Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF RESPONDS to BREAKING NEWS before DAY 1

Episode Date: January 19, 2025

Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back for a new update at the intersection of law and politics on the Legal AF podcast. On tonight's show, they cover: 1) MAGA voters having second thoughts and voters' remorse and how that plays into the Democrats hands; 2) Trump lining his own pocket on the eve of his presidency rather than helping the American people; 3) MAGA judges threatening to deport the "Dreamers,: 4) the 40 or so last minute Executive Orders of President Biden to Trump proof democracy and Biden's legacy; 5) and update on the Mar a Lago and TikTok cases, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Support our Sponsors: Uplift: Elevate your workspace and energize your year with Uplift Desk. Go to https://upliftdesk.com/legalaf for a special offer exclusive to our audience. Manukora: Head to https://manukora.com/legalaf to receive $25 off your starter kit today! Prolon: Head to https://ProlonLife.com/LEGALAF to get 15% off their 5-day nutrition program. Soul: Go to https://GetSoul.com and use code LEGALAF to get 30% OFF your order! Subscribe to the new Legal AF channel: https://youtube.com/@LegalAFMTN Subscribe to Meidas+ at https://meidasplus.com Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's a scammy Donald Trump meme coin. Yeah. It's a play. No, it's a scammy Donald Trump meme coin. Yeah, just days before the inauguration Donald Trump held a crypto gala and then released a meme coin, but they're not calling it a coin because they want to say it's not a Security there's only about 10% liquidity here when you look at the allocation This is seriously what he's doing before the inauguration.

I want to break it down. We'll take a legal perspective at this, looking at the legal disclaimers, what he's trying to, uh, disclaim and do here. Um, and one of the things I want to always point out from the outset, though, is the acronym WMD weapon of mass distraction. Trump's doing this while not lowering prices, not bringing peace to Ukraine, like he promised, not making housing more affordable, broken promise, broken promise. But he is selling meme coins to the crypto community and grifting off his supporters.

Let's talk about what the fifth circuit court of appeals ruled with respect to DACA, finding the program unlawful, but staying there ruling. What are the implications of that? And look, these are the kind of Trump judges and right wing judges who, you know, some of the people who have family members who are on DACA are kind of responsible for getting in the positions of power to begin with. I want to break all of that down.

We'll also talk about Judge Cannon, what she is up to, you know, just, just going on her own and just making up rules, telling the department of justice. You can't even turn over volume two of the special counsel report to members of Congress, like apparently she believes that she can dictate what members of the intelligence community are able to review. Oh, and by the way, speaking of the intelligence community, Donald Trump directed Maga Mike Johnson, the speaker of the house, to fire the Republican chair of the intelligence community committee, a guy by the name of Mike Turner, who's been

a member of Congress representing Ohio for about, well, since about 2003. Fairly bipartisan guy. They pushed him out because of his support for Ukraine and NATO. Vladimir Putin's laughing. In fact, we've done some videos here on the Midas Dutch Network showing even over the past 24 to 48 hours on state-run Russian TV, they're calling Donald Trump gramps and saying, gramps will handle taking over Greenland. Don't you worry, gramps. Gramps will take over Panama. And while Russia is

mocking Donald Trump and calling him gramps and showing nudes of Melania as well on their state run TV. Let's talk about president Biden's final actions before Donald Trump gets inaugurated, the import of things like the equal rights amendment and other ways to try to Trump proof important programs. Michael Popak, how are you doing, sir? Oh, I'm doing great. I was just reading the Wall Street Journal. You're on the weapons of mass distraction. Wall Street Journal just came out with a poll. Most of the voters for Donald Trump don't want him to implement his MAGA agenda. I mean, there's no other way to put it. And this is in a Rupert Murdoch controlled paper. 60% don't want him to gut civil service and civil servants. 60% don't want him to eliminate the Department of Education.

82% oppose any attempt by Trump to gain more power over federal spending. 70% don't want him taking over Greenland and an equal amount for the Panama Canal or Canada. The 65% don't want him to end birthright citizenship in our constitution, not that he necessarily could. I mean, when you look at, and the equal number don't want Elon Musk to have any kind of

power or control over the government, which begs the question, why did this group vote for him? And the voter remorse, and you've done a number of hot takes on it on Midas Touch Network, I've done some on Legal AF as well. The buyer remorse is strong here coming into this indoor inauguration to try to avoid the small crowd problem that he often has. And it just shows me that we are, you know, one of the takeaways, because it was a Murdoch-owned paper was, and the Democrats and their brand are in shambles. I'm not so sure about that. And every time we talk about something that Joe Biden did to empty the tank right before the inauguration, and people are like, would be wondering, well, why is he suing Elon Musk with the SEC? And why is he doing this or that or

setting this policy or that policy, because everything that Joe Biden does to build a wall, if you will, everything he does, Donald Trump has to spend political capital, resources, and time and energy to undo, try to undo it and then explain to the American people where the Democrats can use it as an x-ray machine and say, see, look what he's doing. He's commuting that sentence. He's pardoning that guy. Oh, most of the people in the Wall Street Journal poll do not want the Jan six people pardoned by a large majority. So every time he does something like that, it sets up the Democrats properly and their brand, our brand for the midterms and beyond, because we're going to make him justify every living thing that he's going to do. I mean, I don't know what part of MAGA is going to be thrilled to see in whatever the bleachers are going to be at the inauguration

instead of having the Jan six choir surrounding him. It's all oligarchs, billionaires, where family would normally go, oligarchs, Facebook, Apple, Disney, the president of TikTok, the vice president of China. Is this what MAGA woke up and wanted for the president. I mean, he ran on a populist message, but that was just to get elected. In reality, he is a billionaire that surrounds himself with other billionaires and only cares about the billionaire economy and not the economy of the average person.

And the sooner the MAGA voter and the people that supported Donald Trump find that out, the better we're gonna be as we remessage for the midterms. It's why we have to remain very focused on the key issues here. Look, when Donald Trump gave his campaign speeches, 90% of the stuff he said was crazy, insane, you can mock it, make fun of it, take it seriously though, because it's dangerous stuff. But 10% of the stuff he would say

would be these false promises. The media would ignore the crazy stuff. And then when you would watch your local news, which was owned by Sinclair or Fox or other major networks that would own the other corporate media that would own the local news, they would reiterate the promises. And the promises were on day one, there will be peace in Ukraine. On day one,

there will be lower prices for eggs. On day one, we will make housing affordable. On day one, there's going to be so much jobs, you're not even going to know what to do with those jobs. And then during the transition, he was asked, so how are you going to lower prices? He goes, I can't do that. It's very hard to lower prices. Okay, well, how are you going to lower prices? He goes, I can't do that. It's very hard to lower prices. Okay, well, how are you going to end the war in Ukraine on day one? Keith Kellogg, his special envoy, goes, oh, we can't do that. It's going to take at least 100 days for us to try to figure that out. Donald, should people invest in the stock market?

What do you think about that? I mean, he was asked that when he visited the New York Stock Exchange, a softball question by Jim Cramer. Should people invest in the stock market? I thought you're going to make it so big and so great that people aren't going to know what to do with the stock market. His response was, I don't know. I think if there's a dip, people could be hurt. While he's making those statements about the stock market, we're going to talk in a moment about this meme coin, which he's claiming is not actually a form of security, but that it's just showing your affection and love for the letters, t r u m p and the dollar sign symbol. And that's why you're doing it, not because you believe it will have any value. And he wants to do that because he wants to disclaim any liability from the drastic fluctuations in the prices if people get hurt and his own supporters get hurt.

So he was telling people to be wary of the market, but then he releases a mean coin. And so when Donald Trump's out there saying, I'm going to make the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. Okay, it's ridiculous. It's stupid. But what we have to be careful of is saying that's so outrageous. And then devote a day to talking about that. We can't do that.

We have to focus on, okay, what about Ukraine? What about lower prices? What about the price of eggs? What about the price of groceries? What about affordable housing? What about these jobs you promised? It's our job to be very focused on that And that's what we're going to do and last thing Ben and hold him accountable when and don't be scared by it

But hold him accountable on this network and in the work that you and I do and the other contributors do and the deportation Raids start on Tuesday in Chicago and or in New York led by Holman. We need to hold we need to it's not speaking truth to power It's being rigorous in our analysis, our commentary and calling it out here as a community and be ready for it because that's going to go horribly both on the impact on the economy and on our human dignity. It's not just the economy. It's like, do we want to live in a society where people are being chased out of hard working jobs, where this is a little known fact that people don't, the Republicans don't talk about, undocumented people that work for a living in this country, because that's what they want. They want the American

dream. They're here not to commit crimes. It's a very small percentage, smaller than the percentage of Americans that commit crimes, including violent crimes. They want to have a life and a better life for their children, a lot of which are already US citizens. They pay $60 billion with a B dollars in taxes every year, the undocumented. That's why in that Wall Street Journal poll, I was not surprised when 70% of the people are against these raids and they're against throwing out anybody but criminals. If they've been here a long period of time, they want them to stay and can have a path towards some sort of dignified process. But we will. We

got to call it out. It's not like, yeah, sure, I slapped my forehead like, oh, fuck, Tuesday after the inauguration is when these raids are going to start in New York and in Chicago. No, we're going to be here resisting it, talking about it, examining it, and where we can support the lawsuits that are going to be filed off of it at that intersection of law and politics. You know, we've been covering these stories, the tomato farmer in Florida or the factory owner in Nebraska, you go through various red states around the country and they're all saying, look, look, I'm okay with this policy, Donald, but when it comes to the migrants who work for our factories, you can't do these worksite raids because that's going to crush

our business. And they would go into the fact that like, you know, in certain Florida businesses, it would be like 35, 40, 45% of the labor is undocumented labor. And then the owners and the people who would like vote for Donald Trump when these stories would be covered, they'd also say, look, it's not about raising the prices. We've tried to raise the prices to get Americans to do these jobs. Americans are not taking these jobs. They're not working on the farms. They're not taking some of these dangerous construction jobs. They're not taking some of these hospitality jobs. They're just not doing it. We actually need the labor or we need a

comprehensive reform to deal with this. We should have a very strong border, but we need to deal with those who are here, who are here and contributing to the economy. What we really care about is getting rid of the criminals and the terrorists. It's like, of course, everybody wants to get rid of criminals and terrorists. Like, what are you talking about? Like, of course, President Biden wants to get rid of the criminals and the terrorists. There's no law rule saying we invite the criminals and the terrorists. But, Popak, that's a prevailing narrative that the billionaire and oligarchs who controlled the media

used their platform to spread all of these lies where no matter what would happen, whether it was a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, whatever the incident would be, it would be blamed on migrants. And so you would have this view that somehow President Biden was just allowing all of this to happen and favoring migrants you know, migrants who were

causing harm to Americans. And Trump's main line was, you know, the migrants, the Haitian community that was here with legal status in Springfield, Ohio, that revitalized Springfield, Ohio, were eating your cats and your dogs. And by the way, those factory owners in Springfield, Ohio, that employed the Haitian labor that is terrified right now, they voted for Trump in Springfield, Ohio. You know, after all of that, while their labor is going to get deported and they're going to go back to the bad situations they were in before. So we can't get distracted. I do want to point out how Trump wants to do.

We need to know the tactics though, right? So here's what he did on Friday night. He hosted a party, a crypto industry, an event as a black tie event with all of the kind of top crypto people were in attendance at this black tie event. And then while this crypto event was taking place, while people like Snoop Dogg were performing, and by the way, he's just getting crushed now, Snoop Dogg for doing this event

and doing other inauguration events for Donald. I mean, how pathetic are you Snoop Dogg? What a despicable move. Trump then drops this crypto coin. So while everybody's gathered there, he drops this crypto coin. So while everybody's gathered there, he drops this crypto meme coin. So he has the whole audience there and they're all trying to gain his support

and approval for their kind of various things. So he drops the coin and then the coin goes up in value, like 10,000% gets a market cap value, gets a market value at somewhere, I think the latest one is close to like 10 billion dollars as we're doing this. So this guy, Coffeezilla, he covers a lot of the crypto schemes and scams. He did one on the Hock Toa girl scam and he's covered a bunch of these Influencers who do crypto scam so he so first copyzell is like this has got to be a hack right like like Trump must be hacked Like please tell me it's a hack. I'm begging you. Tell me it's a hack

And then he goes it's if not It's got to be the most bizarre move for an incoming president to make, launch a meme coin. And then he goes and talks about this, dropping Trump meme coin two days before becoming president is nasty work because the new SEC and DOJ will not prosecute Trump or anybody for being involved in this scammy thing. 80% of tokens vest to, it's why I'm saying it's scammy because 80% of the tokens vest to insiders during the presidency. The number one insider, Donald Trump.

Most people losing money will be MAGA who aren't crypto native. And then Coffeezilla says this should be a crime but crime is legal now apparently so that's what went down then you look at just some of these then he goes over here update finally saw the tokenomics of the dollar sign Trump 80% owned by one wallet when you look at the disclaimers here also this is what it says, Popok, and then I want to get your take. It goes, what memes are intended to function as an expression of support for an engagement

with the ideals and beliefs embodied by the symbol, dollar sign Trump, and the associated artwork, and are not intended to be, or to be the subject of an investment opportunity, investment contract or security of any type, it says. And then as you read more into it, it basically says that this is, you know, it's like a total liability waiver and disclaimer. And then it says, this has nothing to do with politics at all. It says, this has nothing to do with politicians, nothing to do with the presidency. This is just, you need to show your love

for dollar sign, TRUMP. So, so PO-POK, I mean, look look there's so much wrong with this. I wanna remind people when i pass it to you though this is his priority not the peace in Ukraine promise not the lowering of the prices not making your housing more affordable this idiot is selling freaking mean coins. How pathetic. Yeah, it just shits all over the dignity of the office of the president. He doesn't care about it at all. It's all about making as much money in the next four years or the next two years as he possibly can. The Trump family made over a hundred million dollars during the last go around. They will probably do 10 times that before they are done. And I'm not even including the billions of dollars that Jared Kushner raised for a first time fund

for which he had no experience whatsoever. Because Donald Trump has surrounded himself with crypto cowboys, of which he has won, with his own platform that he arranged with Steve Witkoff, the guy that just went over to try to negotiate the Hamas deal. And Elon Musk, who was a big supporter of meme, meme means there's nothing, there's absolutely nothing behind it.

It is just a funny bit of novelty coin. Doge with a dog logo. It has always been supported by Elon Musk, who's a big holder of it. This is another version of it. I'd like to find out who was holding the 200 million meme coins. Most of it is locked away,

and there's about one billion of it that's currently trading after a day. And this is just a perfect example of insider trading. Donald Trump knows that on day one, Monday, Tuesday, he's going to sign executive orders that are going to reshape the cryptocurrency landscape for anybody that's owning, developing, or has a platform, including, I'm sure he's going to announce, a cryptocurrency national reserve where the government is gonna use

your and my hard-earned tax dollars, not Donald Trump's, he doesn't pay taxes, to buy up billions of dollars of crypto and store it in a reserve, which is only gonna increase the price for people that are in the cryptocurrency business, such as his incoming Commerce Secretary Howard Ludnick, his Doge, whatever that thing is supposed to be, Department of Government Efficiency Head Musk, Donald Trump himself. So it's insider trading because he just launched a coin that's going to benefit immediately on Tuesday from an executive order

that he's going to issue. Now, it's not exactly the emoluments violation of the Constitution, but it's pretty darn close. And if I know my friends in the law, they're readying lawsuits to prevent this. He's going to name ahead of the SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission, who's pro cryptocurrency and doesn't think it should be regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, whereas Gary Gensler, the outgoing SEC director, does and did. So it's gonna be just green light, all gas, no break, on cryptocurrency in the next four years to benefit in line Donald Trump's pocket. We have never seen, I mean there's so many we've never seen with Donald Trump. We've never had a felon take office. We've never had a kleptocracy in broad daylight

where they're just lining their pockets with and benefiting economically from being the president and the oligarchs around him. I mean, look at Elon Musk. He spent 200, look at the return on investment for Elon Musk alone. He spent 200 million dollars to buy a presidency. His net worth doubled from 250 billion to over, almost doubled to over 400 billion. So he spent 200 million to make 200 billion great return on investment in about five or six months and the rest are all doing the same thing. Oil and gas that supported him. You know how much money cryptocurrency, I'm asking this rhetorically, you know how much

money cryptocurrency invested in Donald Trump's campaign to try to get him elected? And of course he's going to reward them with these golden, this is the new thing that drives me crazy. I'm going to try to take these words back for Midas Touch and for Legal AF. The golden era. If I hear the golden era one more time from a Trump nominee or from Donald Trump or one of his kids, I'm going to vomit. The golden era of the Department of Justice will be ushered in by Pam Bondi.

The golden era of the Treasury is going to be ushered in by Steve Bessette. The golden era of everybody's use in this talking point. You know, when when Eric or Don Jr. went to a cryptocurrency conference abroad, golden era of cryptocurrency. You know what the golden era is on this network, the golden era of truth. Unmightest touch, the golden era of holding people accountable to the intersection of law and politics. That's the golden era, the golden era that we're ushering in. So this whole scam, scammer in

chief, again, up and running, and we have to as a community and as free media, independent media, we have to hold him accountable. If there's a lawsuit to be had for this being illegal, him owning a cryptocurrency company, you notice there's no announcement about how he's gonna handle his business. No blind trust, no, he's gonna run, he's gonna have a hot phone on his desk. He's gonna run his businesses from the White House

on the taxpayer dime instead of being the president of the United States. And his sole goal, he had two goals. One was to avoid prison, check, and that's why he ran. And the second was to make as much looger, as much money as he possibly could in the short amount of time he has in one term. And that's what we're watching. What is so important as we cover these issues though, is to always bring it back to the American people, because what we need to do is I think, recalibrate the resistance and how to oppose and how to challenge and what we have to do is make sure we call out

all of these things like we're gonna be doing here, like we just did. But then again, bring it back. Really, voters, Elon Musk now has an office right next to the White House. This is what you wanted. And by the way, tell me about it. Are your egg prices cheaper?

Are your groceries cheaper? What about those jobs that he make your jobs bigly the greatest job ever? Is that what his priority? No, his priority was on a freaking meme coin. And you know, it's bad when even the crypto community is calling something scammy and when they call it that, just to be clear about the language there, the reason they're calling it that is they look at the allocation and they're saying, is this something that benefits a lot of people?

I mean, look, there's ways to do crypto the right way. Um, you know, and there's ways to do it the wrong way. It's why Biden wanted there to be regulation in this area. What Trump is trying to do here is not even refer to this as crypto. He's not even calling it a coin. That's why they're very careful on their language and they're saying, you're just buying a meme. Like, what the hell does that even mean? You're buying, you're buying a meme. It's really a modern version of you're buying snake oil.

You're buying a meme. Cause once they call it a coin, it has implications of being a security and being a token and being a thing that has a value that helps the insiders, 80% insiders, insiders equal Trump and Trump's inner circle even with this mean coin thing it screws it's screwing over people so we always have to bring it back to that and that's what we're gonna do we're gonna take our first quick break of the show I want to remind everybody about Michael Pope box YouTube channel the legal AF YouTube channel, you gotta subscribe to it. I mean, it's going to be necessary viewing

over the next four years. And especially to start over the next few weeks, rapid response to all of the developments, day one with all of his executive orders, you gotta go and subscribe. Also, patreon.com slash Legal F. Uh, we will, uh, make sure you check that out as well. And we'll be right back after our first quick break.

And then Popak, we got to discuss what the fifth circuit court of appeals is doing. We got to discuss judge cannons, ruling Biden doing on the last days. Let's take a quick break. Are you looking for something simple and delicious to add to your wellness routine? Look, I'm a honey guy instead of artificial sweeteners, so I put regular honey in my salad dressings and hot drinks. But then I found monocura that put all other honey to shame. It has a certain creaminess and complexity of flavor that is unmatched, not to mention the health benefits. The best way to use monocora is straight from the spoon

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available at our link. Start 2025 right, stand, move, thrive with Uplift Desk. Welcome back to Legal AF. Thank you to all of our pro-democracy sponsors right there. Popak, I want you to break down what went down in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. They basically struck down DACA, but then they stayed their ruling. What are they trying to do here? I mean, look, they obviously held this rule. They tied this ruling right before the inauguration. They knew what they were doing here.

I think to give Donald Trump maximum leverage. I think this goes to show you that these right-wing courts, they're still out there. And these right-wing lawyers who are affiliated with Trump and are part of the MAGA Federalist Society movement, these people don't go away, right? They've been trying to get rid of the affordable care act since Obama passed it, trying to get rid of your healthcare. They've been trying to get rid of DACA since Obama passed it. They've been trying to get rid of student loan debt forgiveness since Biden introduced it, and they've been successful with a lot of it.

They've been trying to block all of the kind of Biden policies at every step of the way. They've pushed this and then they developed over the past four to five decades, this federalist society to build their judges so that they control the refs. So that decades later later when they played the game to try to get laws struck down that help the people but don't help the oligarchs or don't help a Christian nationalist type agenda, they own the refs because they pick the refs when the refs were in law school. I know this.

They tried to get me. I was in one of these classes where they tried to recruit me for the Federalist Society. And when I went to Georgetown Law and I went to one of these classes, I sat on it and I was like, all right, I'm not doing this. And I dropped it and it was two George W. Bush top people in the George W. Bush.

But it appeals to you as a law student because you think to yourself, if I do this, I'm going to go and get a big job out of law school, make a lot of money, be able to pay my student debt right away. That's how they get you. And then before you know it, you're in this whole world. The Michael Popock, I went on a tangent there. No, no, no.

I tell people. Tell us about the Tachnomero. I tell people going on a tangent is that's how that's how we formed the podcast That's the whole podcast that we like the tangents a federalist society Like you said trying to recruit that that is the greatest thing that the worst thing But the greatest accomplishment of Leonard Leo in the Federalist Society was to focus on judges That's why we have court accountability action as a collaborative partner over on legal AF channel And here is because they he he focused on that while the Democrats took their eye off the

ball. And as you said, got the referees from kindergarten up, right? It reminds me of the old line about the devil. The devil's greatest trick is to convince people that he doesn't exist. And so the greatest trick is that this you know, this conversion process of bringing people through this this conveyor belt the Federalist Society right up to federal judges and the federal judges to Supreme Court judges and then hand pick again Leonard, a Leonard Leo special hand pick

Three Supreme Court justices. It's not that there's Republicans on the United States Supreme Court It's not that there's Republicans in the United States Supreme Court. It's not that there's Republicans in the Fifth Circuit, the Ninth Circuit, and other places. It's that they're hand-picked by the Federalist Society in order to accomplish their agenda. We've always had Republican control over the United States Supreme Court since I was like in my 20s. I mean, you can only count on one hand a Chief Justice that was not a Republican. That's not been the problem. The problem has been when you put together Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Cavanaugh, who are all handpicked and supported by the NRA, big oil, and other things, and all passed the litmus test on the social issues that were important to the Federalist Society and

the MAGA, that's the problem. And we've never seen that before, where we've just seen the complete manipulation of our federal court system. The Texas two-step, which I only say half ingest, is what we watch over and over again. MAGA runs to a Texas judge. This time it's Judge Canan. Or it's Judge Reed. What's Reed's last name, but come to me in a minute, or it's Kazmeric, you know, they've got their three, Reed O'Connor, there's like the three judges, and then they get their positive ruling

that they want, right, then they take it to the Fifth Circuit, which leans heavy to the right, two-thirds appointed by Trump and people like them, and then you got people like Judge Ho and Judge Andrew Oldham who are trying out for Supreme Court, pick me, pick me with all their decisions. And that's the other reason more cases come up to the United States Supreme Court from the Fifth Circuit than any other district.

And we've got 12 of them. And there's a reason for that because they keep hitting the fire hose and trying to pressurize the Supreme Court. It's like a hockey net where they're just firing a hundred pucks at the net hoping to get five or six through. Problem is, you know, we're the ones that are the losers in that shot on goal. And so you have this case here. This judge particularly that the Fifth Circuit just upheld has had it in for DACA and the Biden administration and the Obama administration, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which has to do with the Dreamers Act, forever.

He has been ruling against, Hannan has been ruling against it since, let me see here 2015 he ruled against an expansion of DACA. So every time and they so of course they know Federalist MAGA go to Hannan go to Hannan sounds like cannon but I'm saying Hannan go to go to him and that's what the Fifth Circuit just upheld. Now his ruling only dealt with Texas killing the program. The Fifth Circuit has said, well, maybe Texas, yes, but we're gonna hold off on deporting people. And there's two parts to the program. One has to do with work approvals and authorizations.

So they kind of split it in half. And what their finding was is that the executive order and these attempts by Biden violated administrative law and the law, immigration law, because it went beyond what a president can do on their own pen. Not so sure about that. But this is now going to go up to the United States Supreme Court. While this is what you said about the American voter, we don't want to get lost here about what this means. This means that there is a group of, let me get the numbers right, there's a group of, let me one second, I just want to look up a stat sheet here that I have.

Is it 50,000 or 500,000? I'll get it before I'm done with this. These are human beings, right? These are children now young adults who now have to live in a shadow of fear, right? Instead of being productive contributors to our society, keeping their head down, nose clean, getting their degrees and certificates, hard working jobs and being paid. What do we have to do? We have to give them ulcers and keep them up at night and have them lose sleep and have them keep a bag packed at the front door because

they're worried about what some Texas, MAGA racist judge thinks about DACA, which is a part of their, let's get rid of birthright citizenship, which is another word for the Constitution provides it if you're born here, you're a U.S. citizenship. They give it this ridiculous name, like when the Republicans won't call the Democratic Party the Democratic Party, because they call us Democrats, because they think we stole the word Democratic. This isn't birthright citizenship. This is a constitutional provision that's been on the books since our constitution, since at least the 14th Amendment,

the series of civil war amendments that came out. So am I shocked that out of Judge Hannan over to the Fifth Circuit, Texas two step up now to the Supreme Court? No, question is going to be what is this new center right that is forming around Amy Coney Barrett? Is she going to side with the Democratic wing of the Supreme Court with the Katanji Brown Jackson and Sotomayor and Kagan and try to drag one

more over to that center of the universe. Because right now what we're watching is a tremendous tug of war about things that matter in this country. And again, I want to make this clear, because some people kind of misunderstood me in a chat I did on PopePak Live on Tuesday. I am not a huge fan of Amy Coney Barrett. She has not covered herself in glory. She's voted on the wrong hump side

of everything that matters to me, except for a couple of things. However, we have to call it what it is. We don't blow smoke or sunshine here. She has become the center right of the court. And she could be the swing vote. We could be watching the Amy Coney Barrett court for the next 10 years plus, just like we

had the Sandra Day O'Connor court and the Kennedy court. She's just to the right of all of them. So can she, this tug of war that we're watching is Amy Coney Barrett over here and Gorsuch, who is now firmly ensconced in a troika, an unholy troika of him, Alito and Thomas over here. And this is the push-pull that we're watching, Alito, and Thomas over here. And this is the push-pull that we're watching, which you, if you're a Supreme Court advocate, you've got to aim for Amy Coney Barrett. Because if you don't get her, maybe Kavanaugh on occasion, but if you don't get her on any of these major

social issues that matter to moderates, to matter to free-thinking people, then you've really lost. That's what we're gonna watch over with the Supreme Court. So again, like you said, they stuck at the Biden. Biden's doing a good job sticking it to MAGA though. I saw a list that it's the total, we'll talk about it in the next segment,

the total number of executive orders that Joe Biden has passed to try to Trump-proof democracy is pushing 40, four zero. We're gonna cover a few of them today. But he's had a couple of losses here and there. Student loan forgiveness got hit a couple of times. The Staka thing got hit a couple of times. But give him credit for trying. That's all you can do.

But I'm gonna really enjoy the part where we talk about what Joe Biden as a lame duck, empty the tank president has been able to accomplish. You know, when it comes to the Amy Coney Barrett, Justice John Roberts, Justice Barrett, joining with the three liberal justices and forming that five, let's be very clear. Amy Coney Barrett, you said this, look, she's not going to rule on any social issues that will be helpful to liberals. She will, you know, likely make some of the worst rulings there. She was, her life's work was overturning Roe v. Wade. You knew that about her though because she wrote articles about that. That's what she taught at Notre Dame University Law School. Like that, her whole thing was doing that, right? So she did that. She

was put in place by people to do that, but she is not really deep into federalist society world beyond that. And when it comes to the dictator type stuff, that's where she and John Roberts will hopefully help with some of the liberal justices. They gave absolute immunity, uh, with, with the decision with Roberts and Coney Barrett, there are a lot of people behind the scenes also who said that they thought that there was going to be some sort of compromise as related to 14th Amendment Section 3 ruling and then some of the other

right wing justices that went back on their word about it. In any event, the question is, will Coney Barrett and Roberts and Roberts wrote that great article talking about how, oh not the great article, he wrote the article where he said that he wants to, you know, that the biggest fears are Donald Trump, essentially without saying Trump by name, disinformation, people not enforcing what the Supreme Court saying. So really Roberts and Coney Barrett may join with some of the liberal justices. Again, that's the best shot that you have in the Supreme Court.

They showed that they were willing to do it with Trump sentencing by not blocking it. We'll see what happens though. Let me show this clip right here though, of President Biden. This was a message that he gave to members of the military in his final farewell address to the armed services and he said to our armed forces and he said to them, remember your oath here. Let's watch this. Let me close with the final request. I say it not as your president or commander in chief,

I say it as a man who spent 50 years of his life serving his country in a different way, remember your oath. My son, Major Beau Biden, used to call it home base. That's a set of principles of values that give you light and darkness that guide you. It's true to the military, it's the best weapons, the best training in the world. You have to have the right to fight in darkness that guide you. It's true to the military, it's

the best weapons, the best training in the world. We have the most cutting edge ships, planes and subs. We have the smartest, most well-trained force on earth. That's all critical. But that alone is not what makes us strong. This is not what brought Washington to band the brothers together all those years ago.

You know, it's just so wild to me that the country rejected that, rejected him. I mean, that's someone who was articulate. Is he older? Sure. I mean, he's 81 years old, but this constant barrage by the corporate media of the ageism and saying that he was not mentally fit. Even now, Maggie Haberman in the Times, today's paper, just spent the, oh, the six enablers for Joe Biden that hid his frailty from the American people. Now they're doing the autopsy before the guy's even throwing dirt on the grave, before the guy's even out of office, instead of all the accomplishments that he made. This is, let me make one point as the older person in this podcast relationship. The aging of America and aging in place, whether that place is in your home for dignity, whether it's an assisted living facility,

like I have my mom in because she needs round the clock care, or it's an aging president aging in place in the White House, we're going to have to start to get the grips with this because we have, we are a country of long longevity. We have very good healthcare. People are living longer than they used to. And we're going to have to be okay with that. What I wanted in my perfect magical world, which I sometimes enter, is I wanted us to respect the fact that he was aging in place and bring in gerontologists and people to guide the staff around Joe Biden about him at 81 is not him at 51 or 61 or 71 or 91 and give them and have him meet regularly and get the therapy and the no everything here has to be like we're back in the FDR days and we got to hide the wheelchair and

the and the crutches and it's ridiculous and if we just allowed that he was gonna have just like we all gonna have, I get a bad day sometimes, then we're gonna have a day when we fumble over a name of something. I couldn't remember how many DACA kids a minute ago. That doesn't mean I'm like, oh, time to send Popak out to pasture.

Not yet anyway. But we have to, as a society, respect our aging in America, and not just hide it, but we were still doing 1880s stuff around age, and it's a problem. I mean, look, I interviewed President Biden for 30 minutes. I mean, he was sharp, articulate, went through all of the programs that he did.

You can't do what he did as an executive if you're not sharp. You can't have all of those actual accomplishments, big pieces of legislation that were passed that are benefiting the country if you're not sharp. It's such a strange thing that they would attack him for that and then have someone like Donald Trump, who by the way, shows lots of actual signs of serious issues and is completely psychotic. But you know, that is a major failure, not just of the corporate media, but I think also of the Democratic Party that needs to rally around their leaders. Like you got to rally around and support someone if they're doing your agenda. I think if you were to speak to Democratic members of Congress and you

would say all this stuff, infrastructure, inflation, Reduction Act, the PACT Act, the CHIPS Act, American Recovery Act, 16.6 million jobs created, frontline with the union workers on the picket lines, national labor relations board being staffed by some of the top people. Like these are bottom up, middle out. Like these are your, this is, this is what you wanted, right? Yeah. But like, you're not out there. You you're allowing the corporate media, you're being intimidated by corporate

media out there, defaming president Biden's age and mental acuity so you're not gonna stand up for your leader who's doing, anyway, there's a whole discussion there. We'll be right back after our last quick break. Reminder, check out the Legal AF YouTube channel, Michael Popak's channel. It's gonna be mandatory viewing, I think for me at least, because there's gonna be a lot of legal developments happening every single day.

And it's gonna be where I go to get my legal news as well. Don't worry, Popak will still have his hot takes here on the Might As Touch channel as well, but there's gonna be a lot. So we're gonna have some here, we're gonna have some there. You can get them in both places, already at 410,000 subscribers.

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One last time, getsol.com and code LegalAF for 30% off. Welcome back to LegalGALAF. Thank you to those pro-democracy sponsors. We don't have outside investors here, so that really helps us grow, support them. The discount codes are in the description and we got some great discounts. Jordy personally negotiates the discounts and so we get you good deals and we use all the stuff that we put up here and sell. So check it out. Popa. Talk about how president Biden is trying to Trump proof his legacy,

what have been the steps that he's been taking equal amendments, uh, amendment equal rights amendment. I mean, tell us about it. Just a series of things that we've been watching. I might have snuck up on people, but a total is about 40 different executive orders. Many, many in the last couple of weeks, you've got an executive order that protected over 330 million acres, acres of natural wildlife and, and refuge that's now protected from oil and gas drilling. So drill baby drill, maybe, but not there. And he makes him the most conservationist president

we've ever had with over 600 million acres protected by him. He's put Teddy Roosevelt to shame in that. So we have that going on. He's just issued major new executive orders strengthening our cybersecurity on the heels of, I mean, China just hacked yesterday. Janet Yellen, the Treasury Secretary's computer yesterday, the honored guests of Donald Trump at the inauguration, although

they, of course, they totally blew him off off the president's not coming. They're sending the VP Instead from China, but like his close relationship with China China as the United States Supreme Court Just said we'll do this in another segment just declared them and agreed with with Congress, which is they are a foreign adversary Meaning they are an enemy combatant against the United States economically, militarily, and from a security standpoint. And now Joe Biden, with a flip of a pen, has strengthened our cybersecurity. Now when I read all the things, the 30 different deadlines and new things and the strengthening of this cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, CISA, actually created by Donald Trump

in 2018. He's gonna be hard pressed to run away from that. And that they're gonna take over and coordinate all of the IT departments of all the federal agencies. And they're all gonna get on these same protocols. And they're all gonna do end to end encryption for emails and video.

My first reaction was sort of like during COVID. Like when the restaurants and the movie theaters and the supermarkets announced that we're gonna start cleaning every day. I was like, you weren't doing that before? I mean, this is something you gotta, that's a change. So I'm a little shocked that some of the cybersecurity protection hasn't been happening. We just had the Chinese live inside of nine different mobile cell phone carriers, computers and servers peering in at our communications and got caught.

They broke into JD Vance's and Donald Trump's phone. This is all just the Chinese. I haven't even talked about the Iranians or the Russians yet. They broke into the Treasury Department. They're constantly hacking. Government controlled hackers, just like they ultimately control TikTok.

We'll talk about that later. And so Joe Biden did that as well. Equal rights amendment, might as touch scooped it. God, this is interesting. I don't know if we have that clip, maybe while I'm talking it could be queued up of you interviewing Biden on this. Kirsten Gillibrand, who's the junior Senator from New York, who I like a lot, has been advocating

for the equal rights Amendment to be declared the 28th Amendment of the Constitution by the President and the National Archivist because they passed the two-thirds threshold, even though a lot longer than the 10 years Congress originally had proposed for it back in 1973, to make women have equal rights in this country. It's hard to believe. We've been talking about this issue for over 100 years. You would have thought this got resolved in the suffragist movement, but it didn't. And then, you know, with Virginia in 2020, we had our two-thirds. Now, you know, some of the states that are, they became really red and MAGA decided to like rescind it because, you know, they're not in favor of women rights, as we know. And so we had that issue. But Kirsten Gillibrand has been spearheading both in the Senate and then this other method of

having the president just declare it so forever. I just read, I never, I don't know if you knew this Ben, you met with the president, he talked to you about the ERA, he never met with Senator Gillibrand about it, which is sort of weird, but you got the scoop and you got it over her. He just announced yesterday or the day before that it's his view as commander in chief, based on all the scholarship, that the Equal Rights Amendment is passed

and should be the 28th Amendment to the Constitution. The problem, to be fair, or to be straight here on Legal AF, is that he did not take the next step, as we have promoted here on the podcast and on the network, to direct the archivist. See, I love this show because we learned about things that I never learned about before I became a podcaster. The archivist of the United States is the keeper of the flame for the text of the Constitution. And she has said in December, I am not acknowledging the 28th Amendment because I'm taking guidance from the Office of Legal Counsel and the Department of Justice and other scholars and I don't see it. He could order her because she is

part of the executive branch and set up a whole constitutional crisis if she refused him, but he did not go that far, especially in the last 48 hours. So the reality is it just shows you where Joe Biden's heart is at, but it's not going to be the 28th Amendment because the archivist isn't going to allow it. And so we may see lawsuits over it in the future, but I don't think, I think it's more of an aspirational thing that he did that we can really get behind more than something that we can actually point to it's it's gonna be a change in our Constitution. You have all that. You have the, he's the he's the president that's given out the most clemencies and commutations of sentences and I don't know about pardons yet, but he'll probably get there before he's done on Monday. He's got a Monday. He's got almost 3,000 commutations of sentences. What he's been trying to do the last two weeks in commuting sentences under his pardon power, which means inclemancy, which means

shortening or eliminating right now, as of right now, prison sentences. If the person's already served it, it's sort of like a pardon, except it's the the crime is going to stay on the books. The sentence, if they're still in prison, they're going to get out now. And these are non-violent drug offenders primarily, because back in 86, the 1986 version of Joe Biden, he did support with Bill Clinton and the Democrats at the time, things like three strikes and you're out, and criminal drug laws that disproportionately fell on the black and brown community. Like five grams of crack cocaine, you got the same sentence as the white rich guy who had 500 grams of powdered coke. And that was a problem. And that was

really something that was in urban communities and they were trying to crack down on it, but it ended up putting black and brown people in jail for an inordinate amount of time. And so this helped balance that. And he's by far has commuted more sentences than any president, Obama, Trump combined. I think Trump total was less than a hundred computations of sentences.

So I like that a lot about it. Was there anything else about the most recent things that he's done, Ben, that you that you that you want to talk about? I want to make this very clear. It doesn't take a genius if you're in the office of the presidency to make billions of dollars selling a meme coin and selling crap and trinkets and things like it. It's easy to do that if you have that level of power. So why doesn't everybody do it? Huh?

Well, why, why is Biden not doing it? Why didn't Clinton do stuff like why didn't while they were in office, why didn't George W Bush do that? Why wasn't Obama out there, you know, hawking stocks and things like that when he was there? Because this is the White House. This is, there's something called dignity. The work that President Biden did was not bringing

one trillion dollars to himself with stupid meme coins. It was taking a trillion dollars to himself with stupid meme coins. It was taking a trillion dollars and investing it into the people. Many of whom voted for the idiot who does the meme coin. And there is this information, lack of information paradigm right now that president Biden warned against on his way out. And he talked about this tech industrial complex that made themselves richer. I bring it up now because all of the things you're talking about, Popak, are ways to try to help people. It's what Biden told me, look, whether you are from a red state or a blue state, it didn't matter. He was trying to help you.

It wasn't reciprocated back to him, but now you've got a guy selling meme coins that are making himself super, super rich by using the present. Of course, the United States is the most powerful country in the world. Duh. If you start selling mean coins, you're going to get all these foreign interests buying it, all these people who, but they're supposed to be like, nah, that's not freaking cool. We're not okay with that. It should be pretty basic. All of the reporting I've seen from corporate media on this mean coin stuff for most of it's like Trump has made so much money, a brilliant movies. What are you talking about? You idiots. This is,

this is in my opinion, it going to be a clear violation of the emoluments clause. You know, this is everything that our constitution should be against. This is horrific. It should be disqualifying on day one this behavior, but bring it back to what are you doing for the freaking people? WMD, weapon of mass destruction. How is your meme coin, how is this helping? I can tell you how Biden helped the people with the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Act, the PAC Act, the Chips

Act, the American Recovery Act. I can tell you how that helped people, how 40,000 infrastructure projects put people to work, a manufacturing boom. I can tell you how bringing the semiconductor industry to America has been hugely helpful and how Donald Trump is going to put tariffs on Canada, Mexico, China, Europe. They're just going to retaliate now and put tariffs, retaliatory, reciprocal tariffs on Canada, Mexico, China, Europe. They're just going to retaliate now and put tariffs, a reciprocal retaliatory, reciprocal tariffs on industries like the semiconductor industry that we're building here to screw Americans in response for

Trump doing that. And let me show you this clip right here. This is a president Biden. I want to show you what dignity is. I want to show you what the office should be about. It shouldn't be about meme coins Here's what Biden posted. I met Sabine on the road back in 2022 She shared a heartfelt haiku with me a reminder of the strength we find when we stand together

Regardless of our differences Sabine. I hope I've made you proud your playlist clip Hello. How are you? Good. What's your name? I'm Sabine Clough. Sabine, nice to meet you. I wrote this poem to you a couple years ago during your inauguration and it was inspired by Amanda Gorman's speech. It's a haiku so it follows the 575 syllable format. The stream may part ways, the leaves all sway uniquely we stand together so it's about standing together You gotta come to the White House and you'll see it framed on my wall I mean, that's the America I love then but then, and then Biden made a meme, a meme, uh, coin out of that haiku. Yeah. Biden made a meme coin out of that haiku and the crypto markets went crazy and he made $28 billion.

I mean, while Biden was doing that, Donald Trump spoke in front of the young Republicans about nine months ago, a year ago, and said, you know, the most courageous thing I've ever done in my life is when I was talking about sexually assaulting women and I called it locker room talk. And a general came up to me and said, I've seen men die in battle. But when you said that grabbing women's vaginas was a power was, was locker room talk. That was the, I've never seen anything stronger. That's real. What are you doing, Amer?

I mean, seriously, what the hell are you freaking thinking? The 49% of you morons who voted for that, wake the hell up right now because that idiot is going to screw up your freaking lives every damn day. And you're gonna wish for four years, the past four years where there was no drama and there was that taking place.

Popak, turn it over to you as you talk about Judge Cannon briefly and then maybe give a quick update and where things stand with TikTok. By the way, which we should be media literate and fact literate as it comes to TikTok, by the way, which we should be media literate and fact literate as it comes to TikTok. Donald Trump was the one who wanted to ban TikTok. It was the Trump v TikTok ban. But the way the media report said,

oh, well now he's gonna save, you know, save the ban, save the, you talked about it before, Paul. Yeah, not, not, well, I'll get to, the Supreme Court wasn't fooled about who originally wanted to ban TikTok, because they spent a fair amount of time in their first three pages talking about President Trump having blocked it appropriately under national security reasons, and didn't even mention

his amicus friend of the court brief where he said, "'Let me just, give me time, stay everything, I'll make a deal.'" All right, I'll talk about TikTok in a minute. TikTok in a minute. Canon, I mean, look, let me do it backwards. Merrick Garland has another less than 72 hours, 48 hours to do the right thing for America

and dismiss the effing case against Carlos D. Alviera and Walt Nauta and that we shorthand call it Mar-a-Lago to in order to release volume two of the special counsel's report scathing indictment beyond indictment showing the criminal proof against Donald Trump that goes to the American people. It's the only way around Judge Cannon and apparently the 11th Circuit who's just decided to sit on the sidelines of democracy and justice and not make a ruling. It's clear that the

11th Circuit does not want to get involved and that they're gonna let time resolve their issues. They're not gonna rule on whether she was right or wrong. Well, no, she was wrong. Whether she was right or wrong to find that the special counsel was unconstitutionally appointed and funded. They're not going to rule on this in time. And therefore, on Monday, game over, because if they haven't dismissed the case in advance, to take away Cannon's jurisdiction, and release the report, not just to the Congress, but to the American people, on Monday, those two idiots are going to, criminals, are gonna get pardoned by Donald Trump, ending the appeal, ending the case, and then that volume two ends

up on Pam Bondi's desk, and we know what she's gonna do with that. Nothing. She's gonna say it's not in the public interest because it reflects the weaponization of the Department of Justice and lawfare, and I, as the Attorney General, I've made the decision to reject my predecessor's recommendation and I'm going to put it into my desk drawer. Now, maybe we'll see it after the next administration, if it's Democrat, 10 years from now or four years from now, whatever it's going to be, but we're never going to see that. And so there is this path, it's narrow as it may be, for Merrick Garland to lead on. Because Cannon, as we expected and as we predicted here on Legal AF, had a hearing on Friday in which she allowed Donald Trump to intervene.

He got back into a criminal case he was dismissed from. I think they should continue the prosecution. But he got in there with John Sauer, in front of her for 90 minutes and the whole time she's tisking about Congress and like, well, I don't really think Congress needs this. I don't care what the statute says. She hasn't issued an order yet, but she will. I don't care what the statute says about the mandatory requirement that the Attorney General turn it over to Congress. This is only about whether it goes to the ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committee. This has nothing

to do with going to the public. With her, it's blocked to go to the public. And we're out of time. I don't know if anybody's looked at her watch lately, but we're out of time. I mean, for me, Monday's Martin Luther King Day, but for other people, it's an inauguration that starts with the President Biden entering the room and ends with Trump President leaving the room. And so Merrick Garland, I'm so tired of talking about him getting caught flat-footed

and a day late, a dollar short when it comes to our justice system. Do the right thing, Merrick, because otherwise you're not even gonna get this out to Congress because it's continuing to be blocked by cannon and then Monday will roll around, the whole case will disappear, poof, like it never existed with pardons.

So that's that, I'll segue into quickly in TikTok. We did a great segment on it. I did one here on the Legal AF, on Midas Touch. I did one on Legal AF. I did a Dina Dahl one on Unprecedented on Legal AF, a new show that we do there. TikTok is, this is easy, 20 pages, nine zero, no dissent, all against Donald Trump's position,

supporting what Congress declared, which is that China is an enemy combatant, a foreign adversary that's controlling a communications app in America. And that alone is justification for the forced divestiture sale of TikTok to a non-foreign adversary. Why? And again, I don't want people to take the wrong idea.

I like TikTok videos like the next person. And there's plenty of MidasTouch people that do some TikTok videos. I get it. But the platform is corrupt. Sorry. The platform is, we sometimes, the platform is we, sometimes in the law we talk about fruit

of the poisonous tree. It is a poisonous tree because in order to operate in China, whether you're on TikTok, run a company that runs TikTok or your Red Note, this new Chinese app that everybody's flocking to, you have to sign a deal with the Chinese government by law that says you will allow every scrap of your information, data, algorithms, everything to be pulled at a moment's notice and turned over to the Chinese government. Pull your servers right for their military, military, national security purposes.

military national security purposes. Period. Or you can't operate in China. It's not a capitalist country. That is the devil's bargain you have to make to run a company in China. So when this guy from TikTok, this President Chu gets on TikTok and says, oh, thank God for President Trump, because we're going to your First Amendment rights. This isn't about, as the Supreme Court said, it's not about the First Amendment rights of 170 million people or the Chinese government. It's about divestiture for national security purposes to not allow a foreign enemy to operate a communications platform that will allow it to vacuum up vast streams of data. So such a large swap that we don't even know about it. And they reminded Trump with a little bit of a pope to Trump, pages three and four of the opinion,

they said Donald Trump was the one in 2018 and then in 2020 who'd made the declaration by executive order that eventually made its way into an act of Congress for good reason. And they didn't even buy into the First Amendment argument that TikTok's lawyers were making, which was, this is all about First Amendment. They said, we don't even find it's about First Amendment.

Because if it was about First Amendment, they would have applied the highest level of judicial review, which is strict scrutiny, which is very difficult for any regulation or law to get over. Like they lowered it to intermediate scrutiny. Once they lowered the bar for evaluating the act, the law, it was going to fly through. And what they ended with is even when we asked point blank the

TikTok lawyer to basically tell us that we were wrong, give us the data and the facts from the record that we're wrong, that the Chinese government doesn't ultimately control TikTok and all of its data and algorithm. Go ahead. We're listening. He said, well, it's highly unlikely. It's not that they can get it from other places. It's highly unlikely.

And they said, yeah, we're not buying it. We're going to let Congress declare the probability of that happening, who are the better experts than you standing in front of us. Once he said that in oral argument a week ago, I knew this case was over. Because they could not assure, because it's not true, that the foreign adversary wasn't controlling this platform. Again, I'm not against content creation. I'm a content creator. I get it. You know, and if there's a way on Sunday, let me leave it on this. Everybody's like, it's going dark on Sunday. Not so sure about that. It has to be enforced by the executive branch.

And Biden has already said he's not doing it. He's not sending out cease and desists and hitting the app store with fines on Sunday night or Monday morning. He's leaving it wisely as a political hand grenade on the desk of Donald Trump and let it blow up in his face. You want to fix this?

You don't want to enforce the law? You want to try to argue that there's good faith negotiations going on when there isn't for the purchase and give them more time, then you look the American people in the eye and you tell them that and you use your scarce political capital so that we as fair thinking Americans

can see what he's doing, that he's currying favor with the Chinese enemy because he's got a buddy that's currying favor with the Chinese enemy, because he's got a buddy that's an investor that's part of his inner circle, because his son, Baron, told him, that's a good way to get elected, Pop. Go on TikTok and the podcasters and whatever else he said. And now he has a soft spot and he loves TikTok. Again, this is the theme throughout. This is the golden thread, right? Throughout this episode and almost every episode we're going to do going forward, if not in the past, the theme is Donald Trump does not care about you as an American, doesn't care

about your national security, doesn't care about your economic security. He's violated, already violated the oath of office and he hasn't even sworn in yet because all he cares about is what's good and right for the Trump incorporated Trump family at your expense. Period. And there's no other way to explain it. And Popak, look, if Donald Trump announces on Monday, I'm saving TikTok. I'm sure he'll get, you know, some good headlines by the corporate media that's rooting for him anyway, and sitting there on the dais with him. But I think more broadly, what you're talking about is you're now going to have to expend political capital to try to help China.

How is that going to go with your plans that you were going to be tough on China? You're now beholden to Xi Jinping. What happens now when you issue tariffs on China and then China wants to retaliate that they kind of control you now algorithmically about how to, you know, in terms of what they're going to, what they're going to push. And I just think again, having this article, having this episode go full circle and the articles that I'm writing about on Midas plus on what you're writing, what you're writing about and talking about Popak on your YouTube channel, the legal AF channel, what our hosts, it's like, okay, fool me once.

Shame on you. Fool me twice. As George W. Bush would say, you can't fool me twice. Okay. But it's shame on you fool me twice as George W. Bush would say, you can't fool me twice. Okay. But it's shame on me. There were, I think mistakes made, although we weren't around for Trump administration.

One, we were there towards the end of it during the campaign, which I think was successful. Um, you know, Biden won. Um, and the efforts to shed light on Trump's corruption, um, were, uh, when we first came about, were successful. But I think the issue was too much focused on the daily chaos and the craziness and a reaction to that every single day. And then everything, every day was just like, oh my God, he did this. Oh my God, he did like, I want to report on what happened, but I don't want to enable the day to day chaos.

That's why I haven't shown his clips, which I think, and a lot of other creators show his clips all the time. I don't know if that's hurting my views or not, or helping my views. I don't know. I don't care. I just think it's the right thing to do. It's the same reason why we're not covering the inauguration. We're not streaming the inauguration again I just think it's the right thing to do not to give him and the billionaires on stage a propaganda platform

Where they're going to spew lies? I'll talk about what he says afterwards in a way that I can fact-check it But I think we have to know the power of our platform and how to use it wisely And I think the wisest use of our platform is to always talk about, okay, you promised peace in Ukraine in 24 hours. You promised you were going to lower prices. You promised you were going to make housing more affordable.

You promised egg prices would go down. You made all of these promises and you're not keeping them and you're breaking them one by one. And so what are you doing? Oh, you're selling meme coins. Who does that benefit you? Oh, you're doing a deal with Saudi Arabia. Who does that benefit?

Oh, those are for your buildings. Oh, you're cutting this deal. Oh, who does that benefit? Oh, so it enables more American billionaires to do business with China when there was going to be restrictions on that, that Congress, Oh, got it. Who's that helping? Elon Musk with Tesla, you know, China is one of Tesla's biggest markets.

Got it. Oh, who has an office in the White House? Elon Musk. Got it. Understood. We just have to be aware, speak plainly to the people, repeat the messaging over and over and over and over again, so that it sets in and have you, the legal a-f-ers and the Midas Mighty, again, speak about these broken promises.

When he talks about Gulf of Mexico becoming Gulf of America, you talk about the Gulf of Lower Egg Prices, okay? When they talk about conquering this land or taking over that land, let's take it serious, but say, okay, cool, bro, but how is that going to help me afford to buy a home or pay my mortgage or get a better job or educate my kids or get better healthcare? What are you doing? So that's what we're going to focus on here.

PO-POK, the Legal AF YouTube channel, everybody make sure you subscribe to it. 410,000 subscribers, rocket ship. You're gonna need to check it out every single day. patreon.com slash legal AF where PO-POK drops his professorial knowledge. Some great stuff there as well. patreon.com slash legal AF and check out all of our pro-democracy sponsors as well, patreon.com slash legal AF and check out all of our pro democracy sponsors as well. Um, the discount codes are in the description. Pope. Bok, any final words that you want to bring to them?

Uh, my dis mighty and legal efforts. No, I've just, just don't be deflated about, uh, Monday. Um, it's the, it's here. Uh, we've been kind of dreading it, but I'm also strangely energized by, you know, we're one day closer on Monday to the end of the Trump administration. We got a lot of work to do and we can't do it alone, you know, rather than just be you and me going down at the pond and yelling at the ducks. You know, we helped form this channel, this Legal AF, for a reason, to be durable,

this channel, this Legal AF, for a reason, to be durable, to be diligent, to have searing commentary and analysis, to build a community for this purpose. This is the break glass emergency moment. And we have a lot of work to do as a network, as a channel, between now and to make Donald Trump, the lamest of lame duck presidents as quickly as possible, as terrible as every minute of a Trump administration will be. It's one term, not two. And we need to work hard from this end, and your and the audience's end, to box in Donald Trump, to make him pay for his lies, to make him pay in the courthouses, in the courtrooms, related to policies that are antithetical to our constitution, to our laws, and to our way of life, and do it on a regular basis. I know the attorneys general are ready. I know the public interest groups are ready. And I know we at Midas Touch and Legal AF are ready, and certainly our community,

three million, three and a half million strong is ready. And so I have this weird, strange energy that I just want to get past the Monday thing and get them in, let them start doing what they're going to start doing. They're on the clock. We're watching and head for the midterms where we're going to hopefully send them to a crushing defeat, as always happens when they overreach and if that wall street journal poll Numbers that I gave at the top of this podcast means anything He's going to overreach and he's going to piss off and create voter remorse among maga And we're going to be there to collect to collect up everybody

There you have it by the way on the inauguration, you know what we're doing popak we're streaming the dogs We're streaming the cats. We're going to do a we're going to play puppies and puppy ball. Okay. We're doing puppy inauguration here on our stream. We're going to see if we can get more views than some of the inauguration stream by just playing puppies on all day. So that that that we've been cooking, that, that, that, that,

we've been cooking it up and a puppy and a puppy and kitten inauguration. Got to make sure both cat and dog lovers get what they've been asking for. All right. And you can check it out. So during the inauguration, if you just want to turn it on, watch puppies and kittens run around and be cute, that's what we're going to do.

Anyway, hit subscribe here, help us get to four million subscribers. Thank you everybody and have a wonderful day. Shout out, Might as Mighty. Shout out, legal AFers.