Pod Save America - Empire State of Mind

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

Trump kicks off 2026 with a return to imperialism, launching a military assault in Venezuela and abducting President Nicolás Maduro. Jon, Lovett, and Tommy react to the news, the administration's open acknowledgement that they want Venezuela's oil, and Trump's hint that military action may be coming to more places in the Western Hemisphere—including Colombia, Mexico, and Greenland. Then, the guys discuss Minnesota Governor Tim Walz's decision to end his reelection campaign in response to a fraud scandal that has captured the attention of right wing media, what we've learned (and not learned) from the Epstein files that were released before Christmas, and the most online stories that you may have missed over the holidays. Then, Lovett talks to Senator Mark Kelly about Secretary Hegseth's move to censure him in response to his reminder to service members that they need not follow "illegal orders." Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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That's simplysafe.com slash crooked. Protect your house like it actually matters because it does. There's no safe like SimplySafe. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favro. I'm John Lovett. Tommy D.Tor. Welcome back, guys. Happy New Year, guys. Happy New Year. Great to be back. Welcome to you and welcome to our new compatri. and the southern colonies.

In our vassal state. Yeah, who will soon have the honor of pumping crude to fund his Majesty's Palace renovations. Vice Roy Miller's. A new, a new, a new, a new majesty's palace renovations. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, we get a lot to cover today. We'll get into the latest with Venezuela and all the other countries that Trump now wants to invade. We'll also talk about Tim Walz's decision to end his campaign for a third term as governor because of the fraud scandal that's become the latest Maga Crusade.

We'll get into what we've learned so far from the DOJ's release of the first batch of the Epstein files and some other news you may have missed over the holidays. And then Arizona Senator Mark Kelly talks to love it about all the latest news, including Pete Higgseth's decision to cut his pension and demote him because of that video he made about following illegal orders. But let's start with the biggest story of the week. Donald Trump's campaign to become emperor of the Western Hemisphere, which follows a well-trodden path of authoritarian,

who respond to economic and political failures at home by pursuing imperialist ambitions abroad. Now we have it right here. Trump has chosen to start with Venezuela, where he ordered the military to capture the oil-rich country's tin pot dictator, Nicholas Maduro, along with his wife, in a raid on Caracas last weekend that has killed at least 80 people. The former first couple of Venezuela was brought to the U.S.

and arraigned in a lower Manhattan courtroom on Monday where they pleaded not guilty to various drug trafficking and narco-terrorism charges, and in case anyone still thinks the people of Venezuela have been liberated from Maduro's brutal regime, the U.S. government has decided to leave that regime in place, which will now be led by Maduro's vice president, Delci Rodriguez, who seems to have cut a deal with the Trump administration where she gets to stay in power as long as she gives American oil companies access to her country's vast but underdeveloped oil reserves. Realizing that the American people may have some questions about the wisdom of this novel,

arrangement and the motivation behind all this. The Trump administration sent Marco Rubio, one of the masterminds behind this operation out on the Sunday shows to give some answers. And here's Marco giving it his best shot. Why wasn't congressional authorization necessary? It wasn't necessary because this was not an invasion. We didn't occupy a country. This was an arrest operation. This is a law enforcement operation. That we have a quarantine on their oil. That means their economy will not be able to move forward until the conditions that are in the national interest of the United States and the interests of the Venezuelan people are met, and that's what we intend to do. So that leverage remains, that leverage is ongoing.

We'll set the condition so that we no longer have in our hemisphere of Venezuela, that's the crossroads for many of our adversaries around the world, including Iran and Hezbollah. And as far as what our legal authority is on the quarantine, I'm very simple, we have court orders. I don't know, is a court not a legal authority? So is the United States running Venezuela right now? What we are running is the direction that this is going to move moving forward. That is, we have leverage. This leverage we are using, and we intend to use. We started using already.

So that's Marco Rubio, kind of sort of answering. Who looks just comically exhausted. I feel for him. He's got like four jobs. He's got an archivist. He's South American viceroy. It's a lot of jobs. And then you see him at Mar-a-Lago doing like this to like a vanilla ice concert.

Just wanted to kill himself. And watching a football game. Did you see Katie Miller has been, Katie Miller's been just tweeting out a whole bunch of videos that I'm sure that her friends in the administration and probably wouldn't like. There was also Christy Gnome and Stephen Miller dancing, I guess, to Vanilla Ice at Mar-a-Lago.

Hellless, having to hang out with that crew. So, Rubio gives these carefully constructed non-answers, and then Donald Trump, just hours later, does the thing that he does where he removes the lipstick that one of his advisors just tried to put on some pig. Let's listen. Don't ask me who's in charge, because I'll give you an answer, and it'll be very controversial.

What does that mean? We're in charge. Have you spoken with her? We're in charge. What do you need from Delsier-Rogriguez? You've threatened Delta. Total access. We need total access.

We need access to the oil and to other things in their country. We were prepared to do a second strike if we needed. We're totally prepared. We're still prepared. That's off the table now. No, it's not. If they don't behave, we will do a second strike. Also, as you're watching that video, you watch the kind of flush slowly come across

Lindsay Graham's face. has never been more kind of psychosexually aroused by a president. It's just so I cannot believe how horny I am for what this guy is saying. Yeah, since Iraq, since 2003. Yeah, speaking of Iraq. He actually went to the bathroom right after that. Anyway, where to begin? Let's take Rubio's argument, which is clearly the argument the White House wants to make,

that this whole thing is just about, as Rubio said, I think I'd meet the press. No more drug trafficking. No more Iran, Hezbollah presence. in Venezuela and no more using the country's oil to enrich America's adversaries like China. J.D. Vance also took a cut at a version of this argument on Twitter, where he writes all his best stuff, claiming that we just can't let communists nationalize oil facilities that belong to American companies, which Venezuela did about a decade ago now. Tommy, what would you say to these arguments?

Yeah, I mean, Marco is trying to say it's just a simple law enforcement operation, one backed up by 150 warplanes, 15,000 troops in the Caribbean, a couple aircraft carriers. And his argument seems to be that all you need to invade a country is a simple indictment of its leader, and then you can just invade. That's his argument. I think. Which is easier to get when you control the DOJ. When Pam Bondi works for you, it's easier. I think, I'll get to the dark stuff in a second. I think what this is about is Trump thinking that he is the king of the Western Hemisphere and that he gets to dictate events in Venezuela. And in practice, that means if you don't like Maduro, you take him out, including the military force, and then you make Rubio and Stephen Miller, the viceroys. It means that if you want Venezuela's natural resources, not only can you claim them for America, but you can decide that you can deny China access to them. That is explicitly part of their national security strategy that they released last year. And it means that in other situations, Trump has used U.S. diplomatic and economic power to prop up leaders he doesn't like in Latin America. Remember when he gave Javier Miele a $40 billion bank bailout in advance of an election there. So the fentanyl argument is bullshit.

Fentanyl is made in Mexico with chemicals from China. it is most fentanyl interdictions, according to the CBP, according to the government's website, is that the border crossings cartels pay American citizens usually to smuggle it across the border in their cars. Venezuela is not a major producer of cocaine, but it's a transit point for like 10% of the world's cocaine. That's not nothing. But if you really cared about cocaine, you could take a big whack at the supply problem through enforcement in Colombia and Ecuador.

Trump has said over and over again, he said it there, that he wants Venezuela's oil. That is what this is about. He doesn't care about democracy. He doesn't care about human rights, doesn't care about the 2024 election that was stolen by Maduro. He wants to decide who leads the country, what oil companies get access in Venezuela, what banks get to finance those, you know, oil fields going forward in which of his cronies are going to get to play in that sandbox and the kickbacks that he will get along the way. So, you know, like we can do all the throat clearing we want about Maduro being a bad guy. It was admittedly an incredible military operation. The fact that they pulled this thing off without a single casualty, without a single aircraft going down is astoundary.

but sometimes removing a bad guy can lead to an even worse outcome and so we're a long way from knowing like how this is going to go well what was your reaction to this shit show you know when I saw the photo of Maduro on the plane in that sort of Nike a leisure sort of a shocking image in part well yeah in part because like this administration has told us repeatedly how important it is to dress well for flights would be pissed. And just like another example of the kind of hypocrisy

that we've been seeing. Yeah, look, you know. Delta couldn't have brought a suit. The team, not the air. We're trying to elevate the flying experience. We all have an obligation, including deposed a heads of state, woken up in the middle of the night

by the Delta force, unable to get into their safe room. At least fucking, what's happening is insane. You're going to want a lighter door on that safe room. You're going to want it to be user-friendly. You want it to open and close, you got to get to close quick.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, look, it's all, it's insane. Now, we've had administrations that have lawlessly toppled South American and Latin American regimes in the past and then claim they did not need congressional approval. That's something the U.S. has done several times, one of our favorite things to do. What makes this all so strange is it's done with the kind of mix of like neocon logic kind of layered on top of it. But underneath that is Donald Trump, whose motivations are egotistical, personal, kind of capricious, based on whoever spoke to him last, right? Like, let's say you take the best version of this that Marco Rubio or J.D. Vance would lay out.

It would involve Donald Trump saying, we're not running Venezuela. The leaders are running Venezuela. Why? Because it's in the interest of his policy for that leader to seem strong at home. but he doesn't care about that. So this is like old-school, old-school American imperialism in the hemisphere run by a corrupt group of clods and buffoons. And it would be dangerous if it was the best and brightest

that Republicans had to offer. They have failed when they have done this in the past with their smartest guys. But that's not who's running this. It's Pete Heggseth and Stephen Miller and a bunch of fucking jokers. It's a small thing, but Pam Bondi put out this statement after we found out that this was all because it was a law enforcement operation.

And she said, Maduro will face the wrath of the U.S. justice system. There is no wrath of the U.S. justice system. It's actually not supposed to have wrath. It's supposed to have justice because it's not a wrath system. It's a fucking justice system. And what happens when you go to the justice system is it's not up to you anymore. It's up to the judge and the jury and the process, right? But like, they're so kind of unserious and immature and not thoughtful about any of this.

they're just honest about how they feel for sure the mask is very much off they're not they're not mince and words everyone remember the the no blood for oil signs from the first Iraq war and you'd be like oh

you know I'm not against this war but those lefties saying it's blood now he's just like oh no it is blood for oil fortunately we didn't spill any of our blood this time but um you know it's definitely for the oil Venezuel and Cuban blood for sure

yeah and we were told it was you know Maduro was this brutal dictator and we should be glad he's gone but it's like well as you said, there was a legitimate winner of the 2024 election there. There's the opposition leader Maria Machado who had just won the Nobel Peace Prize though, I don't know if you saw on the Washington Post

that two sources close to the White House said that even though she dedicated her Nobel Peace Prize to Donald Trump, the fact that she didn't actually give it to him really stung and if she had, she'd be the president of Venezuela right now. Just the fact that we live in a world where that is a possible thing to say out of that. Or that, by the way, that there's somebody betting on the polymarket to make a couple hundred

grand of the fact that Maduro is not going to be in power anymore. All of this is so, yeah, it's so brazen and despicable and like all the like the intellectual layers on top of Donald Trump just being a kind of like kind of careening maniac. And the hubris that none of this is ever going to come back to bite us in the ass. You know, that you could just like we are the strong ones. We are powerful. We have the big military. so we can do whatever the fuck we want and consequences be damned.

And if I get the short-term win and the good headlines and this episode of the Trump show ends well, then no problems. And if there's a huge problem down the road, if there's a terrorist attack or a war or a country that falls into civil war and mass migration crisis, all this stuff, yeah, someone else will deal with that. I don't have to deal with that. One more point on the oil. Basically, as soon as we learned about the operation, we saw reporting that American oil companies were getting ready to go back in. And on Monday, their stocks were way up. Also, Trump on that flight said that we just watched that someone else, so did the oil companies, did you tip off the oil companies about the operation?

And he said, yeah. Yeah, sounds like they got a better briefing than Congress, including the gang of eight leaders. They gave a heads up to the oil companies. Maybe that was one of the traders that made that account. Who knows? Smart. But there's been other reporting about how hard it would actually be to rehabilitate Venezuela's oil infrastructure.

Venezuela, of course, does have the biggest oil reserves, I believe, in the world. the very undeveloped. There's some question about that, right? Yeah. Well, so the number you always see is 300 billion gallons, 17% of the world's known reserves. But there's some, there's some question as to where that number came from. Maybe Hugo Chavez's asked is potentially one of the sources. And it's literally, there's a great example of just how stupid everything is, because it's like, nobody seems to know where that number came from. And they're all kind of basing all this stuff around it, but it may be something that was just sort of inflated decades ago. Yeah, they have a lot of oil. We don't know if it's the most, but they seemling have a lot. Yeah. And so,

So, but like, now we're finding out that maybe big oil isn't as enthusiastic about this or maybe they don't, because it's just going to cost so much money. So I've heard competing views on this too. I think the most honest answer is we just don't know yet and we won't know for sure until, first of all, oil companies need to get on the ground. They need to see like what do the fields look like, what are the wells look like, what equipment needs to be upgraded. They need to figure what contracts have already been negotiated. Like the Chinese have contracts with Venezuela for a lot of these oil fields. Are we going to negate those? Also, like, the political situation is going to matter a lot.

I mean, so just on the investment side, the estimates you see are, this could take years. It could take tens of billion dollars of your investment to really ramp up oil flows. And that, but to get there, like the oil companies are going to want legal certainty. They're going to want licenses or sanctions relief or something to ensure that. I'm sure they'll get that from Donald Trump. Well, yeah. I mean, this is where he'll probably like dole out licenses one by one to companies that, you know, pay him. Show the Oval and give him a peace price.

Exactly. But they don't want that roll back by either of the Venezuelan. government or by Democrats, if we take power, inshallah, they want political stability. And power. What is that? I don't know. What's that way? I've heard about it. I've read about it. So the political stability part will be key too, right? Because that's clearly, I think, why Trump chose Delcie Rodriguez, who is Maduro's VP, is not the acting president. Because she is seen, first of all, as a competent administrator who can, who has done a better job overseeing the oil industry. And then also installing her isn't necessarily, isn't a threat to the entire

patronage system that Chavez and then Maduro have built up, right? You imagine if you install the opposition leader, that is going to rile, you know, the powerful officials running the military or the interior ministry who could be displeased. They might be displeased anyway, but we'll find out. Also, by the way, people that have been part of a brutal crackdown on civil society, on dissent, there's murder, horrible sexual assaults. Like, there's an abusive and despicable regime that they are leaving in place. Yes. And our are also corrupt. I mean, there are people in that government facilitated with drug cartels, et cetera. But, you know, there's other things that could go wrong. I mean, there are remnants of

these guerrilla groups on the border, like the ELN or the FARC that could stage attacks and, like, scare off oil companies. And the big question I have is, like, who's going to defend all this infrastructure? Is it the U.S. military? Is it Blackwater? Is it Venezuelan troops? Like, we don't know. I mean, let's even take it a step further and say that everything goes perfectly well and the oil companies all get there. And then they are just pumping away, right? Hugo Chavez was right And it's the most oil in the world So

That's what a very handsome man Whispers into Lindsay Graham's ear before hitting him A whip Oh my gosh Getting all the oil, Lindsay Smacked Austin you should be confused

I know I know So As soon as you said pumping away I just knew I knew it was coming So it's like There we go again So it's like a hundred billion dollars to get this thing going You probably don't get oil until

I don't know, like a decade maybe years. Well, you might be able to increase production like a year or two. Right, but like to really get the most out of it. Right. You could double it from one million barrels a day to I mean, I think the peak in the 70s was three and a half million barrels a day. For sure. But my point is, the way that the world

oil market works is that there's a lot of oil coming from a lot of places, including the United States. It's global, yes. And so maybe by 2030 your gas prices are a penny or two cheaper because if all goes perfectly in Venezuela. Yeah. And it is very ironic to me that it's very like old Trump brain that he is obsessed with taking the oil, which of course he's been obsessed with taking the oil forever. He used to say that about Iraq. They should have taken the oil in Iraq. So he's been obsessed for a while about taking it. He's like he has this obsession with the most important resource from the last century at the same time and China potentially getting access to it when we were just talking right before the break of how he just lifted the export ban on the AI chips.

that we sell to China that we now are going to sell to China, which is the most important resource of the next century. We got nothing for that, by the way. Got nothing for that. That was for free, but we're taking the oil, even as the rest of the world is moving away from oil as an energy resource. Yeah, good stuff. Just wanted to, we're all but the oil, is the oil going to be, is that going to help us? Like, no, the oil's not going to help us. Well, it could help a couple. It will, you know, we'll help some oil companies. A privileged few make a ton of money potentially. Of course, that depends on a lot of people going along, including China, and, and and Russia and others who will have a lot of,

could have a lot of fun making trouble for us down there. Which, by the way, again, a nice part of our history of countries having little proxy battles to slow us down. But you see a lot of the maggot chuds out there being like, oh, you guys wanted him to focus on affordability, affordability. Now he's going to bring down gas prices. Like, this is not going to bring down fucking gas prices.

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musing about other regimes he'd like to change and territories he'd like to take. Columbia is very sick, too, run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States, and he's not going to be doing it very long. Cuba is ready to fall, you know? By the way, you have to do something with Mexico.

Mexico has to get there, act together. Sweden is covered with Russian and Chinese ships. all over the place we need greed the don row doctrine the don't row doctrine the don't row doctrine that's where we are now the don row doctrine what a dumb fucking so stupid world we live in really reminds me of uh he took it from the new york post did you see that the well oh a year ago in january they had a i think when he was first amusing about greenland yep they had a don row doctrine um uh front page and you're trying to make it happen ever since and there here it is he's got it now

Cool. It's a niche reference, but there's a movie called Ronan starring Robert De Niro and Sean Bean is in the movie and he's sort of a gung-ho, but a little too gung-ho, a little too into the fight. And it's because he's not totally prepared for and he gets kind of exposed in it. But there's this moment when he's like hopped up on the adrenaline of the fun of the action. He's like, oh, man, this is going great. And the action slows down and he has to puke outside the car window.

That's what that reminds me of. They're high. They're high right now. Lunds Graham was bouncing. Yeah. This is shock and awe. This is the immediate aftermath. The U.S. military is able to do what it is ordered to do, and they are high on that.

And let's see what happens next. And so people know, because obviously Trump has had quite a few gaggles on Air Force One where he just, you know, shoots his mouth off and says something kind of crazy that then the rest of the White House and his advisors try to clean up. Like, you know, the Trump team account tweeted out a picture of Trump astride the Western Hemisphere. sphere. Taking a shit on it. Yeah, stepping over with one foot in basically Greenland and the other in South America and over it and caught to saying the Don Road Doctrine. And then I think just on Monday, the State Department has just a picture of him that it says like, this is our hemisphere. So I think there's something happening, by the way, where the social media people in each of

these departments are the kind of like biggest Trump freaks. And they spin the whole media and left up. That's what happens when they're posting out of DHS. That's what the State Department posts, the White House post. And like, These are the people who excitedly read the I Love Hitler Group Chat story in Politico. Yeah, the one that the one that wasn't released that they're in. Yeah. But no, like, I think like they are there to spin everybody up, but they just don't see a cost to acting like this and getting everybody worried because they think they can do their little reassurances to the serious people in the kind of deep within the article, the Susie Wiles style articles where they can get into the deep of actually it's a smart people really run and things carefully. Yeah, and in case you're not like a meme person, but you like sort of the rhetorical flourish of a C-plus Santa Monica fascist, Stephen Miller, who apparently is going to have a big role in governing Venezuela, perhaps, Viceroy Stephen Miller.

He's finally got that class presidency he's been going for for half a century. He took to Twitter in an attempt to expand on the thinking behind the Don Road doctrine, where he argued that the era of empires and colonialism, quote, built the modern world and then when it ended after world war two the west engaged in quote self punishment by sending aid to its former territories and opening its borders to immigrants thereby betraying our quote native citizenry so do we have to make the argument now that colonialism was actually bad you know stephen you know who didn't love colonialism the founding fathers oh okay boom i might i might point you towards a document once stolen by uh nicholas cage called the Declaration of Independence

that was specifically against it. I mean, the biggest fact check for Steve there is he says, he says, suggests that empires and colonies were dissolved out of the goodness of their hearts. I think there was some armed conflict in there that Steven seems to be forgetting.

And it is shocking that we do have to argue that colonization was bad, but it seems like we do. The most prosperity this country has ever seen came immediately after World War's two in the decades after when we welcomed immigrants into this country and had sort of like built the greatest economy and the biggest middle class the world had ever known. That's just some interesting history as well. Notable. It's not like everybody was walking around 1945 and

being like things are great. We've got to keep this going. We've just been on the other side of the greatest conflict in the history of human civilization and then what follows. Which who knows, maybe not the right side anymore. According to the history books, Donald Trump wants to write there was a i was whatever reason this reminded me of it was uh you know there's a those people were critical of of grants because they're like he's a he's a he's an alcoholic your general there's an alcoholic and lincoln you know apocryphly he says uh well whatever he's drinking send it to my other generals it's like okay you have a problem with the way in which we welcomed immigrants from 1945 to 2025 the greatest period of economic transformation in the history

of planet earth not just for the united states but for vast numbers of people all all around the world. And by the way, not just for the richest people. If you look at the bottom 80%, talking about an incredible improvement of quality of life. Neo-libalert, neo-libalert, never before been watched. Lefties clip this and get them. You're right, you're right.

Declines, like air conditioning, decline in maternal mortality and infant mortality, wealth, cars. NAFTA. Sure. Just speaking, for no rig, the partnership. I agree with you. Yes, I know. Completely agree with you. And so, like, what are you talking about?

talking about it's so it's such a pathological point of view and it points to something so deeply broken about him in this worldview which is you care so much more about preventing people you don't like from having anything that you'd be willing to hurt the people you claim you're advocating for which are Americans because we built this system and benefited from it tremendously problems flaws of course but the idea that you're going to tear it all down and that's for us and not just to hurt people that you don't like for reasons that have to do at the color of their skin or or where they come from or who was mean to you in high school. Like, it's just, it's all so perverse and obvious.

It is just frightening that you would have to actually argue with Stephen Miller that taking away someone's self-determination through colonization is bad. Like, treating someone as just a, treating a race or a country as inferior is bad. Extracting their resources is bad. I don't know that he would agree with me when I said those things. And like, the rest of the world is taking this very seriously. Like the UN Security Council met Monday about the United States. We were condemned by a bunch of our allies at that meeting.

Leaders across Latin America, the Brazilians, the Colombians, Mexicans, especially leftist leaders. They were holding emergency meetings about how to deal with the threat from the United States. The prime minister of Denmark has said she thinks the Greenland threat is a serious one. Like that conversation was kind of tinged with like, oh, he's just, you know, Don being Don. He's trolling, whatever. Like you said, like the social media idiots were just like having fun with it. No, I don't think so. I think everyone in Panama was probably thinking, oh, all that Panama Canal Talk, that was pretty serious. Like, we are still in the midst of a diplomatic and economic rupture with Canada because Trump kept threatening to annex their country. And like everything, what he just did in Venezuela is terrifying people around the planet. It's also, I think I remember, I can't remember this, the 2016 or 2020 campaign or whatever it was. But there was like, oh, Trump's trying to take us back to the 1950s.

remember that was the thing you know Hillary said it or Biden said it I can't remember but this is way beyond this is way before that where this is like night this is even like before 1800s 1800s yeah I mean this is like you know the strong do what they can the weak suffer what they must that that is the that is the Trump Miller worldview and it's not it's also seeding some power and influence to China and Russia in this like China gets to control Asia Russia can that's the question that's the question can Russia control you Europe and then we get the Western Hemisphere, but it's like, so it is not a world anymore of, it's not a rules-based international order anymore. There is no international law. It's

just the strongest countries with the most nukes get to divide up the world and hopefully then once the world is divvied up, Trump and she and Putin, you know, can get along pretty well. Yeah, you're saying that this is our hemisphere and that's your hemisphere is actually a much weaker position for the United States. Yeah, look, you know, Vance says this in, in one of of his various defenses about her. Like, I don't think living in a palace in Caracas should protect you from the law. I don't think that lends you any special legitimacy. I actually think there's some truth to that, right? Like, no, like claiming you own a country that you run a country, even though you stole the election. Like, I actually don't believe that makes you legitimate. I believe

in democracy. I believe in those things. But the question is what to do about that? The question is what to do about that? Justify killing 80 Venezuelans and 30 Cubans on the ground. Well, the reason you say that, you say, well, what does lend legitimacy? And it's a legal order, a rules-based order that we defend that has certain values and precepts in which people, which individuals with the most power don't get to decide what happens? Letting the opposition that was the rightful winners of the election take power, that would be one. Or even suggesting that you're doing it on their behalf, which of course they don't. And the reason

that's important is not just because it's right and just and all the rest. And I actually find people saying like, oh, this is going to be permission for China to go in Taiwan or Russia to do more in Ukraine. They've already taken that permission because they don't believe in these rules. Well, I think that I think it's different. I think for the Russians, they have gotten every signal they ever could have wanted that Ukraine can be there, at least 20% of it may be more. The China piece is an open question, I think. Like, I think Trump would trade away Taiwan for an economic deal. We don't know that yet. It gets a little more complicated when we're talking about, like, the Sinkaku Islands, like some disputed territory between them and Japan, a treaty ally of

ours. What happens then? But the point I'm making is only, yes, I agree with that. My point is only that these are other places that do believe in a power-based system. And perhaps the only reason they're not going into Taiwan is because they're worried about the consequences. But the deal we made and what made our system attractive. And by the way, one argument that the Soviets made and that our enemies made in the Cold War was that our ideology was inherently expansionary because freedom is expansionary and democracy is expansionary because we believe it is something fundamental people deserve. And the deal we offer, right, is you get to become part of this order. And not only will you be protected by our power, you'll be protected by these rules.

These rules will be good for you because you will be safe inside of them. And when we attack that. We attacked the thing that allowed us to become not only like this hegemon, but also incredibly wealthy because we built a system in which you didn't need as many walls, which meant you could have trade and you could have bridges and all the rest that came along with the success of America of half a century unprecedented in human history. And I think that the aging of that system and the failures of that system has now left people who are in favor of that system making a lot of arguments about like, but the rules, but the international law. but the institutions, right?

And this is the need for a renewal of that argument because the arguments that start crazy on their side become like their main open public arguments. Like in the 2028 primary on the Republican side, if there is one, they're going to be making the case that like, what's so bad about a world where Russia and China and the United States split up the world and the strong countries make sure that the weak countries

don't cause any trouble and everyone lives in peace? What's so bad? about that. And like, we're going to have to have an argument. Yeah, the other part of this, I was thinking about, I don't know, Tom, if you remember this, but like, for whatever reason it came to mind, because maybe it was in Los Angeles. But remember when there was the summit of the Americas in 2022. And Biden decided not to invite Venezuela and Nicaragua and Cuba. And then there was this revolt by Mexico and a few other countries. And those leaders refused to come in this summit that was supposed to be about American leadership in the region became a story about conflict and

American weakness and Biden's fecklessness. And in the story, Kamala is on the phone begging the head of Guatemala to come to the United States. And it was just pathetic. It was just pathetic. And I look at all this and I say, all right, I am against regime change wars. I am against this kind of, like, empire. But what is the Democrat? What is the, what is like the policy that Democrats offer? Like, what do we say about what it means for us to lead? And not just Democrats as in the Democratic Party, but like pro-democracy forces, liberal democracies all over the country. Because, I mean, You mentioned the UN too, and my mind went to like, oh, is the UN going to write some strongly worded letters? Because we have like, the UN has become toothless at this point.

Well, I mean, yeah, were they going to censor us at the security council? We're going to veto it, right? It's just silly. So a bunch of people saying, illegal. Yeah, no, but it's bad. I mean, we like, you know, every once in a while you look at the mirror and I'm like, am I the baddie? And like, we're pretty friendly there. And like, before people well actually me, like, the Obama administration made a bunch of mistakes.

And like, I'm talking about this from the experience of watching the Libya operation and thinking it was. launched with good intentions to prevent Gaddafi's forces from mass occurring everyone in eastern Libya and then watching over the years as how it is unraveled. It has led to a horrible security situation for people in Libya, but also destabilized all of northern Africa and parts of the Middle East. I mean, like, these are these things, once the toothpaste is out of the tube, you have no idea what is going to happen. And I think all the triumphalism on day one of Virginia change operation is so short-sighted

and stupid and it feels like a rock all over again. the oil was going to pay for itself kind of bullshit arguments are just like everywhere and it's hard to it's hard to watch this happen and I will all of that is true and I completely agree with you I think the there is a difference too which is a lot of times the debates over the

use of force and whether to get involved are like tough calls I think Libya was a difficult call and I think you're right it turned out like a fucking disaster but you know Gaddafi was like in the process of massacring his people and you know so it was like do we stop it is that going to get worse if we stop it or is it going to be worse if we don't do anything right

and you can go through all the different interventions like that and summer should have been easier calls than others for sure but this one is like oh no no no no no we just want the oil there's no national security we just want the oil the rationale changes every other day sometimes it's fentanyl sometimes it's drugs sometimes it's Hesbola or now I which I hear Steve Bannon was like I don't fucking know what Rubio was talking about with Hesbola he's off message there we got to make it about the because then now that

Bannon's full of shit on this by the way he was opposed to this and now he's like oh it was masterful It's the oil thing, and now it's the, we want to control the Western Hemisphere. Now they're just going for broke on. And that's the Don Road doctrine. I mean, that was in the national security strategy. So we all, like, in some sense, should have seen this coming. I am like, well, I know we're going to talk about the politics for Trump. I think, you know, I know you want to talk about the polling there too. Let's do that. It's, you know, it's obviously like too early to know how all the politics are going to shake out. But early clues and some polls. We love polls. A Reuters poll out Monday found only 33 percent support for the operation and 72 percent worried that the U.S. will become, quote, too involved in Venezuela. The Washington Post conducted a poll by text message of a thousand Americans that was about evenly split on the question of the U.S. sending the military to capture Maduro with 42% opposed and 40% supportive, though more lopsided on the question of whether Trump should have gotten authorization from Congress, 63% said he should have, and Trump's plan to take control of Venezuela and choose a new government, which only 24% support. To me, that's like

the key number. You also have your Marjorie Taylor Greens and Candice Owens. and Thomas Massey's out there criticizing this, which is driving a new round of, you know, is the MAGA base dividing over this? What do you guys make at the politics on this issue for Trump and for other Republicans? And you can take it separately if you want. Is this something that further divides MAGA or brings Republicans together? So I'm very worried about the political lesson that Trump is going to take away from this operation and from the Iran strikes, no matter what the polling eventually says, because so far,

There has been no cost to him politically, right, from like relatively limited military actions, at least in terms of time frame. Like no U.S. service members were killed. Congress hasn't done shit about it. Most voters probably don't know this is happening, right? Like most people just, as crazy it is, the people listen to this show are just checked out. And so, meanwhile, Trump himself is surrounded by hardline anti-Modoro, anti-Cuba Cuba forces every time he's in Mar-a-Lago. Bibi Netanyahu visits him like every other day, wherever he is. is. And I fear that Trump is going to take these military actions, love the wall-to-wall press coverage, love being told how bold and daring he was and historic this action was, and then

decide that, you know what, I actually love intervention. I love, like, helping the Delta force guys solve our problems. And that could mean, like he said earlier, like toppling or doing something else to topple the Cuban government, maybe does something to fuck around in Colombia. He's already threatening air strikes in Iran. If the Iranian regime cracks down on protesters. We've talked about Greenland. He did air strikes in Nigeria over the break. Did air strikes in Nigeria over the break, like for no reason? And so, you know, look, if these encouraged, these military actions are limited to like

one night of airstrikes and he walks away, I honestly, I don't think there will be a MAGA revolt. I think they'll mostly be fine with it, even though he's basically adopted the Lindsey Graham foreign policy after years of calling him like a bloodthirsty lunatic neocon warmonger. But if this turns into this prolonged occupation of Venezuela, I think that will be a massive political problem and that's already showing up in the polling 70% of people are like what do you mean run Venezuela we don't want that you're right though he's very um because he's a tv president I mean he said he's like oh I was watching the whole operation on TV he does think he's playing video games that and so these interventions because everyone's like oh the hypocrisy of you know

he said he was going to be a peace president but he's doing all this war well in his mind probably what he doesn't like is quagmire's right where we're spending a lot of money and and we lose a whole bunch of American lives. Or lose period. That's where Americans land on wars. We don't like losing. We don't like looking humiliated. And Donald Trump, the TV president,

who just watch politics on TV, that is where he is. And so he thinks to himself, now that he's got all his toys, because he's in the White House, well, I can bomb this one and that one and fire this. And, you know, airstrike here and I look strong and it gets me some good headlines.

Yeah. And then that's it. I mean, I don't, I, when people say, oh, is he going to send an American troops to Venezuela? like I can't see him who knows we could who knows it will happen hope this doesn't happen but like I can't see him sending in a huge ground force in Venezuela if things go bad there I can see him just being like yeah let it why is he leaving I mean he's leaving who cares let them deal with it he's leaving the curve in place in part because he doesn't want to put troops on the ground I think he draws a hard line in his between I think military interventions that include troops are very different to him than just bombing or raids like this I think he've used the raids this is exciting and daring and luckily nobody was a a killed on the American side so it looks like a perfect success to him um an air rate you know he solomani the most recent strikes in iran like he'll keep doing that yeah i think the question is what happens if this doesn't go as planned and all of a sudden there's chaos in the streets and the only

way you can get uh what you claimed you were getting is with troops what happens there and i agree with you i think he is extremely reluctant uh to deploy american trips that that is the big question like what happens if delsi rodriguez the acting president says fuck you and doesn't let exon get access to the oil field donald trip once he said like the the stakes for her could be even worse than Maduro? Was he threatening to kill her? Because that's sure what it sounded like to me. What if there's some rogue general in the Venezuelan military who stages a coup, you know, like Polta Chavez, um, are we going to reintervene then to disrupt that? What if like the FARC or the ELN or one of these groups like just does a bunch of things to make political

instability? So there's just, you know, it's chaos down there. There's more migration. Like things get worse. There's just so many ways that could break badly. If I'm, if I'm Trump and that happens, I send in another round of airstrikes and then say, let them deal with it. screw it and then the migration problem that you're talking about is real but it happens you know then then he closes the borders and he gets tough on migrants right i even like god fucking forbid that there is some kind of a terrorist attack either here or broad against americans and american interests even then he's going to be like well that's not my fault that's the fault of this these foreigners that's why we got to bomb them more right i mean this this is what happens but like most of it like

like something like eight million venezuelans have left the country i mean hugo chavez and maduro ran the country into the ground. I think their GDP was cut by like 75%. People were impoverished. It went from the richest country to impoverished. Most of the people who left Venezuela, though, went to Colombia or Ecuador or Panama or Brazil or other countries in the region. Like, if more people flow out of Venezuela, it's going to further destabilize the entire,

all of South America and reverberate in ways that we just can't see right now in the same way we didn't see in the early days of the Syrian Civil War the way it would lead to like the rise of right-wing neo-Nazi parties in Germany, you know, a decade later. Yeah, that happens and suddenly the Don Roe Docter ends at the southern border. Not so good. What, I didn't talk about the sub. I meant the quadrant, though. So Democrats, unsurprisingly, have been roundly critical of this, but obviously, because it's the Democratic Party, there's some drama.

Axios had a story about some Democrats having misgivings about this whole thing. They quoted three centrist and or vulnerable house members. anonymously of course. Emotionally vulnerable, yeah. Emotionally vulnerable, and they courageously went on background here. One of them said to Axios, quote, I think it looks weak. If you don't acknowledge when there is a win for our country, then you lose all credibility. Another said, quote, as Democrats, we can't just condemn what happened. And then another, the third one said, Maduro was bad, glad he has gone. You can't have it both ways. Anyone want to respond to the, to the centrist House Democrats?

Not really. I mean, I just think, like, there's no doubt that Maduro is a bad guy. He's corrupt. He stole elections. He locked up the opposition, right? There's no doubt that the U.S. military is the most dominant fighting force in the world. They will win every battle we put them up against. But what I'd say to this House Democrat is like, you have no idea if this was a win for our country. No one does. We can't tell the future. Like, it felt like a win when Saddam Hussein was found in a spider hole. How'd that turn out? It felt like a win when Gaddafi was toppled. How did that turn out? Right. Like, again, Trump has said, we want to run the country of Venezuela going forward to take their oil to take their oil and left the regime in place of the guy he just replaced if you can't look at that and say what step molten said which was this is this is crazy was great said this is insane what the hell are we doing yes that that to me that's everywhere that should be everyone's right ruben guygo is out there he was excellent um Cory Booker had a good statement what did you guys think of the other uh Democrats were out there from the statements you've seen I thought the Cory Booker statement I think stood out if

only because it put it in the broader context of what got us to this moment, which is a completely slovenly and pathetic Republican Congress that has not been willing to assert its constitutional authority in any way at any time. Donald Trump couldn't even do the courtesy of the briefing the leaders of the Intelligence Committee and the leaders of Congress the way you would about a covert operation. They're claiming because those people would leak. Meanwhile, he's telling us he told the oil companies at an answer, at least they may have known. it was coming. Although I think that's probably him just, who knows what he fucking means. But regardless, like, the reason we're in a situation where Donald Trump feels so emboldened is

because he knows that he will face no accountability from Republicans in Congress. And so I do think when people go out there and say, like, this was illegal, this was illegal, it sounds pretty feckless and silly because to who? And to what end? And so what? And at least pointing out, like, there is a world in which we have a Congress that's going to to hold an administration accountable as a world in which doing illegal things could have consequences. Unilaterally launching a regime change war is a bad idea. We know this from a lot of pretty recent history, and I don't think we should be scared to make that case. I also think, like, just the key on these statements is to make it bigger. Like, Seth Moulton was great. Like, this is insane. Mark Warner

made strong points about China and Russia. He talked about the hypocrisy of pardoning Juan Orlando Hernandez, the actual narco kingpin from Honduras that Trump just gave a pardon to. Tim Kaine was good. Masty was strong. But like, again, go big. This is not about whether Maduro was a good guy or a bad guy. There are a lot of bad leaders in the world. We are not going to depose them all. I thought we'd agreed that we don't want to be America's policeman. And then you start to wonder, okay, how are we picking and choosing? Why aren't you deposing Kim Jong-un? Well, it's because of Trump getting love letters from him, but also because he has nukes, right? So if we want every country that is scared of us to suddenly race to get a nuclear weapon, like this is a great way to do it. Yeah. And by the way, also

just pardoning the Honduran leader who was a drug trafficker, right? Like just the, the lack of any standard, any kind of ideology behind any of this. It's just, it's all so capricious and dangerous. I totally understand focusing, if you're a Democrat in Congress, focusing your ire on Trump not going to Congress. You are in Congress. It's your job. It's your prerogative. I think that is important. I do think that when something like this happens, the focus of the statement at the beginning, beginning is just what do you think of this exactly because there I did see a lot of like you know throat clearing about the congressional authorization but then you can tell they're too scared to say that this was just a bad fucking idea and it's like you know what Donald Trump's never going to

Congress it's it's not happening and we don't control Congress Democrats don't control Congress anyway and Republicans are shameless so the most important thing you can do right now is to help shape the public debate by telling people exactly why this is such a fucking horrible idea you know like that to me is like number one yeah but this is where I do like I know it sounds I like I was like actually before we even record I was like am I just like is this a bias that I have to just like think about the ways in which Joe Biden failed but but I do think that like one of the reasons you see Democrats kind of like unmoored a little bit I do think for the most part people have been critical and this is a few random people speaking

on background but I do think there is a kind of well when they say it's weak what they're really getting at is well Maduro was bad and it would be a better world if Maduro wasn't in power and that that election had had been allowed to carry through to the to the right full winner. What did Democrats do to make that happen? There was Democratic backsliding in South America while Joe Biden was president while claiming all of these values, claiming to speak for all of these values. So what is a full-throated, like moral, righteous policy that Democrats would embrace that doesn't seem kind of feckless and weak in the face of authoritarian rule of China's expansion, of Russia's expansion? Because I don't know the answer. I'm not an expert. But like that

does seem missing. Yeah. I think the challenge is, you know, military action. things getting blown up, but it looks strong. It looks decisive. And Democrats of all these scars from the Iraq war in 2003 and, you know, thinking that like the military actions automatically coded as strong and diplomacy is weak. But I just think voters are actually smarter than that. And like, you know where they should have scars for all the ones who cast the vote in favor of Bush's war, which is a vote that haunted most of them for their political careers. Exactly. And like, you know, to your point about the kind of mealy mouth process focus statements, like a lot of Democrats made those kind of statements about the Iraq war. And they were like, well, actually, what I voted for

was for him to go back to the UN with firmer footing. And it's like, guys, history is not going to remember me that way. Are you for this? Are you against it? Are you for the Don Roe doctrine in the next phase of toppling the Cubans and the Colombians and taking Greenland and Panama and whatever else? And I would also say, like, this is to me is an easier one. And I know Dan wrote about this in his message box. This is an easier one than the bombing of the Iran nuclear sites for Democrats, Which some Democrats were like, you know, it's good that he did that because that was about like, okay, there are these nuclear sites. We bombed them. Do we get them all? Do we not? That's, you know, the question. But the Trump administration told us after the Maduro raid that it wasn't really about Maduro. That's about the oil. So Iran with the nuke threatens us. People can die if Iran is a new. There's no threat to the United States from Maduro. They're trying to call fentanyl, WMD. But yeah, this whole thing is like, Maduro is a bad guy. But they're not saying that it's because Maduro was a bad guy.

That's not, that's not what they're saying, because Maduro didn't give them the fucking oil. They still, the regime's so in place. Yeah. The same group of people. They're just, they're down one guy. I will say too. I haven't seen a lot of 20, 28 contenders that have, that have put out statements. Pritzker I saw, tweeted, Gallego, all the, all the ones in Congress said something because it's Congress.

A little quiet out there from the rest of them. I, Kamala had a very long statement. Yeah, that's right. And we think of her as a 2028 candidate. We, for now, for now we do. Yeah. Yeah, the other part of it, I just, what would we have, what would have this, like, I, As you both were going back and forth about how quickly we will be able to exploit the oil reserves of Venezuela.

I was saying, what would this show have been about otherwise, right? And what would we have been talking about today? And it would have been our next topic. But it just like, like he has decided that he wanted us all. Like he did, he chose this. He chose the timing of this. We're all now talking about this rather than the failure on to get any kind of Obamacare extension through the failure to attack any of the problems he claimed he was going to attack. And like that doesn't go away.

Yeah, he gets a couple days of tough guy. bomb guy news stories, but like the, the, the, apparently he wanted it, he wanted it to happen on Christmas Day because he likes the dates, but then there's some, some weather stuff and they had to, they basically like to, the weather sort of in the, in the conditions and the political reality is also kind of like, it was wet and it was windy and you can't fly helicopters and that kind of weather. But what a dickhead. There's a lot of service members and government officials who have to work when you invade a country and do it on Christmas just because it's like, you're a real screw situation. I guess it's my fucking consolation prize. I'll bomb Nigeria

instead because I couldn't get the Venezuela thing done. in Christmas. Incredible. Positive America is brought to you by article. We love article here at Cricket Media. We've got a bunch of stuff in the office. We've got chairs, we've got couches, some desks, like all kinds of things. They look great. They were affordable. They showed up really fast. And that's because article offers a curated range of mid-century modern, coastal, and Scandy-inspired pieces that not only shine on their own, but also pair seamlessly with nearly any other article product. This thoughtful design approach makes it easy to mix and match, helping you create a space

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of a website or domain that's squarespace.com slash crooked. Speaking of Democrats, Tim Walls made a surprise announcement on Monday that he will be ending his campaign to seek a third term as governor of Minnesota. Walt said that he decided to step aside because of the political attacks he's been facing over a massive social services fraud scandal in his state that's become a MAGA obsession and spawned all kinds of right-wing conspiracies. We covered the fraud scandal briefly in a previous episode. I honestly we can't even remember when, but we did. But basically, a nonprofit stole tens of millions of dollars in pandemic relief funding from the government by saying the money was going to meals for kids.

It was called Feed Our Future. It was the nonprofit. And some futures were pretty handsomely fed. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, not the correct ones. But yeah. Biden's DOJ investigated. Dozens of people were indicted in 2022. So this is an old one. Many were convicted. And Walls announced new oversight policies. Then, right after Walls announced his re-election bid in September, this September, Trump's DOJ announced investigations into other Minnesota Social Services programs, and they are currently arguing that as much as $9 billion may have been stolen, and so far 90 people have been charged altogether,

both in the feed our future original case, but then there have been a couple other cases. All these investigations are kind of blurring together, but they are separate cases. But what made this an even bigger deal in Maga World is that most of the people who've been charged are Somali Americans. And then the day after Christmas, a right-wing influencer named Nick Shirley released a video that's since gone viral where he made a bunch of unsubstantiated claims about alleged fraud at Somali-run daycare centers in Minnesota that he visited. That led to the Trump administration announcing a freeze in child care funding nationwide while they investigate, as well as just a general. freak out on the right among everyone from Donald Trump and Elon Musk to nearly

every Republican and conservative influencer. It was just like the couple days on Twitter and online and on YouTube before Venezuela were just this is all they were talking about, including by Elon Musk who has jumped back into posting about politics, calls

for all Somali American citizens to be denaturalized and deported, including Ilhan Omar, and for Tim Walz to to jail and be tried for treason. That was one that Elon Musk also promoted. Trump continued the attack in response to the Walls news on Monday and accused the governor and Ilhan Omar of, quote, stealing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, which of course isn't true at all. Now that Walls is out, Amy Klobuchar may jump into the race, where she may have

the honor of facing my pillow guy, Mike Lindell, if they both win their respective primaries. Amy Klobuchar holding a hairbrush tapping against her hand as a bunch of fraudsters come and bring cash back to the governor's mansion and just put it in front. That's awesome. I think that's cool. That is cool. She'll clean it up. Yeah. She should do that. What do you guys make of the fraud story and the MAGA obsession over it? So there was fraud. It was very serious. The people that committed the fraud should go to jail. Many of them have. Not only that, they've recovered tens of millions of dollars as well. Not all of it. Can't recover all of it. But they've tried to recover. a lot of the money. That's what you do. You find people who committed crimes and you prosecute them. You don't punish communities because we don't believe in collective punishment. Just because somebody that committed a crime is the same ethnicity as you doesn't make you in any way whatsoever responsible. That was sort of a to be a kind of status quo ante that I came to the table with, but apparently others no longer have it. Also, there was so much pandemic fraud. There was so much.

This is one example. This is the top of the list now. Sure, I get maybe. Maybe. Maybe. The PPP fraud was very huge. That's like way up there as well, too. Tons of other small business administration fraud. Remember, there was that you go there are all kinds of reports about people taking millions of dollars from the government, really wealthy people taking millions upon millions of dollars from the government. But this is what they care about. This is what they're focused on. Why?

Because it affects a community of immigrants they don't like. And so they are making this the issue. Does that mean that it wasn't a situation in which given the scale of, of the theft it shouldn't have been caught earlier earlier or i guess more to the point once it was seemingly exposed stopped earlier like what were the reasons it was allowed to continue some of that is legal and judicial but some of it clearly is administrative like these are all really important you ask them we don't support fraud uh but the idea that now this pain needs to be visited on every daycare in the country or every somali immigrant is just it's just racist yeah

it really is combining um the two passions right now of like the because Elon and like the all in boys. We're all over this. And it's like their thing is, uh, is, you know, Doge 2.0. They want this to be Doge 2.0, even though, um, when they were running Doge 1.0, they didn't seem to find any of this fraud. We're so good at Dogeing. No, they weren't so good at Dogeing, but now they're back. And they are saying things now, like most of your tax dollars now go to fraud. The government is just one big, so 30% of all your tax dollars go to fraud now. This is the greatest scandal in the

history that if we just cut out the fraud in the government, we would balance the budget. And no one under $500,000 would have to pay any taxes anymore. This is the shit that they're all pushing. And then you've got Stephen Miller pushing the like, oh, this is a great way to show that any immigrant in this country, even those who have become citizens, are bad and should be deported. Yeah, I think it's sort of like a three-part MAGA obsession. And yes, like the fraud is, it's horrendous, right? It's a ton of money, like billions of dollars at all. So it's like you're pretending to feed hungry kids.

You're pretending to provide services to kids with autism. Like, fuck these people. Disgusting. Lock them up. Throw them away forever. make sure it can never happen again. The MAG obsession, though, I think it's like, one, it happened in a blue state, right? So you can blame Democrats and you can blame and you could use it to attack the social safety net and the welfare state generally, right?

And that is part of their project. You attack the value of government in service of slashing taxes for the richest people in the country. That's like Republican 101. Second, because a bunch of Somali descent, people of Somali descent have been arrested, that gets, right, the Stephen Miller, like, nativist going. It also gets the racist going. And then third, like social media algorithms are designed to explode stories like this, especially on Twitter. Like if you, if a right wing anti-migrant, anti-liberal video appears on Twitter, Elon Musk is going to find it and retweet it and respond to it and juice the fuck out of its reach. And then I think journalists scroll past that video and they see like 170 million views, a totally made up number, by the way.

I do not believe a single metric that man puts out on about view counts on social media or his business. or whatever. But then they decide, like, oh, this has been under discussed. This has been ignored by the mainstream media. Meanwhile, like Google, three weeks earlier, a month earlier, the New York Times had a bunch of really great reporting about this fraud. Minnesota news outlets have been covering the story. Often they say, why won't the media cover this story I learned about from the media. There's a link, yeah. The other part of it too. And the Justice Department, which has been on the case since 2022. Exactly. The other part of this, too, is I do think, like, one of the reasons there should have been more enforcement and checking is because it was a pandemic.

emergency, and they were trying to, A, get money out the door. And B, they were worried about sending, they were worried about people interacting. Like, that was part of a lot of the decisions that were being made in the early days of the pandemic to try to kind of help people in the crisis. And part of what we're seeing is just a desire to rewrite the history of COVID, which is all of this was unnecessary. All of it was fake. The social distancing, the protection, the need for people to stay home, which is why people couldn't work. All of it was manufactured, right? Like, that is part of this, too. Do you erasing what was happening during COVID?

The other thing that feeds into this is, you know, I saw that Tim Walsey gave an interview back when this happened in like 2022. And someone in his, I believe it was Department of Education or Health and Human Services, whatever it was there, in the state, like flagged the irregularities. And they were like, we're going to have to stop this. And then feeding our future sued them. And then in court and said it's because they were racist that they were trying to do this, which is even more disgusting.

Yeah. So that's feeding into, now, now the right takes that as like, Tim Walls fucked up because he thought, no, the Walls administration actually tried to stop it earlier. And then there was a corridor. It was like a whole. But this feeds, I do think this feeds into a like, what is the kind of deeper critique from the right that they want Americans to absorb, which is Democrats are afraid of being called racist. And they'd rather money go out fraudulgently than deal with racism. And by the way, like, I don't think that that is a totally unfair allegation in some cases, right? Like, there is absolutely Democrats. who were afraid to attack a problem like this because they were afraid of being called racist. Certainly this auditor who reached out to these communities was like, look, if you don't want to see headlines all over the place calling you racist for targeting our, you know, nonprofit, then, you know, let us go. I do think it's really important for Democrats. You're seeing a lot of like, what aboutism? What aboutism? Well, actually, look at Trump. Look at the crypto corruption. And that is 100% right. And it is totally valid. There's the most corrupt white house we've ever seen.

I do think Democrats, we need to take this really seriously first. lean into prosecuting the hell out of the perpetrators, like fix the oversight problems, uh, fix the social safety net challenges because like, like this is like when health care. Gov went down, right? Like if you, if you want to sell people on the role of government in your lives being good and helpful and being worth your tax dollars, like we have to go that extra mile, whereas Republicans have a much easier task, which is they just attack, attack, attack, and then say, see, government's worthless. Let's drown in the bathtub, cut your taxes. Couldn't agree more. When Kathleen Sebelius opened up that computer and there was just an exhausted

the teradactal trying to connect the liars. That was such a bummer. Yeah, you don't, as a Democrat, like, you don't care about fraud because it's an issue that Republicans are going to attack you with. You care about it because if you want to propose policies like this that change people's lives, like you have to, you have to make sure that people trust you with their tax dollars, right? Like when the, the better example of that is the Recovery Act. Remember, we, like, made a big show of appointing Joe Biden as the, remember, he was like the inspector general. He was going to make sure that none of the money was wasted on the Recovery Act. And, you know, they, found, like, there's a million, how much money there found Cylendra, right? And that was like

the big thing. But we took that seriously because we're like, if this much money is going out the door, you better fucking believe we're going to make sure that it's not wasted and that there's not fraud. And I do think that's an important, like, you know, lessons for Democrats to learn as they're proposing policies. Yeah, the Energy Department loan program that Scylinder was a part of ultimately turned a profit, but whatever I can. The idea that if you're going to bet, that whole point of betting on companies that some of them are going to go down, but on the whole, it's going to work that whole like cylinder was not any I don't want to do a cylinder thing a guy with a guy with a guy with a cool car startup uh ended up benefiting yeah he did okay what was that guy's name yeah i don't know

where he went okay what do you guys think about walls the decision and uh and clobishar jumping in the race possibly i mean look i i respect anyone to like decides that for the good of you know the team to step back yeah when there's time yeah i do not not referencing anything specific here but you know yeah for sure well why not i think it's better than yeah other people hanging on But the, yeah, look, I do think it's a little bit of an admission against interest here, right? Because he's saying it's because of right-wing attacks and that it's important to continue fighting right-wing attacks, but you're also conceding to them by stepping aside. And I've seen some people say some version, like, I can't believe Tim Walts is giving into this kind of right-wing attack. And I think two things can be true.

One is there's a lot of unfair shit being circulated a lot of ways in which is being exploited completely unfairly. But also, he's the governor of the state. And there's a massive fraud. And the scale of it compared to what they expected to the program to be is just so gobsmacking that I understand why he would step aside. But it's clear he cares about the seat, cares about the state, and that he wants a Democrat to win that. And he thought it would be harder to do for reasons that are fair or unfair. Right. And then on Klobuchar, just so people know, so if she runs in 26 and she wins, there's also a Minnesota Senate race.

right now there's a primary with lieutenant governor peggy flanagan and uh representative angie craig and so um that's for senate and then if klobuchar runs and she wins as governor she would be able to appoint her replacement in the senate that would then be up in 28 i believe and she also wouldn't have to get rid of she wouldn't have to step down from her senate seat so it's a freebie if she wants to run and then if she loses then she'd go back to the senate yeah i wonder how that affects the primary if you let that primary play out or you sort of right now there's an extra slot there's an extra slot yeah oh i guess you let it play out and then maybe potentially the loser of that primary could be uh appointed by a potential governor klobuchar so we'll

see getting ahead of ourselves there strong candidate i mean i also think wall's stepping deck probably speaks to how miserable politics is if you get in like trump's glare like the i of sar on i mean do you guys see like over the weekend trump retruth some video that had basically alleged that tim walls had some role in the murder of Melissa Hortman, the Minnesota legislator who was killed, along with her husband last year. I mean, sick, sick stuff. Because she spoke out about immigration or something. I think about the scam. I think she spoke out about the fraud and was like one of the few Democrats. And so this has been, I remember they, this was going around when she was first murdered that like maybe this was a left wing person because she took this unpopular stance among

Democrats. It's fucking crazy. I mean, her kids were like begging Trump to remove the video. And as far as I can tell he's not. He's just the cruelest person in the planet. All right. So we knew this was going to happen because of where the deadline fell, but the Department of Justice released the first big batch of Epstein documents on the Friday afternoon before Christmas week. And we haven't had a chance to talk about it because we were like

peace out, see you later. The new law gave the Department of Justice until December 19th to release what they have on Epstein. That day they posted a searchable database containing hundreds of thousands of files, including redacted documents, emails, photos, and more. Most

of which lack context or order. Some of the quote unquote highlights from the trove, photos of Epstein with celebrities like Michael Jackson and former President Bill Clinton, investigations into 10 co-conspirators of Epstein's and revelations that Trump, despite claiming otherwise, flew on Epstein's plane at least eight times in the 90s. However, DOJ admitted that it hadn't been able to get through all the files by the deadline,

and there were reports just before New Year's that they're trying to borrow at least 400 government lawyers to help process over five. a million more Epstein documents. It kind of bummed a lawyer off you. It's such a weird way to phrase it. Clearly, they're not doing a lot of work in the rest of the government.

They're lawyers, right? Not a lot of legal. Yeah, I don't think they were doing a terrible job redacting because apparently you could just highlight the black text and get the actual information. Any takeaways from the documents that we've seen from you guys? I mean, you highlighted the three big ones I took away. Like, it's pretty notable that this federal prosecutor was flagging in January of 2020.

The Trump was on Epstein's jet many, many more times. Why was he sending that email? what was he doing on that plane? The 10 co-conspirators point seems to completely contradict Cash Patel's claim that there was no client list or other group of people that he could have charged. And then I think you just come away thinking like the FBI screwed up this case so unbelievably badly over the course of decades because there's all these credible tips and witness testimony, even including from like the sister of one of the victims that could have been used to arrest Jeffrey Epstein so much earlier. and they just completely screwed up. The fact that this all begins with Palm Beach police basically having this guy on sexual abuse of minors

from the jump from the beginning, multiple victims and that it never moves forward. It gets pled down from the beginning and never leads to anything else. The other thing that jumped out to me, first of all, the fact that he was on the plane that many times was news to me. Maybe I, like, I didn't know if I had a real view of it before, but I suppose I had internalized that he hadn't been on the plane because there just hadn't been evidence of it. We hadn't seen it, right? He denied it outright. The first we heard of it was Susie Wiles saying it's like, yeah, he was on manifest, yeah. In that interview, yeah. And the fact that he was one of the people that was just a rational of like, of course he wasn't on the Epstein plane. That's not his style. He would fly himself. He wouldn't go to a place like that. He would do think, like, there was just a whole story about how Donald Trump wasn't on the plane. That's a lie many, many times. Do you also, just the Wall Street Journal,

that Jeffrey Epstein wasn't just a frequent visitor at the Mar-a-Lago spa. The spa would send young women to his house on house calls for massages. I mean, it is, if you're wondering, like, why is Trump trying so hard to cover this up? Why has he tried so hard to cover this up for so long that does not, where the explanation is not that he was in on it, that he was, you know, participating in this? it's that there's so much bad behavior from him around it being on the plane marjorie taylor green uh said over the break too that trump told her his friends would get in trouble uh friends of his would get in trouble if the files came out this whole thing about the marilago right like there's enough behavior that's maybe not chargeable criminal or you know but like pretty fucking

embarrassing he's part of the problem yes the cover up the cover up has always had to be the second worst outcome for donald trump i will say also one other part of it is just as a sort of a whatever, a silver lining to the Epstein cloud, is only that Donald Trump does not believe he has the power to cover this up. They don't believe they can delete the stuff, erase this stuff, that there's too many people that are not loyal to Donald Trump that have the information, which is why they feel so stuck, right? Like, they would obviously love to shred this. They would obviously love to make this disappear. They have no compunction about, they're not into records retention, but they are trapped because inside of DOJ, it is not

maga one inch down it is a bunch of people that are not going to go along with a cover up which is like i do think a little bit heartening yeah all right there's plenty of other news from the last two weeks we haven't had a chance to cover way too much but we did just want to mention a few items that probably flew under your radar unless you're one of the real sickos out there which is why we asked crooked's biggest sicko Elijah cone to help us out one of elijah's many rules here is host of terminally online which is our most hilariously unhinged pod for subscribers only which is yet another the reason you should all become subscribers at cricket.com slash friends become a friend of the pod. We're going to have a lot of new awesome stuff behind the paywall this year. So you're going to want

to sign up for that. The number one way you could help independent media is to be a subscriber. So if you like the show, please subscribe. If you really, really love the show, go to crooked.com slash friends. Consider becoming a friend of the pod member. Yeah. And so because Elijah spends his days never taking his eyes off the internet, he gave me a list of stories, takes and tweets. none of them had flown under my radar because I'm just as much of a sicko but I'm curious how familiar you guys are with some of these. I was pretty offline by the way

and every once in a while I would like go into my phone and I would see that like that like basically it's oh yeah well it's also just sort of like realizing your head up on Normandy on Private Ryan that opening scene I always think about that with Twitter it's like they're under the water

and they go back under the water well it's sort of like it's almost like you guys have just been in the casino the whole time I went to bed there are definitely days where it's like it's about it's been off for like two weeks having a great time with my kids like spending great family times

saw my mom so I hand his parents and then you just like log it to Twitter and you're like it is designed to enrage me and I'm like ignoring my daughter to like fire off who's that the hedge fund asshole who's Bill Ackman specific Stop drafting, stop drafting I know I was away Tommy

I was good until Elon and Chimoth and fucking all in people and Bill Ackman they all got they started doing it with the fraud stuff I was like, ugh. And I had like a good week and a half. I'm proud of you. I was out. I was out. All right. First one. Did anyone catch the marble armrest story? Does that mean anything to you guys? I actually missed this. I missed it. I didn't really care about the Kennedy Center stuff.

Okay. So Donald Trump, can we put up the, for people who are watching on YouTube? You should all watch on YouTube. Donald Trump decided to post right before Christmas, what's next for the Trump Kennedy Center, which is marble armrests. He said nothing's ever been done like this before. It sounds really uncomfortable. What? That is the crazy marble armrests? You want a wood, a nice soft wood there. Or yeah, or something padded. This is what the Venezuelans are going to have to be pumping oil for right there. I can't believe people don't think he's focused on their problems. I know, I know. Okay, here's a tougher one. If someone asked you what you thought about

Gen Z looks maxing influencer clavicular's take on Gavin Newsom, mugging J.D. Vance in 2028 because Newsom's a Chad and Vance is subhuman. What would you say? I tell you something. I don't know that that interview. I didn't know about that interview, but I sadly do know all those terms. I do. I'm a little too deep in this one, unfortunately. So looks maxing as I believe when you, it is what it sounds. You just do all the things to make yourself look better, including testosterone injections, plastic surgery, you know, remember the dude who got calf implants on that MTV series? I do remember that. Remember the end of that? He and his calf implants are still long he never got that girlfriend in that um viny's older brother who is apparently the looks maxing

is kind of an ideology that is adjacent to kind of white nationalism or the right wing because you always see clavicular talking to like nick fuentes and their buddies and then uh clavicular uh like ran over a guy hit a guy with his car yeah not familiar allegedly didn't get prosecuted it's a cyber truck yeah he took a cyber truck so anyway so he thinks jd vance is ugly and we have the we have the clip we should yeah let's let's play the clip in like this next election cycle who's going to win. It's going to be Gavin Newsome against J.D. Vance because J.D. Vance is subhuman and Gavin Newsom Muggs. J.D. Vance is subhuman? Yeah. What makes you say that?

He's got a very short total facial width to height ratio. He's obese, very recessed side profile. Whereas Newsom is like 6.3 Chad. So I just want to say... That's manly, by the way. That was Michael Knows of the Daily Wire. I want to just... Look, all you people out there with your horoscopes, I just want you to know that you and phrenology are coming into into into the light together. But yes, the return of phrenology was inevitable in our kind of demon-haunted world. But yes, J.D. Vance has a recess chin.

Therefore, he does not have what it takes to be a leader. I also saw that guy saying that he takes so much testosterone that he no longer produces it. So I'm not sure that he is able to have sex. like look we've all lived in a world where obviously optics and the looks of a candidate is like seen as part of how they get elected right like Barack Obama's a good looking guy like there was all this thing about the taller candidate always wins yeah but this guy seems to have turned looks maxing into a political ideology and I think that that was new to me in the last couple weeks do you see that Newsom got in on this newsom the Newsom press office account just like they posted a picture of JD Vance's face a little fatter than it used than it than it than it is today. And not the fake one, the meme, like an older picture of him when he was a little, a little heavier. Got it. So that's something that happened. Yeah, that's what they do.

Total chat, total chat. Try mewing good. Total chat. You got to start, we got to get that mouth tape. Mugging is, uh, means someone looking significantly better or outshining others and attract him in this style or confidence. That's Gavin. Didn't really know that.

Mogging the competition. How about the phrase, Globo homo? Oh, all up in that. Give you a hint. It's related to the Maduro raid. I do know. Is this about the homo nationalists? Maybe.

Elaborate. So there was a report about increasingly right-wing gays. Not the right-wing gays, where you wish somebody had higher cheekbones and filler lips. But right-wing homosexuals who are embracing anti-immigrant rhetoric because they are homo-nationalists who want to be free to be gay but also don't want to be surrounded by immigrants. Fascinating. That's what I thought. Didn't know about that. Different thing.

Let's take our friend Tucker Carlson has the information. You're not going to believe what this one. Yeah, I know. I'm not going to go kill Nicholas Maduro because we don't like the way he's treating his people. It's possible we're mad that he doesn't allow gay marriage. That is a distinct possibility, but no one will say that out loud. Not defending the regime, just saying. And by the way, the U.S.-backed opposition leader who would take Maduro's place if he were taken out is, of course, pretty eager to get gay marriage in Venezuela.

So to those of you who thought this whole project was Globo-Homo? not crazy actually What's global homo Nope definitely crazy What's global homo is him thinking There is an international conspiracy To take out Nicholas Maduro Because it's a conservative country

That didn't allow gay marriage That's his theory That I guess A super gay deep state Forced Donald Trump To launch this military operation To take out Maduro Wow

With that it was sadly It wasn't the gays It was the Jews In this case Why not both? Why not both? Why not both? Right there. Why not both? Remember the kind of like, the Megan Kelly, Ben Shapiro moment when he was like, I don't give a fuck about Maduro being a conservative. That he was sort of referencing that in the... Right, the idea that that doesn't matter. Socially conservative. That's right. It's crazy. Finally.

Because his point, by the way, was we should remove dictatorships. That's what Ben's point was there. Well, Ben's point was like he's a terrible guy. Like, we shouldn't like him because he's super conservative on social stuff. Right, right, right. All right. Finally, Zoran Mamdani was sworn in. as mayor of New York City just after midnight on New Year's Eve and has already increased discourse supply to record levels. Which one of these Mayor Mamdani takes aren't real? One, the buses aren't free yet. Mamdani lied.

Two, Mamdani needs to free Maduro. Three, Mamdani defeated abundance by implementing Yimbi policies. Wait, one of those is not real? Are the two of those are real? I got a guess. I think the bus one is fake. I think that one's fake, too. They're all real.

That's the trick. The trick question. Because I saw in the wild a couple versions of the free Maduro tweets. Okay. Amazing. Yeah. The defeated abundance by implement. Because he said the word abundance in his speech, in his inaugural speech.

And so then the lefties were like, yeah, he's basically, he's taking it. He's co-opting it because he's now, he's using the word, but it's like the socialist version of it. He's getting, he's getting Democrats. He's, hey, you're getting socialism all over my abundance. I wasn't done with that abundance yet, and now you've got your socialism all over it. That's gross. There's another big, like, abundance dust up right before Christmas. And, like, I didn't know any of the people involved, but like, it's the, the, the,

I kept thinking, like, Tommy's, uh, what did you say on the pundies as he's so, he was so right? The fever pitch of it, like the, the rage compared to the stakes. We got to build more houses. So much rage. We got to build more houses. Yeah. However, get it done.

It's great. I'll just be bad about a new book in 2026. I was just, you know, build more houses. Sometimes it's going to be zoning and regulations. Sometimes there's rich people doing some bad shit. I don't know. It's both. What the fuck?

Yeah, it's a fucking problem. I don't even care about the underlying policy. Just fight about another book. Just get another book. Oh, boy. I read The Candy House by Jennifer Egan. You did? Great.

I love that book. It's a good book. It's like one of my favorite books. I've been reading. It's one of the books you've read. That's it. Yeah. So all five.

I've been reading Fort Bragg Cartel. I'll give you a very different window. into the Delta Force community. Oh. It's very good. Finish Dead Wake. Oh, great. Great.

Really great. Really great. God damn it. I'm halfway through George Packers' novel, The Emergency. I interviewed him on offline and told him I was going to read the book and I started it. You know a book I read that I, I read, I read Why Nothing Works. Oh, yeah. Is it Dunkleman?

You got through that? Yeah, that is the, the rachelous abundance. But that's the supercharged abundance. That's the longer abundance. That's an abundant abundance. I want to have a conversation with that. author about how many times you're going to say the phrase, is it Hamiltonian or is it Jeffersonian? I got it. I fucking got it, man. I'm reading your book. I'm here. You've got me. Stop saying it.

It's very niche. It's worth to read. I'm learning a lot. But how many fucking times you get to reintroduce the thesis? An abundance of thisi. Yeah. There's a thesis abundance. How stupid do you think I am? I'm following your logic, man. Trust me. It's like genuinely getting annoyed at that professor. I'm also reading the interesting history of the intelligence war between East and West. Wow, you really... It's kind of spies. Well, just on Kindle, you flip around. Let's keep the

escalation going on. I'm also reading the Stephen Pinker book when everybody knows that everybody knows. Oh, Epstein list guy. Good for you. Who else are you celebrating on Epstein's list? Everybody did not know that. Did not know that. Well, it does not come up. You might find it hard to believe it's not in the book. And also, by the way, before I even knew that, which was at this moment, I was a going to recommend it.

So good. Good shit. So good. Okay. When we get back in the break, you'll hear Lovett's conversation with Senator Mark Kelly. But one reminder before we get to that, we're headed to New Zealand on Australia in February. Oh, man. I think it's like five weeks away.

It's crazy. What? I've got to get sure we got to make sure the visas. Yeah? Oh, yeah. Again, we might be staying. Yeah. Which sphere of influence is Australia going to be on it?

I don't think Australia's going to like it. Is that going to be the she? The she sphere of influence? It depends on how much money they're going to put in crypto in the next two years. How west does the Western Hemisphere go? Yeah. Are we crossing the daylight line? Are we moving the dateline?

I can see Trump moving the dateline. Anyway, we're going to be there. The Pots of America, hopefully just visiting tour, comes to Auckland on February 11th, and then three cities in Australia after that. Melbourne on the 13th, Brisbane on the 14th, and Sydney on the 16th. If you're a listener in one of those cities, or if you want to fly there, we'd love to see you. Tickets are on sale right now. head to cricket.com slash events to grab yours. When we come back, Mark Kelly.

POTT of America is brought to you by Built. It's 2026, and if you're still paying rent without built, it's time for a change. Built is the loyalty program for renters that rewards you for your biggest monthly expense, rent. With Built, every rent payment earns you points that can be used towards flights, hotels, lift rides, Amazon.com purchases, and much more. And here's something to get excited about. Starting in February, built members can earn points on mortgage payments for the first time. Soon you'll be able to get rewarded wherever you live and unlock exclusive benefits with more than 45,000 restaurants, fitness studios, pharmacies, and other neighborhood partners. Some great things you could redeem them for are the travel portal.

You can figure out that trip you always wanted to go on. There's Amazon for just basic stuff, like anything you need around the house. You can use built points to get it. And then lift rides. Look, if you need a ride, then you want to have a drink or true, want to take a lift, you can use built points to pay for that too. It's simple. Paying rent is better with built and soon owning a homework better with built too. Earn rewards and get something back wherever you live. Join the loyalty program for renters at joinbilt.com slash crooked. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T.com slash crooked. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you. Joining me now is Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. Senator Kelly, welcome back to the pod.

Thank you for having me back. All right. So, Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, posted today that a response to what he called seditious statements and a pattern of reckless misconduct, the defense department is moving to censure you to potentially reduce your rank, cut your retirement pay. Also threatened further action. The claim here is not just that you called on service members to refuse illegal orders in that video. It's that you've also described lawful orders as illegal. What's your response to this? That's a bunch of bullshit, the entire thing. It's ridiculous and it is, you know, stifling the First Amendment rights of all Americans, especially retired people like me. You know, I said something that the president didn't like. He said I should be hanged. I should be executed. I should be prosecuted. And then his minion, Pete Hegseth, the most unqualified secretary of defense we've ever had, you know, he makes a decision that he's going to court-martial me under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for saying what is in

the UCMJ saying something that is lawful telling service members they need to follow the law, they didn't like that. In that censure letter, by the way, they also put all these other things that I said that they didn't like. Now, think about this for a second. What message does that send to other retired service members or people who have left the military, people on active duty, or just any U.S. citizen? Don't cross this president. He might try to get you hanged, but If that doesn't work, he's going to demote you in the military if you're a service member or take away your pay. You know, this is, I got to say, I mean, I spent 25 years in the United States Navy, and I've been retired now for another, well, 15, I've never seen anything like this. I mean, this is what we've become as a country where people can't speak out against the government, can't disagree.

So, did you find out via the tweet? Is that how you found out? Did you be notified in any of the way? Well, so I found out initially today via the tweet. They did send a letter to my attorney. This is the first time they've actually corresponded with my legal folks at all. But I think this shows the unseriousness of these clowns here. They're more concerned about getting, you know, likes on Twitter and views.

than they are running, seriously running the Department of Defense. Were you surprised that this was the attack that they took? Obviously, you know, Trump has threatened all kinds of things. They've threatened you with court-martial. This is an administrative action. Yeah, well. They're making all these claims about how what you've done is so dangerous, and now they're going to kind of come after your pay.

It seems they're weak to me. In this central letter, sedition, right? Well, I think they realize if they put me in front of a jury, they would have been laughed out of court. even by a military, you know, whatever military case here. So I think they reverted, you know, to this option where they don't think I have a lot of recourse. But I'm going to, you know, I've got to stand up for the American people here. This is not just about me at this point.

They're trying to shut everybody up. If you're a retired guy like me in the military or your former service member or you're just somebody speaking out against this president. Donald Trump wants you to shut up. That's not acceptable. So you made the, what set this off was the video you and several of your colleagues made basically saying that members of the military have to refuse unlawful orders. Clearly, you knew this was going to spur this kind of a fight or fight of some kind, right? No.

I thought that even this guy, even Donald Trump, would say, if he said anything in a response to what we said, he would say, Of course, of course, members of the military shouldn't follow illegal orders. That's what I expected. I actually expected them to ignore it. So I guess part of this is that, look, like, we've watched over the last several decades, this presidential authority has expanded. Congress's role has been minimized.

And, you know, presidents operate in this kind of a gray area about, like, what is the lawful use of military power. Like some of this, right, there is a genuine kind of philosophical problem here of when presidents aren't going to Congress at all. What is an election? Yeah, well, these are different things, though. You're talking about constitutional authority of a president. And you're right. Over decades, we've seen an erosion of Congress's role and an amplification of the presidents. There are some exceptions to that. The first goal For 1991, I flew 39 combat missions over Iraq and Kuwait. That had an authorization for the use of military force by Congress.

That's the way this is supposed to be done. But you're right, presidents often just kind of go it alone. And this Congress especially, my Republican colleagues in the House and the Senate have abdicated to the White House. Basically, carte blanche, do whatever you want. We're not going to get in your way. That's not what the founding father is intended. You know, we are the Article 1 branch of government.

We come first for a reason, and most of the power was put there. They're giving this up. But that's not what you're referring to. No, no. No, what I was referring to are those things that are so obvious to a reasonable person that, hey, I'm being ordered to do something specific, and that's got to be against the law. That's what we're getting at.

We're not talking about big constitutional response. responsibilities and roles that the president has over Congress, no. And do you think that there are specific orders that members of the military should have already refused? Well, I mean, sometimes you don't know, right? So what we did was a friendly reminder. We repeated the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It is the law.

There is when a service member gets in a situation, you know, they can go to their chain of command and say, hey, I've got questions about this. Can we talk about this issue? That never happened with me. I mean, in the early 90s, you know, Desert Shield, Desert Storm, every order I ever got, even sinking two ships. Very obvious, we were well within our rights to do this. But it has happened historically where members of the military have been ordered to do things

that people should know that's against the law. And when the law and orders are in conflict, it says this right outside of West Point on a plaque. You go with the law. That's all we were trying to do is remind members of the military because we have a president who has talked about killing the family members of terrorists. Family members. That means women and children. He has talked about shooting U.S. citizens, protesters in the legs. He's talked about sending troops into U.S. cities to use those U.S.

cities as training grounds, which means you're going to use U.S. citizens for training for the U.S. military. So that's why we did the video. Now on, you know, afterwards, you know, at the same time, those had strikes that already started in the Caribbean. And I do and continue to have a lot of questions about the big picture legality of that. But we were, you know, our goal, here was just to remind, you know, service members, because I don't want to see some young, you know, Navy, Marine, Air Force, Guy, Guardian, you know, I don't want to see these people finding themselves in a really bad situation. Well, aren't people already in that situation?

I get, like, the reason I'm pushing on this is only because we don't need to be hypothetical. We have reports in the Washington Post that that the administration ordered people to be killed who were clinging to the wreckage of a ship. And there are people that had to execute that order. Should they have gone to their superiors and say, I worry this is unlawful? Well, I've been briefed, you know, on that in the SCIF, in a secure facility about that strike. I've seen the videos. I have more questions coming out of that than I had going in. and I think the American public needs to see that video and we need to have an open hearing on this

and people need to answer some hard questions about why we are taking those kind of actions. But that is the, that's kind of an example. We didn't know about that when we made the video, but that could be pointed to as kind of an example of one of the things where we're getting at. We talked about the broader issue of Congress not being involved in military action by the White House.

Obviously, this is a, we're days after the intervention in Venezuela. Axio's got a couple of Democrats to say on background, of course, that criticizing Trump looks weak on this. You've been very critical of the administration for what they've done here. What's your response to that? I think when it's appropriate, it is our job to, to, um, to, um, be critical of this president, any president. I was critical of Joe Biden on things.

It's, it's, you know, our constitutional responsibility. And when it comes to the military, I sit on the Armed Services Committee. I'm the ranking member of the Airlands Subcommittee. I'm on the Strat Forces subcommittee as well and others. I sit on the Intelligence Committee. You know, one of the reasons I actually enjoy, you know, this job is the military stuff, the Intel stuff. It's consistent with my background. I understand stuff about this. But it's also my job. When this administration is doing stuff that makes us less safe, less prosperous, putting

service members at risk, it's my job to say something. I mean, does this make us look weak, strong? We're in the beginning of whatever this thing is going to turn out to be. He extracted Maduro. Maduro is a bad guy. He needs to be prosecuted. It would have been better if maybe he was overthrown. You know, we're extracting a foreign leader out of his country. What precedent does that set? But Donald Trump has a habit of breaking shit. And he has no plan here.

He says he runs the country. We're running the country. These guys behind, and he's pointing at like HECF and Rubio, these, we're running the country. They're not running the country. What would you like to see? So there was also a report, by the way, in the Washington Post that the White House is potentially planning a large role for Stephen Miller. in quote running Venezuela.

I didn't see that. So what should have? I mean, look, we're in this now. What should happen? What should our part? What should happen? I think we should push for an election in Venezuela. We pretty much know who's going to win.

I think at this point, the opposition party won 70% of the vote in the last election. Venezuela was a democracy for decades until Chavez and then now, you know, this. this joker showed up. So, you know, we need at this point to try to help them get back to that. Us running Venezuela, how does that help Americans with the cost of their rent and their groceries and their health care? This president has destroyed the prospect for Americans to have affordable health care. millions of Americans are going to lose their health insurance because of this president and

Republicans in Congress because they wanted to give a big tax cut to billionaires. And now his whole plan is, well, we're going to take over the oil operation here. More profit for more rich people. What are the consequences to U.S. service members if they have to go in there and try to really take control of Venezuela? When this happened in our Iraq and we toppled Saddam Hussein. Remember the jubilation in the streets, the statue coming down, the Iraqis are all happy. How long did that last? Country winds up in civil war and we're in the middle of it. And there's a lot of dead Americans. I do not want to see that happen here. So I remember in 2022, President Biden held a summit of the Americas in Los Angeles.

And there was this debate about excluding Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, then a bunch of of leaders from other countries refused to intend in protest because those leaders have been excluded. And it became, you know, it was supposed to be an assertion of American leadership in the hemisphere. And it became a story about conflict and weakness. And obviously, that's just one summit. But to me, it does speak to some kind of a vacuum of American leadership that's existed. And I wonder if, like, in seeing what Trump has done and how dangerous it is, have we offered an alternative of what it looks like to really stand up for American values, democratic values in the region?

Well, this isn't standing up for values. I agree. I agree. But I'm saying, what is our alternative? This is like, do we have an alternative? Principles when they're convenient. And if they're inconvenient, screw it. That's what we've seen from this administration.

Threatening Canada? Do we have a closer allied than Canada? Who is the moral authority in the Western Hemisphere? at this point? I don't know. I mean, what? No, I agree with you. What I'm saying is this, look, Trump is doing a regime change.

He's pardoning drug trafficking leaders. He's obviously entering into all kind of corrupt bargains here. He's playing footsie with Buckelle. He's terrible. There's no moral leadership and no kind of ideological leadership whatsoever. I'm saying, what is our alternative? What's the alternative now? What's an alternative vision for what American leadership in this region should look like?

The alternative vision, I get it. Yeah. So the alternative vision is what is in the best interest of the United States of America and our allies and our partners across the globe today and into the future. We need to be thinking, the Chinese think out 100 years. We can't be about like what is in the best. interest of us right now this second. We've got to be thinking decades into the future of valuating all the time. What are the threats to our national security? What are the threats

to our economy? What are the threats to our future? How does this thing that Donald Trump just did in Venezuela, how does this affect us five or ten years from now? And I can tell you this, it's going to have an effect. Is this a justification that she needs to go and take Taiwan, kick out the leader. He'll say, hey, you kicked out Maduro. We've got interests here. This is 90 miles from our shoreline, a lot closer than Venezuela is. So is that the justification? Or is this the justification that Putin needs to go beyond Ukraine and say, hey, you know, Kazakhstan used to be part of the Soviet Union. And they've got a lot of oil that they're not exploiting the way they should. We're going to work on that. And by the way, Donald Trump, it's kind of the same thing you just did in Venezuela.

so what should we we need to have a government that can that is playing chess and not checkers i mean stephen miller running venezuela that guy's a moron i mean you talk about you want to ruin that country you want to you know set this up for a situation that is not going to be in our best interest put him in charge so i mean we have to be thinking ahead we've got to have serious people in these jobs We can't have a bunch of sycophants and yes men. Pete Hegseth, is he ever, under any circumstance, going to speak truth to power? I don't think so. So there's something so obviously ugly about somebody like Pete Hegseth going after.

You're somebody like Donald Trump going after you've served your country for decades. You've sacrificed a lot. Yeah, and Donald Trump's a draft dodger, right, five times. We see a lot of stories about the ways in which Trump is politicizing the military, deploying National Guard into American cities, doing these kind of lawless raids in the Caribbean. They're coming after you and other service members who have spoken out. What are you hearing from people in the military who are maybe not hardcore Democrats, but are certainly not MAGA, about their response to this, about what it's like seeing the

military being used and abused in this way? Well, it's quiet, right? They're not doing a lot of this stuff publicly. And I've been told by a more than one occasion, there are folks inside the Pentagon, there's the Donald Trump people, the MAGA people, and they're the quiet people. And when they see them go after a U.S. Senator for something I said, that shuts them up. I mean, are they going to speak out when they see some defense contractor that's a buddy with Donald Trump, you know, fleecing the U.S. taxpayer, or are they going to be afraid and they're going to think, wow, man, they went after that U.S. Senator over something he said, I can't speak out and get about this. So they're stifling, you know, free thought and speech. And what I hear from people, I mean,

I was, you know, on a military base not too long ago. I'm not going to say where. And as I got into the car, one of the very senior people thanked me. You know, thank you for speaking out. Thank you for what you're doing. We need it. So, yeah, there are people that, you know, that they get it. And they understand the, you know, situation we are, you know, currently in. And we have a president that doesn't, obviously, doesn't listen to anybody.

And he's got a bunch of yes people around them. And that's dangerous. So last question. There's also now a move in Congress to try to reassert some kind of congressional authority over military involvement in Venezuela and beyond. There's going to be a war powers vote by that Senator Schumer is going to force. Is there any hope that you'll be able to get Republicans on board to pass it? Behind the scenes are Republicans questioning the administration. refusal to even let members of the gang of whatever it is, five or eight, the gang of eight know that this was coming? Like, is there any hope that Congress is going to reassert its authority here? There's a serious lack of spine on the Republican side of the aisle right now. There will be some people, obviously, that will speak out against this.

I mean, Rand Paul being an example, there will be others. Lisa Murkowski, and I think you'll see a few other people's people, but is that enough to really put pressure on the administration? Probably not. But I do show up, you know, every day for work being optimistic and hopeful things will turn around. That's what we need. I mean, if we're going to, if we're going to keep this, you know, keep this administration in check and possibly keep them from a few days ago, I would not have said this, but keep them from invading Greenland?

I mean, it sounds crazy, but in the last couple days, you know, after we just saw what happened here, and then he's talking about Greenland again and Stephen Miller's wife saying soon, Greenland is going to be part of the United States, if we're going to prevent things like that happening or maybe even going after Canada,

I mean, how crazy does that sound? But who knows at this point? We're going to need the Republicans in the Senate and the House to stand up and say something. I was once at some sort of, you know, fancy conference that I had no business being at. And somebody was talking about what would happen if someone tried to invade Greenland. And this, I think Danish academic was describing the mile high sheets of ice and the temperature. and the conditions on the ground. And he said in his Danish accent,

if someone were to invade Greenland, we'd begin immediately an effort to rescue them. Senator Mark Kelly, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. And good luck in the fight. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. That's our show for today.

Thanks to Mark Kelly for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Talk to everybody then. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Cricket. Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Ilik Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari.

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