No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump just put me on his newest enemies list

Episode Date: June 7, 2026

Trump has just created an enemies list for content creators– and I’m on it. Brian interviews CNN’s Elex Michaelson talks about Trump’s new round of stolen election claims and MSNOW’s Ari Melber talks Trump, Blanche and Epstein.Pre-order The Day After: https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/thedayafterWritten 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 just created an enemies list for content creators, and I'm on it. Plus, I have two interviews this week. CNN's Alex Michelson talks about Trump's new round of stolen election claims in California, and MS now's Ari Melbert talks Trump, Blanche, and Epstein. I'm Brian Taylor Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. As you might know by now, Trump has created yet another enemy's list, this time what they're calling media offenders, so basically content creators, online folks. And my name was among the first ones on the list. I did consult a lawyer about this, and the reality is that if there's a lot of this,

the government wants to use taxpayer resources and a government website to draw attention to me, they do have the right to do that. Is it a good use of taxpayer funds? Is this what Trump voters expected when they voted for a guy who swore that he would focus on lowering prices and bringing down inflation and expanding health care and stopping new wars and releasing the Epstein files, failed to do all those things and then turned his sites on YouTubers? I'll let those people answer that question. Now, I did release a statement in the immediate aftermath of seeing that list. Here's a quick preview of that. So I am officially on one of Donald Trump's enemies list.

You'll now see my name under a list of media offenders. This is, I guess, a new iteration that's focused on content creators now that he's moved through law firms, universities, tech companies, media outlets, comedians. I guess we're up to content creators now. So in consultation with my attorneys, I've drafted a response, a legal response to Trump. putting my name on this enemy's list as far as content creators are concerned, and it goes as follows, fuck you, suck my dick. Now, I'm not going to lie. I was initially nervous about posting that because, look, you all know who Trump is, right? He is a vindictive, petty, small man

who seeks retribution as easily as he breathes. He doesn't need any legitimate reason to go after you. And frankly, when he does go after you, it's taxing, emotionally, mentally, financially, And that's on purpose. That is the point. If Todd Blanche, attorney general, decides to prosecute me for whatever inane reason he lands on, it would probably cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars and cost me also whatever fleeting moments of joy I'm still capable of feeling. And so objectively, logically, it would probably be smart to keep a low profile,

stay off their radar, and not get myself into any trouble. But then I started thinking about the way that I felt when I watched law firms like Paul Weiss capitulate to Trump. because it was easier for them. And how Trump saw that and he felt emboldened. I remember how I felt when ABC and CBS settled insane lawsuits with Trump because it was easier for them and how Trump saw that and felt more emboldened. I remembered how I felt when tech CEOs and companies started lining up to pay Trump millions

for his ballroom because it was easier for them and how Trump saw that and felt more emboldened. I remember being so fucking angry because in effect, their decision to try and make their own lives easier and their own bottom lines healthier, actually made the rest of us less safe, because now Trump, an aspiring autocrat, knows how easy it is to wield the government against his enemies to get his way. And frankly, those companies didn't even help themselves either, because another lesson Trump learned is just how easy it is to go after them again since they were so willing to capitulate the first time. So when I saw my name on Trump's newest enemies list, the absolute last thing I was going to do was the same thing that all those other cowards did,

folding to Trump, getting themselves out of trouble, and not thinking about the effect that it was having on everybody else. And look, I got into this job because I care about this country and our democracy. Like, this isn't exactly a fun job. I swim in the toxic cesspool that is politics online, more than 12 hours a day, seven days a week. I don't take days off.

There's virtually only bad news. And now, having the president of the United States attack me doesn't make anything easier. and we've still got two more years of this. I don't know what that's going to mean for me and my safety, all of which is to say there are easier avenues for me to have gone down. But I chose this because I can't imagine doing anything else. This is what I care about.

It's what I've dedicated my life to. And there's not a world where I watch Trump attack me and become the exact thing that I loathe from all of these cowards who looked out for themselves. So if Trump wants to come after me and content creators, go for it. I will be even louder than before. Like if this self-proclaimed free speech champion wants to clamp down on my right to call him a megal maniacal-pidophile protector, then I'll do it twice as loud. And I will make sure everybody knows what a fragile little bitch this president is, that he is so weak, so pathetic, so desperate, that he needs to go after YouTubers and podcasters. And if me doing so gives anything resembling a permission structure for the next person to fight back instead of capitulate, then I've done my job.

If courage is contagious, I want to make sure we normalize the idea of stepping up and speaking out when we inevitably fall into Trump's crosshairs. Because remember, this guy's not doing this from a place of strength. You don't go after content creators if you're strong or popular. You do it when you're flailing. And that's exactly what he's exposing about himself. These are the last gasps of a desperate small man before his legacy is wiped out and he falls into obscurity. And I will be the first one cheering it on when it happens.

One last note before we get to some interviews. If you would like to show some support for my work, I'm going to ask for one thing. I have a book coming out in just a few weeks. The single best way to support me, if you can, is to pre-order my book titled The Day After. It is a blueprint for how Democrats can and must fight back against this aspiring autocrat. I'm going to put a link to pre-order in the show notes of this episode, or you can go to Brian Tyler Cohen.com slash book. I'll also be on tour in Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and

LA in mid-July. You can also grab tickets to the tour at that same exact link. I would love to see you in person. Thank you so much. Okay, next step are my interviews with Alex Michelson and Ari Melburgh. No Lies brought to you by Hymns. So you've got weight loss goals, but hitting them is another story. Enter Weight Loss by Hymns. It's designed to support you in losing the weight and keeping it off. And Hymns now offers access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the Wagovi pill and the Wagovi pen. With Wagovi at Hibon, Hymns, lose up to 20% or more of your body weight when combined with diet and exercise. It helps you regulate your appetite and eat less, so success is within reach.

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That's HIMS.com slash BTC. HIMS.com slash BTC. BTC. Weight loss by Hymns is not available in all 50 states. Wagovi is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wagovi clinical study information and restrictions, visit Hymns.com. It's crazy. You know, this country needs a fair press, and one thing I think that's done is exposed how corrupt our media is.

And I really do while we're here. I hope the media looks at this election that's taking place in California, you wear. They think it'll take seven or eight days to count the votes. Can you believe this? I mean, they spend all that money on the machines, the big voting machines. They think it's going to be seven or eight days before we know who won the election. But the numbers are looking strange because without any vote counting, the numbers dropped very precipitously for two Republicans that are doing well, that had been doing well. And I hope you're wrong. watching it because I'm watching it very closely.

That was Donald Trump speaking about the votes that are taking place right now in California as vote counters continue to tally up votes. I'm joined now by CNN's Alex Michelson host of The Story Is on CNN. Alex, can I have your response to what Donald Trump just said, where he's claiming that the numbers are, quote, looking strange because without any vote counting, the numbers drop very precipitously for the Republicans. Obviously, this is kind of the second wave of Donald Trump's. election denialism now for the 2026 midterms.

Well, first up, Brian, good to be with you. And welcome to the L.A. County Vote Processing Center, which is the biggest vote processing center in the world. You see behind me right now, people are hard at work going through ballots right here. They're separating the ballots from the envelopes, getting them ready to be processed. In terms of President Trump's argument that there's been widespread fraud in California, California. There is no evidence to that point. He has not provided evidence of that point. The Republican Party has not provided evidence to that point. In years past, Donald Trump made the point that if Jesus was counting the votes in California, he would have won. So I pressed at that time,

the then chairman of the Republican Party, Mike Watley, what evidence do you have to show that? and he wasn't able to provide any sort of laughed and said that Trump was kind of joking about it. He's kept that Jesus line up a few different times. In California, by design, the lawmakers have made a system that prioritizes giving as many people as possible, as many options as possible to vote up until the very last minute. And because of that, counting all of that is slow. So in California, every single registered voter is mailed a ballot, whether they ask for one or not. A lot of people have liked that.

80% of voters now return their ballots in the mail instead of voting in person. But a vote-by-mail system then requires some verification to make sure it's the right person that actually got the ballot sending it back. The way they do that is through signature verification. You sign your ballot. It goes through a machine. They make sure that your signature looks the same as the signature that is on the file for when you got a driver's license or whatever you have in the system. And if it doesn't, then it goes to a human being to look at it or a panel of human beings to look at it. If there's a real problem with that, you're notified and you have an opportunity to come here and to correct it and say, yes, that's my ballot.

here's my signature, and it's called curing. But that whole process takes a while. They give you up to seven days for postmark ballots to come in, because you can drop off your ballot in the mailbox, the day of the election, up to seven ballots for those days for those to come in, and then up to 10 days to cure the roles. So the whole process, when everything comes together,

takes about three weeks. Now, why do you presume it is that Donald Trump is engaged in this whole process yet again, pointing to California and kind of wasting resources, expending his energy, trying to convince people that a process that is legitimate, that all the evidence shows is legitimate, is somehow illegitimate. Because Californians, by in large part, have rejected his policies. Remember, Donald Trump lost this state by almost 30 points. And right now, his approval rating in California is in the 20.

So instead of accepting that, if you change the narrative and say that that's not really happening and create your own narrative, which is something that President Trump has been an expert at through his entire career, not just in politics, the idea of branding something and sort of willing something into existence. And that's exactly what he's done with these allegations of fraud. If you say it enough, people start to believe it. And I will tell you personally, I put out a video to sort of, of explaining the way the process works and to see the way it's twisted, frankly, by both

sides in terms of to get their narrative out there is quite extraordinary. And there is real distrust in the system. And, you know, maybe there's a real argument to be had. Should we have ballots postmarked up until election day? Should we have seven days for those to come in? Is that a good process? I think there's a real debate to be had about the system and whether the system is working or the system should be improved. But what we don't have, have right now. And that's a debate over whether we should be able to count votes faster. What we don't have right now, though, is evidence that the system is rig, that the system isn't working, or this concept that in the middle of the night, a bunch of people find some votes,

you know, in the middle of the week and then just plop down some ballots and then all of a sudden they're counted. That's not how it works. And by the way, if anybody doubts it, come here. This center and other centers like it across the state are open to the public. You can come on tours. You can observe the process in person. You can watch online. The whole thing is streaming live. You can watch the whole thing happen. So one thing that is quite striking when you're here is the amount of transparency built into the system to try to address a lot of those concerns. Right. And I think what you said was especially important that there is a purposeful conflation of the votes are being counted slow by design and this idea that those same votes are rigged because

they're being counted slow. Those two things obviously are completely separate. I want to ask you about the actual race itself now. You are the premier California reporter. I would highly recommend for anybody who's watching from California and frankly nationwide to tune into the story is every evening during the week from 9 to 11 p.m. Pacific 12 to 2 a.m. Eastern. I'm myself have been on that show numerous times, and it is a lot of fun. Alex, can you give us a state of the race right now? Obviously, two major races that folks are looking at are the gubernatorial race, where Javier Bacera, Tom Steyer, and Steve Hilton are vying for those top two slots

to advance to the runoff. And then we have the mayoral race where Nithia Raman and Spencer Pratt are vying to face off against Karen Bass in that runoff. So where do we stand right now? So there are still enough votes to be counted in both of those race. for the outcome to change. So neither one of them is set. It is looking increasingly likely, like the governor's race is going to be Javier Bacera, the Democrat and Steve Hilton, the Republican. Tom Steyer still needs to make up a lot of ground. He needs to do exceptionally well in the late

returning ballots. There were several different anecdotal and polling indications that he was doing exceptionally well in the final days of the campaign. So there are still enough ballots for him to do We have not so far seen an example, though, of him winning enough ballots to make up the margin, but he still has more time on that front. But if you had to bet, you probably would bet for the other two. In terms of the mayor's race, CNN has projected that Karen Bass is moving on. So the battle is now for the last spot of the top two to go ahead into the general election. Spencer Pratt is ahead right now of Niphyah Raman.

And Nithia Raman has done well in some of the late returning ballots. She's expected to climb and probably narrow the gap with Spencer Pratt. The question is, by how much, are there enough ballots out there for her to do that? Because people think there's a lot of late returning ballots for Democrats. Yes, that's true. But not every Democrat is voting for Nithia Raman. Many of the Democrats also voting for Karen Bass, who, of course, is a Democrat endorsed by most of the leaders of the Democratic Party, including most of the Democratic Party, including most

the Democratic Socialists on the city council who did not endorse Nithia Raman. So at this point, in some ways, a vote for Bass is almost like a vote for Pratt because it stops Nithia Raman from advancing up. So we'll see if she's able to lend in those margins. And every day around 4 to 5 o'clock Pacific time, we get a lot of new data. That's when the ballot dumps are made, where they put out new numbers. It's widely expected for the governor's race that on Friday, a bunch of counties are going to release their data probably around the same time. And that will give us a real sense if Tom Steyer has the juice to potentially keep this going, or it may be time to start making a call on that race.

Let's say, for example, that Spencer Pratt does advance through the runoff. Do you have any reason to believe if he was able to garner roughly a quarter of the votes in this jungle primary process where there's no barriers to people voting for Spencer Pratt, that his margins would be. any better if presumably Nithia Raman doesn't advance and the vast majority of those votes go to Karen Bass. Is there any reason to think that Spencer Pratt might have a shot to actually win the L.A. mayoral race? Well, he would need to do one of two things or maybe both things. He would need to convince some of these Nithia Raman voters that you're so against Karen Bass

that you should side with Spencer Pratt. We'll see if he's able to do that. The other thing he would need to do is bring in voters that weren't, didn't come out this time and try to bring new people into the system. And part of the way Donald Trump was able to win was that he engaged voters who before were not in the system to get into the system. And then that changed the whole calculus of the map. I mean, if you had to bet, you would bet against him. It's hard to imagine how that happens. But, you know, on the day before the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton had a 90% chance of winning and then she lost. So I think we should all get out of the prediction business and let voters decide. Last question here, Alex. You and I were speaking and you have reason to believe

that Donald Trump was actually watching your show the other day. Can you explain why? I don't know if he was, but we had a whole conversation about the California vote and what was happening late at night on the East Coast at 1 o'clock and it wrapped up around 104 and then at 105, he put out a true social post about the very topic that we were talking about. So maybe he was watching. I don't know, maybe they were talking about it and a rerun on another network, but... Well, I would highly recommend, look, if it's good enough for the president of the United States to tune into, highly recommend for everybody who's watching right now to tune into Alex Michelson. Again, Monday through Friday, 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Pacific,

12 a.m. to 2 a.m. Eastern. And actually, on Friday evening, I'll be on the show as well for a for a quick debate. So, Alex, thanks for the work that you're doing. Thanks for being there and spreading good information at a time where it's so desperately needed. And I will see you Friday evening on your show. Can't wait. Thank you, Brian. No lies brought to you by better help. So for some of us, summer is our favorite season. Travel picks up, kids are out of school, adventure is the focus. But for others, juggling it all can be really tough. It can lead to a sense that you're overwhelmed and counting down the minutes until the kids are back in school. And many worry that, you know, we're wasting the days of sunshine. That's why it is so important to build in time for yourself.

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her with Todd Blanche, who just got his big promotion as he was nominated for Attorney General in a permanent capacity. So can you talk a little bit about what you think in terms of Trump being able to kind of insulate himself from any accountability as it relates to Epstein by putting in place somebody who has shown that he is shameless, if nothing else, when it comes to burying any of Trump's involvement or running cover for Trump as it relates to Epstein? I think Epstein is a huge piece of this, and we've both covered it. Blanche was running the exact program that has.

Everyone has criticized, including many conservatives and Republicans, because they weren't transparent. They weren't honest. They buried and hit a lot of stuff. In any normal environment, you don't promote that person because it looks like you're rewarding Epstein secrecy, which you are. But here, Donald Trump has shown again and again. I think it's interesting to see his approval numbers crash because more of his supporters either realize it or just over it, that he's not into public interest. And so someone who actually went that far against the political wins, including on the right, to just save him, protect him and do Epstein secrecy, whatever it is they're hiding, that to him to Trump is a win. And so, again, I think it's the type of thing that has legs because plenty of his supporters have woken up to this. And Blanche's signature was on the initial misleading documents.

He was on the letters to Congress that oversaw materials that had redaction errors, that cared more. about hiding Trump than hiding the real victims and others who Trump had claimed he cared about. So I think all of that hangs over this and it's documented. Do you think that this has an impact? And I ask that because there are, I mean, countless issues. Every month there's another kind of discourse du jour or story du jour where we're like, okay, there's no way he can wriggle out of this one. And then, of course, lo and behold, he does.

Obviously, the Epstein thing has a lot of legs because this was an issue. that was championed by Trump and his acolytes themselves. And so this obviously has more potency than just, you know, kind of an issue where both sides can retreat to their partisan corners. This one was really elevated by the right. But with that said, like we had watched as Trump kind of has been able to kind of keep a floor in place. Granted, it's been chipped away at recently.

But in terms of the the potency of Epstein as a persuasion issue, do you think that it's going to make an impact on? way or the other. I think it already has made a huge impact because it broke the dam in the in the votes and was the first big revolt that was a veto proof revolt. So you had a super majority on that issue. And then after that, you had push back on other things, not all as important, but it was only after the Republican revolt in Epstein that you got push back on the budget. You got bigger ice cutbacks. You got pushback on the ballroom even by some Republicans. And now just. this week, you had a war powers vote, which, yes, was mostly Democrats, but Republicans joined.

Massey led that. So the Epstein tormentor to Donald Trump has now beat him more than once on the House floor. That's not a usual thing. So yes, I think there's a cascade. Then there's the other point you made, which I think is smart. And I think people online who follow this stuff independently get it better sometimes, call it better than in D.C. because D.C. bounces between the two parties. That's kind of its thing. And when it comes to Trump, I think both parties have have made mistakes. The Democrats have run repeated campaigns just on saying you don't like him, as if that's a winning message you need to sell when more often than not, I could show you the charts. The country's already there. They don't like him. But whether they bring him back in

compared to the alternative is a different question, right? Just like you could dislike a teacher a lot. And then they bring in a substitute is so bad that you say, I still don't like that teacher, but man, we prefer him to this new one. And so that's, that's, that. That's the Democrats' mistake. The Republicans' mistake is that they've constantly tried to say, oh, you counted him out and he connects with Real America because he had these surprising comebacks. That's not real math.

He got fewer votes in 16. He got wiped out in the blue wave in 18, and he lost in 20 with fewer votes, right? We all know that. They underperformed in 22, including after the big Supreme Court abortion decision. So the only time he ever got more votes was 24. That's a one-off, actually. And we'll see how he does in 26.

I think Senate Republicans are. reminded or waking up to how hard he is to run with. So the comeback narrative is a DC narrative. It's not really a comeback if you were never liked. He won once. And unlike some other people, Colin Farrant Square, I covered that election. There was a big high participation. He won 24 once. You know, I think what's interesting about all of this is like he is quietly doing his work behind the scenes where he just rids the party, excommunicates the party of anybody who was willing to come forward and support the discharge petition for the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Like, it might not seem so overt because this is kind of the, the slow running machinations of

the electoral process. But like, Thomas Massey is out. He signed the, he co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Lauren Bobert was forced to run in the fourth congressional district in Colorado because she wasn't going to be able to win in the third, certainly without the support of Trump who'd been busy calling her dumb and low IQ. you. Meanwhile, you have Marjorie Tiller Green who left Congress outright. And when she even approached the White House because she and her family were getting death threats, Trump basically doubled down and said, you know, you had what's coming to you. And then Nancy Mace, Trump decided to endorse her primary opponent in the South Carolina gubernatorial race. And so

one by one, like this is, again, this is like a slow plotting process. But he was able to be successful in excommunicating the people who put him in this situation, situation in the first place where the Epstein-Files Transparency Act was even advanced because of those people who were willing to buck the party line. And so that's like the one piece of doubt I have in terms of whether it's still going to be as easy for these Republicans to buck Trump, recognizing that every time it happens, whether it's on Epstein with those four that I just mentioned, whether it's Bill Cassidy, who, of course, had voted in favor of his impeachment. John Cornyn, I mean, the guy was so far up Trump's ass, he could touch the back of his teeth,

posting pictures of himself reading the art of the deal. Even he wasn't loyal enough to get the endorsement over Ken Paxton. So there is that backdrop of, okay, you can speak out for something that you agree with, you know, that flies in the face of what the White House's stance is, but your job is going to be on the line. Yeah, and I mean, that makes me think of two things, one on Epstein and one on this type of politics. For Epstein, given how much has come out that already makes Trump look bad, and I'm always careful to say as a legal journalist and I'm an attorney, we have not seen criminal level evidence. We've seen stuff that is embarrassing. Many people would say disqualifying. But unlike some other individuals, the material that's become public about Trump and Epstein doesn't currently implicate Trump as a criminal. So that makes you say, okay, but that's already out there. And he already took the lumps. What else is he hiding? And I'm not the type, you know me.

I'm not the type to say, well, if it looks that bad, it must be that. Sometimes, and I have covered stories like this that look one way and they change. But it doesn't look good. It doesn't make sense, logically, basically, to have this much come out and then have Trump still be acting like there's something else to hide. Now, does that mean that it's the worst thing that someone could think of? No. It could be malfeasance in how Epstein was dealt with as a prisoner foul play in the jail cell, which is something the whole Congress has now legitimated.

It started out. People said, oh, is that a conspiracy? If you read the files legislation, as I'm sure you have, and I'm sure some of your viewers have, one of the enumerated items is all the additional information about the treatment of Epstein under the control of who? Trump, DOJ and the Bureau of Prisons. Now, by the way, would that alone be a huge scandal

if there were foul bled? I think so, which is, again, what I'm saying is a different explanation than if you were hiding, say, some earlier illicit conduct. But whatever it is, he is acting like someone who is going all that way to have something to hide. That's on Epstein. Then on the politics, look, on the one hand, everything you said is true and explains why even when Trump could be polling in the 30s, the power he has in Republican primaries. And over that base, which is not even the whole Republican Party, let alone the whole country in the electorate, right? That's our gerrymandered system, which a partisan Supreme Court has made worse helping Republicans.

that still gives him power even when he's basically lame duck DOA politically. Yeah. And then on top of that, he's willing to do something other presidents have. It's still a type of weakness, I think, Brian, that he spent with his allies more on a single house primary of the Epstein proponent for transparency, mass seat, than any other house primary in American history. That comes from a point of weakness, right? It's like if you get into a dispute with someone and you come back and you bring 20 hired security, right?

One of these billionaires, you say, oh, what do they do? Yeah, they could hire a lot of off-duty cops with guns. And on the one hand, you say, well, you're not going to beat them up today, right? Literally. On the other hand, wow, they must be really scared. And that is a lot of firepower that they bought more on that race than any in American history. I mean, that tells you a lot about the fear and the power that Massey built up, which then, yes, house member versus president, yo, that's usually not a fair fight.

I think that that's a really good segue into another topic that I wanted to talk about, because as far as Trump operating from a place of fear is concerned, he wouldn't need to move to consolidate so much support in the media space if he was able to, you know, convey his message by virtue of how he was governing. Like, if he was doing a good enough job, he wouldn't need to level all these attacks and buy up all of these media outlets. We've seen him either sue or have his allies kind of seek to be as heavy-handed as they can within the media, whether it's CBS or, you know, I think imminently, CNN.

We've also seen him sue, ABC, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, meta, I mean, you name it. We just recently saw Scott Pelly get fired at 60 Minutes. and, you know, the fate of that institution obviously is in doubt. I think what you guys do at MS now is really important because it's one of the few, if not the only legacy media outlet left that's willing to actually buck Trump and criticize him when it's necessary to do so. And so, you know, from your vantage, recognizing that Trump has gone after everyone, really, I mean, he seems to be just ticking his way down the list.

how does that make you feel about your obligation, your responsibility to speak out? And also beyond that, like, you know, it feels almost inevitable that once he's done with CBS and CNN, attacking MS now is going to be next up on the list. And so just it's, it's not going to be easy when the person with the biggest megaphone in the entire country sets his sights on either your network or on your, you individually. And so just kind of planning out for something like that. How have you thought about that? Yeah. I mean, it's a fair question. What's going on with CBS, which remains the highest rated news program. We can all talk about how the Internet's changed a lot and some for the good. But 60 minutes competes with NFL football for the largest audience highest ad rate.

And does it with, as we've seen, because you just saw them stand up to this incredible internal corporate magna pressure doesn't with independence i firmly believe based on what i know and being in this business that if a radical socialist went after 60 minutes with somehow you got to really do a lot of legwork here but got a whole state control the company i think they would go up against leftist intervention just as much as maga intervention those are serious people yeah the problem for trump is those serious people nonpartisan are calling him out and that's because of the the plays they're trying to run to abuse their oversight of the media merger system in order to get favorable coverage. And if you could prove it out enough, if you had an independent investigation, which you're not

going to get from this DOJ, you'd have to investigate whether they've crossed the line into quid pro quo bribery and other crimes because it is illegal for government officials to say, I need X from you to do Y in the government. And usually it's softer, right? We have all the campaign donations. It's softer, it's hard to prove. If that happened, that's already that. Second to your question, we're going to continue to stand on business and be independent. And, you know, sometimes it's like I'm posting about my show or I'm promoting myself. Here, I'm not really about me. I'm really fortunate to work with people like Rachel and Nicole and Lawrence, who stood up, by the way, Lawrence has collapsed with Donald Trump for 15 years, stayed on the air, faced the threat. Now it's

heavier for the reason you stay. So we're led by those people and a, and a, and a, and a, and a, team were more independent than we were before because we're now a fully independent company versus we trade as our own company most people aren't interested in all the details but the bottom line is we're more independent than we were a few years ago so that's what we're doing we're standing up the wider point though that you made is really important when you're up 20 in the fourth quarter you're not really doing a lot of cheating even if you sometimes cheat right it makes no sense he is sliding and crashing and yes he has a probably an emotional vendetta against media and i think all in all

honesty if he were doing better he might still be complaining and attacking kimmel and that type of stuff but the extreme way that they are trying to censor mute and control the press going into these midterms and presumably they're not going to stop going into the the big the big presidential election shows how weak they think they are without that kind of of pressure or cheating as we watch the DOJ and the FCC be so heavy-handed in what they're trying to do. Like obviously Brendan Carr has a huge hand in all of this. And of course, we were just talking about Todd Blanche, how he is basically, I mean, look, the guy's violating the law because we still have 3 million Epstein files that haven't been released.

He's made it clear that he has no intention of releasing anything else. And so he's participating in this government cover-up at the same time violating existing law. You know, as we move forward, I think we looked at what happened in the aftermath of Joe Biden winning in 2020 and installing Merrick Garland as Attorney General. And I think there was this sense, in retrospect, misguided, I think, where it was more important to protect the, you know, to prevent against the optics of politicization and to get back to normal politics and just calm everything down. And obviously that didn't work. And in fact, the unwillingness to hold these people to account for what they'd done, Trump specifically, kind of emboldened him to recognize that he could do it 100 times faster and harder than he had done it before. And now we're in a situation where the corruption is so egregious. Like people are selling, you know, shorting stocks and buying buying stocks that just make them, turn them into millionaires, 10, you know, 10 times over.

we're watching this massive pay-to-play scheme. You know, we just had this report come out, I believe in the Washington Post, like a day ago, that showed that a number of the companies that had donated money to Trump's ballroom were then granted government contracts that were worth far more than what they had donated. And so, like, we have reached full Banana Republic levels of corruption. How do you think that the next Democratic Attorney General should take this stuff into account, count recognizing that there are going to be those people who say, you know, let's put the politics of retribution behind us. But then there's also going to be people who say an unwillingness

to actually uphold the law is the exact thing that emboldens criminal behavior in the future. And so what do you think, you know, what do you think should be the move moving forward, especially from somebody who has a lot of experience in the legal realm? I think you describe it accurately. I think any honest future Justice Department, must deal with the corruption, the looting, the revenge prosecutions that have basically infected multiple parts of the government. I mean, we have the housing partisan warrior and Pulte who was, based on what we can tell, misusing access to information there to go after opponents. That's like secret police stuff. And now he's going to run the intelligence services for a little,

little temporary stint is what Trump said. So it's at DOJ, it's at housing, it's at housing, it's FBI, they were visiting the Georgia voting station, and now it's at Intel. He oversees CIA. I mean, this sounds like a movie when you say, wait, CIA director is going to meet with the guy who's already been caught misusing information to go after domestic opponents, right? This is bad. So you have to completely go in after all of that without fear of favor. And I say that and people will say, oh, I'm sounding potentially naive, but that's any honest

non-Maga administration. Obviously, that would hopefully include the Democrats. That's what they're telegraping. But if you had an honest John McCain-style Republican, I don't know that they're going to win the nomination, but I would expect a McCain-style administration to also do this. I've seen, it's very fastful now to say everyone's the worst. But I've seen and covered Republican administrations

with the DOJ was much more independent and nonpartisan than this one. I mean, Ari, we just watched Joe Biden's DOJ prosecute his, son, like, the president's son. The notion that that investigation would even be allowed to be open, much less go to prosecution, go to, go to, go to, go to, uh, conviction would be just, I mean, it's, it's laughable at this point. The notion seeing Don Jr. get prosecuted. And, and Reagan Bush, according to, you know, in legal experts of law schools, the Reagan Bush DOJs are not held up as some high watermark, but again, if we're just going to be proportionate, they had open probes into their own administration, including Iran Contra.

And by the end, there were deals and pardons. I just want to be clear. This administration doesn't allow anything like that. And they didn't have the level of revenge prosecutions we have right now. So history is helpful that way. So I would say any non-Maga honest DOJ has an obligation to do this first and do it strongly. And that means looking at what's always hardest in Washington, which is, you know, you have all this pro wrestling.

And then you have a hell of a lot of people who they go in and out of office and you say, why does it seem like the Democrats are giving in and they're not fighting that hard? And then you look up in two years later, the guys who were fake fighting on the Senate floor are in the same lobbying shop and other crap like that. And so the DOJ has to really look fully

at what they sometimes see as their contemporaries, which is, oh, well, I knew that guy when we were a DOJ 10 years ago. Yeah, well, we don't care if he was covering up the Epstein files or helping Todd Blanche make up stories or going into grand juries to help, make it a slightly less severe revenge prosecution. I don't care.

If they broke the rules of the law, they should be disbarred investigating. And if they committed a crime like anyone else, I don't care that you knew them back when they were different and worked in a different DOJ. So we have to deal with that. And if we don't, you know,

there was a writer I quoted when I did a piece about January 6 who said, a failed coup without accountability becomes a training exercise. Yeah. Well, boy, have we seen that and we're going to see more of that.

And then the corruption, they're looting. The last point I would make is, you know, when I'm trying to report and get people's attention, I use analogies because I feel like, when you're only talking about the thing, we only know what you think about the thing. So let me compare it to another thing, okay?

A heck of a lot of conservative-minded people and some people were sympathetic to Trump, or maybe they voted for them once and they regret it, they look at that looting that you see sometimes where a city has a blackout or burned-down buildings and people go in and they say, God, these people, they got the opportunity, and in one hour they started taking TVs.

You say that's wrong. What about the local store owner? Okay, insurance pay for it. But it's still, it's still stealing, right? And those type of folks will say, gosh, you know, that looting is wrong. And you've got to deterrent around those people out. Okay. That's less than 1% of the scale of the premeditated first degree, long-acting looting,

including of the Pentagon and places where we would care about national security. So, yeah, if you cared about that looting, you should care about this looting. It's Trump family looting. It's allied companies, and I don't predict the future, man. I would tell you if we don't deal with it as a society, it will get worse, not better, even if the politics change a little bit. Well, you know, the ultimate irony of that is like, that was a message that resonated with Trump's voters from Trump himself.

And the first thing he did was install Elon Musk, who promised to, like, eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse. And what does he do with his power? Fires all of the people who serve as, you know, the watchmen of all of their respective departments and agencies. And then Elon went on after all of the inspectors general were fired and basically eliminated any barriers to the companies, the agencies that regulate his companies, and then awarded himself a bunch of government contracts.

And so right there, all of that trust was just completely decimated. But the extent to which we're seeing it now has become so overt and so egregious and almost like, I mean, they're almost like proud of it. to come out and say, I'm going to sue my own federal government for $10 billion. And then think that it's some gift to us to say, you know what? Let's just compromise with a $2 billion slush fund to turn each one of the 1,500 insurrectionists into millionaires. But also will give me tax amnesty for myself and my family forever. That could also cost the government $100 million in funding that would get paid to the federal government and now won't.

I mean, the corruption in that sense, it's almost like the administration is kind of poking its finger in the eye of the American people because this is the exact kind of stuff that, you know, that Trump and Fox would have had a field day with. Well, I think you're making a subtle point about, if I may, the culture of their degradation of our system. Yeah. They think it's a flex to say, see what I can get away with it. See what I can steal.

I mean, the fund that is in so much trouble now, I'll remind folks, it is already paused in court. It was pause, which is a procedural step under review. But if you have a fully, obviously legal thing, they don't pause it. Okay, there's plenty of stuff the government does that doesn't get paused in this early state. So a judge already paused it. A separate judge is looking at whether the whole deal is a fraud, as you mentioned. So that's how controversial the fund is. But if you're watching this in America, it's your money.

They're seizing and stealing your money. They don't claim that it was appropriated by Congress. They don't claim that there's any reason. They think that's a flex. Now, on some of these issues, more and more Republicans don't, and a lot of people, when they learn the details, don't. But they think it's a flex in the same way that autocrats take a kind of pride in getting other people, even you'll see this in senior cabinet meetings in Russia or whatever,

to say that up is down and red is blue because it shows, oh, look, this person will embarrass and debase themselves. their sense of reality for our power. That's how much power we have. I would observe that there are other people who have power in a way that I think is better long-term leadership. I can list off other leaders who are different. But yes, it's the type of cynical, they think it's cynical.

I think it's cynical. They think it's a kind of flex to say, look what we can get away with. Ari, last question here. Nix in how many? Five. Is that a good answer? That's a good answer. I'm in New York.

I've lived in New York more than any other place. I can just tell you I live in Brooklyn, walking around. Everyone's going crazy. Everyone's into it. So I want to support. I don't want to say seven, and then it sounds like it's going to be too tough.

Yeah, just on that level, as someone who's been in New York this long, the energy, I mean, you walk there for a green where there's the Spike Lee's, there's a bar he likes to go to, and it's really community because people know each other. It's like people are going nuts. So it's definitely a fun time to be in New York

in the summer. Well, it's cool because, like, look, I'm, I'm from born in New York, grew up in New Jersey originally, so all of my sports teams are New York sports teams, diehard Giants fan. I've been a Yankees fan since I was, you know, five years old. Living out in L.A., I've been out here for 15 years. And, like, we have, first of all, the city is so sprawling. So there's never a ton of people. Like, you can walk down the street in New York and you're just, there is a mob of people wherever you go. Right. L.A. just isn't like that. So you never feel like you're immersed in, like, a mob of people. the same way. And we also have, you know, the Dodgers are in L.A. We have the Anaheim Angels, like, that are, that are just an hour outside of L.A. Like, it doesn't have the same feel within the

city. We have a lot of sports teams, too. There's a lot going on. And, and it just doesn't, it doesn't take over the city. Like, we don't have, you know, even when the Kings, I mean, the, the, Rams are Super Bowl champions previous year. The, the, the, the, the, the, our hockey team was, was NHL champions, you can, you, you can walk through the city and not know that that happened. I feel like the same thing isn't, isn't going on in New York, which is, which is really cool. And so, you know, I'm not a huge bet. Go ahead. I mean, and not, not to make it political, but, you know, a lot of times you, around America,

it's the places where there's very little diversity and not many immigrants. And that's where people are like, oh, my God, the immigrants, right? Yeah. And you walk around New York and it is for folks who sometimes, feel like, oh, is this whole American experiment? Is this thing breaking down? A lot of places it's not. You walk around, first of all, they got a new mayor in, they got new stuff they're trying, but also you walk around and you got such diversity. And when they're rooting for the Knicks, if you want to make it an American, you think, great, they're rooting for America. It's in English,

yada, yada, if that's your cup of tea. But also, you see people who moved here and came here and they're sharing something geographically, culturally. I love that. Yeah, that's awesome. highly recommend for anybody who's watching right now. First of all, check out Ari on The Beat on MS Now. Weekdays at 6 p.m. Eastern. But also, I'm going to put a link to Ari's YouTube channel right here on the screen and also in the post description. If you're listening on the podcast, I'm going to throw it into the show notes.

This is the kind of thing where we all have to come together and support any media that is willing to tell the truth about what's happening right now. That takes the form of folks who are doing doing good work and pushing back on legacy media, which has been, you know, Donald Trump's focus in censoring since the beginning of this administration, all the way down to independent media folks and creators. But it's a group effort here to make sure that we elevate these voices who are willing to do the work. So I'm going to put that link right here on the screen and also in the post description. If you're not yet subscribed, please go ahead and hit the subscribe button.

Ari, thank you so much for taking the time, man. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks to all your viewers and listeners. Stay informed. Stay hydrated. Stay at it. Peace, everyone. Thanks again to Alex Michelson and Ari Melburgh. That's it for this episode. Talk to you on Wednesday. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas

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