No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump isolated on global stage– and begging for help

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

Trump finds himself isolated on the world stage– and begging for help. Brian interviews Pod Save America’s Dan Pfeiffer, Congressman Jamie Raskin, and legal journalist Adam Klasfeld.Subscribe to Message Box: https://www.messageboxnews.com/Subscribe to All Rise News: https://www.allrisenews.com/Shop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Trump finds himself isolated on the world stage and begging for help. And I have three interviews, Potta of America's Dan Pfeiffer, Congressman Jamie Raskin, and legal journalist Adam Klassfeld. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. It did not take long for Trump's chickens to come home to roost because after spending the entirety of his second term in office denigrating every single one of our allies, now that he's found himself embroiled in an unpopular war, he has realized that it would probably be helpful to have some allies.

Unfortunately, he's engaged in a bit of an internal tug of war. war between his need for some obvious help and his own ego. Now, I'm going to play audio from Trump in the same press conference just a couple days back, separated by 30 minutes. We want them to come and help us with the straight. My attitude is we don't need anybody. We're the strongest nation in the world. We have the strongest military by far in the world. We don't need them. That is a half hour apart. And look, of course, the U.S. needs help because it entered into a war with no plan, no objective, and no allies. And it's not like this hasn't been tried before. Donald Trump isn't the first American president. This isn't the first U.S. administration to try and

take down the Islamic Republic. Meaning, had he consulted with anyone not named Donald Trump, he probably could have avoided some of the more predictable problems, like, for example, Iran closing or mining the Strait of Hormuz, which can have major implications on the price of oil, a lesson that Trump is apparently learning in real time. But here's the problem. Trump has spent the last year alienating all of our allies, basically tried to declare war on Greenland. He's threatened to invade or annex Canada and Panama. God knows how many threats he's lobbed at Mexico. He shit-talked most of Western Europe's leaders. And now that he's turned the U.S. into a pariah on the global stage, here he is asking other countries to help us. It's almost like there's some value in having

allies around the world as opposed to just being a tough guy and going at it alone, which, you know, frankly, would be bad enough onto itself isolating this country on the world stage. But What's worse is that Trump alienated our allies and cozied up to Russia, which right now is the one country actually helping Iran against the United States. That's why we decided we needed to blow up our global standing so that we could cozy up to Putin who would in turn screw over the United States because something art of the deal. And of course, Trump refused to condemn Putin because he won't. He can't. It's more important for him to feel like a member in good standing of the autocrat club than bother to act in the act. the best interest of the United States. This is, per usual, a matter of Trump's ego versus our national security. Now, in terms of what happens next, the reality is that Donald Trump is

finding himself increasingly isolated at home and abroad. Our allies are clearly not falling over themselves to help the guy who has spent the last year threatening to annex their countries, undermine NATO, and relegating their presidents, their leaders, to the role of governor, as he's taken a liking to doing. And then home in the U.S., his director of national Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, just resigned, posting on Twitter, quote, after much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as director of the National Counterterrorism Center effective today. I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Vance, his vice president's begun seeding stories in Politico, suggesting that he was always skeptical about

the war from day one. Polling shows that this is the least popular war at its outset in U.S. history. Gas prices are now surging. Here is a clip that I think. puts everything into a neat little bow. If you could say something to President Trump and he was going to hear you right now, what would it be? You are a worthless pile of shit. And you voted for him, how many times? Three times.

That was my bad. Apparently, I'm an idiot. No notes. That about covers it. But I want to make one thing clear. This isn't just about Trump. Like I try to make this point as often as I can. The rest of the Republican Party had the ability to exercise

their own autonomy here, and every step of the way they refused outright. They own just as much of this as Trump does. This is full Republican governance in action, unbridled Republican power in action. It's not just Trump who's at fault, it is every single one of these people who wanted power and then chose to contract every ounce of it to a stark raving lunatic who put us all in danger, who made us all weaker, all more isolated, and raised the price of everything. This is a reflection of the entire GOP. So when it comes to vote, remember that every single one of them played a role in this. Next up are my interviews with Dan Pfeiffer,

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After you purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. I'm joined now by the co-host of POTSafe America, Dan Fifer. Dan, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me, Brian. So we are watching the arrangement. War continue to play itself out. Most recently, there was a high-profile resignation from the Trump administration citing Donald Trump's engagement in the Saran War. We're also watching gas

prices surge across the country. We're watching issues with the Strait of Hormuz, where Donald Trump seems to be begging other countries to help him. So as we watch this whole process play out, is there any upside for Donald Trump as he continues to engage in this thing? Not that I can see. And really, it's hard to fathom a scenario where that could happen. Even if this were to wrap up in the next couple of weeks or days. Damage has already been done to Trump politically. Damage has been done the United States economically. Gas prices have spiked. That has created a glut. The oil market, that's going to linger for a while. But it's also just the, in two ways it hurts Trump politically. One is he looks like a moron for doing this. No one understands why he did it. It violates the

principle of no forever wars that he claimed to run on in 2024. And it's the second high price profile action he's taken to raise prices for people, undermining the other central premise of his presidential command. I think real damage has been done here no matter what happens. Why do you think Trump engaged in it? He's an idiot. I think he, I mean, just there's no, I think. But usually you can describe some even, even misguided. Yeah, if you're, if you want to try to play armchair psychologist, I think it would go something like this. After Venezuela, he thought the United States could do this on the cheap, quick and easy. it would be fast. And I think somewhere in the back of his mind, he has this image of, like, as he thinks

about his legacy, he's not thinking about what helps keep Mike Johnson speaker or keep John Thune majority leader. He thinks about what gets Donald Trump etched into Mount Rushmore or whatever else. And I think he has his vision where it's in his head where it's like, I, you know, did regime change in Venezuela. I do regime change in Iran. I do regime change in Cuba. And the last two, he believes, are historically important because they have been long. term problems and long-term adversaries in the United States. And he didn't think it through. And he's not the first person to think that regime change in Iran is a good idea. People have been talking about this, thinking about it, planning it, the possibility of a war with Iran since

1979. And the reason why no one has done it is, the consequences are tremendous because of this type of regime that Iran has, how big a country it is, and most notably the Strait of Hormuz. They have this leverage point over the rest of the world that is very hard to unstick. And so he kind of stumbled ass backwards into it. There's also the fact that Trump doesn't seem to ever have enough of an attention span to stick with anything for more than a few days. And so I'm curious because now we're watching Iran start to bomb their neighbors and bomb embassies and this thing really start to unravel and get a little bit out of control. Do you think that this is going to be something where

Trump can just kind of back off, focus on the next shiny thing and be able to let go in a way that's kind of clean and neat. Or do you think that we've already passed the Rubicon here and this thing has taken a life of its own? That's a great question. And I'm certainly not enough of an expert on Iran in the Middle East to know. He cannot change the subject, move on to something else, as long as the Iranians are firing drones and missiles at other countries in the region.

And because that disrupts travel, that disrupts oil, that disrupts trade, that disrupts the global economy. And he certainly can't do it while the straight of Hormuz is still blocked. If even if it's somewhat open and the flow of traffic continues, but at a greatly reduced rate, that continues to keep gas prices up. Americans aren't paying a ton of attention on what's happening every minute of the day in this war, but they are going to pay attention to gas prices. Yeah. They're going to pay.

Food prices are going to go up. Must do the world's fertilizer comes through the straight. If diesel prices are the highest they've been, I think either at least since the pandemic, if not ever. I think the second time in history deals prices have been this high. And that leads to greater distribution costs for food, which leads to higher prices for Americans. And so as long as that's in place, it doesn't matter what Trump focuses on. People are going to be pissed about it. On the messaging front, Trump has been kind of leaning on this, this Hail Mary narrative, which is

this is a small price to pay, temporary pain. And the most important thing is that we don't have a nuclear armed Iran. And so what do you make of that message? message. People do not think Iran should have a nuclear weapon. They also don't think that Iran was on the cusp of having such a weapon. Yeah. And Trump made, maybe it's possible that if he had spent months like the Bush administration did in 2002 and 2003 to sell a war, to explain the threat, to lay out the consequences, he might have been able to get at least some people to be willing to pay higher gas prices in service of that larger purpose. He never did that. The guy gave the longest state of the union in history and barely touched on Iran in that speech.

He did not try to convince people of this. And you can't do it ex post facto, right? You can't say, you know, it's just like you and I follow us up closely. We knew for weeks that a war with Iran was very possible, could happen in any moment. We knew the day that the last negotiation was scheduled. Most Americans had no idea. They truly woke up Saturday morning, that one faithful Saturday morning, and we were at war with Iran. They had no context, no reason, no explanation. Even if they had watched the President of the United States give that speech at the State of Union, which they probably didn't, they still wouldn't have, that wouldn't have helped explain that we were about to go to war with Iran. I mean, it really was in no context, no war, because he didn't try to sell it to anyone. You know, usually Trump has a pretty good handle on how to control the media, a pretty good handle on the issues that he can continue hammering.

Gas prices was one of them. I mean, he's been taking victory laps on gas prices pretty much every day of his presidency. And so the part that I don't understand is how could he engage in this, recognizing that the biggest, you know, weapon that Iran could wield against us is closing the Strait of Hormuz or mining the strait and that that would inevitably send gas prices higher? How was nobody there around him or Trump himself there to say, hey, if this is the one thing that we pride ourselves on being able to do, this is going to imperil that. And so we should avoid doing it. It seems like some people told that to him, right? There are reports that Dan Cain, the chairman of the joint unit of staff, made that point to him, and Trump dismissed the idea that Iran would actually close the straight.

He really did not do the homework, not understand the threat. And in war, you have to worry about the worst possible consequence, right? You prepare for the best, you prepare for the worst, which you hope for the best. And he simply just prepared for the best and hoped for the best. And this is how we ended up where we are. it's not just Trump who seems to be like trying to find some political angle here. We also have J.D. Vance now figuring out his footing. He was, of course, this avowed anti-war opponent before he got into office.

There's a ton of footage and sound from him over the course of the last few years, basically denigrating the idea of going into another war in the Middle East, saying that if Kamala was elected, she would, you know, she would be the reason that this war would pop off. and yet the New York Times also reported that J.D. Vance was in the room saying that, you know, if Trump is going to do this, he needs to go bigger and go faster. And so, you know, he's got his fingerprints all over this. I'm curious what you make of the Politico piece that was obviously placed by his either J.D. Vance himself or somebody on his team saying that he was like the lone

skeptic against this war in Iran. And so like the way I read that is it's pretty obvious that he's trying to position himself for 2028, seeing the writing on the wall and recognizing how unpopular this thing already is. But just curious for your reaction to kind of this angling by J.D. Vance. I think it is pretty unsubtle and politically, and pretty politically maladroit to do going about this way. Look, J.D. Vance is the overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly likely next Republican nominee. Sitting vice presidents almost always get the nomination. There is no example in modern history of them not getting it. You basically have to go to prison like Spear Ragnu in order to to avoid being the nominee.

Now, there's one big thing that could get in Trump, in J.D. Vance's way. And that is if Trump turns on him. And so he gets, like, I just my, like, not that J.D. Vance is asking me for advice, not that I would give him advice, but he is in for a penny, in for a pound with Trump. There is no path for him, which is he's like,

he differs himself from Trump. Because there are going to be other candidates who don't have the problem of having been his vice president and at his side during all the untarable things that Trump did, who can be the anti-Trump of the Republican Party if that's what voters want. And the ads are they probably don't. But if that's what they want, he's never going to be that person. So, like, it's just, he is, he just really is kind of an awkward dupist.

And this is just him. And he is so ambitious that he can't, like, see straight. And so this is him, like, he should not be trying to distance himself from the president three years from the Republican nomination, right? Like, this is when people will be voting three years from now for that. And so it's just, it's very, it is, it's very J.D. Vance, which is the guy who thinks he can be never Trump one day, the most pro-Trump person the next day, most loyal vice president history one day, differ with him on the war the next day. Like it does, it just, it makes him

look calculating and sort of what everyone hates about politics, which is his probably his biggest vulnerability in a presidential election in 2028. You know, most of these people seem to have gotten away with, seem to be able to get away with anything that, that political gravity doesn't exist so long as you're near Trump. We obviously saw that bubble pierced when it came to Christy Knoem just a couple of weeks ago. She was relegated to some new position as the head of the shield of the Americas replaced by Mark Wayne Mullen. We now have Pam Bondi coming in to testify for the oversight committee and a subpoena was just issued, a formal subpoena was just issued to her to testify. Do you think that this veneer of protection, thanks to Donald Trump, is kind of

of dissipating now that these people are engaged in all of their respective scandals, whether it's the war in Iran, whether it's gas prices rising, whether it's covering up the Epstein files. Yeah, I think there is something that has changed, which is Republicans are looking for some evidence of independence. And they are, no, so they're not going to take that from the president because they're scared of the president. So they're basically going for the weakest members of his herd. Right. Christy Nome is the least in favor, the most controversial. Let's take her out. Pam Bondi is probably next on that list, go after her. And so the question isn't like, it's not every single person that works for Trump is going to be at risk.

But if you were the person that Trump is unhappy with at that moment, Republicans will use that as an opportunity to demonstrate some independence, either to swing voters or to the base angry about the Epstein files not being released or whatever else. Do you think that that Pam Bondi would ever be at risk of getting ousted from her position? The reason I ask that is because she's there for one reason. It's expressly because she won't do the thing that's causing people to turn on her. Like she won't release the files. That's the sole reason that she's in that spot in the first place. So I get that that is causing people to hate her and to lose confidence in her. But if not for that, she wouldn't be in that job.

Yeah. So I don't think that she is going to be fired and then replaced with someone who would release the Epstein files, someone who would return the Justice Department to its roots of independence, who would refuse Trump's orders to prosecute his political opponents. I think if she were to be ousted, it would be for someone who was a better manager of doing the things Trump wants. Right. Like he's not going to fire her for mishandling the Epstein files. He's going to fire her for the fact that she has tried on multiple occasions to bring indictments because people. he wants to go to prison and like face planted in an incredibly embarrassing way. So if he can be convinced that there's someone who will do that job of political vengeance and corruption better than her,

that you can replace her. Like I don't really care if Pambani gets fired because the person who comes in is most likely as bad as her but slightly better at her job. Right. And so it's just, same thing like, I don't think Mark Wayne Mullen is going to be particularly good at DHS. Like maybe he'll manage the apartment better,

but he's still going to have. I mean, he's going to be as bad as Christy know him, just maybe slightly less clumsy in his corruption. Yeah, yeah, which is almost worse. More, exactly, exactly. On another messaging front, a message that the right has largely coalesced around right now amid all of this bad news,

the one kind of sliver, silver lining that they've jumped on is the fact that TSA agents aren't getting paid right now because of the government shutdown, the DHS section of the government shutdown, and there are long lines at airports, and they're all coming together. They've got their marching orders, and they're saying, you can thank a Democrat for this.

So what is your reaction to what we're seeing as the Republicans kind of coalesce around this messaging? I think they're going to struggle to make people specifically blame Democrats. Most people have no idea the government issue. The Department of Homeland Security is shut down. They are, I think, most likely to blame the incumbent party and to blame the president.

Now, it's also worth noting that Trump said he's not signing a single piece of legislation. unless the SAVE Act is passed, which the SAVE Act is not going to get to his desk. And so basically what he's essentially saying is that if Democrats were to pass a, if Democrats were to come together and pass a bill to fund TSA but keep ICE unfunded, he wouldn't sign that bill. So the person right now standing in the way of any sort of deal on getting the TSA agents paid is Donald Trump himself.

Well, it's also worth noting that Democrats have tried to do that. I mean, there was a moment where Greg Kassar, and John Cornyn were both doing, I guess, publicity, press conferences, gaggles, whatever you want to call it, at an airport in Texas. And Greg Casar asked John Cornyn right there on camera,

we have a standalone bill to fund TSA. If you say you want to fund these TSA agents, let's go ahead and do it. And John Corny, the first words out of his mouth were no. I mean, that is ultimately the problem is the Democrats have the more reasonable position here. And that's the problem for Republicans. The challenge for both parties is,

People are not paying attention to this because we're at war with Iran right now and gas prices have gone up 40% in the last week. It's that sort of drowning all of this out. And finally, I want to talk about something that I've seen on the left as we're contending with our own primary elections. And that is the kind of ever-present issue of progressive or leftist candidates, DSA candidates versus liberal, moderate candidates, and kind of the infighting that ensues. and we saw a little bit of it with Tala Rico and Crockett with that race. And it feels very much like, you know, for those of us who are paying attention back during the Bernie Hillary days, it feels like a redux of that race. And, you know, we're, on one hand, we have the more difficult job

because the Democratic Party is a less homogenous coalition than the right is. But I'm curious, you know, as we engage deeper into this process, and tensions continue to escalate and emotions continue to run higher and higher. How do you avoid getting into a position where we just kind of are at each other's throats and these primaries are so bruising that it fractures the very coalition that it requires to win? You know, these primaries are sort of a little all over the maps. In some cases, they are like truly liberal or leftist or progressive or DSA versus moderate. it. Sometimes they are just different approaches to politics, which is what I think Texas between

Telerico and Krakka was. They kind of had the exact same issue positions. It wasn't really about one was a leftist and one was a moderator. It was just they sort of disagreed on how politics works. You know, some of it's generational change, right, where you got a lot of candidates who may be more progressive on some issues, but are challenging just a younger set of leadership. You see that in some of these Illinois primaries that are happening on Tuesday night. You see that in, you know, to a certain extent, that's part of the dynamic in both Massachusetts and Maine, where you have people challenging older incumbent Democratic senators. Here's my take on it.

Like, our party needs to figure out, you know, what the fuck we're doing, what the fuck we stand for, you know, how we go execute politics. And primaries are one way in which we do that. And I think Texas is an object lesson because as bitter as that primary was online. And it was a brutal online conversation. And there were some, you know, some tough ads exchanged and some, tough commentary on the trail itself. But before that election was called, both Tala Rico and Crockett said they would support

the other person and campaign for them to help beat whoever the Republican nominee is. And they have come together since then. And so whatever happens between now and when the primary votes are cast, I'm not worried about. What I care about is whether people come together on the back end. So you take Maine, right, which is this increasingly bitter race. If Janet Mills is the nominee, I fully expect Graham Platner to marshal his supporters two campaign for her to beat Susan Collins because that's the main goal. And if Plattner's a nominee, I expect Janet Mills, her supporters at the DSCC and

Senator Schumer to do the same thing for Planner. Like that's what we should expect. And I do think that there is a, unlike 2016, everyone understands the threat that we are under and they are the urgency of the cause. And so we have to do is we added people to come together. And so these, I think the primaries are healthy. But they're only healthy if there is unity after the voters have their say. And we all get to work of defeating the Republicans and taking back the majority this fall.

Well, from your lips to God's ears, highly recommend for everybody who's watching and listening right now. If you're not signed up for a message box, which is Dan's newsletter. It is the smartest political writing online. I'm going to put the link right here on the screen and also in the post description. If you're listening on the podcast, I'll throw it in the show notes. So if you're not yet subscribed, please do yourself a favor and subscribe. Dan, as always, I appreciate the time, man. Awesome.

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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 Congressman Jamie Raskin. Congressman, thanks for joining me again. Brian, thank you for having me on. So, Congressman, you have some news to share about a new criminal referral that you're working on right now as it relates to a former top Trump administration official. Can you explain what that news is? Well, I mean, we can't allow people to come before Congress and then lie or conceal material facts, both of which are against the law. It's against the law to make material false statements under oath, period.

And then there's a specific statute which adds that you can't conceal material facts from Congress when you're testifying Congress. And Christy Noem came here, and it's just inescapable that she engaged in false statements and concealed material facts from Congress repeatedly. So in terms of whether or not this criminal referral is successful, the criminal referral goes to the Department of Justice. And so if we're talking about putting the fate of whether or not Christy Noem for lying to Congress, putting the fate of Christenome in the hands of Pam Bondi, I think it's clear to everybody what Pam Bondi is going to do, or I should say what she's not

going to do. And so how do you overcome? the obstacle of the fact that this is a, this is a Department of Justice and an Attorney General who are there not to uphold the law without fear of favor, but rather just to run a protection racket against Trump and all of his acolytes? Well, I sent this letter with Senator Durbin from the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the single most important line in our letter might be the simple restatement of what the federal statute of limitations is on lying to Congress. And that's five years. And that takes you beyond the Trump administration. So all of those well-trained cabinet officials in the Trump administration

who think that their job is just to cover up for the president and to lie in every context possible must reflect on the fact that we have federal criminal statutes which make it a crime to lie under oath and those actions, those criminal prosecutions can be brought for a five-year period. So if we are in a world where Christy Noem is held to account, is, you know, there is a criminal referral sent to the DOJ and a subsequent attorney general, one who is not there to just protect Republican officials, but rather to uphold the law without fear of favor, if we enter that world, then why would it just be limited to Christy Noem? There are other administration officials or other figures in the federal government who have also committed the same violations. I think these are

1001 violations lying to Congress. Just a few weeks ago, Pam Bondi sat in front of a congressional committee and said that there is no evidence implicating Donald Trump or tying Donald Trump to the Epstein files. That's patently false. Now, the credibility of that evidence notwithstanding, she didn't make that caveat. She said there's no evidence tying Donald Trump to any criminal activity within the Epstein files. And we know that there are interviews where Donald Trump was accused. of committing crimes that are contained within the Epstein files. And so how are you thinking about this, about consistency as it relates to lying to Congress? Well, I mean, some of the lies that Nome engaged in are easily contradicted by the public record. So, for example,

she said that DHS always complies with court orders and always follows court orders. We know that there were at least 210 cases that have been cited by courts themselves where the Department of Homeland Security violated court orders. And in fact, the Department of Justice even admitted it in 50 cases. And yet she said not. Okay, so that's one where we publicly can determine that she was lying. But then she was also lying about things that she did where it would be tough to know without you know, pretty deep investigative work that she was lying. But we were able to determine she was lying, for example, about this $220 million contract where she told the Senate that that was the product of competitive bidding.

That was a lie. My colleague, Joe Noghuse, refuted her and said, here's the form you filled out to escape competitive bidding. You said you were invoking a national security exception, why you needed to invoke a national security exception for a PR contract, you know, to show you on horseback, you know, out in the wild west, you know, he's a little bit weird. But in any event, he showed that that wasn't true. And then she said, oh, well, right, but, you know, we looked at different bidders, but those were all different friends of her. So that was a dodge about, you know, the competitive bidding process. So the bottom line is you can't come and lie before Congress any more than you can go and lie in court.

And we've got to hold the line on that to show that the perjury laws and the material false statement laws mean something. But I guess my broader question is there are other people who have also lied, who have also told demonstrably false statements, not just Pambandi, for example, which was the, the example that I brought up before, but also what about these Republican Supreme Court just nominees sitting in front of, you know, the Senate for their advice and consent hearings? They said that they respected stare decisis and respected precedent and then immediately went and overturned Roe versus Wade. I mean, there is this sense as people watch this that you can say whatever you want to Congress and then once you're in a position of power, you can flip-flop immediately and there are just no consequences for it anymore.

That's right. Well, look, and my point is this. The Supreme Court justices are in a somewhat different category. Like, they all got up and they swore their fealty to stare decisis and precedent. But then it's very easy for them to invoke various exceptions to stare decisis when factual circumstances have changed, when the law has changed and so on. That's pretty slippery. So that that's tough on that particular case. But the ones you've invoked with respect to the Attorney General,

are serious and real. And so we simply need to get the word out in a deterrent way. We are watching you. You can't get up and lie before Congress under oath the way that Donald Trump can get up and lie the way he does every single day from the White House Oval Office or on the tarmac someplace. Yeah, nobody can get him on that. The Supreme Court has said that under the First Amendment, you basically can't make it a crime to lie unless somebody's under oath or unless we're talking about fraud in order to deprive somebody of their property and so on.

But we can't get so conditioned by Donald Trump's lies that the word goes out among the cabinet secretaries that you can go ahead and say whatever you want. Now, the interesting thing about Attorney General Bondi was she was, she was. refused directly to answer questions, basically, from any Democrat. She changed the subject. She evaded. She began talking about irrelevant stuff going on in other parts of the country and so on. I think she had her little burn book as well, so everything devolved into a personal attack against every Democrat. She turned it into ad hominem attacks. Yeah. All of that was a way, perhaps on her part, to avoid committing perjury. Because the truth is, none of them is going to say anything that contradicts Donald Trump. Now, one of the ways that we assert that known lied was with respect to Donald

Trump, because she was asked the question, did you tell Donald Trump, did you get his approval, then did he know that you have this $220 million contract? And she repeatedly said, both in the Senate in the House, that she did. He directly refuted that and said, he didn't know anything about it. One of them is lying. She was under oath, and if she was lying, that's perjury. He wasn't under oath, and he lies all the time. So that might be the one that's hardest for us to prove. But in any event, one of them is definitely lying. Congressman, is there anything that Congress can do to vindicate crimes against Congress, which is to say lying to Congress, you know, committing perjury or committing contempt of Congress, to vindicate crimes against Congress

if and when the DOJ inevitably abdicates its responsibility to adjudicate those things? Right. Well, one thing we can do is we can wait for a future administration to come in if the statute of limitations last that long. That was the point I was making before. But we also can hold people in contempt of Congress. There's an old power that Congress has called inherent contempt. And the Supreme Court repeatedly ruled that Congress has the power to render both civil and criminal contempt charges. Civil contempt being holding someone or finding someone until they give Congress what Congress has demanded in a subpoena, whether it's testimony or documents or what have you, but also

criminal contempt. You can be punished by Congress for acting in contempt of Congress, which would include lie. And there were people that were talking a century ago now, but who were held in contempt of Congress for engaging in behavior like that. Is that something that Congress would consider looking into in the event that Democrats retake the House and Pam Bondi and this DOJ continue to abdicate their responsibilities to uphold the law? Well, there was a lot of talk about it during the first Trump administration. when we had a majority in the first two years. And a lot of people explored it. And people were even looking for the old jail that nobody could find that was somewhere in the maze of the capital basement to see whether, you know, this could be done.

It never really crystallized legislatively. But it could crystallize legislatively in the future if we continue to have spokespeople for the administration cabinet secretaries coming forward and blatantly lie. the Congress. Is there a world in which that that contempt power could be used to compel the release of the Epstein files if we're at a point where Pan Bondi continues to refuse to release these three million outstanding documents? There is nothing in the inherent power of contempt that would prevent that from being used in that way. Now, we shouldn't have to, you know, cite the inherent power of congressional contempt to get the executive branch of government to comply, not just with a subpoena, but with a federal law. But we will use any means at our disposal.

But basically, Congress would go to court to say that there's not compliance taking place and that the federal government is not itself enforcing the law. But I would say we have to use any means at our disposal to restore the rule of law in America. And we are living through this absolutely atrocious reign of lawlessness and terror, as we saw in Minneapolis. And, you know, if you've got government agents who think that the Constitution doesn't apply to them and the rule of law doesn't apply to them, then you're going to end up seeing U.S. citizens getting shot in the face by government agents. And that's where we're at. Donald Trump, who feels absolute immunity and impunity because of some things the Supreme Court has done.

has let the message go out throughout his administration that they're somehow above the law. And that's what makes it such a dangerous moment. And actually, I wanted to ask about exactly that, which is some news that Greg Bovino, who was formerly the person who was overseeing all of these operations, including when Renee Good and Alex Prettie were shot and killed in the streets of Minneapolis, that there is reporting now that he will be leaving government at the end of this month. Can I have your reaction to that? Yeah, I mean, I don't know under what circumstances, because I'm hearing this from you.

I'm not sure I saw that before. So there does seem to be an effort to change the subject. Minneapolis was an absolute political waterloo for the Republican Party, where millions and millions of Americans turned against them for violating not just the rights of immigrants, but the rights of U.S. citizens to the point of shooting them because they were bearing a lawful firearm consistent with state law and the Second Amendment to the point where, you know, U.S. citizens are being shot down simply for exercising their First Amendment rights. So they're not supposed to use, apparently, the phrase mass deportation anymore. The public understands that

mass deportation is shorthand for violating the rights of the people and trampling the bill. Right. So I don't know whether getting rid of him now is part of that, or like most of them, he wants to try to cash in as quickly as possible and make money as quickly as possible because I understand that the whole thing from, you know, from jumpball is they're trying to make as much money as possible off of the American people. And Donald Trump has made billions of dollars in just over one year in office. And And we believe that the Trumps want to make themselves the richest family in America before they leave office or before they're forced to leave office. Congressman, I want to switch gears finally to one last point, and that is that applications are now open for the Democracy Summer 2026 program. And this is a program you and I have spoken about at length.

So can you give a little bit of an introduction on what that is for folks who don't know about it and why it's so important? Well, I appreciate that, Brian. It's for high school and college kids across America who are paying attention politically or maybe just starting to pay attention and want to get more engaged and involved. And so you sign up with Democracy Summer, you will get to participate in nationwide campaign Zooms with people like Heather Cox Richardson and Larry Tribe and Tim Snyder and Benny Thompson, Nancy Pelosi, you name it. And then you go out and you exercise your First Amendment rights by involving yourself with the campaign. And there people are engaged in door knocking, in canvassing, in registering voters, what have you. And so it's a really great life-changing opportunity, but you'll be able to change not just your life, but your country too. because young people have been dramatically affected by things going on, whether we're talking about war,

whether we're talking about the high cost of housing and education and groceries, and young people need to be engaged in this process. And that's without even getting to some overarching crises of our time, like climate change and like artificial intelligence, that young people need to have their voices engaged in. Well, look, if anybody watching is in high school or college or know someone in high school or college who you think would be a good fit for this program, I could not recommend it highly enough. I've been a major fan of this for years and years and years. So I'm going to put the link to Democracy Summer right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. Again, highly recommend that you sign up. Congressman, as always, thank you for the time.

I appreciate it so much. Thank you so much, Brian. No lie is brought to you by Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard, it's scary. So much work goes into this. this thing that you're not entirely sure is going to work out, and it can be hard to make that leap of faith. Trust me, I know.

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Adam, we have a major update from the hands of a federal judge who just gave some bad news to one of Donald Trump's more unhinged cabinet members, RFK Jr. Can you explain what just happened in court? Absolutely, Brian. What happened is that a federal judge struck down RFK Jr.'s anti-vaccine policies and found that the ideologues that he stacked in his committee to give advice on vaccines were. not properly appointed. So he had stopped all of their recommendations. He stopped RFK juniors attempts to take off critical vaccines from the childhood vaccine schedule. It's a major loss for RFK Jr. And importantly, a rejection of government's longstanding claim that RFK Jr's actions aren't reviewable by any court. And that's an extreme position. I'm happy

to go into that first. Yeah, I would love for exactly that. Okay, well, I want to read this part of the ruling because it's incredible. You had Judge Murphy saying in oral arguments, he was providing some hypotheticals. You see very often, I've been covering the speed for two decades, and very often you have federal judges take a party's argument to its logical extreme, and he did that with the government saying that RFK Jr.'s actions could not be reviewed by any court. And here are some of the hypotheticals that he gave. Judge Murphy said, let's say that instead of revising the vaccine schedule, the CDC said, actually, we think measles is good for you.

You should go have lunch with someone with measles, and we are sponsoring measles lunches in every city. Come have a measles lunch that would seem to go right up against the goal of preventing communicable diseases. Would such a policy by the CDC be judicially reviewable? And the government essentially said, no, it wouldn't be reviewable, said, I think that would still be committed to agency discretion by law. The judge went further, said, so even if what the agency was saying is, we like communicable diseases and we think you should get more of them, that's not judicially reviewable. The government's lawyer said no.

And just think about that for a second. Think of it. You mentioned RFK Jr. being unhinged. This would be an unhinged RFK Jr. being unleashed and saying that there is no federal court anywhere in the land who can second guess when he says that one of his pet theories about the public health should have the force of law. So now that a judge has struck down this effort by RFK's health agency, what are the practical implications for American families. Well, what it means is the public health is being protected. Just to put this into perspective, I recently spoke to a doctor in the wake of this ruling an emergency room physician in Michigan. And he had mentioned that the United States is now on the brink of being off the list of

countries that have eradicated measles. And it's not just measles. The doctor was talking about meningitis vaccines and outbreaks of that. I saw that ProPublica had an expose on how Wipping Cough is now an issue, that long, controlled, and eradicated diseases are now part of the national conversation. And what it comes down to is putting confidence and expertise again. The foundation of the judge's ruling was not only the science. It was a law.

He was talking about the Administrative Procedures Act, which safeguards against arbitrary and the precious government actions. And what we had here was RFK Jr., essentially nullifying and purging a body called ASIP, ACIP, the advisory committee on immunization practices. So he purged the people who were properly appointed to it and stacked it with his fellow ideologues. And in another part of his ruling, Judge Murphy said, of the 15 members currently on ASIP, even under the most generous reading, only six appear to have meaningful experience in

vaccines, the very focus of ASIP. So the judge is saying, you can't short circuit this procedure that was in place since 1964 to provide sound medical advice and put it with people who share your pet theories. Adam, how come this is working, and I'm glad that it is working, But how come this is working for health and human services, but not the Department of Education, for example, not the EPA, for example? There are people in place atop each agency that are hostile to the very mission of their agencies, and yet they're allowed to act with abandon, with reckless abandon, and oftentimes destroy the very agencies that they were tapped to lead. And there really doesn't seem to be any recourse for any of that. But in this instance, where RFK is trying to undermine the stated mission of health and human services and its corresponding agencies, there are judges who are able to step in and say, no, so long as you're acting in a way that's antithetical to the mission of each agency, there is a check on that. Right. Well, what we're seeing is the kind of interplay of what's happening in the trial court level and on appeals.

And I should be clear, the Trump DOJ is going to appeal this. And we've seen. other federal judges try to take actions with the Department of Education, for example, and other agencies. There's litigation right now over Doge. And a lot of this litigation is under the very statute that this case involves, the Administrative Procedure Act, because if there's one common theme in Trump's both of his terms is this explosion in Administrative Procedure Act litigation because he does things arbitrarily and capriciously by definition. It's a sort of unilateral thing, and he stacks his cabinet with members who act unilaterally without notifying the public without bringing in the experts, working against the experts.

So that's why you see a lot of this litigation. A lot of this will come down to whether this stands up on appeal. But one of the things that I find so important about this ruling, and it's a fortified. 35 page ruling here is the principle being defended here that RFK Jr. cannot act alone without any court oversight. If that legal theory is adopted, we're in deep trouble when it comes to the public health. Well, isn't that really what Trump is looking to do? I mean, he wants, he and his party want unreviewable power. I mean, this is what they tried to do with the independent state legislature theory, which is this idea that each legislature in each state can adopt voting rules, no matter how insane,

and they wouldn't be susceptible to any check or review by the judicial branch, for example, or by the governors. So if you had a state like North Carolina, for example, with such a gerrymandered Republican legislature that there was no hope that any Democratic legislature would be able to take over, but, you know, there was Governor Roy Cooper. Those people would be able to adopt rules for the subsequent elections that would be completely unreviewable by Governor Roy Cooper or even the Democratic State Supreme Court at the time. And so this has been a recurring theme for this party where they were so long as they have

their own acolytes, their own hardliners in positions of power, they want those positions of power to be completely unreviewable by any other branch of government. That's absolutely true. As a matter of fact, one theme with the Trump government and the MAGA movement more broadly is these sweeping assertions of power. And to put a little bit of glimmer of hope here, a lot of these have failed pretty substantially in court. I mean, we've spoken about the case of Kilmar-Breggo-Gar many times. Early on, after Kilmara-Brega-Garcia was spirited out of the country and put in a prison in El Salvador where he was tortured, the Trump-D-O-J line was that now it's unreviewable, now it's out of our hands, and that was rejected nine zero by this Supreme Court.

And saying that there has to be some sort of due process not only with Kilmar-Brigo Garcia, but with hundreds of others who were spirited out of the country without notice or a hearing. This is an extension of that, where we have another claim of unreviewable authority, absolute power, if you will, where a judge is shooting it down. And so there are two things that I'm looking for on appeal. One, does this ruling hold because it holding is vital to the public health and the ability of any secretary of health and human services to be able to stack the deck with their preferred ideologs rather than follow any procedures on something as important as public health

recommendations. But the other thing that I'm going to be looking forward to the role, the rule, ruling on very closely is will the higher courts reject this idea that Trump's cabinet members can do whatever they want without the federal courts touching it? Because if that is a finding, we're in real trouble. Right, because then it basically just eliminates our system of checks and balances. And when you have, you know, these extremists, these extremists in positions of power, then, you know, we're setting ourselves up for a pretty dangerous situation. Is there any way to read the tea leaves on what an appeals court might say on on this matter in particular well i'm citing the whole

kilmar brago-garcia route i find it very unlikely that a federal court is going to rubber stamp even an appellate court given the nine-zero nature of the supreme court's ruling on kilmar brago garcia this whole idea of unreviewable authority it's something that the trump t doj trots out all the time and they are always rejected yon this issue. But it will see what happens because this judge, Judge Brian Murphy, has had a ruling paused on the shadow docket before. It seems that Trump DOJ is really attacking him on the basis that prior rulings have been paused, but not fully overturned on appeal. I think that the courts always move slowly and cautiously. But as I look at this opinion, it is so devastating. And it really lays out the radical nature of the

power grab here and how it cuts against the science and cuts against the expertise that I think that Judge Murphy took a really cautious and careful approach to this ruling that I expect will stand up on appeal. Was there anything especially striking that you saw in this decision? because oftentimes, you know, these judges are speaking out in a way that we haven't seen before. And so I'm just curious whether there was something from the decision itself that you think was, especially unorthodox or unusual. It's not so much that it was unorthodox or unusual, but I think that Judge Murphy puts his finger on the atmosphere of distrust. And I thought he opened this ruling in a very moving way. He quoted Carl Sagan.

And I'm going to read from the introduction, said, science like law is far from a perfect instrument of knowledge. History is littered with once universal truths that have since come under scrutiny. Nevertheless, science is still the best that we have. And he's addressing the vaccine skepticism that is all over social media. But he goes and connects that to the law. And he says a little bit later, for our public health, Congress and the executive have been.

built over decades an apparatus that marries the rigors of science with the execution and force of the United States government. One extraordinary product of that apparatus has been the eradication and reduction of certain communicable diseases through the development and use of vaccines. And I thought it was just a powerful way of laying it out there that we have since 1964 come up with a system that married the law and science. that benefited from things like we don't have to think about measles unless someone mucks up the system. Yeah. And I think that he really spoke to something in our culture, the really spoke to and address the real distrust in many institutions,

whether it's science and the law and saying, look what we have accomplished with that. And look what we risk if we throw it all away. Look, as there continues to be a lot of distrust zone in institutions, one space where I think it's a little bit well deserved is the media space, the legacy media space. And we have seen a number of institutions and formerly trusted outlets basically capitulate to Trump and show that it was more worth it to side with and kowtow to a despot as opposed to staying true to their own stated values. We're seeing the extent to which the Washington Post and CBS News and ABC in so many different instances thought it was more important to cozy up to Donald Trump.

And so a small step that I would ask everybody watching right now to take is to support independent journalism, fearless independent journalism, and nobody does it better than Adam. So I'm going to put the link to All Rise News right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. Adam is not owned by some major media conglomerate. It's him. He is doing this work by making sure to pay his own way and go. All around the country, wherever these cases are happening, and he has built a brand that is trusted, if nothing else. So I'm going to put, again, that link right here on the screen and also in the post description. If you're not yet signed up and you want to show some support for independent media, especially at a time where we need it.

Please make sure to subscribe. Adam, as always, thanks so much for your time. Thank you so much, Brian. Always a pleasure. Thanks again to Dan Pfeiffer, Jamie Raskin, and Adam Klassfeld. That's for this episode. Talk to you on Sunday. 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 in a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to bryantylarkoen.com to learn more.