Pod Save America - MAGA Revolts Over Epstein List Reversal

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

Right-wing influencers and conspiracy theorists lose it over a Justice Department memo that says there’s no evidence Jeffrey Epstein had a “client list” or blackmailed his associates. Criticism of DOGE’s cuts to the National Weather Service resurface after catastrophic floods hit central Texas. In a Fourth of July ceremony, President Trump signs his disastrous economic plan into law. Jon and Tommy break down the Medicaid cuts, ICE funding, and the highly unusual tax breaks that made it into the final “Big Beautiful Bill.” Then they check in on Elon Musk’s growing threat to launch a new political party, and they discuss Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s allegation that he was tortured in El Salvador’s CECOT megaprison.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

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So go ahead and visit simplisafe.com slash crooked to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free that simply safe.com slash cricket. There's no safe like simply safe. Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Tommy Vitor. Love It is off this week, so I guess we're going to do our best to fill the 30 or 40 minutes of insight we typically get from him.

Wow. Okay. Apparently you didn't like his joke about your, uh, your Twitter habits when you were on vacation. Look, it was a big piece of legislation. It was, it was a big, beautiful bill. And my tweets did not matter. As we, as we found out at all, they did nothing. Fortunately, we do have a lot to cover today.

We're going to talk about what's next for Trump's big shitty bill, now that it's a big shitty law. Talk about ICE becoming bigger than most countries' militaries as part of the bill. Elon Musk's New America Party. Can't wait to join. Launched on July 4th weekend. It's like the Innovation Party. It is.

Deep cut. I was wondering who would make the Innovation Party joke first? Me too. It was you. And Magelworld turning on Trump over the latest Jeffrey Epstein revelations or lack thereof. Uh, I guess so we will dig into that as well. Uh, we do want to start with the horrific floods

that hit Kerr County, Texas over the weekend, which is a County just Northwest of San Antonio. As of late Monday afternoon, at least 89 people have died, including 27 campers and staff from Camp Mystic, which is an all-girl summer camp that was essentially washed away by the floods. Many more people are missing as of right now. It has been absolutely just gut-wrenching

to see photos of these eight and nine year old girls who died, to hear their parents talk about them, to hear from the parents who are just still at this moment looking for their kids. It's just an unimaginable tragedy. This is now one of the deadliest floods of the last century. And this area of Texas in particular is one of the most dangerous regions in the countryliest floods of the last century. And this area of Texas in particular

is one of the most dangerous regions in the country for floods. So naturally there've been plenty of questions about whether anything could have been done to get people out of harm's way earlier. The Trump administration is getting criticism for the Doge cuts to the National Weather Service, the NWS, where 10% of the staff has been fired,

including meteorologists, and two of the offices that now have vacancies are in the area of the flood. The NWS has also had to delay weather balloon launches across the country, and those help forecast storms. All that said, the National Weather Service did issue timely warnings about this flood. The problem was that those warnings didn't get to the people who were in danger. This is known as the last mile problem. Apparently, Kerr County opted against investing in a flood warning system back in 2017

because they thought it was too expensive. So Trump responded to some of the criticism over the weekend when he took questions from reporters at his golf club in New Jersey. Here he is accompanied by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Are you investigating whether some of the cuts to the federal government left tea vacancies

at the National Weather Service or the emergency 14? They did not. They did. I'll tell you, if you look at that, that what a situation that all is. And that was really the Biden set up. That was not our set up, but I wouldn't blame Biden for it either. I would just say this is a hundred year catastrophe and

it's just so horrible to watch. In light of the floods, do you think that the federal government needs to hire back any of the meteorologists who were fired in the last few months? I wouldn't know that. I really wouldn't. I would think not. You still planning to phase out FEMA? Well, FEMA is something we can talk about later.

But right now, they're busy working. What the fuck is the water situation? The water setup? I could blame Biden, but I won't blame Biden, but I just did blame Biden. For the water setup. I just, I've found the political fighting over this pretty tough to stomach or really engage with.

Like it's just, you know, you watch these interviews with some dad combing through like this rubble trying to find his kids. And it's just like sort of all you can think about. It does sound like what you said was right, like the last mile problem, getting the warnings to people who are in rural areas, no cell service in the middle of the night.

Like that does sound like that was the broader problem than predicting the flood. But I thought the letters in, or the questions in Chuck Schumer's letter were appropriate and important. Like we didn't need to know. We should say that on Monday morning, Chuck Schumer sent a letter to the inspector general

at the Commerce Department demanding an investigation. So that's the letter. Yeah, like we need to know. What was he asking in the letter? Basically, if cuts to the National Weather Service slow down things or put people at risk. I think that's an important question going forward.

I could have done without the like instant leap to blame, name your political opponent for this tragedy on Twitter. I think that stuff's just gross. Yeah. I mean, I think, well, I think the really gross stuff was, I saw some people be like, well, Texas, you voted for Trump and this is what you get. And you're like, what the fuck? We're all Americans. Don't do that shit.

I think that two things can be true. The Doge cuts to the National Weather Service, in this case, had nothing to do with the tragedy. You know, it seems like the National Weather Service in this case had nothing to do with the tragedy. You know, it seems like the National Weather Service, like I said, did send out a timely warning. It just didn't get to people. And that's, you know, not the Trump administration saying that that's independent meteorologists and experts have all said this. But it is true that we are now facing, um, worsening climate disasters. That's just a fact. Whether or not you believe in climate change,

it's still a fact. You can go, you can look at the record. It's like recorded now, which is like the hurricanes, floods, droughts, you name it. They've been, they've been more frequent and more intense over the last couple of decades. And so now, you know, we need to figure out what to do about that.

And there's two things you can do about it, aside from efforts to combat climate change. But in the immediate, you can figure out how to prepare for these disasters and you can figure out how to respond to them. On the preparation side, you know, you cut, uh, 10% of the national weather staff, much of meteorologists were not pretty.

Then you have meteorologists way before this hit saying like, we're about to head into a hurricane season where we can't predict storms as well. And we're all flying blind here. It's like really bad. So it's horrible that they made those cuts. And then on the other end, you know, Trump had been talking about getting rid of FEMA.

They installed, they installed a director at FEMA who told the FEMA staff when he got there that he wasn't aware that we had a hurricane season. That seems bad. Yeah, we probably should have thought twice about shooting down that Chinese balloon. Could have used that thing. That's right. You know what I'm saying? Now, back in February, the Trump administration fired hundreds of FEMA employees and they

offered buyouts to hundreds more, maybe thousands more. So yeah, they're definitely gutting FEMA. They also rescinded grants that are designed to help communities prepare for climate disasters, which seems like a very bad idea. They disbanded all these FEMA advisory councils made up of actual professionals who understand disaster relief, and then they put in place new politicized entities in their stead. And to your point, yeah, Trump now wants to get rid of FEMA after hurricane season. He says, you know, he'll disperse those responsibilities to the states, but I have no confidence that'll happen.

And states don't have the same money. They don't have the same resources to do it. And they have finite resources, so, you know, they're going to put it to the things that are most acute political need for whoever that leader is. And then, great, the big, big picture stuff is, we're pulling out of Paris climate accords, we are gutting tax credits for renewable energy in this big, beautiful bill,

where Trump's doing everything he can to prioritize oil and gas and coal, which will exacerbate climate change. And there's just Republicans can't seem to agree on the fact that this is exacerbating climate disasters in their communities as well. And it's just, it's hard because when Doge was doing what Doge did, you know, there were almost too many cuts, too many stories, too many horrors to focus on any one of them.

But I remember the National Weather Service cuts. I remember thinking that was crazy. It seemed crazy. And we didn't really talk much about it at the time. And there was a bunch of like meteorologists who are usually not partisan types, like local meteorologists. Some of them on during their broadcasts being like, Hey, by the way, usually I can tell you, there's this guy in Florida who's like, usually

I can tell you when the, when the hurricane's going to turn, if it's going to turn, I actually can't tell you now, we don't know. And so again, like we, you don't want to talk about it, you know, in the midst of tragedy, especially if it doesn't directly have to do with the tragedy, but a couple of weeks from especially if it doesn't directly have to do with the tragedy. But a couple weeks from now, are people,

who's gonna be talking about the National Weather Service cuts? I know. It's hard. Because you don't want to be like Trump. You don't want to be the guy who is literally attacking California elected officials for the LA fires while they were still burning. Right? Like that is disgusting. You don't want to be like him and claiming that he turned some valve in Northern California

and thus saved all of us by allowing the water to flow down, right? But it is beyond frustrating that the fires, extreme weather events, all of this is going to get worse because of Trump's climate policies. And yet we can't seem to get people to tie the last two together. I guess we just have to keep making the case.

And on the micro level, you know, can't seem to get people to tie the last two together. I guess we just have to keep making the case. And on the micro level, you know, there's the 2017 Kerr County first, you know, thought about and then ultimately rejected this like warning system, right? And part of that was because a couple of years earlier, there had been a flood, a deadly flood too. And there was a county next door

that actually did have this system in place. And this is the kind of system where, you know, right now you can get alerts on your phone, but if you are out of cell phone range or it's the middle of the night, like it was here, your phone off, or you're going to see like, oh, flash flood alert, you know, but they have things like they can have sirens like they do for tornadoes. They have these systems they can do. And this county, right, is, you know,

it was probably like, I don't think taxpayers want to do that because, you know, no one, especially, sometimes in red states and red state officials, like they don't want to pay for the things that you have to pay for, because government's always inefficient, government's stupid, but like, you know what?

When we're going to be facing many more climate disasters and they're going to become more extreme, they're going to become more frequent, like, yeah, I think it's like time to make a case that investing in government preparedness and response is really fucking important. Yeah, definitely. It's a tragedy. Pots of America is brought to you by strawberry.me.

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own your future with a coach in your corner. Head to strawberry dot me Crooked to claim your $50 credit and get started that's strawberry dot me slash crooked stop settling start building the career you actually want All right, let's talk about Donald Trump's economic plan which the Republican Congress passed and The president signed into law at a 4th of July ceremony at the White House. That obviously included a B-2 bomber flyover. The next big fight now will be overselling the wildly unpopular law to a very skeptical public. And it appears that the administration's primary strategy is to just keep lying. Just what the law does, who it harms. Scott Bessent was out on the Sunday shows peddling the bullshit that the only

people affected by the trillion dollar cut to Medicaid will be able-bodied adults who choose not to work despite the fact that only 8% of Medicaid recipients fit this description. Here's a clip of Besson. Putting a work requirement is by definition a change to benefits. There are no change in benefits. There is a change in requirements to change to benefits. No, there are no change in benefits. There is a change in requirements to get the benefits. Able-bodied Americans are not vulnerable Americans. People can get off Medicaid and get a job that has good healthcare benefits.

It is a group of Democrats who unfortunately seem to think that poor people are stupid. I don't think poor people are stupid. I think they have agency. To be fair, I think he thinks poor people are stupid. I don't think poor people are stupid. I think they have agency. Boo. To be fair, I think he thinks we're all stupid. I think he does too. He is really dishonest.

What, not a very good messenger? No. I don't think I've really heard him talk that much. He was terrible there. I mean, the truth is experts think 17 million people are going to lose their health insurance because of this bill. Most of that is because they're going

to use red tape and bureaucracy to undo a lot of the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Basically, provisions that allowed the working poor to get Medicaid. And they're just gonna do it through red tape because they know that if you're on Medicaid and you're trying to cobble together a bunch

of part-time jobs to pay the bills, it's gonna be difficult to prove that you worked 80 hours that month or volunteered for 80 hours. They also know most Medicaid recipients are already working and you mentioned the 92% stat, the way that breaks down is two thirds of adults age 19 to 64 on Medicaid are working. This is according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study and then nearly three in 10 were not working because their caregivers are sick or have disabilities or attending school and otherwise they qualify for exemptions. So that means, well, we're gonna ring this much savings

out of 8% of the expansion population? No, what's gonna happen is what's happened in Arkansas when they put in place a policy like this, where 18,000 people lost coverage because of work requirements, and there was no increase in employment, because those people were already working. They just got pushed out of the system

because they couldn't do the bureaucracy. Yeah, I just, it was the first time I caught this in that clip is Scott Besson being like, I think people can get off Medicaid and get a job. There's been this, you hear it from Besson, you hear from Trump people, MAGA people, that they're like, everyone's sitting home collecting Medicaid benefits.

That's not how Medicaid works, because you don't get a check. It's not benefits. You go to the hospital and you have health insurance. Or you go see a doctor, you have health insurance. And just like people who don't have Medicaid have health insurance when it gets paid for, when you go to the doctor, right? Or sometimes you have to, you know, have a co-pay,

which by the way, co-pays are going to be raised as part of this as well. So it's not just the work requirements, but like this idea that people are just sitting there collecting Medicaid benefits is not, it's just fucking ludicrous. Makes no sense. Apparently only 31% of the cuts, uh, this Steve

Ratner had a piece about this in the New York Times, uh, only 31% of the cuts to Medicaid are due to the work requirements. So even if, even as unfair as it is that you just mentioned that all the work requirements and how onerous they are and how they're going to result in a lot of people losing it. That's still only 31% of the trillion dollar cut there. So the rest of it is just Medicaid cuts that have nothing to do with

work requirements. Uh, Annie Lowry had a great piece about this in, uh, the Atlantic. Um, and she made the point that other people have made, which is this is not really a work requirement. It's a work reporting requirement. Exactly. And it's the reporting that's the bullshit. That's the hard part. You think to yourself, okay, well, if you're working, shouldn't you just, don't you just check a box and say I'm working and that's it? It's like, no, no, no, you have to like create an

ID and a login and then upload verification documents and you have to collect the documents. And if you miss a call from a case worker, you lose your healthcare. And like, this is how this works. The other state you mentioned, Arkansas, that has these requirements is Georgia has this. Georgia pays, the states also, by the way, have to now set up and pay for these verification systems for Medicaid.

So Georgia pays $9 in overhead for every $1 it spends on care for its Medicaid program Just to do the verification thing which again hasn't led to more people working and has just kicked people off the program And they're talking about this because they know it's popular like the again the Kaiser Family Foundation did a poll 68% of voters supported Medicaid work requirements as described by the House bill But once you'd informed them that the majority of Medicaid recipients were already working and you explained to them sort of the risk of losing coverage that we just talked about via bureaucracy, the support for Medicaid work requirements dropped as low as 35%. So a 33-point decrease in support for that policy when people really understand it.

The hard part is getting people to understand it. So those are the work requirements, but obviously there was a lot more in the bill that passed. I don't know, I wasn't here last week, but I know, and I know you haven't got a chance to talk about the bill broadly yet since it passed, at least on this podcast. What did you make of the bill now that you've had a few more days to digest like what's actually in it?

Yeah, I mean, it's sort of a combination of the worst of like Reaganomics, antisocial safety net with like old school disgusting pork barrel politics. Like if you look at the tax cuts, here's some people who get, or people or entities who get a tax cut thanks to this big, beautiful bill. The bill eliminates a $200 firearm registration fee

when you purchase a gun silencer. So good news for you, I know you're in the market. That's crazy. There's a tax break solely for Alaskan fishing boats and processing plants. There's also a special deduction for Alaskan whaling boat captains. So thank god we're finally helping

other people killing whales. There's a specific tax break for the venture capital industry that's going to cost the rest of us $17 billion. $2 billion tax break for the rum industry. Oil and gas industry gets exempted going to cost the rest of us $17 billion. $2 billion tax break for the rum industry. Oil and gas industry gets exempted from paying the bare minimum 15% tax on big corporations. If you're worth up to $30 million,

you no longer have to pay the estate tax if you're a couple. Individuals that's exempted up to $14 million. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos get a special $1 billion provision that will allow them to sell tax-exempt bonds Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos get a special $1 billion provision that will allow them to sell tax exempt bonds to build spaceports, very important. What a great gift for Jeff Bezos for his wedding.

You're welcome, yes. Over the weekend where he spent $50 million to rent Venice. Was it 50 million? $50 million where they basically took over Venice and flew a bunch of private jets there, had a big wedding. It's the, like the split screen of that, because it's like most people in the country, like, I don't know, were they paying attention to the bill or were they paying attention

to like all the pop culture entertainment coverage of the Bezos wedding? Well, no, no one was paying attention to the bill because you weren't staring at cable like we were. It was all ditty coverage. And then the Idaho murder case, like zero coverage of this bill is actually very depressing. There's also a huge tax break for business owners all ditty coverage and then the Idaho murder case, like zero coverage was on this bill, it was actually very depressing.

There's also a huge tax break for business owners and people who get paid through, pass through business entities like S-Corps and stuff. That costs $800 billion. So yeah, I mean, this thing is just like your classic special interest corporate tax break bill, along with the cruelest Medicaid cuts and then these just idiotic gutting of renewable energy companies.

Trump is a now he's got to sell the bill you know so he's got Besson out there and everyone else lying about the work requirements stuff. They also he's of course he's also listening enlisting the federal government in this whole effort the propaganda campaign which you which used to be something that violated some kind of law, and now we're just like, oh, whatever. He had the Social Security Administration, supposed to be just a bunch of civil servants

and a nonpartisan entity, the Social Security Administration. They sent an email to all Social Security beneficiaries, quote, celebrating the passage of the one big, beautiful bill, a landmark piece of legislation that delivers long awaited tax relief to millions of older Americans. Um, that I guess is referring to the provision that temporarily provides a $6,000 senior deduction,

uh, which is meant to fulfill Trump's campaign promise to end taxes on social security, which the bill doesn't do, even though Trump and the White House keep saying it does. Just stating his fact that it does, it's a lie. Yeah. It's a lie. Do you think shit like that works?

And in just talk about the Social Security thing, and then in general, like how easy or difficult do you think it'll be for Trump to make this law popular using the bully pulpit and sort of, I guess, the entire federal government? I mean, I wish I could scoff at, like, that Social Security email or have faith that people will eventually learn that it's a lie when they get their tax bill,

but I always think back to how powerful it was for Trump to put his name on the stimulus checks and how much that stuck with people, and just, like, a word that... This was an official government communication that went to 71 million people. 71 million people got a total lie from the US government. And like this policy, like so many policies in this bill, does nothing for the poorest

seniors. It'll help out ones that are wealthier. So some challenges for him in terms of selling this bill, it's like the 2017 tax cuts were extended in this bill. I would imagine that in 2018 or 19, people like saw that their tax bill went down. That won't really be the case here if it's just an extension. So maybe that'll help us fight it. It's useful that like the Cato Institute is saying

this is gonna add 6 trillion in debt to the company. Like that's really bad. And it's gonna cost us up to $1.9 trillion in debt servicing alone by like 2036. It's nice to see, you know, voices you don't always see attacking Trump talking about this, but like Elon Musk being out there calling it a disaster, utterly insane and destructive, like that was a verbatim quote,

I think is really helpful. It does suck though, like in terms of just helping people feel the impact, like the no tax on tips provision, some of the things Trump really wants, they go into effect right away, but the cuts to Medicaid are delayed a couple years, so we're gonna have to help people understand how bad those are gonna be before there are elections. I think that there's two parts to this,

to the selling of this and how people feel about it, I think. One is which narrative you buy about the bill, whether Trump's or what the Democrats are gonna say, what we're all gonna say. And part of that is dependent on who makes the better case for some of the stuff that doesn't happen until later. Then there's just, you know, I was calling it his economic plan,

which I kind of think that when we go back and forth, I and like, should we call it the bill, the beautiful bill, this bill, that bill? But it's like, it's his economic plan, right? And Trump and Republicans, they all, they went all in on it. They said, this is our plan to, uh, we, we, we ran for Trump ran for president, Republicans ran for office to say, they're going to bring down costs because everyone was very pissed about high costs. And this is the plan to do that. And so now in 2026, uh, people can ask themselves,

do I feel like I can, uh, afford things again? Do I think the prices are down? Do I think that I can afford a house? You spend $4 trillion at a time of, uh, high interest rates, high prices that haven't come down. Yeah. High costs that haven't come down partly because he has just also levied a sales tax essentially with the tariffs on

everything we buy from all over the world. Uh, just as we recorded this today, he announced another like 25% tar, he sent a letter to South Korea and Japan each telling them like, Oh, I'm going to levy 25% tariffs on both of your countries. So, and there's going to be more, I'm going to levy 25% tariffs on both of your countries. So, and there's going to be more, I guess Tunisia got a letter too. Tunisia. Tunisia got a lot.

Yeah. Okay. There's going to be more of these now. And so you're going to have people paying slightly higher taxes. Well, it depends on the product on all the stuff they buy. And you don't have an, you have inflation that has come down, but you still have prices that are high interest rates are not coming down anytime soon, which is why he's yelling at Jerome Powell and like threatening to fire him, right?

And so I think that you can make a case whether or not some of these provisions go into effect that like, hey, in 2026, are you happy with your cost of living? Are you happy with like what you're able to afford? If not, then like I thought Donald Trump was supposed to fucking fix it. Yeah, I do think there's a lot of sort of like

macro economic factors that will determine how people feel about it in 2026 then I thought Donald Trump was supposed to fucking fix it. Yeah, I do think there's a lot of macroeconomic factors that will determine how people feel about him in 2026, and then hopefully not him, but maybe JD Vance in 2028. If inflation is still high, it is very, very bad for him. And just in terms of feeling the impact on health care, you are starting to see reports of rural hospitals closing or not getting reopened. I imagine we're going to see a lot of that, because of rural hospitals closing or not getting reopened, I imagine we're going

to see a lot of that because those rural hospitals are going to be the ones who are the most financially impacted by these changes and that's going to really impact people's lives. If there's no hospital within 50 miles of you all of a sudden, you can't live like that. Yeah, and that is happening now. There's a new Times piece about a county in Eastern North Carolina that's been trying to reopen their one hospital with Medicaid money, which they almost certainly won't be able to do now. The key quote from a local real estate agent

who's leading the charge said, quote, "'Not having the hospital here is costing lives. This is the most important thing for us.'" One clinic in rural Nebraska has already closed. The guy who runs it said in a statement that the expected Medicaid cuts are a reason why they're closing. This is, this is what I got in a fight

with Don Bacon about. Don Bacon was like, uh, he's like, it's a liberal's hate work. That's what he tweeted. He goes, liberals hate work. That's why they're mad about the work requirements. And I was like, work requirements aside,

like, like someone in your own state is saying they're closing the hospital. He's like, that's a lot. How, how could you say the hospital is going to close? The cuts haven't even gone into effect yet. The bill hasn't even passed. He's like, that's a lot. How could you say the hospital is going to close? The cuts haven't even gone into effect yet. The bill hasn't even passed. I was like, I'm not the one who said it.

It's the fucking Nebraskan who runs the rural county hospital. Right. That's so frustrating. I think these stories are why, these stories of these rural hospitals closing. This is why, before the bill passed, Republicans in Congress were saying stuff like this. The White House has made a commitment. The president said over and over and over, we're not gonna touch Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. We've made the same commitment.

I am fully committed and I'm leading legislation to make sure that, you know, whatever cuts take place in Washington, that Medicaid recipients don't bear the brunt of that. I've been very clear, I will not support cuts to eligible beneficiaries on Medicaid. If during this budget reconciliation process they're going to try to cut rural health care, I am not on board. So much for that. Tough quotes. Tough quotes there from all those frontline Republicans. So, you know, you mentioned some of the Medicaid cuts don't take effect until after the midterms, others don't hit until 2028. How do you think that's going to affect Democrats' ability to make this an issue for voters in 2026? Yeah, I mean, this is the hard part.

I mean, Priorities USA did some polling. They found that half of Americans, nearly half, hadn't heard anything about the big, beautiful bill, and only 8% of all Americans named Medicaid cuts as the detail of the bill they had heard about. That suggests we have a big, big messaging challenge. I just do think this is gonna have to be,

we have to find a way to talk about this every single week, the Democratic Party. I mean, this has gotta be relentless because Trump is gonna try to make it about immigration and the ICE funding. And you saw JD Vance's tweets, right, about how actually the Medicaid cuts and all this renewable energy,

that is immaterial, I think was the word he used. What really matters is getting all these migrants out of the country and somehow that's gonna have an economic benefit. That's what they wanna talk about. We have to make sure people understand their reality. I also think, we mentioned the rural hospitals closing down.

Part of this is, he owns the healthcare system now, right? Just like we owned the healthcare system. Yeah. When we passed the Affordable Care Act. And even though something would happen in healthcare, you know, the costs would go up or premiums would go up and everyone would blame Obamacare and we'd be like, no, it was actually, what's that?

Wasn't Obamacare. This hasn't been implemented yet. And like people like, I don't fucking care what you're saying. They blame you in charge. So, uh, when bad things happen and some of them, by the way, like these rural hospitals closing, will be because of the law.

ACA premiums, which one of the things that happened, you've mentioned this on the show before, the ACA subsidies that people were getting to bring down their premiums or to help them pay for insurance on the exchanges, they were not extended. So those ACA premiums, XCAS reported this, will probably increase by more than seven and a half percent on average starting in January. Talk about inflation. So that's like January of 2026. So that's like a

big talking point. And actually that probably affects a lot more midterm voters, fortunately, than some of the people who were on Medicaid that'll lose their Medicaid much later. And a bunch of hospitals will be doing what those two hospitals we just mentioned do. And a bunch of states are going to have to start making budget decisions about Medicaid sooner rather than later.

And so that's going to start bringing all these effects in a little bit earlier. But I do think that we just have to make them own everything about health care and everything about the economy. There's also a couple of things, other things do think that we just have to make them own everything about health care and everything about the economy. There's also a couple things, other things we haven't talked about in this bill, like the SNAP cuts, people think we should snap, most people don't know what SNAP is, but it's food assistance. There was a Politico story I saw, it says food banks aren't ready to

handle all the people who will now need them. So we're cutting food assistance for a bunch of people, food assistance, just like the people are gonna go hungry and so they're gonna have to turn to fucking food banks and now food banks aren't gonna have the capacity to help people. Some of these nonprofit organizations have estimated that six to nine billion meals will be eliminated. And much like the rural hospitals, grocery stores in low income rural areas,

they rely on money from people who have food assistance. Right, you see it advertised. Yeah, and so, they rely on money from people who have food assistance. Right, you see it advertised. Yeah, and so if they lose that money, then some of those grocery stores, they're worried, or could now close as well. This bill is just so cruel on the merits. And I also think that there are changes,

at least in the House version of the bill, that disaggregated eligibility for SNAP and Medicaid. Like some states, you just sort of had to apply for one and you were eligible for both, and they split that up to make it just harder to get food or harder to get healthcare. So everything about this is just like bureaucratic cruelty, which it does speak to why the votes around the bill,

you saw a lot of agonized Republicans. They all voted for it, but a lot of people like, on the merits, this thing was just awful. No one really, no one's excited about it. No one's excited about it except Trump and the biggest sycophants there. Yeah, and big industries. It's also a bill that really robs from future generations,

because I just thought about this with the senior provision, the $6,000 senior deduction, which as you pointed out, doesn't even go to the poorest seniors. But for kids, for $6,000 senior deduction, which as you pointed out, doesn't even go to the poorest seniors. But for kids, for young people, especially like, you know, Trump did so well with Gen Z in this election, college loans are going to become more expensive, right? Because they cut college loans. So the typical loan recipient with a college degree and an annual income of $80,000 is going to have to pay $3,000 more per year now. So this is like, so we're giving seniors,

wealthier seniors are gonna get like a little bit of a tax deduction that only lasts until 2028, but people just starting out looking for jobs are gonna be paying more in college loans. And it'll also make Social Security insolvent a couple years earlier. Yes, so, and then of course, adding to the debt means that like, you know, our children and grandchildren are gonna end up

paying higher interest rates and have to pay this off later. It's bad. One good piece of news is that our friends at Vote Save America are launching a really cool new program on candidate recruitment for local offices. We'll have more on the details of that a bit later in the show but it seems pretty clear that we need more people fired up and running for office. Any other ideas before we move off of this on how Democrats can keep this bill in people's minds over the next 16 months?

I just, I'm very cognizant of the fact that like, it seems like a big deal now. Even if the midterms were this November, where we're sitting here, what, it's July, this November, it would be hard to like keep people remembering this. We have 16 months to make this election about this bill. Yeah, it's going to be very difficult. I mean, first of all, I just want

to say on this candidate recruitment idea, a midterm election like this is a really big opportunity, I think, for Democrats. We need candidates running at every level for every single office. The odds are there will be headwinds for Trump and the Republican Party. The odds are we'll win elections we might not otherwise be competitive in.

So if you're thinking about running, check out VotesaveAmerica's site and consider this being the year you do it because it's really, really, really important. I just think, yes, in 16 months, God knows what we'll be talking about. There could be a war. There could be a terrorist attack. There could be who knows what. I do think just continuing to highlight the stories we talked about,

the community hospitals closing, the individuals who get hurt, the people who lost their food stamps or their coverage, like personalizing this kind of wonky policy story is gonna be the key in just doing events and talking about this. Like Democrats have been great over the last few months about doing town halls in Republican districts.

That's a great way to make sure that some of those constituents at least are hearing about these terrible votes. I hope Democrats are going to every one of the targeted districts all the time and talking about this bill and just kind of pounding it. Yeah. And I think the one thing we have going for us is, you know, you're trying to flip the house. These are district level campaigns. So, you know, the problem that we run into

in presidential elections is there's a whole bunch of voters who just don't pay much attention and it's hard to reach them because they're not following the news. You know, you're running a campaign in a house district. You could reach a lot more people. And so I think, you know, what's a, if America has the list, but this is the list of people we

were trying to get everyone to call like, you know, David Valadeo in California, who has, you know, more Medicaid recipients in his district than anyone else in the country. And also by the way, is, uh, is, uh, represents a lot of farmers, people in the agriculture industry who are getting deported. Uh, so I think whoever runs against whoever ends up running against David Valadeo, that's a, that's represents a lot of farmers, people in the agriculture industry who are getting deported.

So I think whoever ends up running against David Valadeo, that's a pretty solid campaign you can run there. Yeah, so Hockey and Jeffrey's office put out some specific stats on the impact district by district. David Valadeo, they estimate 65,000 people would lose access to health care from this bill. 60,000 households could lose access to food assistance,

and then 3,600 energy jobs could be lost. So that's pretty specific about the bill and the district and worth just hammering. Yeah, and I do think, like you said, every piece of bad news directly related to this bill or not, whether it's with the economy, healthcare, we still have the doge cuts that are taking effects and stuff like that.

We just got to make them own it from now until the midterms. So we mentioned earlier that vote save America is launching a drive to recruit candidates for local races. Here's the deal. This is a pilot program that they're launching, trying to recruit candidates from our audiences in Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas.

We mean you. You, listener. This is a program where we are hoping that some of you who listen to this, who live in Arizona, North Carolina and Texas think, you know what, I should run for office and it doesn't have to be house, Senate. You don't have to run against sidebrews.

You can run for school board, city council, county commissioner, town clerk, state legislature. Like we, there's hundreds, maybe even thousands of races where no Democrat runs. Look, 2026, we hope will be a big year for Democrats. We hope there are headwinds for Donald Trump. We hope we win a lot of races. And if we're not running in places, we can't win.

So we're hoping you will consider taking this next step. The team picked Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas, because these are three states that, you know, they're purple states. Texas is always out there as we're hoping that we can turn. But look, if we want to have a majority in this country, majority in the Senate, if we want to have a majority in electoral college, if we want to actually just build power

in these states, these are three states that we have to flip. And flipping them is not just like on the presidential level or on the presidential level or on the the Senate level like it starts by winning these local races and to win these local races we need good candidates and one of the biggest things that Vote Save America heard from all the partner organizations they worked with in these states after 2024 is that there's just a lack of candidate quality across the whole ecosystem and we just need more candidates to run. And that's where all you come in.

And this is how you recruit talent. I mean, this is how we build the base of the Democratic Party. You run for these small offices, school boards, city council, et cetera. And you get good at the job. And you learn. And you build a political base and supporters

and learn how to fundraise and do all the things that are required to take the next step. And those are the future leaders of the party in the country. So we hope you'll consider taking the plunge. You've knocked doors, you've volunteered, you've donated. Why not run for office? Why not run for office? It's, it's, I think it's easier than you think. And you will feel like, you know, we know, we both know many people who've people who've run for office and some have won and some have lost, but all of them, like the experience is really meaningful and I think a lot of people believe it is, it's easier than they thought it would be to get started. It's pretty grueling once you do it, but it is a, it's the best, most effective way to

get involved. And this isn't just Vote Save America, like saying, go do it. Like they have great partners on the ground in these states who have identified the races that need candidates. And they are ready, these organizations to help you run for office. So you can learn about the program and sign up at votesaveamerica.com slash run. If you're interested, you'll be paired with partner organizations in your state and they will help you figure out the next steps.

The program launches today, July 8th. And I think Tommy, you're hosting a kickoff call with some of these partner organizations on July 16th. Damn right. So sign up soon. Yeah, sign up, listen to Tommy on July 16th, check it out. And again, if you're interested, vote save America.com slash run to learn more. Podsave America is brought to you by Articall. We have some great Articall furniture here in the Cricket office. We got some couches. I believe we've got some bookcases. Yeah, sure. And I got

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That's article.com slash crooked for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. One part of the bill we haven't talked about as much is the 170 billion dollars it spends to supercharge Trump's mass deportation regime ICE will now become the country's largest federal law enforcement agency bigger than the FBI bigger than the DEA Stephen Miller gets to hire 10,000 new ICE agents that he's basically responsible for they basically report to him since Christina was like, you know, just the face of the department of Homeland Security, but Miller's really the boss. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, same thing is true, I guess,

with the department of justice. This is Jason Zengerli had a whole piece about Stephen Miller and the New York times where, uh, everyone's saying that he's, he's the real power center that all these cabinet secretaries, they're just sort of there to go on TV. Yeah. Miller gets to hire 10,000 new ICE agents.

They're going to build enough new detention centers to hold more than a hundred thousand people. ICE's new budget will be larger than most of the world's militaries, including Israel's. The idea that we're going to have ICE that has a bigger budget than the IDF is. It's a little scary. Yeah.

It's pretty scary. And this is all so that they can hit Stephen Miller's goal of one million deportations per year, which they're trying to reach by arresting every immigrant they can find, even people without criminal records, even people who are here legally. This is certainly what some Trump voters wanted, but not all of them. Here's one prominent Trump supporter from a few days ago. It's insane. We were told there would be no,

well, there's two things that are insane. One is the targeting of migrant workers, not cartel members, not gang members, not drug dealers, just construction workers showing up in construction sites and raiding them, gardeners. Yeah. Like really? And of course with Joe Rogan.

Love it. On a recent episode of his podcast. So I know Democrats haven't been talking as much about this part of the bill because the Medicaid cuts and the tax cuts for the rich are much more unpopular, at least according to the polls. I still think it's maybe the most alarming part of the new law.

What do you think? It's terrifying. I mean, the idea of this just sort of like hybrid militarized police force running through our cities, it's very scary. I also think, I think it's a real opportunity to talk about ICE agents wearing masks. I think blue states need to pass laws

requiring ICE agents to show their faces, show proper ID. I would love to force a big fight over that because like who disagrees with that idea? Yeah. But I also think like, there was, early on, Democrats were very unsteady when talking about immigration. I just think they have to understand

that the ground has shifted a bit. Like, Pew just had a big survey last month on a bunch of immigration stuff that was useful. 54% of voters disapprove of increasing ICE raids on workplaces. 60% of Americans disapprove of increasing ICE raids on workplaces. 60% of Americans oppose suspending most asylum applications. 59% oppose ending TPS for immigrants

who fled war or natural disasters. 65% of the country says there should be a way for immigrants to stay in the country legally if they are meeting certain requirements. And 61% of Americans disapprove of sending immigrants to prison in El Salvador. So the original fight we're having about this that everyone was worried about, like, oh no,

should we be talking about Kilmer or Briega Garcia or these Venezuelan men who were sent to El Salvador? Like, vast majority of the country thinks that's fucked up and wrong and shouldn't happen. I don't know if we're seeing this more just because we live in Los Angeles, but the videos of these ice raids that- Do you want today? Yeah. Which one?

There's one in California, in Los Angeles. Oh, at MacArthur Park, I think. Yeah, I guess Karen Bass went down there too. Think so. But like there's nothing Karen Bass can do, right? You're like, she's there to witness it, but there's nothing else you can do. They're hitting up all the car washes. And there's these people who've worked there for like 20, 30 years. They're like, she's there to witness it, but there's nothing else you can do. They're hitting up all the car washes and

there's these, these people have worked there for like 20, 30 years. They're just grabbing them and, and it's, it's the masks, like you said, it's also the, they're in plain clothes often. Uh, they're always in unmarked vehicles almost. My Instagram feed is filled with these videos. My tech talk feed is filled with these videos.

And you know, I always double check them too, to see if they're, you know, if they're real or not, are you worried about that? But most of them are from like local news broadcasts, which by the way, like I do, you know, you go on social media and you, as you and I do a lot, tweet about this, and you get a bunch of like, Mago crazies that are like,

this is what we voted for, to the poll numbers that you just mentioned. People who are home watching the local news, which is some news, sometimes that's the only news people are getting, they're not paying attention to national news, they're just watching their local news, are seeing these raids all the time, and I bet that they're fucking terrified.

Yeah, I mean, like the stories of the guy who got the shit kicked out of him, um, I think it was in San Diego, and three of his sons served in the Marines. I mean, stories like that offend everyone. The number of people I know and know of here in Los Angeles who are, they're documented, they're legal residents. They may not be citizens, but they're legal residents,

and they are canceling plans, afraid to leave the house, afraid to go to work. Afraid to go to student graduations. Afraid to go to graduations because of this is wild. That is the real story of these raids. It is communities being terrorized, mostly Latino communities. And Trump wants us to be brave law enforcement

agents versus the sanctuary cities who oppose them and coddle criminals. The reality is very, very different. It is people going to Home Depot, kicking the shit out of people who may or may not be undocumented. There's been some really high profile mistakes. I think we should have to constantly lift up

those examples and talk about them. And I think the truly scary thing about this is on the arrest side, you know, it's like warrantless arrests with guys with masks on and their arms, stuff like that. But then on the judicial side, it's not like a real judicial system half their time, right? Like they're thrown in detention centers. They're just lost, yeah.

And, you know, eventually you can get a lawyer and you can get into court or whatever, but they're just, you know, alligator Alcatraz, they're just like building, they have the National Guard now helping to like run the immigration judicial system and these quasi-judicial system and Alligator Alcatraz and some of these fucking detention centers. It's wild.

Yeah, the Alligator Alcatraz thing is just so weird. I mean, the way Republicans are sort of fetishizing it, too. Do you see that fucking creep, Benny Johnson, second time we mentioned him on the show, showing off his Alligator Alcatraz merch. And then Trump was joking with reporters that, uh, if you escape, you need to learn to run in a zigzag fashion so you don't get eaten by an alligator.

And again, it's like Laura Loomer, I think you, you brought that one to my attention. Yeah, Laura Loomer, um, essentially tweeted like 65 million more to go, which is the aggregate number of Latinos in this country. So suggesting. And more to go about like allig aggregate number of Latinos in this country. So suggesting- And more to go about like alligators eating them. Yeah, suggesting we should send them all to jail

and then have them eaten. And like less than 10% of people arrested or booked by ICE are accused of violent crimes. And suggesting that they should go to a prison where they get eaten by an alligator. Like I think most people are just like, what the fuck? What are you talking about?

And you know, obviously we've already, we're seeing the dangers of giving Stephen Miller and ICE this much power. On Monday, the Department of Justice told Judge Paula Zinnis that if Kilmour or Brego Garcia gets released on bond in his criminal case in Tennessee, they will deport him to a third country, which the Supreme Court officially cleared the way for them to do in a pair of recent rulings, one of which allowed the administration to send eight men to South Sudan, even though only one of them is from there. So now the floodgates are open to deporting people to third countries.

And a third country, by the way, is a country that's not your country. So you're deported from the United States, not to the country where you came from, but to just somewhere you probably have never been before. So that can happen now. Last week in a court filing, Abrego Garcia's lawyers also alleged that he was subject to severe beatings and psychological torture during his time in El Salvador's CICOT mega prison.

And the administration also just made another 50,000 legal residents eligible for deportation by terminating temporary protected status for Honduran and Nicaraguan immigrants. This is status. They've had temporary protected status for thoseuran and Nicaraguan immigrants. Uh, these, this is status. They've had temporary protected status for those two countries since 1999.

Yeah. These people have been here for decades. The administration seems to think shipping people off to foreign torture prisons and war torn countries they've never been to will deter other immigrants from coming here illegally. That might be true.

Certainly border crossings are, have almost completely stopped. Yeah. But what happens when people from Honduras or Nicaragua or Venezuela or Haiti who've been here legally for years, uh, get their temporary protected status revoked and end up in Seacat or South Sudan or one of these countries.

Or alligator Alcatraz. Yeah. I mean, I just quickly on the Sudan thing, South Sudan became a country in 2011. Within like two years, the country descended to civil war. There was like a fragile ceasefire power sharing agreement in 2018.

But then in 2023, there was a civil war in Sudan, their neighbor to the North. So that led to an exodus of refugees and fighting in like inter-tribal and ethnic warfare. And basically in 2025, there was a political crisis and clashes between the government and the So that led to an exodus of refugees and fighting in like inter-tribal and ethnic warfare. And basically in 2025, there was a political crisis and clashes between the government and opposition forces that led the UN peacekeeping mission there

to warn that they were on the brink of a full scale civil war. And we're just sending migrants who have no connection to South Sudan to a country where they know no one, have no opportunity, where 10 million people are on the brink of starvation, where it's about to descend into civil war. Why?

To scare a few more people from going up like the Darien Gap? And that would be horrific enough, you know? But now, because they are stripping people of their temporary protected status, right? So people who have been here. Like I said, 1999. So they have, they're working here, they're

living here, they have families here. They know no other country. So what happens to them when they get rounded up by ICE? Maybe they go to alligator Alcatraz. Maybe they go to some other detention center. Maybe they get deported to Seacot. Maybe they get deported to South Sudan.

We don't know because it's all a fucking black box once ICE gets you. Right? Like the idea that we're just going to, just going to do this now and send these people to maybe they get deported to South Sudan. We don't know, because it's all a fucking black box once ICE gets you, right? Like, the idea that we're just gonna do this now and send these people to these fucking torture prisons, the document that Briego Garcia's lawyers filed to describe what he's been going through in Seacott, like, turned my stomach.

It's horrifying. I mean, he arrives and he's told, welcome to Seacott. Whoever enters here doesn't leave. He was forced to strip naked. He had Sokote. Whoever enters here doesn't leave. He was forced to strip naked. He had his head shaved. We've seen those images.

And then when he wasn't putting on his clothes fast enough, they were beating him. They made him kneel for nine hours from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. If you fell over from exhaustion, you were then beaten. You were denied bathroom access. So he soiled himself. Yeah. He lost 31 pounds in two weeks.

He said you could hear gang members and other cells like violently harming each other and no one did anything. And remember, again, CBS News reviewed the backgrounds of all these men sent to El Salvador. 75% of them had no criminal record in the US or in Venezuela or anywhere else. These are just people who got swept up into the system. I don't know if you saw that in the filing to Judge Zinnis, the Department of Justice

has now gone back to acknowledging that they mistakenly sent a Brego Garcia there, which flies in the face of everything that Stephen Miller and Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem are trying and Trump, I guess, too, if he knows the fucking details, which it doesn't seem like he does, are trying to spin because they have to make a Brega Garcia a monster. And to your point about South Sudan, they were very quick to say, Oh, the eight people that we

sent to South Sudan were the worst of the worst. And they had like their rap sheets and it's like, you know, child rapist and murder and stuff like that. And sure, some of the people that they're rounding up and that they're sending to people have committed horrific crimes, right? But if they admit publicly that Abrego Garcia was just caught up mistakenly and sent to

Seacot space, then everyone's going to start saying, well, what about Andre Hernandez? It just unravels. What about everyone else? And then suddenly gonna start saying, well, what about Andres Hernandez? It just unravels a little bit. What about everyone else? And then suddenly we're like, oh, now we're sending people to these torture dungeons to deal with what he just dealt with, what you just read about, and all they've done is either,

I don't know, overstayed a visa or tried to come to the country for a better life or had temporary protected status. Right, and remember, you know, Naib Bokele, the president of El Salvador, he cut this deal to accept these men down in El Salvador because in part, he wanted to get back a bunch of hardened senior MS-13 leaders who were being prosecuted in New York

and who could provide evidence about his government's deals with the gangs. So he wanted to get those guys back so they couldn't be, you know, testify against him. So that's the background of this whole thing. Meanwhile, our president is so stupid that he thought Abrego Garcia had the letters MS and the numbers 13 tattooed on his hand when it was like the worst Photoshop MS paint job you've ever seen. Meanwhile, like the, according to this filing by Obrador Garcia, they separated out prisoners

with gang tattoos and put them in one cell and everybody else in another. He was in the non-gang tattoo cell. And in fact, one of the guards told him, your tattoos are fine. Like they know this guy's not a gang member. It's only our moron president who seems to think he literally had MS-13 written on his hand.

Did you see how Bukele responded to the filing? No. So Bukele responded to this by posting a video of Abrego Garcia in his cell in the prison that they transferred him to. Cause remember when Van Hollen went down, they had transferred Abrego Garcia from Seacot to another prison.

And in this, and at the time, by the way, everyone had reported, oh, this prison is a better prison with better conditions. I think Van Hollen said that once he went down there. So they have videos of him in there and they have a video of him watching TV. They have a TV on and he's, he's fully clothed and he's got, he doesn't have a uniform on.

He's just wearing his clothes and he's like sitting with Van Hollen for a drink. And so, and all these fucking MAGA people, they're just buying it. They're like, see, or they're just in on the lie, I guess. So stupid. Either or. But like, uh, yeah, so they're trying to just make it a propaganda thing.

They're like, oh, no, no, he's fine. He's just lying in this court filing. But it's like, yeah, we know that's a different fucking prison. These are the same idiots who believed it when Bukele's thugs put margaritas in front of a Brego Garcia and Van Hollen, right? Like, he's a clown, he's a marketer. Like, this is how he rose to power. He's just good at PR and all this bullshit. Buckeli's thugs put margaritas in front of Abrego Garcia and Ben Holland, right? He's a clown, he's a marketer.

This is how he rose to power. He's just good at PR and all this bullshit. I hope some of the Bitcoin people that cut deals with him early on, because El Salvador really exploded onto the map a few years ago, because Buckeli decided to really embrace Bitcoin, and he wanted to make it this crypto future city. And he talked about like building an entire Bitcoin city

powered by volcano, like the dumbest shit you've ever heard in your life. But all these Silicon Valley idiots embraced him. And I hope they're doing a little bit of soul searching on this. I have been watching that. And, you know, they're basically pissed about two things, three things in Trump 2.0 now.

Taxes? Yeah, right. No, the debt, the deficit because of the bill and tariffs and this immigration stuff is actually bothering some of them. Some of them are some of them like that, but some of like, you know, you see like some of the all in guys are like, I don't know about this.

This is bad. Cause those morons had Trump on their show and they thought they baited him into saying that tech founders or foreign students who are really high performing, who get diplomas in the United States would then get a pathway to citizenship. And of course he just told them

whatever they wanted to hear. Yeah, and I know you and Lovett mentioned this on last Tuesday's show, but the denaturalization thing now is another big fucking flag. That there is this fucking provision in the law show, but the denaturalization thing now is another big fucking flag. There is this, you know, fucking provision in a law leftover from the Joe McCarthy era where now they can take citizens, United States citizens who became citizens and put them through denaturalization proceedings.

And yeah, do I think like that ends up at the Supreme court and the Supreme court's like, this is fucked up? I don't know. I'd like to hope so, but we have, Alien Enemies Act is proof that we have these really dumb fucking old laws on the books, and the court's job is to interpret the law, and they could be like, I don't know.

I have no confidence in the courts anymore, not the Supreme Court. Yeah, it's really scary, and it was very clear early on that they decided to go after pro-Palestine protesters as kind of a test to see how much they could curtail free speech and intimidate opponents. And it was pretty effective. Just to wrap this up, I do think I realize you could poll this

a million different ways. And you pointed out how the polling has changed on immigration. But yes, let's talk about the Medicaid cuts. Yes, absolutely talk about tax cuts for the rich. Like those are at the top of the list. But just from a pure, I think it's the right thing to do obviously.

We're obviously outraged by all the deportations and the immigration stuff. But just from, if you just wanted to be purely political about it, people seeing their communities torn apart because masked men are just like raiding their workplaces and ripping their colleagues away and disappearing them somewhere.

Like that's going to be fucking unpopular. That is worth talking about from now until the midterms. I agree. Also, there's 483 days until the midterms. We're going to talk about a lot of stuff, everybody. And in 18, you know, we've talked about how immigration's gone back and forth. In 18, talking about immigration worked. It was, Trump was very, child separate, family separation

was very unpopular. The caravan bullshit didn't work for him, you know? So I just think it's a different, immigration is a catchall for a lot of different shit, and people feel differently about different aspects of it. What he is doing is not popular. Pod Save America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Typically, you don't associate speed with quality. For example, you wouldn't expect a gourmet meal from a fast food drive-through.

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The big, beautiful breakup between Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Over the weekend, Elon claimed on Twitter to have launched his new political party, the America Party, which he had vowed to do if the bill passed. He apparently had not filed any paperwork for the new party as of Saturday afternoon,

surprise, surprise, but he did say it would be active in elections next year. On Sunday, Trump responded in typical fashion. Let's listen. I think it's ridiculous to start a third party. We have a tremendous success with the Republican Party. The Democrats have lost their way, but it's always been a two-party system. And I think starting a third party just adds to confusion. It really seems to have been developed for two parties.

Third parties have never worked. So he can have fun with it, but I think it's ridiculous. Adds to confusion. What is this third thing? Trump also wrote a long screen on Truth Social that opened with the sentence, I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely off the rails, essentially becoming a train wreck over the past five weeks. He's not wrong.

I know. What's your, what's your current assessment of Elon's power in exile? Rising, falling? I mean, gutted, right? He's burned every bridge he had in the white house. I'm sure there's elected officials that would love to take his call still because they want his money,

like JD Vance or Speaker Johnson. But it doesn't seem like he's very popular with Trump. And then, like, Tesla's stock price goes down every time he picks a fight with Trump. SpaceX and Starlink are still extremely dependent on government contracts. Like, Tesla doesn't, a lot of the revenue isn't selling cars.

A lot of it is selling regulatory tax credits that are designed to encourage automakers to make low emission vehicles. That money's gonna dry up over time because other automakers are gonna make more EVs and things that, and they won't need to purchase the credits, but also Trump could fuck with them there. So he's in a bad spot, I think.

He also has no juice. Did he get a single Republican to vote against the bill after he was like, you're all gonna get primaried if you vote against the bill? The Freedom Caucus, they all folded, no Chip Roy, none of them. None of them listened to Elon. Elon made zero difference during any of the debate. Yeah, I was looking at, I asked Chris Murphy about that,

hoping for a little hope and told him about it in real time. He was like, come on, man, we just did that. No one cares what Elon Musk thinks anymore. It's just, what do you think about the third party maneuver? Do you think this is ever gonna happen? He's so full of shit. I don't believe it for a second. Spraying $300 million on pro-Trump ads in Pennsylvania

or whatever and jumping up and down like an idiot at rallies. Like that's easy, that's fun. Building a political party from scratch, that's hard, that's a slog. You're talking about ballot access and creating rules and bylaws and policy positions and this and that. Like I don't think he's got the time or attention for this. It's just like every other fucking tech billionaire who thinks they could run the government better than every other politician, and then sure enough,

soon as you get into it, you're like, oh, this is a little more complicated than I thought. Just like when Elon did Doge, and all of a sudden left Doge being like, oh, it was much harder to cut government than I thought. He's gonna realize that creating a fuckin' political party is pretty hard because it's not a national thing, it's state by state.

So every state has their own rules. Like you said, he still hasn't filed with the FEC, but the state level regulations can be really burdensome. They're burdensome even for the third parties that are on the ballots that we see. The Green Party, the Liberal Party, they still have to get access every election cycle. That's the RFK.

Exactly, right? In Georgia, apparently, it's got one of the stricter laws. still have to get access every election cycle. That's RFK. Exactly, right? Like in Georgia, apparently, that's got one of the stricter laws. You need 27,000 signatures per district if you're running for Congress. And so no third party candidate has been on the ballot in Georgia since 1985 because it's so difficult.

So like the idea that Elon Musk is going to spend, forget about the money, the time, and like have a political platform and a program that appeals to enough people. I just don't see it. Also, let's be honest. He's not creating a party. He's trying to create a cult of personality.

And who is Elon Musk currently appealing to? He's burning all the MAGA people now. All the liberals hate him. They're putting stickers on their Teslas that say, I bought this before you went crazy. I guess you're seeing exactly who you'd expect to kind of be like, sign me up for this, like these Scaramucci,

you know, kind of like the rich sort of squishy middle centrist, you know, low tax rich guys. But. Yeah, it's like the people who are, it's like the Howard Schultz party, remember? Yeah, exactly. Remember Howard Schultz flirting with us? It's like, we need some, well, it used to be,

we need someone who's like financially, you know, moderate on economics and centrist financially, but like socially liberal, but Elon Musk isn't even socially liberal anymore. He's not socially liberal and he's sort of, I mean, the defining image of his time at Doge is him waving around a chainsaw on stage. Like no one thinks he's kind of got all his marbles.

Has he made it possible to kill, like, thousands and millions of poor children all over the world. So I don't, I don't. Now, he did say that it might just be a few districts, right? Like, if it's a close, it's a close House race and close Senate race, maybe he picks one or two candidates to primary a Republican who voted for the bill

in a couple districts. I don't know if that's maybe you can have a party in just one or two states that works, but I still think he loses interest in this. Yeah. I just think it's a stupid strategy. If you want to primary people. What's your goal?

Primary them. Is it just to like piss off Trump? Yeah. It's not at all clear. Yeah. And Trump will punish him, right? Like Trump has been quite clear. I will punish you if you do this.

So, okay. Yeah, you'll denaturalize him. Put up or shut up, buddy, yeah. Remember he's gonna, yeah, I forgot the whole cycle, I guess I was gone, that he was gonna deport Elon. Yeah, well, Bannon's trying to get that. He's gonna look into it. Yeah, he's gonna look into deporting Elon Musk. So he's gonna doge Elon.

Maybe the surest sign of how punchy Elon's feeling came in the form of a tweet. At 1.02 a.m. on Monday, Elon's post featured an image of a digital countdown clock reading zero across the board and labeled the official Jeffrey Epstein pedophile arrest counter. I don't know that was the thing. Elon added the caption, what's the time? Oh look, it's no one has been arrested a clock again. Elon of course tweeted during the initial breakup that Trump hasn't released the Epstein files because Trump himself is in the Epstein files. The likely trigger for this post was the news that Trump's FBI and DOJ have determined that there is no Jeffrey Epstein client list. There's no evidence that Epstein blackmailed

any of his very prominent friends like Donald Trump. And there's no evidence that Epstein was the victim of a murder and coverup. MAGA influencers haven't been taking this well, partly because back in February, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News that Epstein's client list was, quote, sitting on my desk right now to review. Here's how Caroline Levitt tried to explain away the misconception to Fox News' Peter Ducey during Monday's press briefing. So what happened to the Epstein client list that the Attorney General said she had on

her desk? Well, I think if you go back and look at what the attorney general said in that interview, which was on your network on Fox News, she was saying the entirety of all of the paperwork, all of the paper in relation to Jeffrey Epstein's crimes. That's what the attorney general was referring to, and I'll let her speak for that. Well, they should put all the conspiracies to rest, don't you think? Not going to cut it. John and I did a long YouTube exclusive on the Pod Save America account where we dug into just this for about 15 minutes.

If you want a lot more detail, I highly recommend it. Also subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube because we're trying to build a democratic counterbalance to all the right-wing garbage you find on YouTube when you search political news. But I have to say, I watched a bunch of right uh, like, right-wing podcasts and media today. I watched a lot of Alex Jones, and they are melting down. They are losing their minds.

Like, uh... You think this is one that stays? I think so. Because it's not gonna go away. Like, this is still a thing that they claim to care deeply about because they think that it would lead to the taking down of some evil, satanic cabal of Democrats led by Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton, blah, blah, blah.

But like Alex Jones, like he's sort of built an audience and a career off of this. He's not gonna let this go just cause Trump says so. I mean, they certainly didn't when Dan Bongino and Cash Patel first said Epstein didn't, that Epstein did kill himself like a month or two ago. Like that just poured gas on the fire. Yeah, they are really upset.

I mean, Alex Jones referred it to the DOJ committing seppuku, which is jamming a sword into your stomach and then up into your heart. And it's, you know, he weaves this like crazy conspiracy theory about how actually Trump is using this to neutralize the deep states. They don't kill him and now he can really, it's insane, but it's not going over well.

It is not going over well on the far right. I realize it's not funny because at the heart of this is a horrific scandal. Jeffrey Epstein did horrible, horrible things. But these fucking idiots who have been pushing this conspiracy theory for however many years. And it was always a little bit ridiculous to think that Jeffrey Epstein would sort of document all the people he was blackmailing on a list and just kind of keep it in his

pocket waiting for the day where if he was somehow murdered and covered up that someone would be able to reveal the list and that it wouldn't leak until then until Donald Trump ascended back into the White House and gave the okay. But like, you know, of course, of course, even when they get their own conspiracy theorists in positions of power, the most power you could have running the federal government, running federal law enforcement agencies, even when they get there and say, no, by the way, it's, uh, it's, there's nothing here. That's it's still not going to convince them.

Trump is always the strong man who can take care of everything, but also the victim of the deep state when anything goes wrong. And it drives me absolutely insane. I mean, the conspiracy, you gotta say, you got grievance politics requires that you're always a victim, even if you have all the power humanly possible, all the power in the world. I mean, the conspiracy, the Epstein's ties with people in power have always been hiding in plain sight.

Like in the 2017 interview with Michael Wolff, Jeffrey Epstein claimed that at one point he was Trump's closest friend. Trump's first secretary of labor, Alex Acosta, is the guy who gave Epstein the sweetheart deal back in the late 2000s that allowed him to basically serve almost no time and do a six day a week work release and get immunity from future prosecution.

And so like the lawyers for Epstein were Alan Dershowitz, Trump's good buddy, he was Ken Star. It's like the conspiracy is right there. Like this is a terrible human being who victimized like a thousand young women, got away with murder because he was rich and powerful and connected, and that is the story. It's not, I mean, as far as we know, it is not that he is, like, secretly working for the Mossad and MI6 and the CIA

and the deep state somehow is, you know, running this prosecution. Like, I, sorry, guys, it's just not, it's not as interesting as that. I want Alex Jones and all those people to know that the list is probably still out there. I mean, I think they probably think it is. I would not give up.

Good luck finding it. Donald Trump promised you he'd release it, and JD Vance said it was very important to do. And also, hold Caroline Levitt's feet to the fire. Next time you go into that briefing room, you're one of those bloggers, or those whatever fucking lunatics they got there. Keep asking her this. Don't let up.

I do think the professional class, like the Alex Joneses, they'll figure out a way to move on. But there will be a lot of regular people who went down a rabbit hole about Jeffrey Epstein. They probably truly believe that there's a cabal of, like, evil pedophiles in charge of the world. And the fact that Donald Trump is not doing anything about it, how do you let go of that?

Let me tell you, those people aren't so regular anymore. That's our show for today. I will be back on Friday with a new show with a special guest host, since Dan's gonna be on vacation. I'm gonna be talking with MSNBC's Alex Wagner. So talk to you all then. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free, MSNBC's Alex Wagner. So talk to you all then.

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