No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump gets nightmare economic news

Episode Date: March 22, 2026

Trump gets nightmarish economic data– the same that sank Joe Biden’s presidency. Brian interviews Rep. Robert Garcia, Tommy Vietor, and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.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.

Trump gets nightmarish economic data, the same that sank Joe Biden's presidency. And I have three interviews, Robert Garcia, Tommy Vitor, and Hakeem Jeffries. I'm Brian Taylor Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. Donald Trump is now facing down the barrel of a phenomenon so damaging, it was literally the demise of Biden's presidency. So a new piece of analysis just showed that U.S. inflation is expected to surge past 5% this year. Here's Fox reporting the news. I'm really, really not happy about this inflation report. All right. All right.

And I know it's one data point. The Fed looks through it. We try to look at two or three month trends. But this does not look good to me. And I don't like sitting here after everything we're talking about and saying, oh, well, okay, but it's just one month. Because unfortunately, March is guaranteed 95% chance to get worse than what we saw. Now, keep in mind, less than a month ago, Trump was demanding that Jerome Powell lowered interest rates. Now it's likely that interest rates are actually going to go up to do.

try and counteract rising inflation. And to be clear, when Joe Biden left office, inflation was 3%. And it was Biden's biggest liability, the cost of regular items, right? Housing, rent, groceries, costs rising were why Trump won. And that's not my take, by the way. It was Trump's. I won on two things, the border. And more than immigration, you know, they like to say immigration. I break it down more to the border. But I won on the border and I want on groceries. It's very simple word groceries, like almost, you know, who uses the word? I started using the word, the groceries, when you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time. And I won an election based on that. We're going to bring those

prices way down. So again, he's well aware of the potency of high prices. He owes his win to it, owes his presidency to it. And yet now, prices are expected to increase to almost double the rate as when Biden left office. And Trump won't have anybody to blame but himself. I mean, think about it. This war was the direct result of his new strategy to make himself king of the world and topple every government that he didn't like. And he saw how easy it was in Venezuela. So he decided that each week he would just do it again. And turns out that Iran wasn't quite as easy as he hoped. And so now we're embroiled in a new war in the Middle East, despite promises that he wouldn't engage in New Wars in the Middle East, which has led to surging gas prices, despite promises that we would be

paying lower for gas, which is in turn led to higher costs for all consumer goods, despite promises that prices for everything would go down. Like, this dude is ushered in the holy trinity of broken campaign promises. And the worst part for Trump is that we all know he's going to get bored, right? But at this point, like two paces out of the tube, major energy hubs are being bombed, the straight-of-hormoos is being mined. So even if Trump decided that this needed to end, tomorrow. This is not the kind of thing that you can just neatly wrap up anymore. The fighting that had been isolated to the U.S. and Israel and Iran has now broken out to include other countries. Trump on Saturday night threatened to bomb Iran's power plants if the strait wasn't reopened

within 48 hours, which means sometime Monday afternoon, which is to say that this will continue to spiral out of control because Trump no longer has control. This is no longer in his hands. And so the pain is going to be felt for months, if not years beyond this, which means that Like, just a few months before midterms, Donald Trump has saddled his own party with a billion a day war that he swore he'd avoid and that we're all paying for as our own cost surge here at home. And let's be crystal clear, because I think this part is important. This is not just Trump's fault.

Every single Republican has agency. They all could have spoken out. But these cowards coddled him every single step of the way. They were so afraid of a mean tweet that they all contracted every ounce of power to him. Mike Johnson basically rented out space in this guy's colon. They all own this just as much as he does. And now they're going to have to try and spin surging costs, high gas prices, and a new war in the Middle East as being good for America,

which will be an interesting little exercise in how much a bunch of 70-year-old men can twist themselves into pretzels as they beg voters to send them back to Washington. Next up are my interviews with Robert Garcia, Tommy Vitor, and Hakeem Jeffries. No lie is brought to you by Factor. So somewhere between the first warm weekend and realizing short season is getting close, eating well stops feeling optional for obvious reasons. Factor is how I stopped letting a busy schedule be my excuse,

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I promise you it's worth trying coming from somebody who cares a lot about what I put into my body. So head to FactorMeals.com slash BTC 50 off and use code BTC50. off to get 50% off and free breakfast for a year. Offer only valid for new factor customers with code and qualifying auto-renewing subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easy with factor. I'm joined now by the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Robert Garcia. Congressman, thanks for joining me. Sure thing. So, curiously, you have an upcoming briefing with the Attorney General Pam Bondi. That is in addition to the deposition that she was subpoenaed for that's going to happen in a few

weeks. So why do you presume that it was so important for Pam Bondi to voluntarily offer up a briefing for members of Congress when she has this deposition that she was subpoenaed for anyway? We're not sure. I mean, look, we've been asking for meetings with the Attorney General to for her to come in. It's all been, of course, denied. And so it's interesting now that there's an official subpoena in place for her to testify under oath. Of course, she wants to do this briefing. Now, look, we'll do the briefing. But the very first thing I'm going to say and make it very clear is that this briefing is not in lieu of the under oath deposition that she has to sit for. And so I think there are some that are including myself that are going to make it very clear

and are concerned that somehow she's going to try to get out of doing her official deposition as by subpoena. We're not going to allow that. The subpoena has gone out. It was bipartisan. She has to come under oath. And if she wants to give us a briefing and answer more questions, we're happy to do that. What is the point of coming and briefing members of Congress?

What's the point of any of this when the issue at hand here is something that she has full control over, which is to release the outstanding three million documents in the Epstein files? Well, that's exactly what we're going to ask her. I mean, at the end of the day, why hasn't she released all the files? And I'm going to ask her why she continues to defy the subpoena. She keeps pointing to the subpoena as it relates to the Epstein files that we put in place last summer, right? Right. She keeps pointing to the Transparency Act, which she notes has.

some provisions where interagency communication or ongoing investigations, she can hold those files. That's not the case of the subpoena. And I remind folks of that all the time, which is exactly why we did both of those efforts. And so she is a responsibility to give us all the files. We're going to ask her both in the briefing and at the deposition why she's unwilling to do that. To what extent are we in the public going to have some visibility into what happens in both the briefing and the deposition? Because both of those. obviously are behind closed doors. There's no public testimony.

It's a private deposition. And so in the instance of today when you speak with her, and also in April, to what extent are we going to have some visibility into that? Well, look, as it relates to the under oath deposition, I would expect that the oversight committee and the majority, in this case, Chairman Comer, will essentially do what he's done for all the depositions, which has been the agreement, which she will release them. Well, obviously, whether it was the Clintons,

whether it's been other major depositions, like around Les Wexner, he has released the video and the transcripts of those depositions. And we would expect and demand the exact same thing for the Attorney General. There's no reason why he would hide that. And if he did, I think the question is going to be why, why this double standard? Why are we now participating in this cover? Now, as it relates to the briefing, I think we're going to have to figure out and understand what we're actually able to say to the public.

I imagine that we'll be describing what happens there, but look, it's not going to be recorded. There is going to be no official transcript. And so a lot of it's going to be interesting to see how they choose to frame what happened in this briefing. We're going to come out and say what we need to say. If there is information that somehow classified in some way or there's information in that briefing that can't be put out to the public to protect survivors, we'll make note of that. But I plan to be able to tell the public as much as possible from both the briefing.

and, of course, the deposition. At what point do you think that Pambondi is no longer capable of doing her job? I mean, quite frankly, she hasn't done her job now. She's not doing her job. She's not releasing the files. She's going back on her word. She's using the DOJ to play cover for Donald Trump. And so as relates to her job performance, I think next to Christi Noam,

there's no one that has been involved more in damage, hurting her institutions, the Epstein cover-up, all she's doing to protect Donald Trump going after the president's political enemies, whether they're members of Congress, whether they're in the court system, whether they're at institutions. I mean, it is real, and I think she's got a lot to answer for. You know, there are a number of Republicans who are sympathetic to the cause of trying to get some transparency as it relates to the Epstein files, accountability for, for, on behalf of the survivors. Is there going to be a world where if Pam Bondi continues to serve as an impediment to getting any of this information released, that there may be Republican support for an impeachment

effort, for example? I would hope so. I mean, I would hope that we'd be able to build that case. I mean, the fact that we got a handful of Republicans to join all Democrats in the committee and actually get the committee to subpoena the attorney general of the United States, Donald Trump's Attorney General, I think was a huge step forward in the right direction. I think that a lot of Republicans are hearing from their base, especially their MAGA base, that this EPSC coverup is damaging the president. It's causing people to leave him as supporters. And so I would hope they would continue in partnership around the Attorney General. And it's not just the AG. I mean, the Deputy AG, Todd Blanche, let's remember is the one that actually visited Galane Maxwell. He's the one

that actually moved her to that lower security facility. He's the president's for the president's former lawyer. I mean, this is just corruption at its very core. And so we need a DOJ that's actually going to hold powerful people accountable. That's going to actually be independent from the executive branch, which, as you know, has been the case. The DOJ should not be taking direction from the Oval Office. That's not the way it's ever worked, and it's not the way it should work now. I want to bring to your attention a pretty explosive story that's being reported in the Miami Harold by Julie K. Brown, who has been, obviously, for years and years and years on top of this. She wrote, the House Oversight Committee wants to interview Epstein Prison Guards, who worked

the night that Epstein died, or N. Epstein Prison Guard, who worked the night that Epstein died. The interview request comes after Miami Herald exclusively reported that she was overheard by an inmate talking about covering up his killing. Can you speak to the legitimacy of that claim? Is the Oversight Committee looking to have come testify, the Epstein prison guard who worked the night that he died? Yeah, we support obviously this deposition, and that's something that I think is really important. Look, there has been the government itself and the DOJ, they've put out their conclusive report as far as it relates to Epstein's death.

They declared it as suicide. There have been experts that were involved in that. And at the same time, there are so many inconsistencies, so many mistakes that were made, so many quite frankly strange incidents that have happened since that I think lead a lot of folks, including myself, to believe that there's more there. And that we need to ask the right questions, that we need to re-look at how and why Jeffrey Epstein died. And there are some outside independent experts that have also looked at the circumstances and then have come to a different conclusion. They don't believe that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide. There's that missing footage.

There's the fact that the security guard was receiving some payments. And look, all of these things, I'm not saying that there is evidence per se that some of Jeffrey Epstein didn't commit suicide because I think the evidence and the experts have pointed in that direction. But I think to give us clarity to ensure that we are following every single lead, I think it's something we've got to take a look at. So I support interviewing the prison guard. Do the Republicans on the committee, as far as you know, support that as well?

because obviously Democrats don't have subpoena power right now. And so everything kind of has to go through James Comer and the Republican majority. They do. In fact, we're working to bring the bodyguard was the last person to see Epstein actually alive into the committee. Do you feel that the successful effort to formally subpoena Pambandi was a way by Republicans on the committee to placate the Democrats and kind of succumb to a lot of the pressure that they were contending with?

Or is this an affirmative effort? Is this them, you know, also leading because they have questions that need to be answered by Pam Bondi. Are they doing it through gritted teeth kicking and screaming, or are they doing it because they actually have legitimate questions and legitimate concerns about the way that this whole investigation, the release or failure to release the Epstein files is being carried out? Look, I think a majority of Republicans, they'll do whatever Donald Trump tells them to do and are part of the cover up that the White House clearly has been in. involved in and they've supported that by not demanding transparency. But I think there are several Republicans, some of them are our committee that genuinely have concern for the survivors in a way that pushes them and makes them act on getting additional subpoenas in place, pushing Comber to do the right thing, demanding like Nancy Mays did to get bonding in front

of our committee. I think there are those moments we are seeing Republicans, whether it's been Nancy Mace, whether it's been Anna Populina Luna or others. There has been courage on that side, and I think we hopefully will continue to see that. You know, you are making good progress right now. What does this progress look like compared to if Democrats are able to take the gavel? If you become the chairman of the oversight committee, what does that look like compared to what we're seeing now? I mean, it would be night and day. I mean, right now, we are dependent on Republicans to set the agenda, set the meeting, set the depositions, set the rules. They're the only ones that have subpoena power.

If we were in the majority, we would have enough vote on every vote to get exactly what we wanted. We would be able to send out any subpoena to anyone that we wanted to do and speak with. And so it's significantly different. And so we're fighting really hard, doing everything we can right now. But with the power of the majority comes additional powers for the committee. So we look forward to that. And can you give us some examples?

of who might be of interest to speak with if you do gain the gavel? Well, as it relates to the Epstein investigation, there's a series of folks that Eras point to as far as possible co-conspirators. There are additional people that were in Jeffrey Epstein's orbit that worked with him very closely. There are banks and figures and executives at many of the banks. There are people that finance some of these activities. So there's a long list of folks. I mean, there are, there's probably 30 to 40 individuals that all could have interesting and important information for our investigation.

As it relates to other investigations, we want to talk to Stephen Miller. We want to talk to Christy Noem. She, just because she's moved on as another agency, doesn't absolve her of her crimes or corruption. Corey Lewandowski, we're seeing a lot of reports right now about what exactly happened around him in certain arrangements and certain contracts that were made out of DHS. to talk to folks at Health and Human Services, a destruction of our vaccine system, the destruction of our boards of science. And so there's a long list of folks that we want to talk to, and we will absolutely be committed to getting the truth and forcing accountability and ensuring that the Trump corruption era is over. Perfectly put. We'll leave it there. Congressman, as always,

thanks so much for taking the time. Thank you. No Lie is brought you by Zbiotics. So I have to tell you about a game-changing product that I use the night before going 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. It's a build-up of this byproduct, not dehydration, that's to blame for rough days after drinking. Pre-alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make pre-alcohol your first drink of the night, drink responsibly, and you'll

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So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money. No questions asked. Remember to head to zbiotics.com slash BTC and use the code BTC at checkout for 15% off. I'm joined now by the co-host of Potsay of America, Tommy Vitor. Tommy, thanks for joining me. Good to see you. So we just saw Donald Trump do something that seems scientifically engineered to destroy what's left of his presidency. He just had the Pentagon request another $200 billion for this war in Iran.

And, of course, that would be bad enough unto itself, given the fact that we have so little to offer Americans at home as we're watching health care get cut, food assistance get cut, infrastructure crumble, education be underfunded. But this is completely counter to exactly what he promised on the campaign trail, which was that he wouldn't engage in foreign wars and that he would focus on America first. He even made it his whole whole ass campaign slogan. So can you talk about first and foremost? It's like, what would the administration be able to do if it didn't write a blank check to this war effort in the Middle East? Oh, my God. I mean, anything. They could restore, I think, all of the Medicaid cuts two times over.

Feels like that would be a little more popular, right? Maybe cut the price of health care, better schools, like end child poverty. Like, there's unlimited things you could do with $200 billion. And as you pointed out, like, this is wildly unpopular. Reuters has a poll out today. only 37% of voters approve of the war in Iran, 59% disapprove, and we're only a couple weeks in. Yeah, the least popular war at its outset in American history. But look, the Trump administration is nothing, if not adept at managing the media, managing, like, how it promotes the optics of everything that they do.

They're pretty savvy operators in that respect. Normally, yes. Normally. And so what do you think is the upside for Trump as we head toward midterms? Midsterms are only six months away, and it already doesn't look like, you know, even if they ended this thing tomorrow, it already seems to be unraveled enough that they wouldn't be able to put the pieces back together where people wouldn't be feeling this, you know, come November. What do you think the upside is? What do you think the rationale for them is?

Because I'm assuming you don't believe that it's that there was an imminent threat from Iran. So what do you think it was? Why did he do this? I mean, I think what the reason he started the war is because, look, last June, there was the Midnight Hammer operation where they bombed a couple of of Iran's nuclear sites. No one was hurt. Everyone told him he was an amazing, tough, historic figure, right? Then there was the Venezuela operation earlier this year where special forces were able to swoop in, capture Nicholas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, yank him out, install the vice president, and now Trump feels like he's running Venezuela as this vassal state. So he has decided that he has

almost godlike powers via the U.S. military, especially special forces, that there's no cost, there is no downside that he can do literally whatever he wants. And he had, lunatics like Lindsey fucking Graham talking into this war and say, sir, if you take out Maduro and the Ayatoll is in Iran and the Cuban government is next, you're the greatest president in history. And that was just an insane thing to argue, given what we know about Iran and the capability of their military and how they would fight. And also, I mean, just to talk about the communications piece of this a bit, normally Donald Trump is an excellent communicator. Like, we don't like him. He's crazy, but he is able to drive a narrative.

control the media, right? Like, get people to talk about what he wants to talk about. He has utterly failed to do that on Iran. He never gave a major speech explaining his rationale. He's doing, like, random little to Iran. At the same time, he's, like, welcoming the MLS soccer team champion to the White House, right? Like, he just looks like... He's so golfing on the weekends.

Yeah, he's golfing on the weekends. Like, reporters are, like, drunk dialing him, and he's doing, like, 40 mini interviews where he's saying different things. So, like, he has created a lot of the communications problems that have fed into the political problems behind the war itself. Okay, so you're actually really well positioned to be able to answer this because you were a spokesman for the National Security Council. But I'm curious what the options are in terms of moving forward. Like if Trump extracts the United States right now, what does that look like? Best case scenario and worst case scenario. And I ask that because it

doesn't feel like even if we ended this today, it would be as neat as I think he anticipates. Like we're now seeing Iran bomb other countries in the region and those countries begin to retaliate. So it feels like it's already gotten out of our hands a little bit out of control. And so just give me a sense of best case scenario and worst case scenario, even if we were able to leave tomorrow. Yeah, look, I think if Trump decided, he woke up tomorrow and he thought, okay, this is not going well. Like, we're done. We're done hitting targets. I think the Israelis keep going, which means the Iranians keep going, which means the Strait of Hormuz stays closed. and the Iranians probably also retaliate against U.S. interests in the region

because they think that putting pressure on the U.S. will be the only way to get Netanyahu and the Israelis to stop. Now, I think what's most likely to happen is Trump is going to keep going for several weeks, if not longer. There's a lot of concern. There's reports that are sending like thousands of Marines to the Middle East right now to do maybe ground operations. Those could include going in and getting highly enriched uranium and pulling it out of Iran.

Those were the sites that we bombed, last June. That we supposedly obliterated. Yes, supposedly obliterated last June. It could mean taking oil and gas infrastructure on this place called Carg Island. It could mean, God knows what. And so I just fear that we are getting slowly sucked into this war deeper and deeper. And as more of these energy installations get targeted, you could see the price of a barrel of oil go to like 150, 200. I mean, God knows. Was that not even a concern for this administration? It's crazy. Like, they knew. I mean, it was something that Trump was hammering on a daily basis that he'd gotten the price of gas down. And now he seems to have relinquished the, like, his last saving

grace, because obviously the price of housing has continued to rise, the price of groceries, price of utilities, all of these things that he promised he would bring down. And the things that he exploited when he was on the campaign trail, those have all gone up. But he at least, you know, had this last vestige, this last silver lining, which was low gas prices. He had to know, I mean, you know, that one of the weapons that Iran could deploy was closing or even mining the Strait of Hormuz. And so was there nobody there to tell them, like, hey, you might want to hold on to this last thing that you have as we especially enter midterms? Yeah, I mean, look, every expert would have told you that a war game with Iran ends with them mining or closing the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians told us as much, basically like if you attack us again, we're going to regionalize this war, meaning attack your interests in the region, but attack other countries.

You're right, though. Trump has had, like, this man is completely out of touch with every normal American, right? He lives at a country club half the time. But he does know that people care about gas prices. It's like a thing he's internalized since the 80s. He used to brag about it all the time. But now the national average for gas in the U.S. has reached $3.90 per gallon. It could hit $4 a gallon next week. That's basically up a buck in like a month. And diesel has already exceeded $5.00. And on top of that, I mean, one third of the world's fertilizer passes through. the Strait of Hormuz. That's not getting through other critical minerals and elements like

sulfur or helium that like you need in manufacturing. They're not getting out. So this is going to hammer prices in the U.S. but also like really poor countries are going to get especially fucked by this. Is this the kind of thing that best case scenario could go away in a couple of weeks? Like there's a world where Trump gets bored, you know, and see something else that's shiny. If things tamped down, what is like, what's the tail on this thing? I think the tail is like, months. at a minimum. I think gas prices are elevated through the summer, even if things like calm down right now, just because it takes a while to get these supply chains back revved up. And then it's Republicans that have to shoulder this stuff because they're going

on the campaign trail, and they have to somehow say the president that we have refused every single step of the way to serve as a check on has engaged in this whole process that's raised the cost of everything. We were instrumental in cutting Medicaid and cutting ACA subsidies and cutting food assistance. Like, I mean, I kind of have to ask you to get in the head of these Republicans. What do you say on the campaign trail other than we had to do it because a threat from Iran was imminent, like, against the homeland? Like, how do you go on the campaign trail when you have nothing to point to?

Yeah, I think you have to try to regurgitate this lie that there was some sort of imminent threat, but voters aren't buying it. After 20 years of and $2 trillion being spent on the war in Iraq, now you think the voters have an app. I mean, they voted extremely. expressly for him because he promised he wouldn't do this. Yep. And by the way, there was a UGov poll out on Thursday that found 24% of 24 Trump voters disapprove of his handling of Iran. Which is pretty enormous considering these people, this is the kind of thing.

Normally North Korea numbers. Correct. Correct. Even within his own conference, we always see like, you know, 96% support for the craziest fucking thing. Like Trump shoots puppy point blank on the side of the road. It's like 96% support this guy. Yeah. And it, look, and it's just not going to get better. I mean, if I were a member of Congress, I think your only prayer is like, is my district gerrymandered enough? Like, wow, I don't know what else we got. Yeah. I mean, that should be kind of a blinking red light because we've already seen just on the affordability stuff unto itself some staggering numbers in terms of the swings that we're seeing 12, 14, 16 points to the left. And these are not even in, you know, purple districts. Like, we're seeing some

districts in, in Arkansas, you know, some like some Florida districts. We're seeing districts where or jurisdictions where the population is primarily Latino swing like 40, 50 points left. It's crazy numbers. And that was before the war. That was before the war, which is only going to exacerbate the affordability problems and now add war on top of that. A war that, by the way, costs a billion dollars a day that we presumably, you know, apparently didn't have any money for, you know, American priorities before this, but now we've come up with all of this funding for the war.

But we have some Senate seats that are that are pretty close. Oh, yeah. We're talking Senate seats in Maine and North Carolina. Ohio. Ohio, Alaska. Iowa, Texas. Yeah. And so, like, that puts these states in play in a big way, you know, in a way that may not have happened if Donald

Trump didn't engage in all of this voluntarily because this didn't have to happen. That's the thing. It's like, look, at the end of four years, voters blamed Joe Biden for inflation, even if it wasn't necessarily his fault. Because the buck stops with the president. The buck stocks with the president. In this case, like if you asked the majority voters, I think if you'd asked in 2024, why'd you vote for Trump, it would be to get inflation and get prices down because things are too expensive

and they were pissed. He already had not solved that problem. Yeah. Inflation was basically 2.9%, 3%. Biden left office with inflation at 3%. So that was not solved. It was not handled. And then Trump did this thing that is obvious to everyone.

He started a war that single-hand. candidly ramped up like one of their biggest costs, which is gasoline. Yeah. I mean, that was, that was the hard thing for Democrats to reconcile is like, you know that Biden's going to take the blame for high gas prices, even though, you know, the economy was opening up after COVID had shut everything down. It takes a little bit of time to get, you know, some of these oil wells back online that had been offline prior to that. There was obviously global inflation. Russia had invaded Ukraine. That had some impact on the war.

And so, like, whether it was Joe Biden in office or any other president, those high prices would have been there regardless. And so, you know, you can make that argument. People are still going to blame the president. But, you know, that was the kind of thing where, you know, if you were acting in good faith, it doesn't really matter who the president was or what his policies were that was going to happen. This is an instance where Donald Trump is unilaterally and directly responsible because had he not done that Friday night a couple of weeks ago, we would have woken up Saturday and there would be no war.

The Strait of Hormuz would still be open. A barrel of oil would still be like 60 bucks. whatever it was. And like his interviews about this, she's like, well, it's a small price to pay to eliminate the threat from Iran. It's like, no, no one agrees with that. Yeah. Well, I think that the part that was funny about that is like this, okay, we have to be like

patriotic and accept, uh, and accept like, you know, some, some temporary pain. This is an entire political party that railed against the, the concept of wearing masks during COVID because it's like, I'm not going to allow a single inch of sacrifice in my life, even if it, you know, they, they, they, they, you know, they, they, they, you know, They made fun of like, you know, stay inside to stop the spread for a week or whatever it was, like a pretty small sacrifice for a global pandemic. And that was a bridge too far. But now everybody has to pay higher gas prices because Donald Trump has decided that he needed to do regime change in the Middle East.

Without telling anyone. Without telling anybody or making any case for any of this. Yeah, it's a nightmare. Yeah. I'm curious, too, like, you know, one of the things that I've seen as we look toward some tenuous justification, and I think you're exactly right in terms of Trump looking at. how he can build up his legacy. There is kind of the beneficial consequence as far as he's concerned of less talk about the Epstein files. To what extent do you think that this did serve a dual

purpose in that talk about the Epstein files is obviously a little bit subdued relative to where it was before. I mean, I guess the reason I struggle with that theory is like he might have found something nearly as unpopular as like Jeffrey Epstein. But he didn't intend for it to be. unpopular. Like he thought, I think that you're exactly right, that he thought this would be easy. Yeah, but look, it's something he like overtly ran against. Yeah. And it's an, and so this, it cuts, it hurts him in two different ways. Like one, there's a lot of people who are like, no, I don't want to go to war in the Middle East, right? There's a lot of veterans or young people want to spend money elsewhere. Like, our buddy Peter Hamby did a big polling project where they

looked at, they did quantitative and qualitative research with all these young men, like 18 to 29 of all political persuasions. And the thing that pissed them off the most was why are we spending money on bombs and not here when my life sucks and I don't feel like things are getting better. And also they were worried about getting drafted. And then they're... Which by the way, Caroline Levitt refused to rule out. She refused to rule out. And then also, mostly there's like it's another thing he lied about, right? Like there's a group of people who are new voters, uh, maybe like sporadic voters who voted for Trump because they were pissed off at the status quo and pissed off at the system. And they believed Trump when he said he would release the

Epstein Files care about cost of living and not get us into dumb wars. And now that he's overtly lied to their face about all those things, it's really like cracking something, I think, in his political support. Yeah, I mean, the reality is, like, his entire presidency has been a graveyard of broken promises. He promised free IVF didn't happen. He promised lower cost instead engaged in a trade war that raised costs. He promised an end to the Russia-Ukraine war. That's still raging a year and a half later.

All the MAHA people are pissed off at him because despite, like, Bobby Kennedy releasing videos with Kid Rock and like a, you know. Working out in airports? Yeah, like driving a scooter and then getting in like the cold plunge. They've refused to ban Roundup, this weed killer that is linked to all this cancer. That was a huge priority for the Mahau world. So like breaking promises left and right. Yeah.

And there's corporate interest behind it. There are a lot of studies that show that Roundup is actually healthy for you if you drink one shot of it per day. Post workout. That's pretty good. I don't know if we can do that. That was honestly pretty good. That was really good.

Well, so look, I think, I think to that end, if you want to see more RFK impression. I do. Take that show on the road. Yeah, I think we're going to do exactly that. You in? You in, Tommy? See you in Boston? You see in Boston?

Die of the river. What that is a reference to is I recently did a live event in Boston and confused Boston and Chicago. Who were you talking to? I was talking to the governor of Massachusetts and asked how much green dye they put in the Boston Harbor because I, forgot that it was Chicago whose river they die. Yeah, it's a beautiful. So, anyway, only the real ones will have watched this deep into the video

to even know that. All Irish people look alike to this guy, huh? For those who haven't yet subscribe to Positive America's YouTube channel, I'm going to put the link right here on the screen. You're fine. Give it a pass. It is completely free to subscribe. So if you want to help build up this progressive media ecosystem, please make sure to

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Go to Shopify.com slash BTC. that's Shopify.com slash BTC. I'm joined now by the Democratic Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries. Thanks so much for joining me. You agree with you. So I want to talk about the number one issue that the right is pushing right now, which is the lack of funding for TSA. Obviously, we're seeing massive amounts of TSA agents call out of work

because DHS hasn't been funded. The right is claiming that this is all the result of the Democrats. They're waging this big disinformation campaign where every time there's a delay in some airport and we're seeing massive delays. They're saying thank a Democrat. Can you talk to me about the effort being put forward by Democrats to get TSA funded? Thanks for asking because there are a few things that are important here. One, listen, Republicans control the House to Senate and the presidency. And from the very beginning of this president's term, they've taken my way or the highway approach.

The reason why TSA is not being paid is because Republicans have made the decision to hold TSA agents hostage and to create chaos and airports all across the country because they don't want to get ICE under control. And if you go back to the one big ugly bill, $191 billion was given to the Department of Homeland Security, including $75 billion in the slush fund to ICE. They have more than enough money to make sure that every single TSA agent is paid. They've made an affirmative decision not to do so, which is why we've launched this discharge petition to force an up or down vote to ensure that we can pay TSA agents and reopen the other parts of the Department of Homeland Security, like FEMA and the Coast Guard and our cybersecurity professionals that don't have to do

with ICE or don't have to do with Donald Trump's extreme and violent mass deportation machine. So if they're saying right now that it's the Democrats' fault for not funding TSA and the Democrats have standalone bills to fund TSA, then what is the excuse for TSA not being funded? Yeah, it's just Republicans, again, engaging in massive disinformation and lying, straight up lying to the American people. These are pathological liars over on the other side of the aisle in terms of what many of them just do. And certainly we see that on the extreme far right.

They know they're on the run. They know that the American people recognize that Donald Trump and Republican policies have been a complete and total failure. This guy promised to lower costs on day one. Costs have been gone down. Costs have gone up. Republicans are losing elections all across the country up and down the ballot. We've seen that now happening for about 15 consecutive months. Donald Trump is deeply unpopular. The one big ugly bill is unpopular. This reckless war of choice that Donald Trump has gotten us into in the Middle East is deeply unpopular. And the American people want to see taxpayer dollars being spent to improve their quality of life. And that's what Democrats have been fighting hard to

achieve, whereas Republicans are spending billions of dollars to do things like drop bombs in Iran or to unleash violent, untrained, and mass ICE agents to brutalize or in some cases kill American citizens and violently target law abiding immigrant families. And so, of course, they're trying to distract the American people, but we're not going to let them do it. there is reporting that the White House is now asking or considering asking for $200 billion as a supplemental aid package for the ongoing Iran war. Can I have your reaction to that news? I mean, it's the craziest thing in the world that the White House might potentially be floating. Coming to Congress for an additional $200 billion when they haven't justified a dime that has

already been spent and have no view as to how to actually get us out of the situation that they recklessly got us into and simply want taxpayers to be on the hook for tens of billions of dollars more when there's no justification for the billions of dollars per day that they're spending right now they've not made the case in any compelling way as to how actually the American people have been made safer by this conflict, of course. And we're seeing, as a result of this reckless war of choice, costs go up, particularly gasoline prices, which are through the roof right now. By the way, this all happened when Donald Trump came to the House floor, bragging about

the fact that in his view, gasoline prices were down. The guy has been a complete and total failure. And so while we haven't been presented with any request for additional funding, they don't have any ability, in my view, to justify additional funding at this point in time when they haven't made the case to the American people to the Congress or even to our NATO allies as to why we're in this situation in the first place. Well, we've already seen a few instances where that spending for this war is already out of control. The first couple of days cost roughly $5 to $6 billion. The first six days of this conflict

or war or incursion or whatever they're going with today cost over $11 billion. And now, as I mentioned, there's that reporting that suggests that they're looking for $200 billion. What could that money be used for, if not dropping bombs in the Middle East at the hands of a president who swore up and down that there would be no new wars? Yeah, it's a very important point. Candidate Trump said that he's not going to get America into another reckless war of choice in the Middle East, President Trump has done the exact opposite, gotten us into a reckless war of choice in Middle East,

spending billions and billions of dollars already, perhaps up to $30 billion have already been spent, if not more, and now he wants to come to us, potentially, for an additional $200 billion. Listen, this is the same group of people who enacted the largest cut to Medicaid in American history, ripping health care away from millions of people, including children, women, and seniors.

They also enacted the largest cut to nutritional assistance in American history, $186 billion in their one big, ugly bill. They've literally stole food from the mouths of hungry children and veterans. And so that money could and should be used to restore as many of the Medicaid cuts as possible. That money should be used to make sure

that no one in America goes hungry. That money should be used to make sure that the money that was stolen from consumers as a result of the Trump tariffs, which have cost them thousands of dollars in additional expense per year and have now been declared illegal and unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, the American people should have their money refunded to them. And of course, that money could be used to make sure that we extend the money. Affordable Care Act tax credits. So more than 20 million Americans aren't put in the situation that they're in right now because of Donald Trump, where they can't afford to go see a doctor when they need one. I would also add that, you know, TSA's budget, I checked their 2025 full-year

budget. It was like $11.8 billion, meaning TSA could have been funded three times over for the amount of money that Donald Trump has spent dropping bombs in the Middle East, again, which would be bad enough, but even more egregious given the fact that he campaigned expressly on never doing this. I want to switch gears here to a different topic, and that is Pam Bondi. Do you think that what Pam Bondi is attempting to do in the aftermath of the subpoena being issued to her to come testify for a private deposition in April, that by holding a briefing, and this just took place yesterday, that she's looking to basically satisfy her requirements in her own mind. so that she doesn't have to fulfill any obligations to appear for that private deposition per the

subpoena that she received? Pam Bondi is a partisan, petulant, pettifogger. She is a political hack. She's deeply unqualified. And we saw how she performed when she came before the House Judiciary Committee, before the American people, performing for Donald Trump and no one else, acting like she's his personal lawyer, as opposed to the people's lawyer, which is the job of the Attorney General, and she's engaging in a massive cover-up as it relates to the Epstein files, which is why, led by House Democrats, we have forced the Oversight Committee to subpoena her. And now, Brian, as you've indicated, she's trying to get around that. By holding a briefing, this is unheard of as far as I'm concerned. There was no deposition transcript. There was no recordings. And there was no swearing. her under oath. And so she can say all manner of things without fear of being prosecuted at some point later on for perjury. And so Summer Lee was exactly right that Pam Bondi needs to testify under oath before the American people. So we can talk about the massive cover-up that the

Department of Justice has undertaken. There are about 3 million files connected to the Jeffrey Epstein situation that Epstein survivors have firmly and appropriately and passionately demanded be released so we can achieve transparency and full accountability. You know, the problem as it relates to Pam Bondi and her failing to comply with a congressional subpoena is that the agency that would normally be tasked with enforcing that subpoena is the one that she herself leads. And so I spoke with Congressman Raskin, and he brought up the fact that Congress does have inherent contempt powers. Is that something that you think Congress would

be in the right to wield in the event that Democrats took control of the House in the aftermath of the 2026 election? And we still have an attorney general who refuses to comply with the law. Absolutely. Congress has inherent contempt powers, and it's going to be one of the tools that we will have to use when Democrats take back control of the House of Representatives in order to make clear that there will be consequences if congressional subpoenas are violated or the Department of Justice continues to try to conduct itself like it's above the law. In addition to a wide variety of other tools that we'll need to utilize, listen, there's going to have to be. accountability. And my view about how we move forward, our promise to the American people, is that we're going to relentlessly focus on the affordability crisis that Donald Trump thinks is a hoax. We're committed to driving down the high cost of living. We're committed to fixing our broken health care system. At the same period of time, we're also committed to cleaning up corruption. And we know there's a lot of it that has taken place in the White House and with the

Trump cartel. And the Department of Justice is front and center in that regard, particularly as it relates to the active cover-up that many people have correctly concluded is taking place right now. And so, yes, it certainly is the case that inherent contempt is something that should be under consideration right now. But James Comer, who continues to behave like a malignant buffoon, is someone who is actively participating in the effort to shield the White House. He's leading the cover-up caucus as opposed to leading the oversight committee. We'll leave it there. Leader Jeffries, I appreciate your time. Thank you much.