No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Supreme Court deals fresh blow to Democrats

Episode Date: May 17, 2026

The Supreme Court makes another brazen move in favor of the Republicans. Brian interviews Tennessee state representative Justin Jones about the return of Jim Crow politics to the South, Pod Save America co-host Tommy Vietor about Trump’s secret death note, and legal analyst Adam Klasfeld about Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS.Pre-order The Day After: https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/thedayafter Support Adam Klasfeld: www.allrisenews.comSubscribe to Pod Save AmericaWritten 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.

The Supreme Court makes another brazen move in favor of the Republicans. And I've got three interviews. Tennessee state representative Justin Joan discusses the return of Jim Crow politics to the south. Pilates of America co-host Tommy Vitor talks about Trump's secret death note. And legal analyst Adam Classfeld discusses Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. There was one last avenue that Democrats could employ to get the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court, blocking the referendum redrawing the maps from going into effect.

The argument was that the Supreme Court should issue an emergency stay to allow the new maps to go into effect immediately while court proceedings continue to avoid irreparable harm. This is from the filing. Quote, The irreparable harm resulting from the Supreme Court of Virginia's decision is profound and immediate by forcing the Commonwealth to conduct its congressional elections using districts different from those adopted by the General Assembly, pursuant to a constitutional amendment that people just ratified, the Supreme Court of Virginia has deprived vote.

voters, candidates and the Commonwealth of their right to the lawfully enacted congressional districts. And now we've got new news from the U.S. Supreme Court. They've officially rejected the Democrats' effort to issue a stay in the Virginia Supreme Court's ruling, which means the left has officially exhausted all legal avenues. So the decision not to allow the new maps will stand, at least for this cycle. I don't have any doubt that it will be sorted for 2028, but for this cycle, Democrats have to compete with the existing maps. Now, I should note that Republicans currently occupy two congressional seats that Kamala Harris won in 2024 and a third seat that she just barely lost.

So if Democrats overperform this cycle, which obviously they're expected to do, I do think that there's a world where Democrats flip three seats in Virginia anyway, even without the new maps in place. And I actually spoke about this Scotus ruling even before it came down and basically predicted this would happen. This is from two weeks ago on CNN. Do you think the United States Supreme Court, which has supported Texas? is right to do this and has supported California's right to do this will support Virginia's right to do redistricting. You think they might overturn this? No, I think that this Supreme Court has proven itself to be an arm of the Republican Party, if nothing else. And we have seen numerous instances where, whether it's this U.S. Supreme Court, where you had a bunch of justices,

beat their chest about the importance of precedent and the Voting Rights Act, which is, you know, that precedent has been reaffirmed over and over and over again for the the past 60 years, just like Roe was precedent that was reaffirmed over and over again, the Supreme Court stands for its own adherence to the Republican Party. And in fact, the Supreme Court's hackery has been on full display. I don't think anything makes me more irate than the fact that the Supreme Court told Alabama voters that even though they were using gerrymandered maps, illegally gerrymandered maps in 2022, four months was far too close to an election to make any changes.

And then the Supreme Court told Texas voters that even though this, they were using illegally gerrymandered maps in 2025, four months was again, far too close to an election to make any changes. But this year, when they struck down the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana, even though 100,000 people had already voted in an ongoing election, the Supreme Court not only allowed that map to be struck down, but they expedited their own ruling, their own process to make it happen. There is no consistency other than their allegiance to Republicans. That's it. So look, I know that when we're talking about the Supreme Court, it is all but impossible to feel hopeless because of how stacked the deck is against the left.

But I actually think that this is useful. The hypocrisy is so obvious that I think it's a good motivator, a good motivator for elected Democrats and states they control New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Colorado, Illinois, Washington, Oregon to redraw their maps recognizing that they are contending with an opponent that is power hungry and shameless. And it's a good motivator for Americans who can see that shamelessness written on the wall. For as apathetic as Americans generally are when it comes to elections, one consistent theme is that they show up when the other side tries to rig the rules of the game in their favor. And that's very clearly what's happening here. So don't despair. Use this

to motivate you to ensure that we're never in this position again. Next up are my interviews with Justin Jones, Tommy Vitor, and Adam Klassfeld. No Lie is brought to you by Zbiotics pre-alcohol. So I have to tell you about this game-changing product that I use before a night out with drinks. It's called pre-alcohol. Zbiotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. So here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut.

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Tennessee has become ground zero with Republicans trying to eliminate all black representation in the deep south in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's Voting Rights Act decision. Joining me now is Democratic member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, Justin Jones. Justin, can I have your reaction first and foremost to this latest move by Republicans in your state to eliminate what was left of the congressional districts that favored Democrats? You know, Ryan, when I walked in the Capitol last Thursday, it was 26. when I walked off the House floor, it was pre-1965. What we are seeing is the largest coordinated assault on black political power in the South since the end of reconstruction. You know, it was done with surgical precision. Donald Trump called the governor and demanded that we have a special session.

A couple days later, we were back here in the General Assembly for session, had less than 24 hours to look at a map and was voted on the next morning on the House floor. And so this has been rushed through all in service to the white supremacist's agenda of Donald Trump. and his allies who are so intent on keeping control of black and brown communities at any cost, even when they know that their policies are unpopular and that they're not going to win this election cycle fairly. You know, these people obviously are familiar with Tennessee and the South more broadly their history. And so is there any shame when you speak to these people recognizing that they know full well what they're doing, that this is just basically a redux of pre-1965 America?

Like, is there, is there any, do these people look you in the eye? I'm just trying to get a sense of, of how they feel while they're doing what it is that they're doing. I mean, these are folks who are drunk with power. And, you know, one thing that came out yesterday that I just think shows how blatant it is, is that we were under the impression that every Democrat was being stripped of the committee. The Speaker of the House stripped everyone except the white men. in our caucus. And so every black member, every woman was stripped of committee, but the white men

in the Democratic caucus got to keep their committees. We found out last night. And so it just shows who, you know, is dehumanized in spaces like this. These are folks who were laughing as they were passing these racist maps, laughing at the people who were coming, expressing their grief, their frustration at the process and the taking away of their representation. And these are folks who, you know, traffic in the politics of racism. You know, one of the members who voted for this is Representative Paul Scherl, who just a couple years ago joked about bringing back hanging by tree. You know, these are folks who use racial slurs. I've been called Boyd multiple times as a colleague in this building. You know, they think that we are back in the 1960s and they are very clear about

that. And now this policy agenda is bringing us backwards to that time in which we don't have equal representation in our democratic process in which, you know, we may not even have black lawmakers at the federal level ever again as long as these type of racist Supreme Court decisions stand in the South because we're not just seeing it in Tennessee, but Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, there's an assault war being waged against black folks in the South, and it's a civil war, and we must call it for what it is. It's a Jim Crow agenda being led by these white supremacists who wear suits and, you know, have decorum, but their actions are violence against communities of color, and its political violence in terms of taking away

our voice in our democracy. I completely agree. And so recognizing the fact that these Republicans will stop at nothing, that efforts to compromise with them will garner us nothing, that they had this idea where they wanted to enact their 60-year plan to overturn the Voting Rights Act, and they're actually doing it right now. And it would only be foolish to think that anything that the left does is going to, like, to cooperate with them or compromise with them is going to stop them in any way. What should the left do to counteract what we're seeing right now? Like, you know, you know, you amid all of this, amid all of these actions, what steps need to be taken now to kind of write this ship?

I mean, you know, this is a moment to do things out of the ordinary. You know, when I walked off the House floor, I burned a Confederate flag outside the House chamber to draw attention to the need for urgency and moral clarity in this moment. We are facing folks who are trying to bring us back into the Confederacy. You know, I felt like I was at a Capitol Clan rally. These are not folks who are playing by normal rules and procedures. These are folks who want control by any means necessary.

And so we need folks across this nation, states to respond in kind. We need to treat this with the proportionate response that it requires, you know, to remove them from their offices with new maps, you know, in states that can do it in New Jersey, New York. But I don't want to just make this a partisan thing because I think that's what these Republicans are trying to do. What we're seeing is racial gerrymandering in the South because they're saying, well, this is just partisan tit for tat. we're doing it because you did it, but know what they're doing in the South is racial gerrymandering. Memphis, Tennessee, a 51% black community has now been gerrymandered where they're connected to a district 300 miles away diluting the black vote, diluting their representation.

In my community here, Nashville, you drive 30 minutes from one crispy cream in Nashville to one on the outskirts of Nashville, just 30 minutes. You pass through five congressional districts. That's how insane these maps are just to visualize it. And so these are racial gerrymanders. This is racial backlash. You have folks who are now saying that we want to go after the 14th Amendment. You have folks who are saying that, you know, this is what they've been waiting for to dismantle the Voting Rights Act since 1965 because they thought it was racist against white people.

I mean, this is the absurdity that we're hearing here. And just to be clear, when they created the maps in Tennessee, the Speaker of the House said, there's no race involved. We just use census data. And so it's partisan. But, Brian, if you know census data, census does not say what party you are, but it does say what race you are. These were racially drawn maps done by racist, you know, folks who have surgical precision to silence and carve out the voices of black and brown. communities in the South. I was on News Nation about a week or two ago, and I was debating with the host, Katie Pavlich,

and her talking point on this, when I brought up the fact that Tennessee has been gerrymandered within an inch of its life and that the voting power for black and brown communities in Nashville, in Memphis, has been completely cracked into multiple district, completely diluted, was that the South has been desegregated as the result of this voting rights act. decision. And so what would your response be to these Republicans and right-winger who suggest that this Supreme Court decision was actually desegregation and not segregation? I mean, it's absurd. It's absurd in a moment. In my state in Tennessee, one in five black Tennesseans cannot vote because a felony disenfranchisement. In my state, we are seeing a resegregation of our schools

because we're defunding our public education system to give white, wealthy kids, vouchers, coupons to go to private school. I mean, we are seeing a resegregation of our, of, you know, this, this resurgence of the southern aristocracy. all in service to an agenda that is fearful that America is becoming more diverse and multiracial. You know, what this decision did, Brian, was create all nine districts in Tennessee are now majority white. Even though black people are over 20% of the population and black and brown people together are over 25% of the population, every one of Tennessee's nine congressional districts are now majority white. They've created majority white districts in our state like we've seen back

before the 1965 Voting Rights Act diluting minority voting power, diluting our voice in the political process and it was done intentionally. And what the consequence is going to be is that we've seen this in Nashville. We have congressmen who live over, you know, an hour or two hours away, have no offices here. And so our constituents don't have services. They don't have support at the federal level. They're calling our state offices trying to get support because they cannot reach anybody at the federal level because they don't even see us as worthy of being, you know, responded to. And so we are treated like we're a colony essentially without, you know, having a voice in our democratic process.

And it's being done, again, across the South to bring us back two times we don't want to go to. That's, you know, when they say they want to take this nation back, they're literally taking us back to pre-1965. And they're not going to stop there. And that's what the message to the nation is that, you know, if we don't fight this in the South, you know, they're going to wage, they're waging a battle against multiracial democracy all across this nation. And so we're the canary in the coal mine.

When you said that you burned a Confederate flag, what was the reaction? Did you encounter any anyone else? the state legislature? I mean, I know that some of my colleagues are calling on for me to be arrested. You know, they've said that it's arson, even though it was a, you know, it was a flag that was burned and nothing else. You know, to me, it's very telling that these racists who I work with, who call themselves representatives are more offended by the burning of a Confederate flag than they are about the burning

down of our democracy. I think that that shows us where their loyalties are and where their concern is. You know, these people are literally creating our arsonists for democracy. They're burning the democratic process, burning. through all the protections that we have and spitting on the graves of our martyrs, people like Vylolozo and Jimmy Lee Jackson, Medgar Evers, who literally were murdered and killed, you know, fighting for things like the voting rights, like the crown jewel, the civil rights movement. And so this is who these folks are.

And they're unapologetic. Their masks are off, or better yet, I should say, the white hoods are off and they're showing us exactly who they are. You had mentioned before the Democrats need to respond in kind. What would your message be to those states that have had the opportunity to, to move and yet haven't yet. And then more broadly, just your message to state legislators and governors across the country where right now Democrats do have the majority, perhaps not the ability to redraw maps for 2026, but as we move toward 2028, where frankly, we haven't

seen much movement. I mean, yes, we got a map redrawn California to neutralize what happened in Texas. Cudos to the folks in Virginia and shame on the Virginia Supreme Court. But we have other weapons right now that could be wielded. New Jersey, New York, Maryland, where Bill Ferguson is blocking the effort, Illinois, Colorado, Washington, Oregon. And other than those two states that I mentioned at the top, we haven't seen any movement at the same time that we're seeing movement from the Republicans in Florida, in Texas, in Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, Ohio. And so there is a pretty big asymmetry here

in how the two different parties are wielding power in this case. You know, we still have Democrats who are acting like this is early 2000s politics. You know, that world of normalcy of our politics is gone. You know, we are in the midst of, we have to say that this is a war. It's a war for the future of our democracy.

And the South is a front line in that battle. And so, you know, I would say to the governors and to the lawmakers in those states, that this is a moment to put our morals above our manners. You know, what is moral is to act, not just for us, but for generations who are counting on us what we do in this moment. I think we're going to be judged not by what we do, but by what we don't do. And so I would err on the side of action, err on the side of doing something, because come a couple years and our democracy has crumbled, and we're back in a re-segregated America, people are going to be looking at who

did not act. And so I would encourage the states of New York, of Illinois, of Washington, of Oregon, to take action. And if you need us to come. from the South and tell you what the stakes are, I'm happy to do that. I was just in Sacramento this week, and I came from the South to Sacramento to lift up what's going on here because people, I think they don't understand the stakes of what we're fighting right now and the ancestral trauma that's coming up as we're dismantling black voting power and how it's going to spread across this nation like a cancer. And so I think that we need, you know, our democracy requires a disruption sometimes. We need folks to disrupt the normalcy, the business as usual to do something bold and to do

something, you know, that is proportionate to the opponents we face and the battle that we face, because they're being, you know, they are ruthless and they're hold for control. And we're still trying to make friends with folks who are literally aligning themselves with authoritarianism and can care less about us and the people we represent. Justin, in your conversations with folks who were around pre-Civil Rights Act, pre-1965, how do they maintain the strength to keep going, recognizing, the extent to which we have we have slid back. Like these people have been there before.

I think I think for for younger folks, black or white, as long as they're on the side of democracy, like we obviously all see kind of the inequity and the horror of what's happening right now, but it's new for a lot of us. And I think, you know, for people who've seen this before, there's got to be a certain degree of trauma that I think people who weren't around prior to the Civil Rights Act kind of shoulder onto themselves.

And so what have those conversations with folks been like? Yeah. You know, I was just talking to Ms. Diane Nash. She was one of the leaders and organizers in Selma in 1965. And today's actually her birthday, 88. And I was talking to her about what this moment means in our history. You know, they gave their life's work. And she said, you know, her friends gave their lives, pushing things like the Voting Rights Act.

and to see this president, the Supreme Court, spitting on that work, spitting on those graves, I think there is a trauma being resurrected because, you know, these are things that we, it hasn't even been 60 years. And already, though, the gains that we thought were one are being dismantled. And I think the lesson in this is that if you study things like reconstruction, there's a moment where you had multiracial democracy in the South. You had black lawmakers. And then you had this white backlash at the end of 1800s. And you didn't have black legislators in the South until 1960s again. And we can get back to that point of deconstructing. instruction, and I don't think it's alarmist to say that we're headed in that direction.

And so I think, you know, what the message is, is number one is that the fight for freedom must be fought in one in every generation, that the civil rights movement is not just something we should read about, but it's something that's actively happening right now. And we're facing the Bull Conners, the George Wallace's, these white nationalists of today. And we have to be just as courageous and as relentless in resisting them. I'm heading to Montgomery tonight for a large rally of southern, you know, organizers and black lawmakers across the south, gathering in Montgomery to say that if you come for one of us, you're coming for all of us.

And it has to be multigenerational. It has to be multiracial. That's what we represent. And that's what they're afraid of. And so I think that's the message that we're hearing. And number two, that one of the most important lessons, one of my mentors told me, is that you can judge the effectiveness of your protests or your movement

by the response of your opponents. So the reason that they're acting like this is because we're being effective in organizing them. They're fearful of if things go out, you know, as the rules would allow, that they will lose power. And so they know that we've been effective in organizing here in the South. And so they have to cheat to maintain power. And so it shows how.

fragile these white men in power are. It shows how weak this system is. And it shows that it's a death rattle of this white supremacist system. And so they're trying to take us down with them. But we're going to fight like hell, you know, for ourselves and for generations who are yet to come. Justin, how do you, how do you keep the faith at a moment like this where you have all the cards stacked against you? Things are actively moving in the wrong direction. And it doesn't feel like on the horizon, at least immediately, there is some solution to this. And so how do you wake up on a daily basis and go into work in a, you know, in the Tennessee House of Representatives where there are so many people who are perfectly content to, as you said, align themselves

with these white supremacist institutions and still do that despite any feelings of hopelessness or despair? Yeah. You know, I've had a very unusual time here in the legislature. state, I was only in office for three months before I was expelled by these same white Republicans, you know, kicked out as the youngest black lawmakers. So I've, I kind of, you know, coming with clarity that I'm not here, you know, to make friends with these folks, but we're here to make change for our district, you know, and I think, you know, what I see is that courage is contagious, you know, when these maps were being passed, it didn't happen in silence. People rose up, shut down committees, you know, we, you know, people, this movement is

growing and they're fearful of it, you know, and which is why they're passing things like banning curriculum in school because they're afraid that kids are too conscious right now, is why they're passing things like feeling disenfranchisement because they know that if we actually turn out in our numbers, we can get these folks out of office. And so, you know, the South, what gives me hope is that we are not a red state, but we are just a state that has been oppressed for so long, but I think you can only push people to a certain point before it's like that spring. And I think we're getting to that point of momentum where you're seeing that there's going to be a reckoning happening here. And then I know that, you know, we are indebted not to only our ancestors, but to our children,

those who are coming after us. But I don't want to be insincere and say that it's not hard sometimes. I mean, being here in the South as the youngest black lawmaker can be isolating, you know, being kicked off my committees, having colleagues who call me boy, you know, my first week in the legislature, Jack Johnson, the Senate Majority Leader told me that I'm worthless and I'm not supposed to be here. These things, you know, these are the reality of where we work, but it also gives me clarity of what we're fighting against. And I appreciate that the race is here, you know, have the Confederate flag, that they're honest about it, because at least, It's not as subtle and as below the surface,

but our opponents and what we're facing is clear as day. And so anybody who's denying that we're in a racist America right now, pay attention to what's happening in the South. They're telling us who they are. And so it's no longer this post-racial after Obama, racism's over, but we're seeing, no, the racists are here. And they're telling it on themselves and they're showing who they are. And so we should need to show them who we are too.

And that we are, you know, the descendants of John Lewis and MLK and Ella Baker and Banner and Lou Hamer. And we're going to fight like hell like those who came before us. to make sure that they don't drag us backwards to a time we don't want to go to. I know that you just mentioned that you went to Sacramento, so that folks over here where I am in California and across the country can kind of get a better sense of what's happening in Tennessee and in the South. For those who are watching and listening right now, what can we all do to help?

How can we be most helpful in this moment? Yeah. I mean, number one, I think there's power and presence. I know we're going to be putting out a call for folks to come to the South. This is a front line in the battle for our democracy right now. And so often people pay attention to North Carolina and Georgia, the quote unquote swing states. Tennessee may not be a swing state, but we're a state that will swing back when we were kicked. And I think Mississippi is the same Alabama, South Carolina. We cannot write off or abandon any state at this

moment. We are facing the forces of a new Confederacy. And the only thing that will defeat it is a coalition of United States against this new Confederacy. And so joining with us, you know, as there's calls action, I know we're going to be putting out of call to action for a freedom summer here in Tennessee, calling on folks like they did in 1960, where to come south, help us engage in the largest mass voter registration mobilization campaign since the 1960s, sending resources because, you know, states like ours are so underinvested in the national Democrats are not going to come and often, you know, don't see the worth of places like this, you know, but this, but we know that our people are scrappy

and that we can do a lot even with the little resources. And so standing with us, helping us to build infrastructure. We have amazing organizations. We're building the Southern Defense Coalition that we're going to be looking and launching. And so, you know, just keep an eye out for that and to really amplify what's going on. Because I think some people don't realize how quick this descent into white supremacist Jim Crow systems is happening. It's happening at lightning speed. And I think people need to understand that as goes to South, so goes the nation, that they have a southern strategy and we need to have our own southern strategy of solidarity. And so now's the time to show solidarity with states in the South.

And I appreciate you, brother, for amplifying this because I think so often, even, you know, a state like ours is not, the stories are not told in national media. And we need to let the world know what's happening here. Because if it can happen here, it's going to spread across where the tip of the spear, but they're not going to stop here. And that's, that's the message I want to send to America is that, that, you know, if they're doing this here, that we're the testing ground. We are the laboratory of what they want to spread across this nation. Project 2025 was Tennessee, 24. It was Alabama, 2024, Mississippi, 2024. We've been dealing with these forces for so long. So pay attention to us because we have been resisting them. We've been under

macro control long before 2026, 2025. You know, we've been dealing with this for a long time. And so, you know, folks are experts on how to fight this and have been key in building this coalition as a multiracial democracy. Well, I could not be more grateful for your voice. I couldn't be more grateful for the fight, even with all these cards stacked against you. And I know that everybody watching and listening right now feels the same. So, Justin, I appreciate you taking the time today. Appreciate you, brother. No Lie is brought to you by Shopify.

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Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash BTC. Go to Shopify.com slash BTC. I'm joined now by the co-host of Potsaf America, Tommy Vitor. Tommy, have you heard about this secret death letter that Trump left for J.D. Vance? You don't have a secret death letter? I've one in my house for my wife. Well, this is nuts. I'm going to throw it to a clip right here. As someone said to me, they could just put something in the air that makes him six 30 days later. I saw a run to come up to me at an event recently on Ellis Island and said the same thing.

I said, absolutely not. I have no fear at all of them doing something. The idea that you do something that undermines your recognition goes against what they wish to have. Secondarily, remember what the president said about another country trying to do that? He said, you know, there is a letter in the drawer in the resolute desk that is addressed to the vice president should something happen to him. So that is the language of power. You know, China could do something so sneaky as they did with COVID that you wouldn't be able to really tell if the president just got Lyme disease and fell ill in America. We have protocols, trust me. Not ones I can discuss, but we have protocols.

So J.D. Vance is there to serve as the white night. Should something, something happened to Trump, how much confidence you have that, how much confidence do you have that J.D. Vance would be able to carry out Trump's dying wishes? Here's what I have confidence in that J.D. Vance has broken into the Oval Office, steamed open that envelope, read the letter, copy of the handwriting, replaced it with his own version, and then put it back in there. Also, I don't, I don't think the Constitution says that upon your death you can govern from the grave. From the grave. Yeah. Yeah. Although, I mean, look, the, the reality is that that Trump still views himself as kingmaker and guaranteed that even after he's out of office, if he's out of office, he will absolutely want to be like the guy when it comes to dictating from beyond the Oval Office. Also, it just, it tells you everything you need to know about Donald Trump that his secret death letter is not to his family. Who's just going to say that? Is the JD fans? It's to a guy he comes.

kind of hates. Donald Trump, it's almost like, it's almost sweet when you hear about it in the beginning. It's like, if something should happen to the president, he has this secret letter and it's like, oh, Melania is going to be so relieved.

And it's like to J.D. Vance, dictating exactly how he should govern in the event of his demise. It probably just says, punch yourself in the face. Do it again. Lose weight. Punch yourself again.

Lose weight. Stay on the GLP ones. How funny would be if Trump drafted a second secret death letter and to Marco Rubio and then just started to be like, guys, I mean, I mean, Basically, I mean, that that storyline has kind of come into the zeitgeist now where you know he's going to just pit these people against each other.

And ultimately, it's going to redown to his benefit. It's like, who wants my endorsement more and how can you prove it? Yeah. Look, he knows that these guys are his bitches. I mean, they both are. They work for him literally. But also, Trump knows that in a Republican primary, he can say to Maga, go this way or go that way. And those two know it too.

So he's just going to hold that over them forever. And the reason he's doing it is because he secretly hates them. I'm pretty convinced of it. Well, it's true. Like, if he had any respect for them, he wouldn't be able to dictate what they could or couldn't do because he would just have enough respect that they would do it on their own. But he doesn't. And so he's going to play them as puppets, basically, treat them as puppets and not give his endorsement until the absolute last minute if he does at all because he wants to have leverage over these people for as long as he possibly can. Yeah.

Actually, I got a copy of the letter. and what it says is, if I die, J.D. and you become president, while you're in this house, you sit when you pee. He's like, well, no change is there. I think I just stole a joke from like a Chappelleau episode in like 2004. Well, you know, both people who know that joke will be able to call you out for it. Anyway, what else are we talking about? How does this make you think about the, you know, fight to become basically the MAGA air between these people?

because obviously, you know, you do have Marco Rubio, you do have J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance is being sent out to, I think, he was in Maine today talking about the administration's fight against fraud, which is the ultimate piece of irony because, you know, the first thing Trump did is pardon a bunch of people who are committed to fraud as soon as they paid his campaign. Right. So, but at the same time, like, these people don't really garner the same attention. And they have the stink of this administration's engagement in, like, farm. war and wars on them, this administration, the stink of this administration's high prices on them, high gas costs. Like, how does that, like, if Trump had any allegiance to these people, isn't he, isn't he just undermining it by basically having them be a part of an administration that is just plummeting in terms of their favorability? Yeah, I think it sort of shows how tough a position those guys are in politically if you're a part of this administration and want to come next.

because Trump's approval rating among all voters is just going down and down and down. I mean, there's polling that it's somewhere between, you know, 35%. And his disapproval on questions like, I don't know, the economy is like 70% disapproval. The last poll I saw showed Democrats leading on crime. It was like D plus three on crime. That's crazy. Yeah, Harry Enton from CNN said that Trump is now the owner of the five worst polling results in like presidential history or something.

So congrats on that. However, his standing with the base is still rock solid with like the people who define themselves as MAGA. And the people who define themselves as MAGA are who you need to win any presidential primary process or nomination process. But just the primary. I mean, like you, you, you, it screws you in the general. Yeah.

Totally. I mean, in this instance, like having having the primary voters support you and support somebody extreme enough that that they are too extreme for independence is just a recipe for disaster. because if you're going to be, I mean, this is the usual problem with primaries anyway. Like, they're going to turn out somebody who's the most advantageous for the base. But if there's no buy-in from independent voters, then you have no chance in general election. Yeah.

It's a really challenging place for J.D. Vance and Marco Ruby to be, especially given how badly the war in Iran is going. And I'm like, you know, you might have noticed that things are not going well with Iran. The Strait-over moves is closed like two months later. Yeah. No sign of it being opened. However, like, J.D. Vance's political identity was predicated on his existence. experience in Iraq and how it told him that foreign wars are bad and regime change wars are bad, so thus he opposed them. But he was not able to prevent this one from happening. So he's trying

to leak all over the place that he was opposed to it secretly. To Politico, to the New York Times, shady vans is the lone skeptic in the room. But it's like, buddy, I'm sorry, you own this just as much as anyone else. And Marco Rubio, like, he was riding high after the Venezuela thing. He went to Capitol Hill to brief members of Congress about the Iran war early on, did this one press conference where he was like, the Jews made us do it. And he like ran away and hid for a month. Then he did one other press conference where he was in like a good mood and reporters decided he was great and happy and like the good competent cabinet member. But again, like, I just, he can't wear the jacket for this as much as anybody else. But do you think that there's a world

in which, you know, recognizing how quick the media cycle moves, the new cycle moves, that that Marco Rubio and or J.D. Vance can be able to run away with this thing and not kind of wear it as an albatross around their neck, just because enough time will have passed and nobody has the attention span to focus on this? It's possible. I do think, like,

I think there are big swasa maga that just feel betrayed and will be a vocal, angry minority. And like, that opens a space for someone like the Tucker Carlson. 100%. Hey, I oppose this war.

You know what else I opposed? Covering up the Epstein file, something you guys really cared about. And like, you get a lot of earned media off of that. 100%. I mean, Look,

I don't want this to be like, you know, a prediction show about what the 2028 Republican primary will look like. But the biggest beneficiary of all of this is not Marco Rubio, it's not J.D. Vance. It is Tucker Carlson, which I know, like, you know, worries people that are watching and listening because he is as bad, if not worse, than all these MAGA acolytes or even Trump himself. But he's also smart enough to recognize not where the puck is, but where the puck is going.

And so he can see that, like, he can basically extricate himself from the unpopular aspects of what the administration is doing, whereas J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio can't. They can't come out and say, you know, what the administration is doing by engaging in a cover-up over the Epstein files is fucking disgusting. They can't say, hey, engaging in this two-month war that we promise we would never engage in is a miserable choice that's not only undermining one of our core campaign promises of no new foreign wars, but also sending the price of gas surging for every single American at home. And spending billions of dollars on foreign wars when that money should be going to America first priorities. None of those people can say anything, but these people outside of the

administration, like Tucker Carlson, have the ability to do exactly that. Yeah, Tucker knows when to throw a Hail Mary with a puck or when to just do like three pucks and a clad of pucks. Or tune in next week as me and Tommy launch our sports show. Yeah, no, like Tucker is genuinely well positioned. He's built a huge media empire that he owns. Like, he doesn't have to go through Fox News's filter anymore to reach people. I don't look I I I go back and forth I would be very worried if he ran if I were like J.D. Vance also they're buddies

I like Tucker seems genuinely paranoid and like worried about his own safety and campaigning involves leaving your compound in Maine and like hitting trail and talking a lot of people potentially he might also just be kind of feeding into the general paranoia that that sells on the right I mean there's a reason that for like the last 20 years if you if you have a right wing show you can you can

sell these like survival packs and like yeah you know because i think he started his own like dip brand too yeah well you'll need that in the apocalypse honestly you might yeah you might you can take the edge off in the apocalypse too you know the the sad thing is it's not just marco rubio and jd vance who are kind of uh um left looking like fools um right now in this media cycle there's also cash butel no no no he's doing great what are you talking about Tommy um Can you give us an idea of Cash Patel's latest scandal here, what he was just found doing on vacation? Okay, the latest thing that the fake news media is bitching about with my guy Cash, who's honestly fucking sick, and he gave me this awesome burning bottle with his name on it. He's fucking dope.

He loves to pound booze. He knows where the puck is going because he plays hockey. Fuck, yeah, he does. He went to the Olympics. Anyway. That's my gold medal winning FBI director. Apparently Cash Patel. So he took an official trip to Australia and New Zealand.

On the way there, he stopped in Hawaii, like met with the FBI field office there or whatever. Makes sense. Like a refueling stop. On the way back, he stopped again, apparently for two days. And I think that's when he went on a VIP snorkeling trip on the government dime. Were you wondering where this snorkeling trip occurred? I was. It was in Pearl Harbor around the USS Arizona, which is a ship, bombed.

the Japanese were 900 sailors and Marines. Their bodies are entombed in this ship. Was that before or after he went on the bar crawl in Auschwitz? Doesn't snorkeling over the watery grave of 900 sailors and Marines start like the start of a horror movie? It's also like so ridiculous to think of the FBI director. Like while these service members and law enforcement officials are like at the military base in Pearl Harbor, that like they look over at the water

and there's like the FBI director just you know with his like paddling his feet and his fucking bathing suit there with a snorkel on his face. I'm trying to think if there's a... It might be the case that you never look dorkier than when you're out of water and snorkely. Correct. This would be like the modern day equivalent

of who is the person that wore the... Oh, the caucus in the tank? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, just cash Mattel like waddling around and flippers. How do we have no photos of that? There has to be... Someone nailed.

this. If there's like pictures from every six months of Mike Vrable and Diana Rossini at various bars, there's got to be one photo of Cash Mattel. The problem though is like the site is a memorial. It's totally off limits. Like you cannot go there and just snorkel and pat around. So we must have like specifically requested to go snorkeling at the cemetery, the grave site for 900 sailors and Marines from like 1941. Well, I hope the, I hope the views were fun. I'm sure he saw some, you know, beautiful sites and like wacky, wacky you know, things down there,

eyes pointing in the opposite directions. And the fish too. He's really geeked about the ground zero scavenger hunting he's doing later today. He sucks. How is Trump not fire of this loser yet? He's like fucking humiliating him

left and right. I mean, the only answer right is that Cash Mattel's like, I'm going to kill your enemy. I know what's in the Epstein files. There's that too. But he's like, Anyone, you know, any like seashell based crimes, the cash Patel is on the case and going to prosecute it. Yeah.

Well, that's a shit show. Yeah. So, look, to keep learning what other shit shows are happening, if you're not yet subscribed to Podsafe America's YouTube channel, please make sure to subscribe. I'm going to put that link right here on the screen and also on the post description. And also, if you'd like to subscribe to this channel, help build up progressive media so that these fucking clowns don't get to dictate what is or is not on the news. Brian can afford a haircut finally. Yeah, please. No lie is brought to you by Factor.

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Classfeld. Adam, first and foremost, as it relates to this new news that came in on Donald Trump's lawsuit against his own IRS, what can you tell us? Well, the reporting that I'm reading, Brian, is that he is expected to, drop his $10 billion lawsuit that he has been hammered about because he would be receiving taxpayer money on a lawsuit that he would be negotiating with his own government. And his way out of this is to create what he calls a weaponization fund of $1.7 billion that would be paid out to people that he claims were targeted by the Biden administration. What this means in practice, a giant.

slush fund that he could use to pay out January 6th insurrectionists, including people who filed a lawsuit against the government. The class action includes people who assaulted cops with chemical spray. We're talking about the violent rioters who are named in this lawsuit as seeking to collect from the government. They're the type of people who would collect from this $1.7 billion slush fund. Now, it's being billed by the Trump DOJ, according to the sources of ABC News and this reporting, as a weaponization fund, it's going to compensate the people who are wrongly targeted under Biden, according to their framing of it. But in practice, what this is is a giant slush fund for anyone who he thinks would be more politically convenient to pay out than to see the

the taxpayers looking at him pocketing his own money from his own IRS. So let's talk about why he would agree to do something like this, because Trump doesn't do anything unless it ultimately benefits himself. And so why would he relinquish a lawsuit, you know, bad press notwithstanding, why would he relinquish a lawsuit to create a slush money fund where he could pay out his own friends and family and allies and donors, presumably? where does he derive the benefit in all of this? Like, I mean, this is, you know, it's going A to B here is not a big leap.

So how does this help him? Well, we are in a midterm year. This is a story that has generated a amount of terrible press for him in a midterm year. And also, you need to look at the fine print. According to ABC News's reporting, I'm going to read directly here. The settlement terms are expected to prohibit Trump from directly receiving payments related to those three legal claims. However, entities associated with Trump are not explicitly barred from filing additional claim, sources said. So here we have a recognition,

according to the network sources, that Trump could stand to benefit from these settlements directly through the entities associated with him. And Trump has plenty of entities. associated with him. As for the optics about this, he might think branding this weaponization compensation fund salvages the bad optics of this. But at the end of the day, what we have here, and explicitly named in this story, are the January 6 rioters who filed a lawsuit, that they would be compensated for the so-called weaponization because they were prosecuted for such things as spraying capitalizing.

Capitol Police with chemical spray, throwing a gas mask at law enforcement. There were oathkeepers and proud boys among the people listed in that complaint. And we've already seen settlements from the likes of Michael Flynn, the family of Ashley Babbitt. So this weaponization fund, if people don't dig deep beneath the surface, might seem like a rebranding win for the Trump administration. but I expect there's going to be pretty rigorous coverage of it going forward. Now, given the fact that he has this slush fund that he's going to use to pay out people who suffered the indignity of being prosecuted for their own crimes, is there any way to prevent our taxpayer dollars from being able to go to this kind of stuff?

Like, is this susceptible to any type of lawsuit? Because it seems crazy that there's going to be $1.7 billion fucking dollars of taxpayer funds that Donald Trump's going to be able to send off to criminals and campaign donors at will. And so, like, is any of this subject to oversight whatsoever? Well, according to the reporting, this is going to be subject to legal challenge. And what I have noticed in my own reporting on this story, my own research on this story, when you looked at Trump's lawsuit against the IRS, a federal judge had essentially thrown a question at the Trump Justice Department officials about whether there was jurisdiction over the case, whether there was a

case or controversy on the grounds of, are you two on different sides? And so in the typical case, the United States versus X, you know, whatever X is, these are opposing parties. But when the parties aren't opposing and when they're representing the same interests, that might throw a wrench in things. And so we're already looking at judges pushing back a little bit. So I expect there to be continuing legal challenges. I think Trump is trying to mitigate the branding challenge, the optics challenge in a midterm year where people are really starting to talk about the use of their taxpayer funds on schemes that benefit him and his cronies. So I do expect that this won't be the last we're hearing of this story. This isn't, you know, a fait accompli. They came up with this

fund and it's smooth sailing from here. I mean, also, consider the fact that if he has carte blanche, assuming that his idea comes to fruition, if he has carte blanche to dole this money out to his own campaign donors, what's to stop them from donating it right back to him? I mean, it seems pretty obvious that if he wants to pay somebody out with a handshake, agreement or an understanding that, okay, 50 or 60 or 70 or 80% of the money has to go right back into his own coffers. I mean, is there anything stopping that from happening? And that's why it's important to always read the fine print. Again, the reporting saying here that the entities that are under his control aren't specifically barred and he can put forward

legal action. That's a hell of a loophole. So I think that any fund like this is going to be scrutinized. It is going to come under legal challenge. You're going to have judges. One option that judges have, and we've seen this throughout Trump's second term, is they can appoint a so-called friend of the court, an amicus, to provide what their view of the law is on the judge's power to intervene. That happened when the Trump Justice Department threw at the charges against former New York City mayor, Eric Adams, on bribery and other allegations, there was an amicus appointed to instruct the judge on their power. So I think this isn't the less we're hearing of this story.

I think what we're hearing right now is that the Trump Justice Department and Trump himself realized they have a serious branding problem. You know, Adam, the interesting part I think of all of this is that in everything that Trump has done, he's never worried about public opinion. I mean, he's engaged in a war in the Middle East that is aggressively unpopular, continued with this cover-up of the Epstein files, aggressively unpopular, launched a trade war that's raised the cost of everything. That's unpopular. Cut Medicaid and food assistance, that's unpopular. Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, that was unpopular. So everything he's done has not been in service of maintaining some degree of support from the public. It's just been to help himself. I mean, when he builds a ballroom, when he reads a ballroom, when he reads, paves the Rose Garden and the walkway to the Oval Office, when he retrofits a Katari jet to the tune of a billion dollars that taxpayers are on the hook for, when he hosts these crypto dinners, where he's doubled his net worth, where he's talking about building this arch. I mean, all of this

stuff is for him. And so I guess that's why it's difficult for me to understand why all of a sudden, when he's self-dealing in exactly the same way he's self-dealt for all of this time for the last year and a half, why suddenly is this the bar? Why suddenly is he thinking, oh, this would be a bridge too far if I sued my own federal government to give me $10 billion when he has been grifting the American people in broad daylight all this time? Right. I mean, you know, even on this idea that, yes, it's a midterm year. He isn't slowing down his war with Iran. It's a midterm year. That hasn't stopped. him. He's still moving forward with his, with his, you know, effort to get taxpayers now to pay a

billion dollars to fund his ballroom. That's happening in election year. So why this in particular? Why would this be any different than all the other grifts that he's participated in? Well, I think, for one, it's very hard to navigate the mind of Donald Trump. I will say there's something particularly brazen about this. This is a direct pocketing of taxpayer money. and that is a little bit harder to explain. But I would say that there have been parts where the overwhelming thrust of public opinion has changed things. Look at what happened on the ground in Minneapolis, the Twin Cities,

that there were nationwide protests. Christy Noem is out of there. You have at least the rebranding of what they are trying to do under the Department of Homeland Security after people across the country protested, wrote, and helped shut down more of these ice warehouses than the contracts were completed. And now, with Mark Wayne Mullen in there as a new secretary, a lot of that entire scheme to have this archipelago, this network of ice warehouse detention camps, is seemingly on pause. He put that on pause and time isn't on their side to get that done. So I do think

that Trump in some ways can be just delusional about public opinion. You know, he might not realize how unpopular, how the things that you very capably and accurately rattled off are. But sometimes gravity has a way of catching up with people. And the sheer brazeness, the sheer corruption, frankly, of pocketing $10 billion in taxpayer money in a negotiation, everyone knows the two parties are on the same side. They needed a way out. And they think, probably mistakenly, this is it. I mean, I can't imagine a world where this stands up to legal scrutiny because what's to stop a Democratic? president from saying, you know, I'm going to sue the IRS for a trillion dollars and we'll just, you know what, because I'm a nice guy, we'll just lower it to 500 billion and that'll be my slush

fund where I can pay out, you know, any of my friends or donors or whoever it is, I can fund the entirety of Planned Parenthood until the end of time. I mean, it is so nakedly illegal on its face to just say, okay, I'm going to start at an arbitrary point where I'm going to attack the federal government, I'll lower that to a slightly lower, albeit still arbitrary amount, claim that as a compromise to my already arbitrary lawsuit against my own federal government that I'm a part of, and then just have no guardrails on where I can give the money is just insane. And I cannot imagine where, whether it's the $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS or the compromise, $1.7 billion slush fund, that any of it will stand up to scrutiny. Because if you look at it from

any perspective, I think the Republican lawyers would have a million things to say if Barack Obama or Joe Biden just decided to make with no guardrail some slush fund where they can hand out taxpayer funds to their friends. Unfortunately, the guardrails had been norms and practices within the federal government. And that, what Trump has shown throughout both of his terms is that's nowhere near enough. The guardrail should have been an independent. Justice Department, but an independent justice department was a convention that when one's ethics attorneys said, you have to recuse from this, you were the president of the United States lawyer, so you have to step aside in these cases. And that was another story that broke recently.

I believe CNN broke that story that the ethics lawyer did advise that, and then they fired the ethics lawyer. Of course. So I think part of the challenge, that some time down the line through the work of politics, if Democrats get back in power, what had been norms need to be replaced with laws, that no, no matter whoever's in power, you can't have this self-dealing through the machinery of the federal government so you, your cronies can be personally enriched and that you can basically, use the machinery of the state as a tool to reward your friends and to bludgeon your enemies. Perfectly put, we'll leave it there.

For those who are watching right now, if you'd like to support Adam's work, this is true legal independent media. I'm going to put a link to All Rise News right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. Oftentimes Adam is all over the country covering this stuff at the location that it's happening in. I've talked to him in New York. I've talked to him in Tennessee, in Florida.

And so this is all being done. on his own dime. So again, if you'd like to support independent media, this is a great way to do it. Adam, as always, thanks so much for your time. Thank you, Brian. Oh, it's a pleasure. Thanks again to Justin Jones, Tommy Vitor and Adam Klausfeld. 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 Brom Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to bryantylercoen.com to learn more.