No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - CBS gets exposed for carry water for killer ICE agent

Episode Date: January 18, 2026

CBS gets exposed for carrying water for the ICE agent in Minneapolis. Brian interviews Jamie Raskin about a new update in the Epstein investigation, Jared Moskowitz about the fact that the January 6 pipe bomber was discovered to be a Trump voter, Abdul El Sayed about Trump flipping off workers in a Michigan auto plant, and California attorney general Rob Bonta about a new investigation into Elon Musk.Support Abdul El Sayed: https://abdulforsenate.com/Shop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

CBS gets exposed for carrying water for the ice agent who killed Renee Good in Minneapolis. And I've got four interviews. Jamie Raskin discusses a new update in the Epstein investigation. Jared Moskowitz talks about the fact that the January 6th pipe bomber was discovered to be a Trump voter. Abdul El-Sayed talks about Trump flipping off workers in a Michigan auto plant. And California Attorney General Rob Bonta talks about a new investigation into Elon Musk. I'm Brian Taylor Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. Last week, the biggest story in the country was the fact that an ice agent, Jonathan Ross, shot and killed,

Renee Good, an unarmed mom of three in her car in Minneapolis. Republicans tried desperately to find any excuse to be able to claim that he had acted in self-defense. They didn't waste a second before Trump and Vance and Noem all came out and claimed that he was attacked, right? Trump himself said that Ross was run over and that he can't even believe he's alive, all of which was, of course, bullshit. And then they found something with legs. It came in the form of a tweet from CBS, breaking the Ice Age. who fatally shot Renee Good on January 7th in Minneapolis, Jonathan Ross suffered internal bleeding to the torso

following the incident, according to two U.S. officials briefed on his medical condition. Now, this immediately stunk. Anybody who watched the video of the shooting, which, according to polling, was a staggering 8 in 10 Americans, watched Jonathan Ross fire his shots from beside the vehicle, call her a quote, fucking bitch, walk over to see Renee Good after he'd shot her, and then walk away back to his own vehicle.

CBS's stenography included no-named officials, no doctors, no medical records. Later on, they posted a link to a story, which still included no one on the record, offering instead, quote, The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Agent who fatally shot Renee Good last week in Minneapolis, Jonathan Ross, suffered internal bleeding to the torso following the incident, according to two U.S. officials briefed on his medical condition. It was unclear how extensive the bleeding was. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed Ross's injury,

but has not yet responded to CBS News' request for more information. The story will be updated as we learn more. So the reporting was literally just Christy Noem's Department of Homeland Security saying that Jonathan Ross suffered internal bleeding with no records to confirm as much. CBS is literally just doing stenography and no actual journalism. And it turns out those of us who saw that tweet

and the story weren't the only ones who thought that this wasn't on the level because now the Guardian is reporting that there was quote, huge internal concern at CBS based on email. So I'm going to read some of the reporting based on those emails. Before the original report was published, a medical producer at the network suggested in an email to colleagues that it would be, quote, helpful to ask what type of treatment he received and whether the officer received surgery or any type of procedure. In another email, an executive expressed skepticism about the broad nature of the medical diagnosis and what it actually entailed, quote, I'm no doctor, but internal bleeding is a very broad term and can range in

severity. A bruise is internal bleeding, but it can also be something serious. We do know that the ICE agent walked away from the incident. We have that on camera. The network's top editor, Barry Weiss, expressed a high level of interest in the story on an editorial call on Wednesday morning, according to staffers who listened. Quote, there was big internal dissension about the internal bleeding report here last night, the staffer, who was not authorized to speak publicly said. It was viewed as a thinly veiled anonymous leak by the Trump administration to someone who would carry it online. So, a few points here. First, of fucking course, Barry Weiss was interested in it because she's literally in that job to carry water for the Trump administration. And so if she has

the opportunity to launder their excuse to try and justify an ICE agent's murder of an innocent woman, she's going to do it. That's again, why she's there. Another point, is this the rigorous reporting that we can expect from CBS? No medical records, just a blind acceptance of what the Trump administration feeds them. I thought they already had Caroline Levitt for that, but apparently there's room for CBS as well. This is literally not journalism. It is just parroting White House propaganda. And look, this is all being done by design. Trump finds these weak, over-leveraged media companies. He's able to threaten them because they need government approval for their space companies or their mergers or whatever else there is. And he makes sure that the only way they

get what they want is if he can force compliance or capitulation. There's a a reason that ABC News paid Trump off. There's a reason Washington Post did it too. There's a reason that meta did. There's a reason that CBS did. The problem with these massive media conglomerates is that they're clearly susceptible to extortion. Trump knows that. He leans on them and then they fold every single time, all of which is basically just a big commercial for independent media to step up and fill the void being left by legacy media. And if you've consumed my content or read my book, you know that I've been beating the drum about building up independent media on the left for years. This right here is why. We need an infrastructure in place to be able to fight back against

not just a right-wing media machine that's been humming along for a decade, but now, even legacy media that's been infiltrated by right-wing actors and Trump sycophants, like, for example, Barry Weiss. The reality is that they are showing us who they are. It's about time we believe them. Next up are my interviews with Jamie Raskin, Jared Moskowitz, Abdul El-Sayed, and Rob Banta. is brought to you by OneSkin. So I'm over the whole New Year, New Me thing. Short-term fads do not deliver long-term results. Science does, especially when it comes to skin care. That's why I use One Skin. Their formulas are powered by the OS1 peptide, a patented peptide built on longevity science proven to target aging at the cellular level. It's not about adding extra steps to your

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I'm joined now by Congressman Jamie Rask and Congressman, thanks for joining me again. Really psyched to be with you, Brian. So there is an update here as far as the Epstein files are concerned. We have a new update from the House. Can you explain what that is? We had a number of women, survivors who came to us with information about how Epstein had promised them when they were minors, that he would arrange for them to be admitted into NYU or Columbia and would pay for their tuition. And he used that very much as part of his recruitment and grooming mechanism.

And so I've written letters to NYU and to Columbia simply demanding that they give us all the information that they've got. and we know that these are not the only schools that he potentially used in this way, and he maintained very cozy relationships with a lot of colleges and universities. Everybody knows about Larry Summers and Harvard and MIT. But, you know, these were not just places where he could kind of sanitize his image, but also places that he could use as part of his recruitment of young women and dangling admission as part of entree to his world. As far as you're aware, was anybody else involved in all of this?

Were there other people that were, you know, participants? I guess really what I'm getting at here is this idea that, you know, we had members of the DOJ or the FBI come out and say that nobody else was involved, that apparently Jeffrey Epstein just trafficked a thousand girls for himself. And so does this give any insight into somebody else? as involvement in this scheme, possibly at NYU at Columbia? Well, we know that that is false. We know that there were many other people of necessity involved in this situation, but

several survivors told us that their college tuition, their bureaucratic paperwork, and their expenses were personally arranged by Epstein Associates, Darren Indyke and Richard Khan, who were a longtime Epstein lawyer and accountant and who are now the co-executors of his estate. So Epstein was the schmoozer who maintained the relationships with all of the various dignitaries and deans and professors and so on. But of course, he had a bureaucracy to follow through on the various deals he was able to make for people. So what, I mean, this is, I guess, I guess an oversimplistic question.

But if we know, if you know that there are already other people involved in this whole scheme, then how does Trump's DOJ come off by holding these press conferences and saying that they have no idea of anybody else who is involved? What do you, how do you, how do you have information that Trump's own DOJ with full access to the Epstein files doesn't have? Well, and this has been the problem from the beginning with Cash Patel. and Pam Bondi, who've tried to assure us there's nothing to see here. And Dan Bongino did as well. They said we've been through all the documents, and there are no other crimes indicated. Of course, later, they said they didn't know what was in the documents.

And remember, they just found an additional million documents that mysteriously appeared. And so, I mean, we can't take anything they're saying seriously. they are in full cover-up mode. Trump, who campaigned saying that all of this should be made public, is now doing everything you can to prevent the information from going public into trying to sweep everything under the rug. So you're right. It's so obvious you don't run a billion-dollar-plus global sex trafficking ring of young women,

including procuring spots in college classes at some of the fanciest colleges and universities in America with one person. That's not a one-person operation. I mean, it takes a whole bureaucracy of complicity to make something like that happen. Well, kind of to that point, there is some big news that Pam Bondi is scheduled

to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee that's on February 11th. Is that correct? Correct. And so what do you hope to accomplish when she comes and testifies before the committee? Well, of course, you know, we could have a week-long hearing with Pam Bondi, and each of us will be limited under the Republican rules to five minutes of questioning. We've got so much to ask about, not just in the field of the Epstein cover-up of this global child sex trafficking ring, but also about, for example, January 6th, the 1600 pardon insurrectionists, and the DOJ has aggressively

been taking the position in court that the pardon's extent even beyond what these people did on January 6th to other crimes that they may have been picked up on at the same time that they were arrested for January 6th. So, you know, drug dealing is one of those. weapons charges and so on. So we want to know where all that's coming from. It's of a special importance now that they have found at least a suspect in the pipe bombings of the Democratic National Committee

and the Republican National Committee on January 5 and 6, because Donald Trump's mass pardon is written in such a way that that suspect and his lawyer are saying that he's covered by the pardon anyway, Mr. Cole, who was a pro-Trump election denying, stop the steel guy, is saying that he's covered by Trump's mass pardon for the events that took place on January 6th at or near the Capitol. And they're saying they're swept into that. So we want to ask about all that.

We also want to ask about the attack on the FBI agents. and the federal prosecutors who worked on the January 6 case. And they worked with great honor and distinction to do it. But they're being punished simply because they did their job and are, have either been fired, completely dismissed or demoted to, you know, relatively menial tasks as a way to punish them for having done their job. So those are just two of many, many things that we want to look at. So we're going to, we have our hands full in terms of getting. ready for this hearing to make sure that she doesn't get off scot-free on a lot of the outrageous

things taking place. I mean, is there anything to stop her from just saying, oh, we don't comment on an ongoing investigation? We don't comment on an ongoing investigation. And then just basically using that to filibuster and not have to answer for anything that she or the department are doing. Well, yeah, we expect every form of rhetorical dodge and subterfuge. In terms of the Epstein situation itself,

and Pam Bondi coming to testify, will there be some exploration of the fact that a year ago at this point, she was talking about having the full breadth of the files on her desk, only for her now, to not only have refused to release the files, but coming out and saying

that she's finding files that supposedly didn't exist five minutes ago. Yeah, I mean, her record is just riddled with self-contradiction and inaccuracy because they claim to have wanted sunshine, but actually they want absolute darkness in a closet. They want to hide everything. And so we will definitely try to hold her account to account for the things that she said and for the things that she's done. And then very specifically try to hold her to account for turning

over the documents that it's now a federal legal requirement for her to do it. I mean, they're talking about holding Bill Clinton in contempt. The person who needs to be held in contempt is Pam Bondi, who's turned over, you know, at most what, two or three percent of all of the material that she is compelled by law to be turning over with respect to the Epstein file. That's where our focus should be in seeing to it that she complies with the law that we got passed after, you know, really Herculane political efforts to assemble that majority to dislodge the legislation with the discharge petition. Can I have your reaction to the fact that James Comer, on that point of Comer saying that

he's going to take action against Bill and Hillary Clinton for defying subpoenas, that he actually made that announcement while he was flanked by a couple of Republican congressmen, including Andy Biggs, who themselves had defied congressional subpoenas from the January 6th committee. You've got Jim Jordan saying the same thing. He also defied subpoenas. And so can you talk about this hypocrisy where you've got these Republicans demanding accountability for the very thing that they themselves committed? Well, we've got all kinds of subpoenas scofflaws and delinquents out there, which obviously does undermine all of the poses of outrage they want to strike about the Clintons. But, you know, we're way beyond the point of trying to correct their hypocrisy.

That's a lost cause. But at least we must be able to get them to comply with what the law requires. The law requires the administration to turn over all these documents. And there are a number of these people who are J6 witnesses who were subpoenaed to testify before the January 6 Select Committee, who never did, who owe an honest accounting to Congress and the people about what they were doing on January 6th and why their names have come up in various ways with respect to Donald Trump's plot to coerce Mike Pence, to nullify electoral college votes and just give the election in Donald Trump. which Biden had won by more than 7 million votes. We'll leave it there, Congressman. As always, I appreciate the time. Thanks so much. Great to be with you, Brian. No lies brought to you by better help.

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globally. And it works, with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash no lie. That's BetterH-E-L-P.com slash no lie. I'm joined now by Congressman Jared Moskowitz. Thanks for joining me. Good on, Brian. How are you doing? I'm doing all right. So you have a big hearing coming up today. In fact, by the time folks are watching or listening to this, you'll already be in that hearing. But the hearing is regarding the pipe bomber on January 6 or just January 6 more broadly. First and foremost,

can I have your reaction to the fact that we've just found out, based on, you know, analysis from the DOJ or the FBI, that the pipe bomber had voted. for Donald Trump twice. Well, why does that surprise anyone? Everyone who came into town that day, who, you know, just didn't storm the Capitol, obviously decided to go lay pipe bombs. So the hearing that I'm about to go to, I was appointed by Hakeem Jeffries to this subcommittee, is to investigate January 6 and the origins of January 6th and try to rewrite history

that January 6 didn't happen. It was a regular day at the Capitol, right? They were just coming to peaceably protest, and they weren't there and cited by the President the United States, that they didn't come in in riot, that they didn't come and attack police officers. None of that happened. They were just, it was just a group of interns on a regular tour. Now, that was what they promised the president who was asking for this committee. This is the first time we're meeting after the committee was created over a month ago. And we're going to talk about the pipe bomber, which is great.

Look, congrats to the FBI. Glad they got the pipe bomber. We should thank law enforcement for doing their job. But obviously, this is not what the Republicans said they were going to be doing with this hearing, which is to try to rewrite January 6th. Of course, we're going to remind everyone that a year and a half later, they still haven't hung up the plaque that was passed by Congress in memory to the law enforcement officers that died that day

or as a result of their injuries from January 6th. So I want to switch gears a little bit here. We just had folks from Greenland and Denmark come to the White House today. To what extent do you think that this is? There are a couple of schools of thought that on one hand, you know, this is yet another distraction from all of the disastrous policies being enacted by this White House, whether it's the Epstein files, whether it's the lack of affordability and on and on. On the other hand, you know, we ignore the inane lunatic ravings of this president at

her own peril because oftentimes he makes good on the crazy shit that he says. And so when you see representatives from Denmark, from Greenland, go to the White House, again, how worried do you think folks should be that this administration is going to make good on its threats. So the answer is nobody knows, right? That's part of the chaos that Trump creates and the guessing game. I mean, obviously, look, Greenland could become the 52nd state. You know, 51 is Canada, of course.

We acquired that. Naturally. That was the whole first year of the Trump administration. Now Canada is going to be the 51st state. So Greenland will be 52 North North Dakota, if you will. And so obviously that's the joke of all of this. Now, there is a serious policy here in that we don't want Russia or Trump. China to be setting up bases of operation to be in the waters around Greenland. So talking to NATO

about that is very important, making sure Greenland becomes a base of our operation and not the Russian and the Chinese. But that's something we can work in partnership with Greenland. Listen, sometimes the president has a good idea. His execution is just bad shit crazy. Okay. Like it was a good idea for the president to get other NATO countries to pay more money. right, that was a good idea, that strength in NATO. But the way he went about it is he said we were pulling out of NATO, we weren't going to do Article 5, right? He started doing all these crazy things. So a lot of times he has a policy that might have some points, but then the execution is disastrous.

You know, what the president, I think, is doing talking about creating chaos so that we can stop talking about affordability and stuff domestically is the president has a lot of checks on his powers domestically. There's Congress, there's a Supreme Court, there's states, there's state attorney generals. there's local laws. But in foreign policy, the president is king. And so I think what you're seeing is the president realizing that he doesn't have a lot of obstructions in his way. He can do what he wants, foreign policy-wise. And for a party, a Republican party, that's leaning towards isolationism, I mean, this is going the opposite direction. I mean, Dick Cheney would be proud about what Donald Trump is doing.

You know, it's funny, they raided the House of the former, NSA director, but they clearly adopted his foreign policy. It's a fascinating thing that's happening on the Republican side on this issue. Well, you know, I'm going to do what the Republicans in Congress won't do, and I'm going to ask the million dollar question here, how do we pay for it, especially in light of the fact that we don't have enough money to continue paying for Medicaid to the tune of $17 billion. We don't have enough money to continue paying $186 billion worth of food assistance. We don't have enough money to continue these ACA subsidies for 24 million Americans. And so, again, millions upon millions upon millions of Americans are going to be contending with higher prices

because we have no money to pay for anything. And yet, apparently, we have enough money to pay to annex a foreign country? Well, look, again, you're dealing with the Republican Party, which is a party of personality. When you said, what are the policies of the Republican Party, I would say, well, whatever Donald Trump said this morning, this afternoon, this evening, and at three in the morning. Those are the policies. of the day of the Republican Party. So they don't know what they stand for or which way the wind blows

until they hear from Donald Trump. They are not a party of any convictions or any policies. These are not the conservatives who care about the budget. It's just whatever Donald Trump says, whenever he says it, and they have no choice

but to line up behind it. And so, of course, Brian, we don't have a trillion dollars to go by Greenland. Okay, that would have to pass Congress. He doesn't have the votes to do that, of course. But again, that doesn't mean that there aren't legitimate things

that we talk about, keeping the Chinese and the Russians away. But do it the correct way, working with our allies, figuring that out. Not, you know, we're going to come. All options are on the table. Like all of a sudden, Delta Force is going to come in and take Greenland. Well, you had mentioned that he does have constraints on his power domestically. And one of those constraints, obviously, is to interfere with the independence of the Fed.

Have you heard of any pushback from your Republican colleagues, I'm sure, privately, where, you know, they're uneasy about the fact that Donald Trump. Trump is trying to basically coerce the Fed into doing whatever he wants by dangling the prospect of criminal prosecution against Jerome Powell. No, the president stepped in shit on this one. And you can just see it because the president is distancing himself from it. This is a guy who likes to take credit for everything. And now he's saying, oh, I didn't know.

Well, the reason he didn't know is he heard from his treasury secretary or heard from the bondholders that this would be disastrous for monetary policy. We heard from Jamie Diamond, who we know the president respects, that this actually would raise interest rates. We heard from every living Fed chair that this was an overreach by the president. We heard from former Treasury secretaries that this was disastrous. We heard from a dozen nations and the monetary leaders who do business with the United States that this would undermine our credibility.

And so, look, I know the president is interested in Venezuela, but we don't want Venezuelan monetary policy here in America. So, yeah, there were a half a dozen Republican senators who came out against this. I know the majority of my colleagues, even if they're afraid to speak, are against us. It's what separates us from many nations is that we have independent monetary policy that isn't weaponized based on the partisanship of the moment. Look, Jay Powell didn't know, okay, some facts about the building that the Fed was building. Thank God. Thank God Jay Powell is more focused on the monetary policy than what's going on in the building that the Fed is building. I know the

president knows a lot about his ballroom, okay, and that Jake Powell didn't know the construction of his building. But Jake Powell's focused obviously on trying to lower interest rates, trying to make sure that we're creating jobs, trying to ease us still out of the pandemic and keep us competitive around the world. And by the way, whatever overruns are at that Fed building, I remind everybody that the ballroom right now is costing twice the amount of money that the president said it was going to cost. It'll be triple or quadruple by the time we're done with it. That's not a reason to do what they're doing here. This is all about intimidation. it's all about weaponization of the Justice Department.

Jim George should know all about that. He chaired a committee on that last Congress. And look, Jay Powell is not going to be deterred. I actually think this brings all of the other representatives from the Fed to Jay Powell's aid and does the exact opposite of what the president's really trying to accomplish here. The reality is, though, there are only a few months left in Jerome Powell's term. And so don't we end up in the same place where it becomes? clear what the next Fed Chair, what the next Fed Chair's job is in effect, which is just

to basically to cow to Trump, to listen to whatever he says. And that's going to be, like, we know that Christy Noam is there because she is a Trump supplicant. We know that Pete Heggseth is there for the same reason, that Marco Rubio is there for the same reason, RFK Jr. there for the same reason. And Trump is making it clear by virtue of these threats that, you know, even if he can't have some impact on Jerome Powell, that the next guy is going to have to listen to him to bend to his every whim. And so isn't the issue of coercion basically eliminating the independence of the Fed still very much on the table by virtue of what we're seeing right now? Well, of course. And since that, the market has gone down several days since the president

started this. By the way, Jerome, even though he won't be the head of the Fed in a couple months, he still has another year on his term. So if you're now investigating him and doing this stuff, One can make an argument that now Jerome's going to stay. Maybe he doesn't stay as the chair, but he stays as a member of the board. So I actually think that this is not, was not in the president's best interest, was not in the country's best interest. But that's the problem. Sometimes you've got people in departments that read a tweet, hear something the president says, and they go and act on it and do it. And, you know, and creates chaos.

You know, whether this was, you know, Bill Pulte or Janine Piro, you know, trying to try and a couple of this. And the president actually didn't green light this. that's very plausible. But it's caused now, I think, tremendous angst among the business community and amongst our monetary allies about can the United States continue to still be, you know, the place in the world that the entire world's economy focuses on. Our dollar is dropping. De-dollarization is something that the Russians and the Chinese are working on. I mean, there were dramatic repercussions in the bond industry. If people stop buying our bonds, if they stop buying our bonds, we can't continue to spend money, and we go into a depression. I mean,

period, is what happens there. Last topic here, I want to talk about Dan Bongino, who has emerged as this white knight in the aftermath of what he very much feels like is some victorious term as deputy FBI director, you know, in the aftermath of all of his work helping cover up the Epstein files, which is the principal issue that he staked his brand on before coming into government. And so, can I just have your reaction to this idea that Dan Bongino is like this crusade, is still trying to cling on to this branding as some crusader for accountability and transparency in the aftermath of probably the least transparent deputy FBI director term that in living memory.

Well, look, I appreciate Dan Bonino fighting Republican grifters online on anti-Semitism and the stuff that you see coming out of Tucker and Candace Owens and the conspiracy theory. So I appreciate that at the moment, but let's not pretend like the last year didn't happen. I mean, this is a guy who got his job on the Epstein files, you know, talking about Epstein, talking about getting them released. And then as soon as he got there and read that Trump's name is in it hundreds of times and he's on the flight logs, all of a sudden, Dan Banjino felt like, oh, I'm in an office with four walls and I'm uncomfortable. Let me go back to my podcast. The whole reason he got hired was the Epstein files. And as it turned out,

he had to leave because of the Epstein files. Do you think that his audience is going to, is going to stick around while he pretends that he has some credibility still? Oh, who knows? I mean, look, the Republican online audience, you know, you could do, you know, a mental health case study on it, okay, on what's going on between. the Candice Owens and the Dave Smith and the Nick Fuentes, you know, and Joe Rogan, who yesterday came out and called ICE the Gestapo. I mean, it's fascinating on what's going on in Republican podcasting. There's splits all within MAGA over all of it. And so it's a fascinating to watch. It's not healthy for the country or for the American people, but from a standpoint.

When does that ever stop us before? Right, of course. Are you not entertained, Brian? Yeah. All right. We'll leave it there. Congressman, I appreciate your time. Thanks so much. Thanks, buddy. No Lie is brought to you by Factor. A recurring theme in my life is that I desperately want to eat better, but there are literally not enough hours in the day. Factor doesn't ask you to meal prep or follow recipes. It just removes the entire problem.

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I feel very honored. I mean, uh, amazing to be here. Thank you so much for having me. So let's talk about the middle finger. Uh, this is Donald Trump went into, uh, a plant in Michigan, decided to give the finger to, uh, to a worker there. Is that not just the most perfect microcosm for Trump's whole presidency that you've seen? I mean, the thing about is like he's, he's talking to him from, from above him. Yeah. He like flips him the bird and he drops the F bomb against him twice. This is how he feels about working people.

And that's the thing about it is like he couldn't just be bigger and be like, I'm the most powerful person in the whole world. He had to tell him how he felt. I mean, like, and this is this is part for the course of Trump. I mean, what does it say that he also that hero? Can we have a minute for that guy? Yeah. Also, there's a go fund me for him.

Please do. I mean, it's crazy that like Ford, I mean, the idea that Ford suspended him to me is crazy. Right. As his First Amendment rights, he was practicing. They decided to bring the president of the United States, stop the line so he could walk. And now that guy gets suspended. Crazy. Right. Well, what does it say that something as inconsequential as somebody just saying, you know, giving, calling him a pedophile protection, which by the way, not not based on some very good evidence. What does it say that the president of the United States can allow can allow something like that to get under his skin?

And what are the implications of the fact that we have somebody so thin-skinned, you know, so impulsive that that that's what bugs him to that degree that he'll say fuck you as the president of the United States with all the cameras in the world on him to some, you know, guy working on the line at a car plant? I think we're seeing it play out live in living color. I mean, you look at the raid to depose Maduro. A lot of folks inside the White House say that that the last straw was that Maduro did a dance that was similar to him. his dance. Yeah. Like, this is the reason why you, you spend nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money to depose a foreign leader. Okay. You're also seeing it in his choices when it comes to Minneapolis.

They can't admit that poorly trained officers shot a woman in the face and that it was wrong and that there should be an investigation about how they used the power of the United States government against a 37-year-old mom. and now he's just sending more ice agents to Minneapolis. You see it in the choice to probe a sitting U.S. senator from my state because she had the audacity to remind the troops what their responsibilities were based on international and American law. All of this goes back to the fact that he thinks that the most important thing he can do is to respond to spites against him personally. For him, the entire United States government is being used as a tool for his own revenge.

And I mean, the last point is the Fed Chair, right? Yeah. You see it every, every, all of the stories of 2026, which by the way, is only like 14 days a lot old. All of them go back to his own personal feelings. Right. I mean, not just the Fed share. If you're talking about weaponizing the DOJ, you've got Letitia James, you've got James Comey, you've got Adam Schiff, which would be bad enough unto itself. but the fact that this guy came into office

under this pretense that he was going to end the weaponization of government that was apparently out of control under Merrick Garland. Merrick Garland, of all people. I wish that Merrick Garland was as rabid as Trump and Republicans have made him out to be. And yet here we are. Now, you know, this is weaponization at every corner.

But I'm glad you brought up ICE and I think this is a good opportunity to talk about this, not just given the fact that it's happening in Minneapolis and Minnesota, but because it's going to go everywhere. I mean, we're here in Los Angeles, and this was the first ice deployment was here in L.A. And then it went to Portland, Chicago, Washington, D.C., of course, it's in Minnesota.

I have to ask, is ice salvageable? No. And the way I want folks to understand it is this. Imagine you have a home that's got black mold in it. At some point, there's nothing really you can do with that. The whole edifice has to be broken down. down excised. Exised and we need to start from scratch.

Yeah. We can and should and must keep our southern border secure. We can and should be able to create a pathway to citizenship for folks. What ICE has been weaponized to do is to do two things. Number one, to attack the constitution via the premise of immigration. And two, to normalize paramilitary forces. demonstrating the raw power of the state on peaceful streets. The only, to me, the only historical precedent that we see with this is the Gestapo in Germany.

Yeah. And you could have seen it coming. Back in 2018, I said we should abolish ICE. And I said that because all you had to do was connect the dots around what this agency was being told to do, how it was being weaponized, how it was being held apart from the usual laws that protect citizens from the state, how he was attempting to normalize

the violence it was doing, and then watching at the beginning of the second term as he put that on steroids. $185 billion budget, that is more than the budget of the FBI, that is more than the budget of the U.S. Marines. Yeah. It would make it, I think,

the six biggest military in the world. Yeah. Just ice. Just ice. Yeah. And the premise that was sold to the American public was that somehow migrant crime was different than other crime. It's not like all of a sudden there's not a police force that police is migrants, right? Crime is crime. You police crime. But that idea was that ice was going to keep you safe. Now, ask yourself whether or not we are safer when they're shooting mothers in the face. And this is where we are now. And the response is, is the response is it to hold accountable the state against its people as the Constitution would require,

the response is to double down when it's so obvious that this agency has run amok because of the incentives that it's created, because of the people that they've recruited to do this. And the worry that I have is that we're not even in the first year yet. The first year is not even over of his tenure. He's got three more of these. Yeah. There was an iteration of the Republican Party way back just a few years ago that used to that used to claim that the Second Amendment was so important expressly because of it being a way

to defend against a tyrannical government, a big overreaching government, exactly the kind of government that we're seeing right now. And I know that the Overton window shifts so much that it almost, like for us to do this exercise where we say, oh, you used to, you used to say this, you're being hypocritical. It's like, yeah, that, that, you know, that ship has sailed years ago at this point. But in your travels, at least with the folks that you've spoken with, is anybody in the center or the right that is viewing this through the prism of some, you know, traditional Republican or conservative mentality where, hey, maybe it's not great to have some, like, rogue, jackbooted thug agency fucking shooting people in the face and killing them with

complete impunity like conservatives of yesteryear used to say? You know, I'm not a conservative, but I have respect for traditional conservative thought. At least it is coherent. You look at a guy like Thomas Massey. He and I are not going to agree on most things. But at least he's internally consistent. Right. And when you look at any public official, you should ask,

do your principles build out to your policy? Can I predict based on what you say you value, what you're going to do? And the hard part right now is that the modern Republican Party is no longer a conservative party. We don't have a conservative party in this country anymore. You have some conservatives who call themselves Republicans who operate with the Republican Party, but are finding themselves almost at war with the Republican Party or have been kicked out of the Republican Party

because now you have a party that's enthralled to the narcissism of one man. Yeah. And he is literally sucking up all of the political power that used to sit in the traditional conservative party. And the worry that I have is when you have one man who is openly musing about not holding elections, who's basically said that the only check on his power is his own broken set of morals, where do you go from here? And what I would really like is for people who believe in conservative ideology to decide to grow a set and stand up to him.

meanwhile we're going to have to be out here fighting like hell to beat him and them in an election and here's the worry that i have you cannot accommodate tyranny that's not how this works and you're already so you're not of the uh the barry weiss school of uh of both sizesism very wise is a whole different story at this point i mean like this is a woman who came to power talking about freedom of speech, except for her whole political project was to shut down any freedom of speech that mentioned the word of Palestine.

That's actually, they're actually consistent with that hypocrisy because Elon Musk did the same thing. Elon Musk came out and said, I have to buy Twitter because I need to own the town square so that we can get some true freedom of speech and legalized comedy again.

And if it cost me $44 billion, so be it. And now he's out here, like an hour ago, suspended Amy Klobuchar's account because she was talking down about ICE. I mean, just the rank hypocrisy that we're seeing, especially on the issue of freedom of speech, is just, is, is, is disgusting.

And, you know, I just, I think the hard part that I have right now is that you're seeing a lot of Democrats try to appease, right? And I just think that the way that you win in election in the year of our Lord 2026 is to say what you're for and be more compelling about what you're for than they are. Because right now, that guy came to power. talking about the pain that people were feeling and about how he was going to build an economy that got us past inflation and major life affordable again. And when I talk to people up and down

my state across the 70 cities I've been to, they're not feeling any better about things. If anything, they're feeling worth. This chaotic system of tariffs that he is created so that he could bend corporations to his whim is about enriching him and his family. This weaponization of ice against the entire constitution is about enriching and empowering him. And so we've got to be able to call a spade a spade. And you've got a lot of folks out here being like, well, maybe you shouldn't just call it what it is. And you're like, y'all, I think everybody's just been waiting for folks to just say the obvious

thing and say it with some courage. And so look, you know, a lot of folks are out here like, you shouldn't say a ball of ice. I'm like, really? When that agency shot a white lady in the face with the idea that somehow their whole purpose is to protect white ladies like her from. Brown people. Yeah.

Like, tell me why we shouldn't call this out in the starkest, most obvious, most direct, most specific and most passionate way. Like, tell me why that's not what we should do, except for that you all are afraid. And fear is exactly what a narcissist will weaponize against you. It's fear. Once you decide, you're like, I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid of you. I'm not afraid of what you're going to do.

I'm going to keep saying what I say. You can do whatever the fuck you want to do. I am not afraid. Once you do that, that becomes content. You know, I mean, like, hats off to Jerome Powell. Who knew that he was like the monochum of courage that we had in Washington, D.C. He just went right up there and been like, here's what this is about. Yeah.

And all of a sudden, guess what happens? Everybody around Donald Trump folds. Yeah. Because guess what? The thing about narcissism is it's fragile. Once people know they can get away with shit, they keep getting away with him. And we've seen that play out time and time again. In fact, when ABC News capitulated to Trump early on,

They thought that that would buy them space. And in fact, all that did was tell Donald Trump that they're weak, that they can be owned. And so what did he do? He did it again and again and again. And when CBS comes out and says, look, we're weak too. We're willing to capitulate too. Continues to trash them over and over again. It doesn't buy you anything.

Like, these people think that if they can confer some goodwill onto the other side, that Donald Trump will be a good, a good, like, transactional partner, transactionality only goes one way with Trump. Loyalty only goes one way with Trump. And so when they engage in this whole process, thinking that they've bought themselves time, thinking that they've bought themselves space, all they've done is shown him that they're just like,

you know, that they're a bloody fish in the water at this point. And he's going to come and kill him. And that's what he's done over and over again. It'd be like, there's a mosquito. You're like, listen, just bite me this one time and go away. Yeah. That's not how it works. No.

And he's, and that, and that he will never not be a mosquito. No. And he was going to suck the blood out of whatever he possibly can. And he's insatiable. That's the thing about it. He's insatiable. So, you know, this idea that somehow he'll just look past me now, we've got to stop doing that. Yeah.

And as a party, if we're serious about the future, you've got to be able to stand up to him and look past him. Right? That's the thing is you've got to both be able to stand up to him and look past him and remind people that there is an after Trump. You've got to make him small. And that's, you know, I think sometimes, you know, obviously I grew up with a name like mine and I learned the hard way that if you let somebody take your lunch money, you're never going to eat lunch.

So I remember the first day of school, let some kid take my lunch money. We moved and the next time we moved, I told my dad, I was like, I'm going to get sent home today. He's like, what do you mean? I was like, I'm just going to get sent home today. I just know how this is going to play out, right? First kid who stepped to me, I was like, I am going to beat you mercilessly as a message to everybody else.

I'm not here to fight. But if you want to step to me, I'm so sorry. like that's going to be the last fight you've ever had. And at that point, you're like, okay, once you all figured out, that like, I'm going to fight back. And if you pick on me, I'm going to pick on you harder. We've got to develop a sort of willingness to bully bullies. And the hard part about it is Democrats.

It's like, you know, sometimes high school drama is the best way to understand these political dynamics. Like, Democrats are like the cool kids, right? And the cool kids at the end of the day, when the bully comes, they don't really know how to fight and everybody else kind of looks at them and says serves you right because you guys have been bullying by exclusion for a very long time

and I think we've got to have a dynamic at this point that just says nope, nope, nope, nope, like we're not going to start the fight but we're going to end it and we're going to stop excluding all of these folks right because I hate to say it the top of the Democratic Party plays a similar game by different means

and I just think that system has got to end because there are too many people suffering on the wrong end of a system that is allowing Donald Trump and people who are sucking up to Donald Trump to take more and more away from everyday people. And that's what we see up and down our state. It's what we're seeing up and down the country. What happened to the kid? What'd you do to the kid?

I'm trying to find out if an 11 year old got his ass beat. 11 year old got his ass beat. I got sent home early. My dad asked me what happened. I was like the predictable situation of my name is Abdul. And, you know, at the end of the day, honestly, like, that kid never stepped to me again. In fact, he'd like cut a wide berth, and I didn't have to fight again for the rest of the year. And nobody else ever questioned me about my name, not once.

That's how it goes. So while I have you, I think it's important to talk about your background. You're an epidemiologist. You're a physician. What else am I forgetting here before we jump into the medical stuff? You got it. No, look. You're also a Rhodes Scholar.

I did a lot of school. Spent way too much time in school. So I want to talk about Medicare for all for a moment. And I've spoken to Senator Sanders about them. I have been advocating for this for as long as I've been doing political media, but it always, I mean, except for a small moment in the 2020 primary where you had a few candidates who, you know, wanted it, a few who didn't. And it became like this lightning rod issue where, you know, the progressives were down for Medicare for all, universal health care, single payer health care. The moderates weren't. And if you've got, you know, half or a third of the Democratic Party that wants it and half or two thirds of the Democratic Party who don't and then 100% of the Republican,

party who doesn't, it's, you know, it's kind of DOA. But I feel like we're in a different world now where we don't look at these issues through the same lens as we did before, where the sacrosanctity of the status quo and the system as it stands doesn't exist in the way that it used to. And we've seen that because they're not standing up to Trump. And so we don't have to, you know, think that these, that everything is immovable because Trump is is tearing everything down. And so there will come a world where we have to build. it back up, but do we build it back up in the exact same way that we did or do we build it up in a way that is more just and brings more people into the process?

And so first and foremost, I understand that when people think about Medicare for all, it still feels like it's sorted into the very progressive camp. But from the folks that you've spoken with who are not necessarily super far left, does it feel like this is a moment where there's actually an embrace of something like Medicare for all? You know, once you get past the left-right framing that all of us try to put our politics into, and you actually go out into communities across the country, and I've been doing this up and down my state,

you realize that most folks don't really ask whether or not this is too progressive for me. They're asking, does this actually solve a problem I really have? And even when you go back to the passing of the ACA, which was a really important moment in expanding health care for people. I don't want to take that away from the history of our country. President Obama called it a starter home.

And we have since outgrown the starter home. And to me, the big failure, right, that we kind of knew existed inside the starter home. The reason we were going to outgrow it someday is that it relied on a profit-motivated health insurance industry to provide the bulk of the American public health care. And when you have profit-motivated insurance and profit-motivated healthcare providers at some point, all that profit comes from somewhere, which is your and my backpocket. And we've now come to a place where that has become unsustainable.

And we consistently have to patch with subsidy after subsidy to make the system sustainable and to work. And so to your point, in an era where Donald Trump has now stripped that edifice back because he could care less about whether or not people in this country can actually afford their health care, we're now in a moment. we're now in a moment where we have to ask, okay, if the starter home wasn't working and they're breaking it down, what do we really need to build? Yeah. Medicare for All is not government health care. Medicare for All is guaranteed baseline government health insurance. If you like your insurance from your employer or from your union, that can still be there

for you. But if you lose your job or your factory shuts down, you shouldn't be destitute without health care. You should be able to get the health care you need and deserve without having to worry about a premium, a co-pay, or deductible. That's not a crazy idea. And it would solve some of the biggest problems in health care. Number one, you could guarantee every single person the health care they need and deserve. Number two, our health care costs are growing at an unsustainable rate. And when you have Medicare providing the bulk of health care for the public, it can start to negotiate down prices or at least keep them from growing at the speed that they're going.

they've been growing. And that's why it's called single payer, because instead of individuals negotiating on their own behalf, which of course you have no economies of scale, you're not able to negotiate anything well. Now you've got the government negotiating on behalf of 350 million people if you can bring the price down, just like every other industrialized country in the world is able to do. I mean, this is not some novel theory. Like, this is what Canada does. This is what France does. This is what Western Europe does. And we all have this like Stockholm syndrome that we think we have the best health care in the world because the health insurance companies

who don't want us to touch a thing keep telling us we have the best health insurance in the world. And here's the problem with it, right? Like in Stockholm, they actually have good health care. But like our Stockholm syndrome, to get the average wait time to see a cardiologist, which by the way, nobody is told to see sometime in the future. Like when you need to see a cardiologist, you need to say cardiologist.

Right. You're not sitting here in January and saying like, hey, I'd love to see a cardiologist in October. Exactly. Two and a half months. That's the weight time. in our country. Like my wife and I are both doctors. Okay. And when we need to use our health care, you know what we do? We always just call up friends. I literally like, I had this issue. I thought I had a stress fracture in my foot. And I was like, okay, well, how would I actually manage this? I guess I'd have to go to my portal, send a message to my doctor, and then tell them what I was feeling and then wait until

they booked me for a visit to tell me that I needed an x-ray and MRI to then tell me that. So I was just like, I just texted my friend. I was like, hey, but I have the privilege of having doctor friends. That's not a thing most people have. Yeah. And this is the challenge in this country. Like when everyone's trying to figure out how to end around the healthcare system, you know it's freaking broken.

Yeah. All of that goes back to health insurance. So even on the doctor front, right, a lot of folks are like, well, doctors are making good money. No. What's happened is you have health insurers and hospitals. and clinics who have been able to use each other to consolidate in the system. Hospitals buying up hospitals, health insurance, buying up health insurance.

And all of the money in the system gets sucked up at the top. So if you actually look at the increase in physician or nurse pay, it's only gone up like 25% over the last 20 some years. Both my parents are registered nurses. So I've seen it. And I've heard every complaint in the world about how the hospitals are run, about how the system is run, about like, you have never seen a more disillusioned perspective about health care than when you've spoken to, you know, nurses.

I've had to walk picket lines with nurses at three hospitals in Michigan in the last year alone. And you know why? Because what will happen is a different hospital system will buy up the local hospital. And then because they basically all own all the local hospitals in the area, they suppress contracts for nurses because they know the nurses can't go anywhere else. And so they're able to suppress their wages

and worse, give them unsafe staffing ratios to have far too few nurses managing far too many patients, which becomes a risk to the patients. And that's the thing people don't get. Like, when you have this kind of scenario, you yourself as a patient assume that the hospital is operating in your best interest,

but when they're not hiring enough nurses to take care of you, guess what happens? They're not. They're not operating your best interest. And all why? So they can make more money. Right. And it happens in this collusion, this evil collusion between health insurance and hospital. So all I'm saying is, instead of having a profit motive on the health insurance and the hospital side, maybe we can just guarantee everybody health care via the federal government, which, by the way, we do for people when they get sicker anyway after they turn 65 through Medicare.

And that's the most popular program we have in this country. He's got 80% support in this country. And here's the crazy thing. If you actually look at where the money for health care comes from, 60% of medical billing comes from the federal government anyway, either through Medicaid or Medicare. So we already have a government health system. We've just created a system where private health insurance

can profit off of providing insurance to people when they're their healthiest. And they don't want to do it, you know, when they get sicker. They've created these advantage programs where they'll take Medicare dollars, pocket them, and then use prior authorization to gatekeep seniors from their health care. They do that. But the whole thing's a money grab, right? And so we don't need private health insurance.

If people want private health insurance, great. But you shouldn't have to rely on it because it's fundamentally unstable. And it's created this tiered system that creates challenges for people when they actually just want to get the care that they need. Yeah. And by the way, I lived in France for a couple years after college. And they have, they have socialized health care, but then they also have a private offering. They call it a mutual, but it would be the same thing. I mean, you can buy extra health coverage if you want it, but otherwise everybody's covered.

I remember I have two herniated discs in my spine. It's a long, long time wrestling injury. And so I needed, I did like electric stim and like deep tissue massage and whatever just to like keep me in one piece. But I remember finding a doctor in France who did that for, you know, sports. medicine and whatnot. And I remember going and asking how much, how much it would cost. And they, and everything gets, gets reimbursed if you lay money out. And they said it would cost like, would cost like two euros and 80 cents. And I was like two euros and 80 cents. And they were like, but you'll get it back. And she thought I was upset that I was going to have to lay out

the money. She thought I was upset that I was going to have to like pay two euros and 80 cents and not that I was expecting her to say that it was going to cost like $275, you know. So we'll have to live this way. Yeah. And then the funny thing about it, right, is that the idea that you would want to do something similar to somebody in a different country is somehow so terrible.

But here's the thing about it, right? It's crazy to me, right? Every country in the world has a military. Some militaries run better than other militaries. But nobody's like, well, that country has a poor run military, so our military is going to be trashed too. You never hear that argument. So my point is, look, we're the United States of America.

we have never settled for less than the best, except for when it comes to health care. We're okay with middling to, I mean, complete shit, infant mortality rates. There are communities in America, where I worked in the city of Detroit, where infant mortality rates are similar to where my family immigrated from in Egypt. And we seem to be okay with this. We don't have to live like this. We don't have to live like this.

There is no reason why. We cannot build the best healthcare system in the world. And right now, if you have money, you can have some of the best health care in the world. But if your middle income, if you're middle class in this country, you are getting health care that is way too expensive for far less care that smacks you on the back end. It's the reason we have $225 billion of medical debt in this country, which is higher than the GDP of half of the United States. and like we seem to be okay with this, we don't have to live this way. I would add too, the rest of the world

imitates the United States at every opportunity they can. Like, again, I lived overseas. I know the extent to which our culture, our culture is exported and everybody else imports it. Everybody wants to see what's happening in our movies, our TV shows,

our music, our clothing, all of it, our dancing, like everything gets exported from the United States, imported into foreign countries. There is a reason that give even despite that mentality, nobody wants to touch our health care system, that nobody goes near the American health care system. We are the envy of no country in the world when it comes to health care. And for a world so so groomed into adopting American culture, the fact that nobody wants to touch our health care system is a testament to the fact that it is so broken and doesn't work for anybody. No, and Brian, like here's a crazy thing.

Like we are sending billions of our dollars abroad to fund genocide and war abroad. We just spent a billion dollars to depose a foreign head of state, $185 billion ice budget, which just to understand this, you could eliminate the medical debt in this country for somewhere between $3 billion to like $10 billion. It would be a drop in the bucket relative to the ice budget, and we are not doing it. That is our money. That's taxpayer dollars that we pay to the federal government

so that we can weaponize a bunch of folks who were sitting in their mom's basement and playing Grand Theft Auto like five weeks ago. Right. Now they want to cause plan of soldiers by terrorizing people on the streets. Spending our money. When you got people who are wallowing away medical debt, going without the health care that they need and deserve

in the richest most powerful country of the world. All of it. Almost all of it. It goes back to decisions that get made because corporations get to buy and sell our politicians rather than being accountable to everyday people. And we don't have to live this way anymore. We really don't have to.

We could make different choices. And I'm just saying that it is time for us to have an honest, direct conversation with the American public about what it looks like to actually start making different decisions. Perfect place to leave off. For folks who are watching this right now or listening right now who want to help your campaign,

where can they go? Abdul-S-S-S-E-L-S-S-Y-E-D. follow us on socials, Abdul-E-L-S-A-D. Frankly, if you just look up Abdul and Senate, I'm the only Abdul-Ru-Ru-Ru-Ru-Ru-Sat. Kind of anywhere. So I hope folks will check us out. Brian, thank you so much for having us. This was awesome. It's great to just have this conversation face-to-face. Well, thanks for coming. And thank you for the work you do. I'm joined now by the Attorney General of California, Rob Bonta. Thanks for joining me again. Great to be with you again. So you have a major announcement here as far as a new lawsuit against one of Elon Musk's

companies is concerned. Can you explain what that lawsuit is? Absolutely, Brian. Today we announced the launch of an investigation into XAI for allowing GROC to generate non-consensual, sexually explicit images of women and children. And it is shocking. This has happened in full view of the public on the X platform over the last few weeks. And it is disgusting and very possibly illegal. We are launching an investigation to get our arms around the facts. There are multiple laws in the state of California that restrict and limit the ability of platforms and entities to create sexually explicit, non-consensual images just like this. And we will go where the facts and the law take us. But I am very concerned.

We are very disturbed about what we've seen. And so we wanted to let the public know that we are on the case. We are investigating. and if appropriate and necessary, we will take action to hold Elon Musk and XAI accountable. So I presume that there's going to be some defense as far as Elon Musk is concerned, that all of this is kind of an emerging technology and that you can't really predict what's going to happen, you know, what this technology could do until it actually does it. But what might undermine that is if this stuff was happening and it wasn't taken care of

after it's already been revealed, that it was happening. So has that been the case or is this all just kind of new? This, if Elon Musk and XAI say that, they'd be wrong. This is not a bug. This is not a failure of existing safeguards. This is the feature. This is a design. This is intentional, deliberate, a purposeful provision of the ability of GROC to create

these images. And other AI companies have put guard. rail zone to prevent exactly this from happening. It can be done. It should be done. And XAI has not done it. And even after the public outrage, the outcry that has occurred, the grot continues to allow the creation of these images. It's been put behind a paywall with something called spicy mode. now you have to pay to create these sexually explicit non-consensual images, but you can still create it. And that's by design as well. So Elon Musk and XAI have made their choice, and they are allowing this to happen, despite what the law says.

And we're going to dig deep and look close. And if we find that they're breaking the law, whether it be civil laws or criminal laws, we're going to take action. I know that there are some laws regarding revenge porn, for example, are there any existing laws, or I guess what is this lawsuit going to be predicated on? Is there some existing law that you're going to lean on in your lawsuit against XAI for creating these explicit or non-consensual sexual images? There are multiple laws that exist in the state of California. Three in particular that have been created by the California legislature just recently

as AI has begun to proliferate. And we have seen what is possible in terms of what AI can create with deep fakes and images like this that quote unquote undress children and women and put them in in different sexually explicit situations. And so AI generated images like these are prohibited in California by at least three laws that we that our research has has revealed prohibit these types of images. And there's always been and continue to be criminal laws on the books that prohibit child pornography and certain types of child sexually abusive material, CSAM. So there are laws already in place. And we will be measuring the behavior against those laws to see if they violate what those laws prohibit.

I know that it's not really your job to try and get into Elon Musk's head, but why do you presume that Elon Musk seems so reticent to actually comply with this law and to take the same precautions that other AI companies have taken, you know, far from that, to your exact point, he's actually monetizing it, putting spicy mode behind a paywall so that he can continue this abusive practice, but now make money from it. Hard to get into that head. He's always sort of exhibited an irreverence. He has claimed a commitment to sort of pure free speech, as he calls at First Amendment, although speech can certainly be and should be regulated with appropriate time, place, and manner restrictions, as has the U.S. Supreme Court has said.

I think that it's safe to say that limits on free speech are roughly where child pornography comes into play. That's right. And this is just like, if you use your common sense here and apply it, you know, no matter what you claim you are, you know, this should be nonpartisan, this should be bipartisan, this should be everybody saying, we shouldn't have non-consensual, sexually explicit images of children in the public domain. That should be an easy one or of women that allow women and children to be abused, harassed, mistreated. And, you know, this is a no-brainer.

It's common sense. So hard to know what's in his head, but what should be in his head is that we should not have these images and they should not be on XAI generated by GROC. And last question on this point. What kind of damages are you seeking? What would be the consequences for XAI if you're successful in this lawsuit? There's a set of different remedies that we might be able to secure here. One would be what we call injunctive relief, a court order stopping the behavior going forward,

stopping GROC from generating these non-consensual, sexually explicit images of women and children, you know, ending the practice, ending the conduct. That would be one. There's also civil penalties that we could secure $25,000 per violation. and just to get a sense of how many potential violations there might be, between Christmas and New Year's, there were 20,000, it's estimated images of this type generated on X. So a lot of potential violations.

And then finally, there could be criminal liability, in which case the corporation would be held accountable. We'd have to see if any individuals would as well. But usually when a corporation is held accountable, there are criminal fines and criminal penalties. All right. I want to switch gears here for just a quick moment because we had a judge hand down a ruling in federal court in California regarding their effort, you know, at the hands of the DOJ,

at Trump's DOJ, to undermine the maps that are going to be on the ballot for Prop 50. Can you explain a little bit of your reaction to that court ruling? Yes, we're very, very gratified with the court's ruling today. A three-judge federal panel upheld the maps that the people of California created by voting overwhelmingly for Proposition 50. This is exactly what was expected. No surprise. I saw the complaint come in. I closely monitored the evidentiary hearing, multi-day evidentiary hearing on the plaintiff's motion for Plenary Injunction, and I always thought we'd win, and we've won. The plaintiffs have argued that the maps were based on racial gerrymandering.

They're wrong. They are based, they are partisan. redistricted maps. And that is completely lawful, completely illegal. They were created in response to Texas's redistricting. And that's exactly what the proposition said that was put before the voters, that this is a partisan redistricting of maps. And that's what the court found as well. Appropriately so. So we're gratified by the win. It's no surprise, but gratifying nonetheless. You know, if I'm not mistaken, this is the Republican's sixth attempt to try and undermine these maps. two of which went to a judge in Texas that was Judge Matthew Casmeric, who's like one of the most pro-Trump judges in the entire state of Texas.

Even he not only said no, but then threatened sanctions because the lawsuit was so frivolous. And so do you presume that we've seen the last of the litigation at the hands of these Republicans to try and undermine these maps? I don't think it would be wise to presume that. I mean, they're working overtime. They're stretching. They're reaching. You know, it seems like the more baseless and merit.

list the better for them. I'm sure they're willing to lose a seventh time and eighth time, and they will. We've beat them back six separate times. And every time they think they've found something or have some argument and they claim they're on the verge of victory and striking down these maps, it's ridiculous. You know, this is about facts and law going into a court, showing the receipts, showing your case, and they got nothing. And we continue to reveal that they have nothing. and we continue to beat them in court. So based on their past behavior, I'm not certain that this is over,

but so be it, we'll beat them again, if necessary. Presumably, they would always start with their best lawsuit, their strongest lawsuit. And so does the fact that we're now six lawsuits in, does that suggest that if we were to see a seventh, that it would be weaker than all of the prior lawsuits that have not only been brought, but that have been struck down in court?

I think that's fair. although I will say, you know, they were just kind of throwing everything against the wall. I think they were all, you know, very weak. So it's just kind of different shades of weakness and meritlessness and baselessness and baselessness. And maybe they come up with some other cockamini theory that baseless and meritless as well wouldn't be, wouldn't put it past them. It's not beyond them. I think it's an irresponsible use of the court system in a lawsuit. But if they wish to do it, they may.

and we will beat them. You know, this lawsuit happened at the hands of the DOJ, which claim that there shouldn't be any racial gerrymandering. Is there no irony in the fact that they've just gotten done asking the state of Texas to gerrymander racially so that they could get five seats for themselves? Trump came out and said, I'm entitled to five seats. They obviously racially gerrymandered those five seats.

So, you know, they're kind of speaking out of both sides of their mouth here where they claim that it's good when it benefits them in Texas, but bad when it doesn't redound to their... advantage in California. Yeah, ironic, hypocritical, you know, unprincipled. You can use a bunch of other words, whatever you want to call it. But they start with the outcome that they want based on their desire to seize power and have, you know, whatever power that they seek.

And then they back into some cockamini theory or logic. And they'll say one thing one day and something else the next day, depending on if it suits them and suits their desire for power. And you've pointed out a really key hypocrisy. Not the only one, unfortunately, but I think you really make the case there. Well, look, I think maybe they're hoping they'll have more luck when they carve up the maps in Venezuela or Greenland or whatever other territory they're seeking to, they're seeking to usurp and annex. With that said, thank you. Thank you, Attorney General Bonta. I appreciate your time today. Really great to see you again, Brian.

Always a pleasure to be with you. Thank you. Thanks again to Jamie Raskin, Jared Moskowitz, Abdul Al-Sayed, and Rob Banta. That's it for this episode. Talk to you Wednesday. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber,

music by Wellesie, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating and a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to Briantellercoen.com to learn more.

Thank you.