Legal AF by MeidasTouch - LIVE: Popok GIVES URGENT Legal Update After FIRST WEEK

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Legal AF's Popok provides an urgent live briefing to our audience on late-breaking events and answers questions too! Tonight, Popok explains all of the new lawsuits and court orders and restraints arrayed against the Trump Administration including a new one today to stop him from freezing funding, and one coming about his attempts to retaliate against the DOJ; how the Jan6 Pardons have exploded in Trump's face with child pornographers and other criminals already back in jail after the pardon and one Jan6 defendant dead in a police confrontation; how the World is lining up to take on Trump and bully him; the knives are out for RFK Jr. lead by his cousin Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, and so much more. 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. Qualia: Head to https://qualialife.com/LEGALAF and use promo code: LEGALAF at checkout for 15% off your purchase! Miracle Made: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://TryMiracle.com/LEGALAF and use the code LEGALAF to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Graza: Go to https://graza.com and use code: LEGALAF to get 10% off your Graza Starter Kit and get to cookin' your next chef quality meal! 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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Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canada. This situation has changed very quickly. Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. Download the free CBC News app or visit cbcnews.ca. Welcome to PO-POC Live here on the Midas Touch Network. I'm Michael Popok, co-founder of Legal AF. And boy do we have a lot to talk about. This administration is only a week and two days old.

And what we're watching, I'm going to give you the patterns that I see and why they're playing into our hands to destroy them at the midterm elections and to undermine them every way that we can in courts around America. First, as we predicted, attorney generals or joint attorneys the midterm elections and to undermine them every way that we can in courts around America. First, as we predicted, attorney generals are joining together with public interest groups to file multiple lawsuits off of this week and last week. I was going to talk first about birthright citizenship and the executive order and how that's already been blocked by a senior federal judge in Seattle.

But as we were coming on the air, we have a DC federal judge who's blocked the attempt to use impoundment or a federal freeze on more than three trillion, that's with a T, trillion dollars worth of government funding that puts senior citizens, students, businesses, hospitals, and everybody else that relies on government funding and government grants, not just not profits, from cancer treatments and cancer trials to health care and meals for the underprivileged, all now frozen except a federal judge has said, not so fast, I want to see everybody in my courtroom on February 3rd. We'll talk more about the procedure, why it was entered, what it means, and that's not the only case that was filed. The one that's getting the headlines is the case in

which Judge Ali Khan in DC issued the temporary restraining order subject to a further hearing on February 3rd. But there's a whole nother trial filed by the usual suspects now of 18 attorney or a new lawsuit, 18 attorney generals who got together and filed in Rhode Island at the same time. That is a strategy and tactic I want to talk to you more about on this edition of PO-POK Live. We're seeing the same 18 attorney general, attorneys general come together, the ones from Washington, from California, from Oregon, from New York, all leading the charge

and filing multiple lawsuits in different jurisdictions. It seems confusing, but there's actually a strategy to this madness. And as a practicing trial lawyer, I'm going to tell you what that is and why it is working. Speaking of retaliation, Donald Trump, that's all he's been doing. He must want to spend the entirety of his administration tied up in the court system. Maybe he fell in love with the court system having been prosecuted so many times there because that is all is going to happen with his administration. Every one of these

executive orders, dozens and dozens that were filed or that were signed on the first day, most of which are unconstitutional or violate congressional law or the Administrative Procedures Act, which is how you even passed law. Let me just remind more Donald Trump than our audience, because I know our audience knows this, the executive branch does not legislate. They are not supposed to be creating law. They're not supposed to be creating law. They're not supposed to be impounding funds authorized by Congress. All the sun rises and sets when it comes to funding

and programs and law in Congress. Every little school child in short pants knows that. Donald Trump, of course, doesn't. And so all, most of his most egregious executive orders, and he's trying to govern by executive order violate one version of the Constitution the Administrative Procedures Act about how you pass laws and or directly congressional law and the separation of powers and that's what these public interest groups like the NAACP

ACLU New interest groups like democracy forward led by people like Norm Eisen. That's what they're doing, joining with 18 or more, 18 up to 20 attorneys general that are also filing this case, along with groups that are injured by these things, not-for-profits and small businesses and others. The Indonesian community in New Hampshire who sued in one of the cases for birthright citizenship. I want to talk a lot more about that. The retaliation has taken many forms and the retaliation is being televised. Everything from let's reduce Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs of Staff General who helped stop World War III with Donald Trump,

the threat that Pete Hegseth, who just barely by the skin of his ass became the head of the Pentagon, by one vote, that being JD Vance's, they're now threatening Mark Milley with not only taking away his security clearance, taking away his security detail, but demoting him by one star, you know, under an investigation, a trumped up investigation, as to whether he undermined the chain of command. Everybody wondered why Mike Pompeo, who was the Secretary of State in the first term, why he was left out in the return to power by Donald Trump. Now we know why. Because Donald Trump believes that Pompeo was disloyal for siding with Mark Milley to stop World War III, and so they've gone after Mike Pompeo was disloyal for siding with Mark Milley to stop World War III, and so they've gone after Mike Pompeo as well to take away his security clearance

and take away his security detail. Anthony Fauci, the same thing. And then in the same breath, under the same rubric of retaliation and trying to hollow out our civil servants and the way that we operate as a government. I mean, the top of the cabinet positions get all the oxygen, get all the attention, the Pete Hegsets and the Tulsi Gabberts and who's the head of the Department of Justice and who's the acting this or that. But you know who does the living and breathing and dying and policymaking, and it touches everybody lives, the civil servant, the career bureaucrat or the career member

of those different cabinets who are just been there for 10, 15, and 20 years and have all the expertise. Well, Donald Trump doesn't, he hates them. You know who really hates them? Because Donald Trump's just a puppet. Donald Trump is just a puppet of Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation. When you hear about freezing of funds and impoundment,

where did that come from? Not Donald Trump's brain, came from the fevered imagination of Russell Vaught. Russell Vaught is the self-proclaimed father of Project 2025. He is now going to be, not today, because he didn't get confirmed yet, but he will be the head,

the chairman of the Office of Management and Budget. That's the nation's checkbook on the executive side. That's where the freeze came from. Russ Vought is the president here, not Donald Trump. We're gonna talk more about Russ Vought. In addition, Donald Trump is busy wasting taxpayer dollars. I thought the reason people voted for him is because he was going to save money, save three trillion dollars. Is that how he is that how he was going to save three trillion dollars? The three trillion that that Elon Musk kept talking about? Since Elon Musk has been shrunk down in size to being the webmaster of America trying to decide which websites violate which of Donald Trump's policies. That's all he's doing these days. So is that the three trillion? The three trillion that's now frozen or now unfrozen by Judge Ali Khan? We'll get to the bottom of that. And then attorneys general are not the only ones out there that protect democracy. Inspectors general do that too. Those are the people that are supposed to be independent that had investigative units within each department

and cabinet level position in a government, state or federal. And they're supposed to look for corruption. They're supposed to do audits. They're supposed to find out if there's rogue employees or rogue policies and report on it. Well, we had an attempted midnight massacre, but that was done inappropriately and wrongly

because Congress and the Republicans in Congress like Chuck Grassley, they are the ones that led the march to pass a law in 2020 to stop Inspectors General from being fired by presidents without giving not only 30-day notice or 60 days notice to Congress, but also that they put in writing the individual particularized reason for each individual inspector general being fired effectively for cause. What is the cause? Donald Trump didn't do any of that because as you can see all he's operating under is he's going to ask for forgiveness instead of permission, not even forgiveness. He's just going to do it and make us chase him through the courts. We're prepared, right? The defenders of democracy, the audience here, Midas Touch, Legal AF,

the attorneys that we support that moved so quickly at high velocity to move into courts to obtain those injunctions, not only because they had to, because you got to move quickly for injunctions, because you're arguing you have irreparable harm, meaning things have to happen now to stop the harm. If you don't move quickly, you've undercut your argument that you're being irreparably harmed. That's why they move so fast, but they also move so fast because they've been ready for Donald Trump. They've had Project 2025, the 500 pages. That's the playbook. ACLU, for instance, the American Civil Liberties Union, shout out to them, go on their website, has been doing white papers and policy

papers since before the election about how to defeat Project 2025 if Donald Trump ever came in. And they're ready now. That's why we're seeing what we're seeing. And then finally, he's wasting our money because not only are there going to be lawsuits that we're seeing what we're seeing. And then finally, he's wasting our money because not only are there gonna be lawsuits that we're paying for indirectly through taxpayer dollars to defend his crazy approach, but we also have, he's now, he wants to give seven months of severance to federal employees to try to downsize.

Again, there is civil servant protection mechanisms in the court, in place through Congress. We have the Merit Service Board. You can't just fire members of the Department of Justice who prosecuted you because you don't like them, people that have spent their 20, 30, 40 years of career in government working for all presidents. You can't just get rid of them with a letter that says,

we don't think you can implement the president's agenda because you were once his prosecutor. With a blanket letter, a boilerplate letter, the Merit Services Board requires more than that. So we're going to end up paying hundreds of millions of dollars to these people for their retaliatory firings as Donald Trump is waving around a seven-month exit package on our dime for people who don't want to be in the government with him, which is effectively most of those people. This is again out of the fevered mind not of Donald Trump, not of the inner circle that you've seen of Russell Vaught of Project 2025.

He talked years ago about trying to downsize the government through a president having unitary power and impounding funds and freezing the federal budget, freezing aid to foreign countries to downsize by forcing civil servants out whether it's lawful or not. You know, not only did he fire Department of Justice people, he then in order to get others to quit,

he's transferred them to things he knows they're not gonna wanna stick around for. It's like the Siberia of the Department of Justice. Like why don't you, the person who was the counterintelligence Department of Justice expert that worked against me at Mar-a-Lago, you're now going to work against sanctuary cities, those democratic cities that are refusing to cooperate with the federal government and their attempt to

suck up immigrants and undocumented from the streets and workplaces. Go work there, knowing that they're going to quit. This is what Donald Trump's lasting legacy will be unless we defeat it in the courts. Let's talk about the pardons tonight. We got 1,600 pardons. What could go wrong when 20 minutes through the pardon process, Donald Trump threw up his hands and said,

F it, give them all a pardon. I am not making that up. That is from inside reporting. That was his process. You won't be able to write a book about it. You won't be able to write a book about it. You won't be able to see a movie about it because it literally was him going, okay, give them all a pardon.

How's that worked out? Well, it turns out a number of them have either been subsequently indicted for child pornography or were at the time and are serving time now. So he pardoned child pornographers, that's one. He pardoned a guy, I thought the big story was gonna be a week ago, that he pardoned a guy that immediately got rearrested

for a felony gun charge. I was like, oh, that's, wow, that's amazing. And you know, all that. No, we already have one of the Jan Sixers is already dead because he decided, I assume, based on implicit approval by his cult leader Donald Trump to act out and resist arrest again during a routine traffic stop in Indianapolis and was shot and killed because he had a gun on the front seat.

That's what happened to Matthew Hackett, right? So how is this whole thing really working out for Donald Trump? We need to hold him, more importantly, I keep saying MAGA, but I really want to go back to the Republican Party. The Republican Party, which has been completely co-opted by MAGA, is responsible for what the things we talk about on this show. And you need to hold them responsible and run the bastards out and chase the bastards out at the election. You guys do it in the ways that we've talked about on the show.

Get involved with your communities. Get involved with your school boards. Get involved with your election offices. Run for office. Work on fundraising. I don't mean your own money. Go collect other people's money, work for the parties, you know, the Democratic Party.

That's one way on the way to voter registration and voting in at the midterms. We'll do our part energizing these communities, supporting the attorneys general, supporting the public interest groups, supporting and bringing them on to our shows, the attorneys general and the others, and shining a light on it. We'll do that. We're in constant dialogue here on the Midas Touch Network and Legal AF with these groups and to support them. And this is the way that you can support them as well. And then I want to talk about China. I want to talk about AI, artificial intelligence. I want to talk about the financial markets and crypto,

all tanking because of missteps by Donald Trump. Missteps, I will posit, are the result of Donald Trump being so ethically and financially conflicted because of his own business investments and dealings, how he wants to make money now and in the future, the people that have put money in his pocket and have tried to buy the president successfully through the campaign, big oil, big crypto, big tech, all of that big AI, all buying Donald Trump, literally, investing in his companies, doing business with him,

trying to influence policy. So we have a warped policy maker in Donald Trump, creating warped policies that are not for the American people. And it really looks like a five-year-old trying to run a world economy. He's made so many mistakes, starting with the tariff wars, you know, starting with banking on old school AI,

artificial intelligence methods, while China was busy three days later, announcing a cheaper, faster, better artificial intelligence. One commentator called it the Sputnik moment, where China in one day won the space race when it comes to artificial intelligence. As a major troll against America and Donald Trump, who have been trying to take down TikTok

and Donald Trump's announcement about Stargate, this $500 billion supposed investment to create data centers and artificial intelligence and chips to beat China. China's already beaten us apparently. And the markets shed over 3 trillion. So talk about 3 trillion must be the topic tonight. Must be the theme. They shed almost $3 trillion in financial markets in three days because of what China has just done. Donald Trump continuing to make decisions not based on what's right for the world economy or the American economy,

but what's right for Donald Trump's economy. I want to talk about that. Donald Trump has a knack for doing something. I will give him that. He has a knack for uniting the world. He has united the world against Donald Trump and America. There's no other way to explain it. Whether you look at Putin trolling us and that backfiring, China doing the same thing,

you've got Colombia, Mexico, and Canada, which used to be our allies, by the way, firing back. And all that's done is chase these groups either together in order to have economic muscle and have to avoid working with the United States when we need them the most as a place for our goods and our services for instance and inviting in the Chinese to invest in these countries in order to get a foothold for instance in the Americas. I'm going to talk about that. And lastly, RFK Jr. just got lambasted by Ambassador Caroline Kennedy. Yes, JFK's daughter, former ambassador to

Australia. She has said that, and listen to these words, RFK Jr., her cousin, who she's known since he was in short pants, and so is she, is a predator. A predator within his own family and a predator of other parents and children when it comes to his asinine vaccination, anti-vaccination policies. That's a lot. We're only 17 minutes in to Pope Huck Live and I'm already fired up. So let's, let's, let me take a swig of water. Live and I'm already fired up. So let's let's let me take a swig of water Thank you now it's time to do a little plug thank you salty

legal af the YouTube channel Most of my audience here on popak live over the last 11 or 12 episodes and we got an amazing audience We're averaging about 500,000 people. We're averaging about 18, 20,000 per night watching us. I'm doing it live as everybody knows. I'm in Miami. For those that are wondering what kind of room I'm in, I'm doing a, listen to this, I'm doing a Legal AF Live, live, tomorrow at the National Trial Lawyers Conference or Convention in Miami. And one of my first guests, and you guys are going to see it, because I'm going to, of

course we're going to drop it on the Midas Touch Network and on LegalA. After YouTube channel is Omaroso. Omaroso, Omarosa who just wrote a book called Unhinged an insider's account of the Trump White House. There it is. She's my first guest tomorrow. We'll be bringing it back here on Midas Touch Network but that's why you see me sort of on the road here. Legal AF, the YouTube channel, we're up to about 430,000 in just a couple of days over four months. That is a testament to our audience, the loyalty of our audience, and the voracious appetite of our audience for the law and politics analysis that we're doing over on Legal AF. Now is the time to help us grow that pro-democracy channel and hit that blue subscribe button. It's not ego. Trust me, it's algorithm. The more you watch, the more you

subscribe, the more you're telling the YouTube world that you want that content and you need that content, and then I'm going to help provide it as the chief curator over there. I've got an amazing group of contributors if you don't already know about the channel. Besides myself, I've got Dina Dahl, I've got Shan Wu, former prosecutor and attorney general, general counsel for the attorney general. I've got court accountability action and now, kind of an exciting plug, I just did a Zoom call last night with about 10 new potential contributors coming out of the pro-democracy world, some of which I can't even talk about them yet, you'll be really thrilled, I think,

and onboarding them over the course of February on to Legal AF. So when I get back from the first round of sponsors, and thank you to the pro-democracy sponsors here on the Midas Touch Network and Legal AF, without which, frankly, we could not do our job, then our audience would be without us and vice versa, we'd be without you. So we really appreciate, they know what our message is, they know what our point of view is and our audiences

and they're here for it. And if we test out these products, we like these products, if you can afford it, and I'm not trying to make you spend money, we don't get a commission on whatever you buy, but if you can afford it, and I'm not trying to make you spend money, we don't get a commission on whatever you buy, but if you can afford it, it's something you find interesting, we liked it, and so that's why we're talking about them on this particular show. When I get back, I'm gonna pick up with all the topics, answer your questions as well, which if you want to ask me questions, you go into my blue sky at MSPOPOC, it's there up on the screen, and

into my blue sky at MS Pope pockets there up on the screen. And you can ask me a question, I kind of look at them and then scan it and then I get ready to answer them as we're sitting here. So let's do our first break for our pro democracy sponsors. Physio chiropractic and massage therapy are all great resources for when you need them. But going to these appointments every few months does not give me the ultimate results I'm looking for when it comes to my well-being. It's taking daily, even hourly, opportunities to move my body that

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Thank you for being here. We got about 10,000 with us today. Let's dive into the attorney generals and the public interest groups joining together. This is going to be the firewall that we've talked about that we need at this critical time. I think we should take some solace in the fact that how rapidly with such velocity that these groups bound together, filed their lawsuits, got their injunctions in things that matter about Donald Trump's executive orders. There's others to come, but let's start with birthright

citizenship. 22 attorney generals and two cities, along with the ACLU and the NAACP and other public interest groups, made three separate filings to attack the birthright citizenship memo in which, I know that's shorthand, so let me give you a little bit of a longer version of what I mean by that. 14th Amendment, section three declares, if you're born on US soil, you are a US citizen, unless you're subject to the territorial jurisdiction of another nation.

That's always been interpreted to mean that you are a child of a foreign diplomat. The ambassador to France is stationed in New York and as a baby, they're French, they're not US. And that's the way that's always been interpreted since an 1898 case of the United States Supreme Court and the way the 14th Amendment has always been interpreted. I know people are saying, yes, Popak,

but the Supreme Court can change the interpretation. I mean, Alina Jaba said something like that today, like, well, the law is what the lawyers and the judges say it is and the Constitution. I get that, Alina. However, when we rely on a 124-year principle coming off the 14th Amendment passed after our Reconstruction period and the Civil War, you know, that's a super, super precedent that shouldn't be disturbed, especially by executive order. So Donald Trump had his federal government is taking the position that any, if you show up and you ask for any of

the aid that's still available, or any kind of government service or any kind of privilege of the government of being a United States citizen, it's to be denied to a child whose mother is undocumented or here on temporary visa status unless their father's naturalized or an American citizen. That's not how the Constitution works and you can't change that by executive order and there's only two ways to do it. You get an amendment to the Constitution. Let me get this, kind of get these numbers straight because I get asked this a lot, so I want to cover it right here. In order to amend the Constitution, there's only one major way to do it without a Constitutional Convention. Two-thirds of the states and two-thirds of the House and the Senate have to approve the amendment to the Constitution. I think everybody can do the math and realize we're

not getting two-thirds of anything done in this country especially especially in its present state with the present occupant of the of the White House. So put that aside. That's not happening. And the same thing to call a constitutional convention. And then the result thing, whatever comes out of the constitutional convention, still has to be passed two-thirds, two-thirds, two-thirds. Then you have a interpretation of an existing language. It's the other way to sort of change the meaning of things. Now we did see that with the 14th Amendment

and this particular Supreme Court makeup, right? We had the Colorado insurrection interpretation. We know how to read the 14th Amendment, section one, sorry, section three. And I might've got my numbers confused. Let me start over again. 14th Amendment Section 1 is birthright citizenship. 14th Amendment Section 3

is the insurrectionist disqualification provision. In 14.3, we saw the United States Supreme Court tell us that that provision doesn't say what our eyes told us it said and reinterpreted it, right? And interpreted language out of existence about Donald Trump being an insurrectionist and states be able to bar him from the ballot and or from office. Okay, so we know that they're not shy, this Supreme Court and the MAGA right, to touch the 14th Amendment and change it through through fits of alchemy and to fit their liking. I just

don't see them doing it in a birthright citizenship. So these three cases got filed, one by public interest groups and the attorneys general in Washington and California in Seattle, Oregon on purpose, not by accident. Everything I'm telling you now is a tactical strategy or tactics of the filing on purpose. They filed in Seattle. Seattle is also the place in the first Trump administration where they blocked the Muslim ban. So they knew they

had a friend in that courthouse. Maybe not Judge Kofenor, but they knew they had a friend there. Okay, so they filed there. Two other cases get filed by other related groups in New Hampshire and in Massachusetts. What's the common denominator? Moderate to liberal courthouses reporting up to moderate to liberal leaning appellate courts on the way to the Supreme Court. Ninth Circuit on the West Coast, First Circuit on the Upper East Coast, New England area, and those would then go to the United States Supreme Court.

Now, as of now, some people have asked me in the chat or in the comments, can't Donald Trump and the MAGA file something in the Fifth Circuit and in Texas and get a favorable ruling? But they have to show they've been injured in some way, and the problem is they're not injured by Donald Trump's executive orders. They're benefited, so they don't have the Donald Trump's executive orders. They're benefited. So they don't have the injury that's necessary to bring such a case. So I don't see that happening. It's going to be left to the Democrats and progressives, fair-minded people, to bring these kind of lawsuits.

And then a fast track over to the United States Supreme Court. We have one ruling of birthright citizenship against Donald Trump and a 14-day, I think there's about nine days left, a 14-day block, we call it a temporary restraining order, on the way to a full hearing on preliminary injunction off of full briefing. The loser of that, and at the rate that case went, it's going to be the Trump administration. When you had Judge Koffner stop the Department of Justice lawyer for Donald Trump in his tracks after about, oh, a good 30 seconds, seconds and say let me just ask you one question. Do you believe the executive order is constitutional? And of course he's there

as the shill and the puppet for Donald Trump. He said absolutely constitutional your honor. He said alright stop. Okay it's the most unconstitutional, blatantly unconstitutional thing I've ever seen in my 40 years in my career as a senior judge. And it went downhill from there for the Trump lawyer. And I've been on the other side of that. And I've been on the side where the judge has done things in my favor. And then you just sit down. You're winning. You don't try to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Your best argument is no argument. You sit down.

That's what the attorney attorneys general did in the courtroom and the judge issued the temporary restraining order. Subject to 14 days, full briefing and another ruling on preliminary injunction. And if that goes against Donald Trump, that goes up to the ninth. In the meantime, filings in the other two states, and some people might be asking,

if these are nationwide blocks, nationwide injunctions, why do you need to file on multiple courts? Because you don't know what the results gonna be. So it's almost a portfolio method. You file in multiple courts hoping you'll get at least one in your favor. If you get one in your favor and one against you, at least you have a split, a split decision and that can get you to the Supreme Court as well. I think frankly they're gonna get 3-0 in favor of democracy and against this birthright citizenship executive order. I think it's gonna go cherry cherry cherry jackpot, okay? And then that'll all go up to the United States Supreme Court on an

emergency appeal through Supreme Court justices we can trust like Katanji Brown Jackson and Sotomayor and Kagan and the rest and then the full Supreme Court. I think it's going to get to the Supreme Court on birthright citizenship in the next 60 days, and we'll come back and talk about it here on PO-POK Live. That blueprint got repeated, even involving some of the same groups and the same attorneys general in this new federal freeze funding thing. What's that all about? Okay. A cardinal tenant of the MAGA and of the Project 2025 and of the Heritage Foundation is that the president has unitary powers. All power in the executive branch relies with the president, not with any of his cabinet

positions, including the Department of Justice or the FBI, they all report to him, no independence. And that occupant of that has an ability to counterbalance Congress, who is in charge of taxing and spending and funding, by impounding money already allocated by Congress and stopping that money from flowing to the various programs

and federal programs. We're talking about a $3 trillion federal set of programs where people rely on this money in order to operate their organizations for healthcare, for medical treatment, in Meals on Wheels, on the performing arts, you name it. These organizations rely on these grants and rely on this funding. This was so bad that the Medicare portal crashed for Donald Trump.

That is an abomination for elderly and other people in America that rely on Medicare and Medicaid and the disabled. It literally crashed because people thought he was cutting off in those levels of entitlement, although buried in his executive order, he said, well, I'm not touching those entitlements that go to individuals, only the ones that go to the organizations that help the individuals. Did that make any sense? And then Carolyn LeVette, who I don't know what North Korean catalog they got her out

of to be the press secretary. I know she's super young, so I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, but she is way over her skis. This looks like propaganda that North Korea and that lady that wears the pink kimono that she would relish. I mean, just crazy stuff that she's saying out loud. Like, well well the only confusion Knowing that the Medicare and Medicaid portal crashed

She looked the press in the eye and said the only ones that to confuse in this room with the media I mean, I want to be like fourth grade seriously, that's the best you got as average Americans suffer because Donald Trump wants to Reshape the government overnight in his image and the economy and foreign policy all at the same time. I mean you see how how poorly this is going? So the same group, 18 states filed in Rhode Island at the same time that a large public interest group led by democracy forward and I think Norm

Eisen filed in the District of Columbia and got a block of this of this attempt by Donald Trump, illegal attempt in violation of congressional law and the Administrative Procedures Act to block funding that had already been allocated by Congress. The president can't do that. That's not a check and balance. That's a violation of separation of powers. That's a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. And they're also arguing a violation of the First Amendment because money can be speech and denying these organizations that you don't like, like, you know, national public radio or DEI or, you know, entities or ones that are in favor of green economy. That's speech that's been

Tampered with by money being cut off to them by donald trump. So an interesting first amendment argument also coming out of there again multiple double barreled filings at the same time dc and roteisland why Rhode island to the first circuit court of appeals liberal dc to the first circuit court of appeals, liberal. DC to the DC court of appeals, liberal. And you split the load so that if you get a bad decision, it balances out you know by having multiple cases being filed and multiple judges looking at these things. And then you then you lean into the judge that does the best for you. Let's be frank, it's a little bit of forum shopping. It's a a little bit of forum shopping. It's a lot of bit of forum shopping.

I think right now all the groups that filed simultaneously love Judge Kofenor in the birthright citizenship case in Seattle, and they'll just sort of lean into him and don't wanna like muck it up by having another judge and they're gonna slow down the other two cases because they got the band they wanted with that one filing. And they're all working together. So it's not like, oh, I wanted my case to make it. I wanted cases because they got the ban they wanted with that one filing. And they're all working together.

So it's not like, oh, I wanted my case to make it. I wanted my case to be the case. Nobody cares about that. All pro-democracy entities and organizations are sort of working together and rowing together to preserve democracy and to be a firewall. So that's how that works. So I wanted to take the plane up 5,000 feet and have you look down at it with me as a 35-year trial lawyer in federal courts

like the one I'm talking about, about why you do these things, how these groups have joined together. And this is only eight business days or eight days into the administration. We are going to see the same group, different configurations, but the same group of attorneys general and public interest groups weekly. Weekly.

The Trump administration is going to be in court weekly, daily, just as we predicted. I mean, I think I did a hot take, oh, god, right after the election. I said, here's the good news. Here's the silver lining. There are 18 states that have the blue trifecta where both chambers of their legislation, the governor and therefore and the Attorney General are all blue. That's 18. There's another

four where the Attorney Generals are or they're at least it's mainly in the control of Democrats and that's that magic 22. You're going to see a lot of Letitia James, the New York Attorney General. She's a living nightmare for Donald Trump. She's the one that got the $458 million civil fraud case off of him. You're going to see her over and over again. And I'll just leave you with this stat on this section. Donald Trump got sued in the first administration over 400 times by the ACLU alone with an 80% success rate. That's a hall of fame number, son, as they say. You can go back 800, you're doing great. And the attorneys general, the same thing. That was the first go around.

Now you can just triple those numbers. It's going to be, if it was a thousand lawsuits before against Donald Trump's administration, it's going to be four thousand. And I think they're going to stay at the same success rate because Donald Trump has to govern by executive order. So that means he's always coloring outside the lines and he's always violating and lurching from one constitutional crisis or one separation of power problem or abuse of power problem after another. That is a gift to this audience and to our democracy that Donald Trump is trying to operate through executive order because that is the easiest thing for us to defeat in the courts. So the Supreme Court, even this MAGA right-wing Supreme

Court hates executive orders, really does, and fly-specs them to within an inch of their life about whether they comply with an act of Congress or not. And the bigger the item, the bigger the issue, the less likely the Supreme Court is going to find that executive order is valid, because they have their own internal doctrine, the major issues doctrine, which says that if it's so big of an issue it's something Congress should have done not you by executive order as the president with a stroke of a pen and so that they run afoul of the major the major issues doctrine as well

so that's the that is the Attorney General's in the big picture I wanted you to be aware of because we're gonna be talking about this a Midas touch and a legal AF every day, sometimes every hour with these lawsuits. And I don't want you to get mentally fatigued or exhausted by them, because these are important to pin down Donald Trump and pin down Project 2025 and expose it for what it is,

and then use it to run the bastards out on a rail come the election. Let me talk about retaliations that are going on by the Trump administration and how that's going to end up in the court system before we take our next break. You've got the petty ones that also have real-world implications. When you pull somebody's security detail, you're putting them at risk. Mark Milley, who basically put his hand between Donald Trump and the nuclear button, called his counterpart in China, apparently, and told him, don't worry,

I won't let Donald Trump start World War III. So incensed Donald Trump, that Donald Trump, we know from the Mar-a-Lago investigation, Donald Trump started showing national war plans, Iranian war plans that they were planning to do to say, see I wasn't the one who was going to attack Iran, it was it was Mark Milley because Mark Milley came out against them in a New Yorker magazine interview and that was part of the Mar-a-Lago problem because he was showing top-secret stuff to people

that didn't have top-secret classified clearance, well now he's decided to repeat Hegseth, his lackey, to go after Mark Milley, whose body of work and valor is unassailable, except by Donald Trump. They're going to knock him down a peg and take off one of his clusters, one of his stars. They're going to impact his pension and take away his national security clearance and his security detail.

I mean, this is not, for those that are just joining America, wait, this is not supposed to be America and how it operates. You don't take Department of Justice lifelong prosecutors and staff because you're pissed that they did their job and investigated you and you eventually got off. You don't pay them back and show them the door and fire them and say, well, you could always appeal got off you don't pay them back and show them the door and Fire them and say well you could you could always appeal me if you don't like my decision No other president has ever purged the Department of Justice the way Donald Trump is doing it You know and for those that are wondering well, why didn't they leave when Jack Smith left?

Was I got asked that question? Jack Smith was a special counsel. He came out of something else. Some of them come from private practice. He came as a war. He was in Kosovo doing a war criminal, the war crime trials and was a prosecutor there and came back in a temporary basis as a special counsel, not as an actual main justice career line prosecutor. And so he quit. He was like, I'm done. I've turned in my report the first week in January. I don't want to be around for the firing. He released all of his other special counsels and other people he brought in for this particular purpose to go back to private

practice or whatever they were doing and good night, but the career Prosecutor is somebody who's been there through thick and through thin through administration after administration This is their career like my career was to be in private practice My career was to be not in the government was to represent people's interests to seek justice for them in our courts of law That's my career and it would be like telling me now at my age, which I'll remain nameless, telling me now at my age that your career is over. You're done.

Hang up your spurs. I know you've worked since law school, since clerkships to do this. You've reached the pinnacle of your career, but now you can go work somewhere else. And it's not that easy. The top creme de la creme of the bureau chiefs and the people that ran certain divisions within the

Department of Justice, they'll get plum jobs in top law firms, but these others, they don't want to go into private practice. They want to be prosecutors. And so this has dashed their dreams and their hopes and shown them the door without compensation. This group's not even being offered compensation. So when they sue successfully under the Merit Service Board and civil service rules, where do you think that money's coming out of?

You and me. Not Donald Trump. He doesn't pay taxes. But you and me. When he tries to get rid of civil servants by transferring them to jobs that he knows they don't want to do or forcing them to come back back from furlough at lower pay or this or that and knowing that they're gonna quit and offering them dangling them seven months of of of severance if they don't want to work for him which none of them do where's that thought where are those dollars coming from I thought people voted for him to save money that he was gonna write the economy That he was gonna fix, you know

Egg prices and gas prices and rent prices and things that matter to everyday pocketbooks I thought that was the reason he got elected Who voted for any of the things that I've been talking about for 46 minutes on Pope Pac Life who? Buyer remorse? How about voter remorse? If we ran, here's the thought experiment, here's a tabletop thought experiment for our crowd. Put it in comments. If we ran this election again, would Donald Trump pull the numbers that he pulled in the last election by running on a phony populist message and then surrounding himself

and being completely corrupted and co-opted by billionaires and trillionaires who invested in him. Would he win again? I'd like to know the answer to that. Put that down in the chat. So what do we do about this? Well, the inspector's generals who were fired in violation of law are going to bring a lawsuit against the Trump administration that you and I and our taxpayer dollars are going to have to pay for. Same thing with the Department of Justice. These other people,

if it violates the code of related to military, the military code of justice or military codes related to how you, you can't just demote a person and go, yeah, I don't like the way you look. I don't like what you did to me. You're losing a star. There has to be a process, a due process. We require that in the law. You can't just fire a civil servant, a Department of Justice prosecutor. You have to, what's the cause? You have to give progressive discipline like a warning, training, a note in the file, you know that kind of stuff You can't just show up one day. I'm not you're out

But Donald Trump thinks you can until we stop him at the in the court system when I come back I'm gonna change gears a bit. I want to talk about financial markets I'm doing a new thing on Monday mornings on legal AF catch it there financial financial markets Monday. I'm gonna talk about how Donald Trump's policies are roiling the world markets and backfiring on him and on America and why. And I used my Wall Street background on that.

I was a Wall Street executive for a time when I was the deputy general counsel of a large Wall Street firm. So I gotta give you my sort of more insider analysis of what is really going on with the markets. I'll do that, a version of that, when we come back from our next break. Then, relatedly, this power of Donald Trump, this unique superpower that he has, to unify the entire world against America, and why that matters.

And how the leaders now, world against America and why that matters. And how the leaders now against America are people, and talk about profiles and courage, like Claudia Scheinbaum of Mexico, like Gabriel Preto of Colombia, like the outgoing Justin Trudeau and people to replace him in Canada, the people in Denmark and the rest, and why that's important, and what it means for them joining forces economically and otherwise together, and how it's providing an opening for China to curry favor there and to get a sphere of influence there

as Donald Trump continues his alienation tour, whether he's doing it directly or through Elon Musk, and then I'll end it all with the RFK Jr. versus Caroline Kennedy or the rest as he moves into his confirmation process to be the head health official in America. But we got another great group of sponsors here on PO-POK Live. Let me just tell you straight out, I really appreciate this. We did this as a flyer coming off of the election. I said to the team at Midas Touch, I like to take a shot at my own 45 minute to an hour block

talking about things. I don't pull punches. I answer questions. I don't take prisoners. And I want to try that style here and see if that works. And we're going to turn this into a full-blown full-fledged podcast. It's right now it's sort of an elongated hot take as we call them but it's going to be in the near future probably around March you're gonna be able to pick up

this on an audio feed, Popak Live, so that's a little teaser I'm gonna do about that and then we got the Legal AF YouTube channel. Really important. When we on Midas Touch and Legal AF decided to put our head in collaboration with... There we go. It was an ad running there. So, Lab TV, folks. And when we decided to put it together, it was for... It's alright. Salty, my producer, said, sorry. It's okay. We put it together for a reason. We wanted something to be resilient and searing in its analysis. And they are focused at the intersection of law and politics in a way that just having hot takes

and even Legal AF the podcast wasn't gonna do it. We thought we needed more. And so we did it about two months before the election. And now, you know, on the other side, three months on the other side of the election, we've now built, we're moving quickly to our 500,000 number of subscribers. You'll help

us. Take a moment during the ad breaks or otherwise whatever you want to do it. Go over to LegalAF, the YouTube channel. It's LegalAF MTN from Midas Touch Network. And hit that subscribe button and that will record. I'm telling you we're growing at about 50,000 subscribers a month. We're humbled by it. I'm humbled by it and it makes me get up every morning when I'm brushing my teeth thinking about what can I do better for you on Legal AF. And so now let's go to our pro-democracy sponsors and we'll come back and do those other topics.

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effectively, as far as I can see. Hakeem Jeffries of the Democrats is the co-speaker of the House that Donald Trump is just going to avoid them all. He's just going to avoid it through these executive orders and that's where the gift comes in because every executive order ends up being, that matters, that's material, ends up being a lawsuit where we can get a federal judge of our choice to turn the tide, some of which will end up at the Supreme Court, yes, but most, let me just lay this out here for those that are, that lose sleep at night the way I do sometimes about the Supreme Court. Not every case ends up at the Supreme Court. They only

took 60 cases on average over the last five years. When I left law school, some amount of time ago, they were taking about 100 to 115 cases a year. They take 60 now. That's all. It seems like a lot more because it only takes one to kind of blow your entire view of America, but they only take 60. And my point is there are tens of thousands of lawsuits

that are filed. We're talking about, what was the number I gave you a little bit earlier? I said 1,000 lawsuits have been filed. We're talking about, what was the number I gave you a little bit earlier? I said a thousand lawsuits have been filed by the attorneys general and the public interest groups in the first term, and we're expecting 4,000 this term. So do the math. 4,000 to 60, that means most of those cases are going to the ruling of the trial judge or the appellate court right above them is going to be the law of the land and will not be disturbed by the United States Supreme Court. So I want people to keep that in their mind. Let me switch gears and go to finance, financial

markets. It's important. Donald Trump ran on a platform and I'm a businessman. I know what I'm doing. Follow me. Here we go. Okay. How you doing so far? Not great First he banked with much fanfare on this 500 billion dollars Stargate I don't know people saw I don't think we have the time to put up the clip I don't know people saw the clip of him announcing this he looked so bored and so gassed After like the third day in office. I'm like pace, man. You got another four years minus three days left. How are you gonna make it? I mean, he was announcing a $500 billion investment. I thought he was announcing bingo numbers,

you know, and a bingo card at some, you know, assisted living facility. I mean, you know, that's what it looked like. And so what was the purpose of it? Oh, that open AI, you know, the chatbot people, chat GBT people, and Microsoft and Oracle and all these other groups are getting together and SoftBank and they're gonna open up these huge data centers that need all this electrical power with all this chip development because AI is gonna cure cancer. It was sort of like that. They actually said that at one

point. I'm like, well, that's interesting. Of course, they didn't invite Elon Musk to the dance. I thought he was Mr. Technology. Not only did they not invite him, he then trolled Stargate about a day later and cut the legs out from under and said, I've seen the balance sheets for some of these people like OpenAI and Sam Altman. They don't have that money.

I was like, maybe somebody should have sent the chief tech guy, the tech, you know, the head of the technology and the website department for the for Donald Trump a memo to have him invited and maybe he should have stood there at the podium instead of pissing all over it the next day. But forget all of that and forget TikTok. I know everyone's like, oh, TikTok, forget it. Think deep, seek. That's what you should keep you up at night. Three days after Donald Trump announced Stargate, China effectively announced that there was a startup in China led by, of course, people supported by the Chinese government, who had invented a type of artificial intelligence that was better than what OpenAI is doing and what these other

groups, JNO, the ones related to meta and whatever, better, faster, and super cheap, like super, super cheap. They did on $6 million of an investment and a year of programming using old chips, old computer chips, because we had barred China from getting new chips, the bigger, faster ones, so they used the slower, dumber ones, but they figured out a way to program around it. And so they used this, they linked together the slow, dumb ones, this is my terminology,

and they programmed around it with really sophisticated, bespoke software, and the result was a super cheap, do-it-yourself chatbot and AI at like one one hundredth of the cost of what America is investing in. And the financial markets woke up and then tanked the Trump economy, meaning our economy, the world economy, and shed three trillion dollars worth of market value in one day because they freaked out that China was going to eat the United States' lunch as the AI capital of the world and do it really cheap with really cheap and dumb parts. That's a problem. The reason is Donald Trump is not focused on making the right decisions about our economy

because he's so, he's the most financially and ethically conflicted and corrupt president we've ever had occupy that office. There's no other way to put it. We never had a president enter office with like a thousand limited liability companies in 12 different sectors of business, all from cryptocurrency to memes to hotels to golf courses, to Bibles, to sneakers, to non-fungible tokens. Some people are in my audience are like, what are we even talking about right now?

Right, that's the point. They're all opportunities for foreign powers to buy a president and avoid the law that says you can't invest in a campaign. You don't have to invest in a campaign with Donald Trump. You just buy his fill in the blank. You stay in his hotel, you play golf, you invest with his son, the son-in-law, Jared Kushner,

in a development in Slovenia or Serbia or wherever else they're developing these days. And that's how you buy a president. And he's so conflicted because he hasn't put any of this in a blind trust. Sure, Don Jr. and Eric are supposed to be running things. Does anybody really believe that? Does anybody really believe the Fredo brothers are running and the Godfathers not involved? Come on. So he's running all these companies. And so he's warped because he makes decisions not for you and me. He makes decisions for his own pocketbook and his own, his own bank account. And then if that wasn't bad enough, he, he, uh, which is exactly what our founding

fathers were afraid of and the ones that wrote the Federalist papers, he brought in public, uh, private interest groups and special interest groups to invest in him. He went to oil and gas and big fossil during a meeting in Mar-a-Lago during the campaign and said, give me a billion dollars and you'll get a government that you can work with. And they didn't come up to a billion, but they gave him a couple hundred billion. AI banked on him, the tech bros, as we call them. I think Ben on our channel calls them the brologarcks. They invested hundreds of millions of dollars

to get Donald Trump elected in order to have regulation that would be favorable to them, not to the American people. Same thing with cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency, all excited! Donald Trump, they bought Donald Trump! And then they tanked the cryptocurrency market in the last week because Donald Trump didn't mention cryptocurrency not once during the inaugural address and they were listening. And then he issued his executive order. They were like, okay, here comes the

executive order. This is really going to help the industry. He's big on crypto. He has crypto. He bought crypto. He's selling crypto. What is he gonna do for us? And Donald Trump said, I'm setting up a blue ribbon panel and in about six months, they'll make a recommendation.

They were like, what? That's your pro crypto policy? Some sort of convoluted, I thought he was supposed to cut government red tape. I didn't realize he was supposed to make new government red tape. So he's going to create this giant morass, this giant sinkhole of bureaucrats, the head of the SEC, the head of the Department of Justice, the head of the Commerce Department, the head IT of every, I'm like, are you kidding me? How are they going to get anything done in what, a weekly lunch meeting? And then make a

report to me in 180 days, 180 days. That's like a lifetime in cryptocurrency. fortunes are bought and sold during that period. And so that they didn't like that. And then they were like, well, maybe he'll announce the cryptocurrency national strategic reserve. Yeah, like the oil reserve, the government will buy trillions of dollars of cryptocurrency, you know, and put it into a stock, you know, a stockpile, and that'll make us all money. Let's do it. And he goes, instead of a reserve, he said, no, we're going to do a, not a

reserve, we're going to do a little stockpile. We're probably just going to start with about 20 billion that the Department of Justice and other agencies have obtained through civil forfeiture. We already have that on our books, so we're just going to slide it over here. Maybe we'll add to it, I don't know. And the cryptocurrency market tanked, right? It hasn't yet recovered and shed like a trillion dollars in value. And then the China troll where they waited for Donald Trump to announce, like this, they waited for him

to announce Stargate, knowing through their, of course, their spy network, they had already hacked into us. They knew that Stargate was coming and they waited all of 72 hours to announce DeepSeek, which killed the market and all of the brawligarx fortunes. They all shed billions and billions of dollars overnight because we're tied to the global

economy because we can't go it alone, because it can't be American first for everything, because the others are joining together against us. Every time you attack Central and South America and Latin America, all you're doing is joining them together to create an economic block, to trade somewhere else, as China or Russia gladly swoop in to do business with them to gain a sphere of influence against us. That's what we're watching. So America First doesn't

work on a global platform. See what happened to the markets in the last week alone, and we're only a week into the Trump administration. It's not going to get any better. We saw a version of this happen in Africa, on the African continent, when, well, let's be honest, what we used to call first world countries, first, yeah, ignored Africa for years. Then they found oil in parts of it. And then the Russians and the Chinese found Africa and developed a sphere of influence. It's very hard now to turn back and have gotten this entire future trading bloc and power blo block in their back pocket. All Donald Trump had to do was travel through the Caribbean or Latin or South America and

see all of the Chinese infrastructure projects that are going on there. I've seen it because I travel. See the new port built by the Chinese. See the new roadway, the highway, the power station, the hydroelectric plant, all in these countries, the new road paving, bridges, tunnels, all courtesy of the Chinese. Why? Because we have ignored those regions and we've pissed them off. That's why all these headlines from mainstream media like, Trump pounds chest, Colombia's president capitulates, bullshit.

We're late at night here, I can say that. Total bullshit. The Columbia president, along with Claudia Scheinbaum of Mexico, are actually forming the blueprint of how you take on the bully in Donald Trump. How do you take on a bully? You punch him in the nose and you steal his lunch on the bus stop, and that's what they're doing. Only if you did not read the translation from Spanish to English

of Gabriel Preto, the president of Colombia's attack on Donald Trump in and around the fight over whether he was going to take the undocumented Colombians back into his country, only if you did not read or take the time to read Spanish would you think that Donald Trump won that fight. At one point, Gabriel Preto not only called Donald Trump a person who wants to kill his own people through his capitalist policies because he's a socialist, but he also invited Donald Trump to have a conversation over a glass of whiskey, a conversation over a glass of whiskey, knowing full well that Donald Trump is a lifelong, he's a lifelong teetotaler, having sworn off alcohol after his brother died from alcoholism.

That's why he has that Diet Coke button on his desk, on the resolute desk in the White House. So I love the troll. It's like, hey, we'll have a drink one day. Oh, I'm sorry, you don't drink anymore because your brother's dead? I mean, this is where Columbia is going. I would not try to take on and try to insult

the national sovereignty or the culture of Central South and Latin America. I just would not do that. I don't think that's proper policy. And don't do it to the Canadians either, because they're just gonna fire back with their own tariff war. So Donald Trump has just set the world aflame against the United States, and we have to

hold the Republican Party responsible for it at every election. I don't care if it's dog catcher to school board, to the head of the sanitation department in your town, to the actual federal elections elections to judges that are running for office. This has been, we learned a lesson, hopefully we learned a lesson about how MAGA, starting with the Tea Party movement even before that, tried to get control of America. And they did it through running for school boards, running for municipal elections, running to be a mayor or a commissioner or a counselor, right? Land use and zoning board, whatever it is. They started to do a takeover in all of these places. They ran for secretaries of states of various states. They ran to be the head of the education department in these states.

Then they did it on the federal side. If your state has elected judges, those are important. Make sure you support the right elected judges. Make sure you run for judge if you're a lawyer or somebody that's qualified to do that. Right? All the way up to the United States Supreme Court. I'm sorry, all the way up to the state Supreme Court if you're state, if you have an elected state Supreme Court. And do it over on the federal side too. The more we get into government in positions of power instead of pressing our nose to the glass of that candy store wondering what's going on, the better we are going to be. And that has been the secret poison of the MAGA and Republican Party

led by Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society and the rest is the co-opting of these major institutions and pillars of our society. We've abandoned the pillars of our society. We've relegated ourselves to the public interest groups, which are tremendously important. I'm not here to undermine them, but we can't just rely on the ACLU and the NAACP and other groups like Democracy Forward to clean up behind the elephant of Donald Trump. Right? We have to get into the government, get into the school boards, get into the judge races, and fire back. And that we can do over time, but it starts today. So to answer the question I'm often asked, Popak, tell me what to do. Okay. Go look, if you want to stay local, go look if you want to stay local go look in your local town go to your town city village

Whatever you are go to your weekly monthly meetings sit in the audience Run for office help others run for office, you know, whatever whatever interest you run for school boards Yeah Follow the judge. I know people are like, who are these judges that I have to vote for? You should know the judges you have to vote for. You know, get affiliated with your local democratic party

in your county, in your city. Join it. Run for it if there's delegates. This is the taking back of America time. Watching us on YouTube, yes, it's important. That's important. Because we give you the information to help you make sense of it.

I just had a bunch of contributors get together to talk about joining Legal AF. And one of them in particular struck me. Something that he said on the Zoom call yesterday. And hopefully you'll hear from him directly. He said, before we can speak truth to power, we have to speak truth to each other and sort of re- I'm trying to think which contributor that was, and then re-establish the social contract that's been shredded and lies at our feet.

And you do that neighbor to neighbor. Your neighbor shouldn't be your enemy, even if he's flying a MAGA flag or vice versa, you're flying a flag he doesn't like or she doesn't like or they don't like, whatever it is. We have to re-establish as part of the currency of democracy this social contract and talk to each other and make sense of these various shards and puzzle pieces and put it all together and then speak to each other that way, locally, then go globally, and then write Truth to Power. And again, to paraphrase Judge Kofenor, who was the judge that entered the block of the Birthright Citizenship Executive Order, he said at one, very eloquently and poetically, he said

there comes a time in history when history looks back and asks where were the judges, where were the lawyers when these bad things happened? And the point he was making is this is the moment for the lawyers and the judges to step forward and protect democracy and don't have future generations look back and go, how did that law ever survive a judicial review? Where were the lawyers? Why didn't anybody bring a court case on that? And it's, you know, giving historical perspective. I try to do that here on the Midas Touch Network and on illegal AF, giving my own background, my own

life story, my own body of work. We're all unique, we all have a different point of view, but we're all singing out of the same hymnal here, of course, on Midas Touch on legal AF. So then, lastly, I want to talk about, just in the remaining minutes, I want to talk about RFK Jr. Now look, I don't blow smoke or sunshine, And I will tell you that I am, I was very troubled by the fact that Pete Hegseth got through and got confirmed, even if it was by the tiebreaker vote by JD Vance as the vice president. I had hoped with all of the bad evidence that had come out against him about sexual abuse, sexual assault, and those allegations, rape, the allegations of rape, his mismanagement of the

veterans organizations, public drunkenness, intoxication, and misogynist, Christian right nationalist extreme views, that this would tank his candidacy in much the way that we were able to get back Gates out of there before it even got out of the starting blocks. Now Donald Trump, I'm sure, decided to put up Pete Hegseth early, not late. That was not an accident. I think they wanted to run him first, see who all the Republicans like Jody Ernst and others see, if any of them would jump off sides

and against Donald Trump. Maybe that would lead to Hegseth not getting through. I think at one point even Donald Trump confided his confidence that he thought it was 50-50 at one point about a month or so ago, two months ago around Thanksgiving. But they would do this as a test run and see who the disloyal people were. And even if Hegseth went down, then they would know who they'd have to go bash, and Mago would have to go after, and threaten to go after in primaries and other things if he went down.

And so they watched carefully. And a number of them jumped off sides. Mitch McConnell, I mean, he's leaving, and a few others. And it narrowed it to tie. I mean, they have a five seat lead effectively in the Senate. Maybe it's down to four right now until they fill one of the Senate seats, but I think that was done on purpose because if they can get Pete Hegseth through, I think they get everybody through based on how much party discipline and they're displaying. He stepped out of line with Donald Trump,

you're going to suffer the wrath of Donald Trump and MAGA. Joni Ernst, who I thought should have stepped up against Pete Hegseth, she got mercilessly bashed by MAGA when she had the temerity to suggest that he might not be qualified, which means I think Cash Patel may well get in. Tulsi Gabbard also, Pam Bondi of course, is definitely going to get in. And so that leaves us to RFK Jr. In the beginning, I thought there's no way this unqualified person who's not a scientist, who's anti-science, who's not a doctor, who's anti-doctors, who is outside the mainstream and believes in crazy alternate medicine theories that belong on some fringe YouTube channel, not as the head health official for America.

I thought that is other craziness. He's an admitted drug addict, recovering drug addict. That's admitted. I'm not outing him. He's out admitted drug addict, recovering drug addict. That's admitted. I'm not outing him. He's outing himself. You know, the worm in the brain, the crazy positions he's taken. And the fact that he's like, he had been an environmental protection lawyer for a not-for-profits for a long time.

I thought that would make him lose some Republican votes. I thought this guy's never gonna get in. And Caroline Kennedy, I think it's important that she came out against her first cousin. Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of John F. Kennedy. You know, you'll see the pictures, we won't have them here. The pictures of she and a little girl with John John, her brother next to her in the White House. You know, she's been sort of the darling of the Democratic Party and has been an amazing civil servant, selfless civil servant running public interest groups,

been ambassador to Australia and the like. And she and the entirety, I mean the entirety of the Kennedy family and clan, and it's huge, have all come out against RFK Jr. Not just because they don't like him because they said he's unhinged, unstable, unfit, it makes a mockery of the legacy of the Kennedy family. Caroline Kennedy said her uncle who she knew well, RF, I mean she was a child, but she knew her uncle RFK and knew her father, again a child, JFK would be spinning in their graves

based on to see RFK Jr. and his policies and positions. And she went further and said in a letter they posted on social media today and said he's a predator. He's been a predator within his own family. And that means abuse in the family that she talked about, and a predator on other people's children, because he's pushing his false narratives about vaccines and treatments, and everything from raw milk to don't vaccinate your children in a way that is deleterious to the nation's youth and

she's calling him out on that. The question I have is if the last-minute affidavit from the sister-in-law of Hegseth about her sister having to hide in a closet to avoid abuse at the hands of Pete Hegseth and they had a safe word between them to protect her, if that didn't tank that, I'm not sure that Caroline Kennedy criticism, severe criticism, calling him a predator, is going to do it here. The real question is, is the Christian right, which is what is the iron rod of Donald Trump's backside, are they going to support him and his abortion views, which are not favorable to Christian right? I mean, Mike Pence has even come out against RFK Jr. Is this going to be enough to tank his candidacy? If he's cross-examined long enough by the Democrats, he'll come off as cuckoo crazy. But I haven't been that impressed

with all of the cross-examination of the minority members of the party during the confirmation process. So, I don't know, if I was a betting person, I think this guy's getting in. I mean, one of the commentators here that we like on the Midas Touch Network told us privately, let's just let them all get in. Let all the jokers take over. Why are we filing lawsuits to stop any of this? Let America, and I mean the majority that voted for him, get what they deserved and what they wanted. I just don't operate in that world because that's, I don't think what we watched in the election is the magnification of America. I just don't. I don't think that is the way to read the polls, the failure of the Democratic Party to successfully sell its brand

values. One of the commentators that I'm going to onboard on Legal AF, the YouTube channel said last night, being pro-democracy doesn't mean anything. It's empty words to people. They don't know what that means. It used to be shorthand for something. We say it here. We say we're a pro-democracy we're a pro-democracy network. She made a very interesting point when she said, it doesn't mean much to people. They don't understand what that means. There are people, she used as an example, there are people in this society, in American society who think Joe Biden is responsible for the rollback of Roe versus Wade because

it happened, quote unquote, on his watch with the United States Supreme Court because they don't understand how the United States Supreme Court works. And so those, you know, that is a brand progressive democratic policy pro-democracy problem that we have as a party that has to be solved. We have to solve for that equation over the next two years. It starts here. I agree with the people that I've been talking to about what we can do here on

the network. And that is start talking truth to each other. Start using shows like PO-POK Live, Legal AF, all the content on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF, the YouTube channel to piece together for people using our best professional judgment, our searing analysis and commentary, to piece these disparate parts together, to make sense of it. It's like that old show, Homeland,

where the lead character had that crazy board with all the red string connecting everything. We try to do that without being sort of crazy about it. So you see how it fits. Then you can make sense of it for yourself, which gives you more comfort, gives you a pull star, gives you something to hold on to among these shifting sands and swirling oceans, right? Something to navigate by. Then you can take that and put it into action navigate by, then you can take that and put it into action and follow us as we follow these lawsuits and these lawyers and the 18 to 20 attorneys general and what they're going to do and how every one of these controversial executive orders by Donald Trump, and we haven't

even talked, we will next week, about deportation orders and sanctuary cities and the constitution about these and the due process that even the undocumented have. That's something that Donald Trump never wants to talk about. If you're here before you're deported, you have due process rights. You have constitutional rights because you are here regardless of whether you're an American citizenship or not. And that whether you're your citizenship is going to be taken away is subject to due process rights. So come here, join this community with us, join me on PO-POK Live every Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern Time if you're here already. Hit the

free subscribe button to the Midas Touch Network. Subscribe to their Substack Plus Midas Touch, sorry, on Substack, which is run by, I think, Ron Filipkowski as the editor-in-chief over there. Come over to Legal AF, the YouTube channel. Help us continue to grow that. Get in on the ground floor of that, right? Some people might say, oh, I joined Midas Touch when it already had three million. I don't have three million on Legal AF. I mean, I won a million before our one year anniversary or one year birthday.

We're getting there. We're getting there. It's humbling. It's also exciting and exhilarating to all be there in that community together. So I appreciate you being here with me tonight, supporting our pro-democracy sponsors. Today's Tuesday, tomorrow, midweek edition of Legal AF,

here on the Midas Touch Network. I do it with Karen Freeman at Niflo. Saturday's Legal AF, I do it with Ben Mycelis. And then we do hot takes at the intersection of law and politics about every day. So until my next reporting on all things Legal AF, this is Michael Popak signing off. In collaboration with the Midas Touch Network,

we just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel. Help us build this pro-democracy channel where I'll be curating the top stories for watching.