusing on with

looking at like, why are numbers so fucking dog shit for Republicans right now? Why are they getting beaten by such white margins? And it's certainly way more than one thing is responsible. But I think something that has not gotten enough attention that has been dooming the Republicans electorally is that they got what they wanted in the branch of the, the chunk of our government, that is hardest to ignore for the average American, which is like what's happening to their kids in schools. And a bunch of regular people who were not all that political saw that like, my kid can't like check books out any of the fuck is wrong happening here.

And they went crazy, not crazy, they got really pissed off. Rightfully so. And I think this is going, my hope is that this turns out to be one of their worst like strategic missteps in this period of time, is their belief that we can just go fucking ape shit on school. and no one will care. Yeah. Well, and this brings me back to something I've been talking about for a while, which is that

so like one of the other results that we're sort of looking at here is, so there was an election in Georgia in this, like, as a special election for the seat that was Marjorie Taylor Green's old district. This is like one of the most unhinged Republican districts in the entire country. Trump won it by 40. And the Republican Clay Fuller did win, but he only, he won by 12 points in a county that Trump carried by 40. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty bad. It's like a 28 point shift. Yeah, right. It's, it's unbelievable. Now, obviously, they didn't win here, but there's been a lot of stuff about how,

okay, well, this is just because Democrats, Democrats do better among high information voters. Those are the people who vote in these off cycle elections that aren't during the normal election cycle. Blah, blah, blah. There's a lot of this kind of stuff. That's a kind of stuff that puts you ahead as, as the polls were showing in Wisconsin. That puts you ahead by like seven. That does not, that does not explain a 13% overperformance. Yeah, yeah. Right. And I think what is happening here is something I've said consistently,

and this is something that I think Robert is sort of explaining why this is happening, is that pollers are still using, they're still using as their basis for what they assume the elector is going to be. They're using the data from the electorate from the 2024 election. Yeah. Because that's the standard practice, right? You use as a sample, you know, and you make some, like, adjustments because it's a by-election and stuff like that.

but like they're using as as a sample base of voters the people from 2024. And that electorate does not exist anymore because it's been completely destroyed. Yeah. Right. All of these people have suddenly been mobilized. Like the whole city of Minneapolis has been like turned into this like weird. I don't know. I'm making that sound negative.

It's like there's like Minneapolis has had a level of mobilization that is like possibly has never been seen before in U.S. history. All of these like people who had been, you know, just like not political at all are. And this is the other thing with the school vote election is that these are mostly people who were not political people at all who just swept in because their schools got fucked with. The entire electorate has changed. It shows there's like a deep fluidity here, right? There's a lot of people who supported Trump because of economic conditions, which were blamed on the Democrats. And they moved for Trump. And there was a lot of these same people are not like Trump or Republican loyalists. They're reacting to the economic conditions and the messaging from each party. And this is reflective. in the number of Trump-Zoron voters, even the number of people who vote Trump and AOC in New York, right? Yeah. They're not like mega loyalists, right?

But it's showing how there is a big fluidity among the types of people that do decide elections. Yeah, but then there's also, and this is, I think, the other side of this too, right, is that there's the ones of people who haven't voted, George just didn't give a shit at all.

And those people are suddenly being mobilized. And this is turning into, like, like the Democrats are like winning a whole bunch of like rural, counties in these elections, right? Yeah, yeah. And now the last thing I want to talk about in sort of this kind of section of everybody hates the Republicans is that the issues and incised TIPP survey for April shows Trump with a

39% approval rating. This poll, which has done a bunch of times every year, they give like a bunch of topics where they give A through F rankings from like immigration to the economy to like the wars in Iran and Ukraine. and like a plurality of the votes were an F on every single one. Even immigration. Immigration was the one that was kind of close. Okay.

Between that and like A. Every single other one was down double digits. Okay. If you look at like CDF versus like A, B or if you like ignore C, right, it's so much more in the category of like Ds and Fs. On the negative side in general. Yeah. Yeah. Like this is for every single issue.

I'm guessing it was kind of a biose. distribution, right? Like a lot of A's or a lot of Fs and not much. There's actually a surprising number of B's, but... That's interesting, yeah. And like a decent number of D's. But, yeah, it was like mostly Fs and then everything else is kind of spread out between the other ones. I mean, all of this is before the like, I'm a civilization will die tonight stuff. Which did cause negative reactions from people in the conservative base. Yeah. And the people voting in Georgia and Wisconsin. I want to play this clip here.

This was a clip from Georgia of a Georgia voter who was interviewed on Election Day. It's giving war crime. You can't do that. We don't just annihilate people because we can and, you know, make a grab for the money and the oil. And that's what we've done in Venezuela. And that's what we're doing in Iran. It's giving war crime. It's giving war crime.

I need to take a second. This is beautiful, right? It's positive, yes. It's a better message than the Democrats have managed to come up with on this. No, I just need a second. This is like a woman in her 30s or 40s holding a kid at 9.

This broadcast was at 9.33m. in Rome, Georgia on election day. Yep. It is. It's giving war crime. Yeah. And, you know, if you look at that, like the UGov Economist poll, which is from like April, first, but like even at April 1st, he had an atrocious 35% approval rating, which is that's like,

that's like end of the Bush administration shit. All of this, the important part of this is that, like, the Democrats are still really historically unpopular right now because everyone's pissing them for not doing anything. But the actual mass of people in this country fucking hate all of this. They're pissed off at everything that is happening. Everything you ask about that Trump is doing, they are fucking angry about. out. And, you know, this is, this is, this is the kind of anger and the kind of just generalized raise that I think there's no really good way to measure outside of the tools that we've developed for elections or in terms of just like, you know, sometimes you get street mobilizations.

Like this anger, like is the defining thing of the United States right now. It's that everybody's pissed the fuck off about this. And yeah, and every opportunity they get to express that this shit fucking sucks, they do. This is what American politics is, even as everything is unbelievably hideously bleak from all of the shit that people are doing. Speaking of people who are pissed off, there's one final story that I'll go through pretty quick before we close this episode. Last Wednesday, to celebrate April Fool's Day, Trump fired Pam Bondi as a attorney general. Trump told Bondi about his plan to fire her while in the car together to watch the Supreme Court oral arguments on birthright citizenship.

What? There's video of it. There's video of it. It's amazing. Like, credit to Fox, but they got a shot of them in the limo, and Trump is clearly telling her. And it's when we know he was telling her. It's an amazing little artifact.

All you can make out is their faces kind of and their body language, but it rips. It's so funny. Now, Bondi tried to convince Trump to let her stay on until at least summer, but to no avail. Trump appointed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to serve as acting Attorney General until the president nominates a full replacement. On Tuesday, Blanche said, quote, nobody has any idea, unquote, why Bondi was fired except for President Trump. Those sources close to the White House have told multiple outlets that Trump had a growing frustration

with Bondi for a while, especially related to her failure to successfully prosecute certain political enemies and the fallout from her handling of the Epstein files. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has been floated as a prospective replacement for Attorney General. At the EPA, Zeldon has led efforts to roll back environmental regulations and climate protections related to endangered species, wetlands, and emissions. Before working in the Second Trump administration, Zeldon lost the race for New York governor to Kathy Hokel by seven percentage points. A relatively close race for New York. Yeah. Zeldin is a Trump loyalist, fought against the president's two impeachments while in Congress, and refused to certify the 2020 election results. Great.

Zeldin's a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who served four years in active duty as a military intelligence officer, federal prosecutor, and military magistrate, and 2006 was deployed with the 80-second airborne division during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Wait, so he's a troop cop. Military magistrate. He's a troop judge. He served in a few roles. Yeah, that's troop cop shit. He served as a prosecutor and a judge. They hated and reviled. Yeah. Troop cop.

He looks like maybe he at some point went to law school there, right? He went to law school in New York, either during that time or beforehand, it all kind of takes place around, because I think he got out of law school around 2004. At the time, he was the youngest person to finish law school in New York. Oh, wow. He was in his early 20s. After he got out of the military or... out of active duty, he's briefly served as an attorney for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

and also private practice for a little bit before he went into the state senate and then eventually U.S. Congress. Now, before Bondi's firing, Pan Bonny was scheduled to testify in front of the House Oversight Committee about the Epstein files on April 14th. Now, Democrats on the committee still want her to testify as she holds relevant knowledge. But on Wednesday morning, the Justice Department released a statement saying Bondi would not appear at the hearing on the 14th, quote, since she is no longer Attorney General and was subpoenaed in her capacity as Attorney General, unquote. This is a little bit untrue. She was not subpoenaed by her title as Attorney General. She was subpoenaed by name as Pam Bondi. Now, oversight committee Democrats have responded by saying

if Bonnie does not comply with the bipartisan subpoena addressed to her by name, they will, quote, begin contempt charges, unquote. Republican Nancy Mace has said, quote, Pam Bondi cannot escape accountability simply because she no longer holds the office, of Attorney General. Our motion to subpoena Pam Bondi, which was passed by the Oversight Committee, was for Bondi by name, not by title. She will still have to appear before the Oversight Committee for a sworn deposition. The American people deserve answers, and we expect her to appear as soon as a new date is set. Unquote. So it appears they will try to reschedule her for a new date. Bondi's firing is interesting in the context of Christy Noem's firing,

as for the first year or so of Trump's second term, he really resisted making changes to his cabinet, right? These sorts of frequent changes were a hallmark of his first term. Yeah. And for the start of his second, he seemed to not want to do that and instead got his ranks of loyalists that he was going to work with. But since Christy Noam's firing, that has clearly changed. And this is prompted speculation about who could be next.

from people like Tulsi Gabbard to Cash Patel or Pete Hengseth. I think Gabbard is certainly one of the people. If I was one of these three, I would be most nervous if I was Gabbard. Patel's an odd, is an odd character. I'm really not sure what's in the future for him. A podcast. And I think that what happens eventually in Iran will determine what goes on with Hague Seth. There have been rumors that some of the reason that Hegseth has been sort of purging

high command in the military is that he has concerned that those people could be his replacements like alternates for him a sec deaf yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Patel was under more he i feel like during following the shooting of charlie kirk right the assassination and that their failure to find the assassin for some time yeah and his and his uh plane tickets and his trips with his girlfriend yeah the failure with savannah guthrie too yeah trump trump did not like that clip of him in the hockey locker room. Yeah, there have been of quite a few now you mention them. Before we go, we should mention there is still about a week left of Webby voting. It could happen here is nominated for a Webby, as is James series migrating to America, which aired on

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