Pod Save America - Trump Honors Dead Friend, Restarts War

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

Sen. Lindsey Graham unexpectedly dies and President Trump notifies Congress that the military has resumed strikes against Iran. Jon, Tommy, and Lovett discuss Trump's announcement that the United States will become "THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT" and begin charging a 20% toll. Then, they discuss the legacy of Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell's unexpected and unconvincing proof-of-life photo after his own brush with death, and how both senators' absences will affect Trump's legislative agenda—before touching on the administration subpoenaing four journalists at The New York Times and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s role in an outbreak of explosive diarrhea across the country. Finally, Brian Tyler Cohen stops by to talk to Lovett about his new book, "The Day After: How to Wield Power in a Post-Trump World."For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail]

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visiting simplysafe.com slash crooked. That's half off at Simplysafe.com slash crooked. There's no safe like Simpliceaf. Welcome to Pudsafe America. I'm John Favreau. I'm John Lovett.

I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm back, guys. Welcome back. It's good to be back. We missed you. I missed you. I missed you guys. And you were gone. I was gone.

I was gone. You guys did a great job. Great job holding up the fort here. On today's show, Lindsay Graham is dead and Mitch McConnell is alive. We'll talk about Graham's legacy and McConnell's proof of life photo and how the absence of both men is affecting Republicans' agenda in Congress.

We'll also get into Trump's latest war on the press after the White House and Cash Patel subpoenaed four New York Times journalists over there reporting on Qatari Force One and whether RFK Jr. has a lid on what's become an explosive outbreak of diarrhea. Then Love It talks to... Sounds like... That's not about your vacation. It's sort of more of a... Yeah, it's a personal thing to bring up.

Yeah, I was going to say. See if he can help. me out. Then Love It talks to our pal Brian Tyler Cohen about his brand new book, The Day After, How to Weald Power in a Post-Trump world. Fun to fantasize, I guess. Champaign problem. Okay, Brian. All right, but first, let's get to the top story this week. It appears as though the ceasefire with Iran fell apart last week while I was gone, and now we're back to full-scale war, RIP, the MOU of Versailles. Trump officially notified Congress that military action has resumed.

He also says he's reinstating the naval blockade of Iranian ports and that quote, the USA will be from this point forward known as the guardian of the Hormuz Strait. Really rolls off the tongue. Guardian to the Hormuz Strait.

That's what we've always wanted to be. USA was kind of boring. What are we called? The Guardian of the Hormuz Strait. Not the first time an agreement signed at Versailles after a war ended poorly. Hopefully not as badly as the last time.

Good job, J.D. Vance. Good job. Yeah. I really nailed it. We're also apparently going to start charging a 20% toll on all cargo that goes through the straight, according to Trump, which seems like it's a violation of international law. That's according to Marco Rubio last month. Yeah. Ticket master's like, why so little?

They're just trying to get their beaks wet. And the Rubio isn't just like, oh, this is illegal. It would be a contagion that would spread across. the globe. Yes. Yeah, looking forward to him talking about that now. Meanwhile, Iran continues to fire off rockets at U.S. targets across the Middle East and openly threaten revenge on America. Not to worry, Trump's got this whole thing under control. Here he is calling into Fox and Friends this morning.

We're going to keep the straight and we'll probably run it. We'll become the guardian of the straight. Maybe you'll call it the guardian angel of the straight. And we should be reimbursed for that. Obama was the worst of all because Obama actually went to their side. Obama because you know he's a well let's not say let's let's not say let's leave that for another time Muslim is that what he was going to say Socialist socialist socialist foreigner or something in that in that vein an Ayatola He's such a dick tell me how feasible do you think it is for the US to become the

Guardian angel slash toll booth operator for the straight of four moves paging Curtis Leewa right guardian angels could we stand up up a mission to permanently escort boats through the Strait Hormuz, yes, they could do a formal escort mission. It would require a lot of Navy resources. It could last a long time, maybe permanently. I was going to say indefinitely. Yeah, in perpetuity aid, another forever war, everybody.

It would cost a lot of money, and it would be really, really risky because, again, it's a 30-kilometer choke point, and Iran can hit you with drones, missiles, naval mines, God knows what else, and the whole thing unravels if one gets through. So I don't think that a permanent escort mission is going to get you back to pre-war shipping traffic levels because there's like limitations on how many, you know, Navy destroyers you have. Fewer companies are going to want to try this because it is inherently more risky.

And then a lot of companies are not going to pay a 20% surcharge. That's a pretty big fig on the shipping fee. So my guess is that this is an empty threat designed to create leverage from the White House and they'll probably walk the whole thing back in a couple of days. I just can't see how this will actually get implemented. Remember the last time, Mohamed bin Salman, the Saudi. were like, no, you're not using our airspace. You're not doing an escort mission.

What are you even talking about? And then I saw, did you see the New York Post reported that the White House is calling this latest operation, Operation Bitch Slap? No. Is that a joke? No. No. That's official?

Yeah. It's very Hegsefian to me, but it suggests that they viewed sort of what's happening as a time limited and temporary battle with the Iranians. It also feels like just a way to try to get attention. It's like he's trying to act up Heg Seth and they've named all the other missions and they didn't get enough attention, so now we're just going to bitch slap. Yeah, this was someone on background for what it's worth. But it feels Heg's heavy.

And there's also a great Wall Street Journal piece about how there's some poorly worded language in the ceasefire MOU that's being interpreted by Iran as meaning they now control the strait. So great work, as you said, J.D. Vance, Steve Wukoff and Jared Kushner. Like, just big picture. It's just worth remembering this was going to be a four to five week operation to deal with Iran's nuclear program. And now we're well over four months and we're talking about how to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

I just would add one thing to your list of reasons that this is not a good idea. One other would be that it is not traditionally in the conception of Americans, the role of the U.S. military to be the permanent security detail for oil tankers moving through the Gulf to protect the investment of large multinational corporations and the infrastructure by which they transmit fuels. That's why we got to take a cut, love it. I was just doing some math on this. About 20 million barrels a day go through.

go through the straight, usually, $80 a barrel. That's $320 million a day. 20% of that. It really did remind me. Trump's saying, look, we got to stop these Iranians from trying to charge a toll for people moving to this trade on moose. And as a consequence, we are going to charge a toll

for moving through the straight and mus. And there's this episode of Sopranos where this poor gardener is stuck between a war between Feechlamana and Polly Walnuts. And he just gets the ever-loving shit beat out of it over. end of it, Pauli Walness is like, you're going to pay me, and I did you a favor. I protected you from the other guy, and you're going to have to do some lawns for free. That's Trump with this. And they're like, like, like, the, that, that meme of the, you know, the, our, you know, our,

our blessed ships, they're barbarous, they're barbarous murderers. And it's like, our blessed protection services, your barbarous protection racket. I saw the Iranians, one of them, like, tweeted out, like, you know, you're right. Someone needs to control that. And, like, But we're going to do it for much less. Hey, Iran is you getting a better deal than Trump. Let me get you into the straight for, I'll only take 10%. Are you going to take 20%? I'll get you through the straight and 10%.

It seems to me like Trump's chances of negotiating that MOU into a long-term deal with Iran may have dropped precipitously over the last week or so, but I don't know. What do you think, Tommy? I mean, the Wall Street Journal's reported that the Trump administration thinks a nuclear deal is increasingly unlikely. I wonder why they would think that. So if you can't get to abide by the 60-day MOU, I don't know that you're going to get it into a more complicated nuclear deal.

Yeah, I feel like when we first talked about this, we talked about the fact that there's like a fundamental problem, which is that the two circles of the Venn diagram don't overlap because Donald Trump can't accept a deal that's not demonstrably better than the Obama deal, but the only deal that will ever be on offer is one that's demonstrably worse. And everything about that MOU is about kicking the can on that fundamental problem and all the ups and downs. We have a deal. We have an impasse.

These people are bastards we can't work with. I've never met more reliable partners. All of it has been a kind of high dudge and dramatic Trump show on top of like the fundamentals, which have been terrible from the beginning. Well, and the Trump administration was betting that they could offer Iran a bunch of economic incentives and get them to not want to go back to war. But for Iran, they're like, we just survived a war against the U.S. in Israel. This is our moment to like assert our dominance over the entire region.

and they're betting that Trump doesn't want to go back to war before the midterms, and I think they are right because Trump tells us as much all the time. So Trump did a little interview with Tommy, your friend Hugh Hewitt. I caught that. Did you see that? So Hugh had asked him, do you plan to oust the Iranian regime? And Trump says, well, I think they're a little cuckoo. They all are.

To them, deals are made to be broken. They're extremely unreliable people, Hugh. Was the MOU that your negotiators brought back built to fall apart? What does that mean? I don't know. Trump says, It was built to test. It was a test. We didn't know. Look, memorandums of understanding when you're dealing with sleaze bags don't mean much.

It is like to your, how many times was Trump like this new group of people? They're so reasonable. We can make deals with them. J.D. Vance is out there being like, it's really cool for the first time in 47 years that we have all these channels to the Iranians and they just want to chat. And it's just, it's been so cool. Yeah, the friends we make along the way. And yeah, the hue, the huge setup question. It's like, is it possible, Mr. President, that things are going exactly. as you planned? Why, yes, you, I think they might be. I think you're right. Exactly as we planned. Fazaar.

Also, I noticed that Trump at NATO was like, we've already got the nuclear material because it's so far underground. Nobody's going to be able to get it except us. So why did we go to war in the first place? It wasn't the whole point to get the nuclear material? You're going to drive yourself crazy trying to find any sort of internal logic. Yeah, and he's calling it the nuclear dust now because it's so stupid. It's so stupid.

It is funny that the MOU. It formalized the ceasefire. That's gone. It ended the blockade. Blockade's back. Reopened the street of Hormuz. Closed again. Sanctions relief, oil waiver.

That's gone now. And now a 60-day clock to negotiate the permanent deal. That's August 16th. We are well on our way. Yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. Well done, everyone.

Before we move on, I kind of missed this when I was gone. The story about the Iranians, the Israelis, giving the U.S. intelligence that the Iranians, are trying to kill Trump again? What's going on there? Oh yeah. Well, apparently they did that. Yeah, they are.

The Iranians, apparently the Israelis passed along intelligence to the U.S. claiming that Trump was on some, there's some new effort to assassinate him. And Trump went and bragged to the press about how he's like number one on the Iranian hit list. And that maybe is why he switched

from the old Air Force one to the new Air Force one on the way home. We're going to talk about this later. Yeah. But also maybe why he started bombing again. So, I mean, if Trump, he'd be pretty pissed if J.D. against keeps talking about how cool the Iranians are.

If I'm going to stop, last time there was that much daylight between two members of a mob family, Corleone gets shot outside that fucking orange stand. It's like a little too much daylight inside the family, guys. Did make me feel too like the Israeli intelligence Netanyahu was probably like, oh, you're not bombing enough lately? See? See, they're trying to kill you. It's just such a mark.

Like, of course they're trying to kill you, man. You killed Kossum Soleimani and then you bombed their country for like a month. So they like you now? Right. Democrats in Congress haven't really had the ability to reign in Trump and Iran, though they may have a chance this week. Brian Schott said he's voting no on the annual defense bill, known as the NDAA, citing Trump's request for a 50% increase at the Defense Department. This is separate. This is an addition to the extra $67 billion, I think, in funding that Heggsets asking for by August and a separate supplemental bill.

You guys think every Democrat will see this as an easy call like shots? No, they won't. I mean, maybe they should, but they won't. So this is not an appropriations as an authorization, right? So this is about how the Congress is directing money to be spent, but it doesn't actually appropriate the money. That's a separate process for reasons that make sense if you, I don't know, read roll call on the toilet.

But as many. As many great Americans do. But where else are you going to read it? Right. But I wonder, because so we've had similar debates in the past about holding something up that actually includes the reforms that Democrats want, right? So there is an argument that you continue to have this pass with a huge super majority. It also raises incomes for the troops, that kind of thing. It has some reforms that Democrats want.

Yeah, we should say that everything's in here. Everything's in there. So Ukraine, like the whole defense. department, strategy, everything for the whole year. And not passing it doesn't hamstring the administration to fight the war at all, because it's not actually authorizing any, it's not actually appropriating any money. It's just a kind of proving how money can be spent. And then you have a fight that's coming over the supplemental, which is what Hegset really wants and Trump really wants, which is, I think to me, I look,

if I'm in the Senate to be voting no one fucking everything, they fought a fucking insane, stupid war that's hamstring the global economy without any kind of justification. But the appropriations is the money he needs and is the kind of the, I would say is like the real back end authorization of the conflict. Yeah, it seems like if you're, it seems like the reason to target this one even over the appropriations is the, you could probably do a supplemental. If they do this, it would be a reconciliation bill, so they only need 51 votes. And this, it seems like they need the full.

This is not a 51 vote margin. This is the full. So Democrats probably have, if they all band it together, they have the votes to block this. Yes, but nothing about not passing this. prevents them from doing the appropriate. Look, I'm just that this is, this is something that traditionally passes like 80, 20, which is a, like, you know, a huge majority because it's for kind of the broad support of the military and all kinds of rules that they've been trying to fight for. Yeah, I think the status, like the Congress has passed in NDAA every year for, I think

60 plus years. So this is usually a thing they get done in a bipartisan fashion. I do, like this authorizes 1.15 trillion. I think there's going to be another request for up to 350 billion, So for 1.5 trillion total. Which is what Trump wants. That's what Trump wants, which is an insane amount of money. There's a 42% increase on current levels, which is just not necessary or justified or inner interest. And there was some polling that a recent poll found 60% of Americans think that that budget

request is too high. And majorities think the Iran war was dumb and unnecessary. And they probably won't be thrilled if they were to learn that it's ramping back up again. So like, this is an easy know for me. But there's a lot of Democrats. So I think we'll have a lot of muscle memory that says voting against all of the underlying things within this bill and voting against authorizing pedigone spending is bad politics for them. Again, I think that's a dated view of politics in the world, but I think that's why you'll see

majorities vote for it. Yeah, there's a view amongst them I'm sure that it's bad politics for sort of the reasons you're getting at, which is like weak on national security, not supporting the troops. There's also like a bad local politics angle. Like, Slokkin was asked about it and she said, oh, it's a tough vote specifically because it includes like, you know, money for a new hangar at Selfridge Air National Guard base So you can imagine that there's a number of Democrats like that. But I do think, look, I think it's meaningful that Schatz, who's, you know, in line to be in leadership here, is saying that he's voting no and that they voted, the Democrats voted no in committee.

So I don't know. I think at this point, Trump is continuing to fight this war and nothing is stopping him. And you might as well throw everything you have at it if you're in Congress to try to put roadblocks up. Or at least raise attention in a way. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Pod Save America is brought to you by Armour Colostrum. When you prioritize your body's baseline, you're better equipped to show up with focus

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Potsave America is brought to you by Bambas. Summer is here and we are living for life outdoors. You've got days of the beach, soccer games, going to soccer games, you're watching soccer games. Ever do you, we're going rucking, Tommy? You ever do you rucking? Do you ruck? What's a rucking? It's when you just wear a ruck set, just heavy, wear something heavy and walk around.

It's great. A lot of people in my neighborhood do that. I love it. That seems like a fun thing to do. We could do some parkour. Yeah. Remember when that was a thing? Remember when planking was a thing?

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with over 200 million donations in counting. Head over to bambas.com slash crooked. Use code crooked for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S.com slash crooked. Code Crooked at checkout. So Republicans will have a tougher time passing anything through the Senate right now since they're currently dealing with two absences. Lindsay Graham, who died suddenly over the weekend and Mitch McConnell,

who is apparently still very much alive. Graham was 71 and died Saturday night from what's being reported as an aortic dissection. Axios reports that a person who had spoken with Graham said the senator complained he wasn't feeling well, but didn't want to seek medical attention until after his meet-the-press appearance the next morning. Graham apparently joked, quote, I can't die now. I still need to do the Russia sanctions, get Iran sorted out, and do Israeli-Saudy normalization. South Carolina governor Henry McMaster has appointed Graham's sister Darlene to serve out the remaining months of his term. He was up this November and Trump, of course, offered a touching tribute to the senator during his Fox and Friends phoner, as one does.

He was a friend. He would call me all the time. I'd say, stop calling me, Lindsay. He was a great guy. He loved playing God. love being outside. It wasn't that he was a great striker of the ball. He wasn't exactly a perfect. He wasn't Jack Nicholas.

He was not Tiger. Now he had one bad moment. That was, you know, the January 6th thing when he stood up, all right. Now I've had it. That's it. I can't do it anymore. Didn't he call me like about 40 minutes later?

He said, did I really say that? I can't believe it. So he called me too much. He was a bad golfer. He betrayed me. then said just kidding and he did like being outside. Yeah, which is also what you say

at the funeral for a golden retriever. Love the ball, loved being outside. It's just incredible. You'll lose someone. Bark too much. Get me up at night. But a sweetheart in the end.

Like, a guy loyal. A guy who is seemingly Donald Trump's best friend in Congress dies and he calls into Fox News and he just can't help but make it entirely about himself. I mean, it's not surprising in any way. It's just, it's a reminder of who he is. Lindsay Graham's legacy.

What will it be? How about it? So I remember when I was working for Hillary Clinton, she had just come back from a trip to the Arctic with Sinbad. With no Simbad. I don't believe he was on that trip. With Lindsay Graham, John McCain, Susan Collins. And that was at a time when,

Lindsey Graham was vociferous around climate change. He was trying to figure out how to get the GOP to change on climate change. He did a cap and trade bill with John Kerry. And then you fast forward to Donald Trump being president, and he's trying to claw back the Inflation Reduction Act money that went towards electric vehicles on immigration. He works with Ted Kennedy to write a comprehensive immigration bill. He is a staunch advocate for comprehensive.

of immigration reform, then you fast forward to the Trump era. He is not only against any kind of comprehensive proposal, he's against helping the dreamers. And he comes out in favor of ending birthright citizenship and obviously supports Donald Trump and his draconian immigration policy. And so, you know, you look at like there was an interview that I thought was revealing where he said, you know, I'm going to do what Mitt Romney couldn't do and I'm going to do what McCain couldn't do. I'm going to harness the magic.

You know, there's a dark side to Donald Trump, but there's a magic. And I'm going to be the one to harness it, right? And now he's dead. And you look and say, well, what did you harness exactly? What did you harness? What'd you get for your magic, right? Trump got everything he won, right? He got his immigration policies. He abandoned any kind of effort to tackle climate change. I suppose you got a war with Iran. Maybe there's an argument that you've slowed the abandonment of NATO. But here we are and he's threatening Greenland. You're begging him to do what he can for Ukraine, which his heart is not in. So, you know, Lindsay Graham sold his soul. to try, I think, to stay relevant and to, and then generously, I think, to try to turn Donald Trump as away from his, quote, dark side. And the end result is Lindsey Graham is the one who became a kind of sad and pathetic vassal. Yeah, I think it's a cautionary tale about what happens if you're in D.C. too long and you get caught up and, like, care about the wrong stuff. And, like, I don't know, Lindsay Graham, I've never met him. People say he was nice and charming and kind.

And like he was nice to his sister, their parents passed away. He raised his sister, right? Who we love. We love Darlene. And we think Darlene has incredible judgment. And she's coming in. It's a hard job. But this is somebody who has her own head on her shoulders.

And she's not going to get bullied by a bunch of these Republicans. And Donald Trump, she's going to do what she knows is right for the people in North Carolina. I think that helps saying that out loud. Okay. We're hoping she's a secret liberal. It would be funny if she was just a secret liberal. I mean, it would be a great twist. She just came in.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is like there's people who think that he is kind of like a throwback. to a better and more collegial time in D.C. And maybe that's true, I guess. But, like, I think the defining quote about Lindsey Graham is what he said to Mark Leibovich in 2019 in this New York Times magazine piece because Mark is pressing him, like, how do you go from being Trump's biggest hater

to, like, desperate to be in his inner circle? And Graham says, to try to be relevant. And he also said, I've never been called this much by a president in my life. It's weird and it's flattering and it creates some opportunity. And I just, I found that to be so sad because this is a man who over the course of his career. Credit for honesty.

Credit for honesty, but he went from being defined he defined relevance for himself as first being John McCain's sidekick and then being Donald Trump's sidekick. And he just didn't care about the cognitive dissidents that came along with the two or the vile things that Trump said about his best friend. And I mean, love it. I thought you ticked through all like the policy area as well. Like the thing it seems like he got policy wise was a war with Iran. So congrats on that. But like, you know, the other thing he thinks he seems to be excited that he got was 63 appearances. on Meet the Press.

And there would have been a 64th this Sunday. And it's such an ephemeral definition of relevance. But it's also such an indictment of the D.C. establishment press that this man is a fixture on these shows because he's primarily booked on these shows to advocate for starting a war somewhere. And so, you know, look, I'm not attacking him personally, but I think it's like what you don't want to be in Washington. You know, you want to stand for something.

You want to be care about something. You want to do something for people. and not just be relevant. Yeah, I mean, people's motivations are complex. And when you talk about to a reporter like he did about wanting to stay relevant, the generous interpretation there is Donald Trump is the president and this is where my party is. And so I'm going to try to be relevant to sort of get my policy preferences, you know, move forward in any way that I can.

There's also the less generous reading of staying relevant is like, I want to be in the mix. I like being close to power. And, you know, Peter Baker had a story about him as well. And he recalls running into Graham outside of a restaurant in D.C. And Graham was on the phone with Trump at that point. And he gets off the phone and he says to Peter about Trump. He's a lying motherfucker. Mr. Graham allowed with a shrug.

But also said, quote, a lot of fun to hang out with. Mr. Trump, he said, was so dominant within the party that he could do almost anything with impunity. quote, he could kill 50 people on our side and it wouldn't matter, Mr. Graham observed. Honestly, that is a pretty accurate, honest assessment of Donald Trump and Lindsay Graham's relationship with Donald Trump, which is he's a lying motherfucker, but I'm sure Graham had a lot of fun. But he takes me golfing. Hanging out with them. Like, that's literally what it is. And that was, by the way, you know, this story mentions this as well, that like John McCain and Lindsay Graham, you know, had a falling out over this towards the end of John McCain's life.

And John McCain was like, why do you have to golf so much? much with them. Like, I get, I get why you might want to be trying to, like, push him in the right direction here and there. And this is the first term, of course. He's like, but why are you golfing so much with him? And, you know, that was sort of a sad falling out of the ban. Maybe a little jealous, you know, it's like, oh, you've made new friends at college, you know, and now you're not hanging out with the old crew. It just, it just speaks to the power of personal politics and, like, he's nice to me. There's a lot of people that know better about Donald Trump who are smart, who know he's doing bad things for the country, who are, like, offended by ice raids or whatever, but

or like, well, he was nice to me that one time. And I think, you know, it's like, of course. Like, I believe that Donald Trump can be unbelievably charming to people. Yeah, I get it. I've fallen for that myself, you know, but it's just. Yes. The thing about Trump, too, like, John Thune gave a speech was clearly, like, surprised and devastated by the loss of Lindsey Graham.

People that like Lindsey Graham really like Lindsay Graham, charming, funny. That kind of politics is hard in an era when someone like Trump is president. And it's like, beyond just the way in which he kind of flipped on Trump, like, the kind of politics he seemed to like, which was personal and kind of making deals and joking around, right? Like, it is a democratic practice. But when one of the people you're working with attacks the legitimacy of the other party, undermines democracy, is like hostile to, like, tries to prosecute his enemies, like, the jokes don't work.

It doesn't make sense anymore. more, like the kind of, the thing that you think you're doing are actually not doing anymore, because you're practicing, I do think like genuinely, like, practicing what you view as the best way you do democracy in a, with a, with a, with a collaborator who actually doesn't believe in it at all. And, like, all the people lamenting the end of the era, like the era of John McCain and Lindsey Graham and that kind of like, I don't know, like raucous bipartisanship where you mixed it up and argued. And then Lindsay Graham writes the tribute to Hillary Clinton and Time Magazine Zine, like, if that's the kind of politics you're, you're wanting, then the enemy of it is

Donald Trump. So Graham's sister, Darlene, will only temporarily fill the seat. South Carolina will hold a Republican primary this August to determine who will face Democratic Senate candidate, Annie Andrews, this November. You guys think this is still a safe seat for Republicans, no matter who wins the primary, or would anyone like to argue that Dems have an outside shot here? I mean, in such an anti-establishment year, I guess you always have it now. outside shot. I don't know what that candidate looks like, you know, like a hardcore, like,

burn down both parties suck. So I mean, Trump wins South Carolina by 18 points. Graham won against Jamie Harrison by 10 points. 10 points, yeah. The swing in some of these off cycle elections has been around 13 points. So is it hard? Absolutely. Is it a possible? No. Yeah. It depends on who the person is. Yeah, so there are names that have been floated. Nancy Mace, who just had a stellar performance in the gubernatorial primary. I love her posting just when I thought it was out. They pull me back in. Nobody's pulling you anywhere.

You are, nobody wants you in this. The algorithm has pulled you back in. Yeah, it's like, like, oh, right, fine, I'll do it. No, no, no, no, they are the Russians. They are responsible. Ralph Norman. Cuckoo. Joe Wilson.

Joe Wilson now seen as the elder statesman. Yes, exactly. I was just about to say that, the guy who screamed you lie at Barack Obama way back when, Lieutenant Governor Pamela Yvette, all these have been floated. Yeah, Cook rates it as a solid R. And, you know, the case for Andrews is she is a real candidate. She's a Charleston pediatrician. She's raised $8 million, $3 million cash on hand.

She was actually outraising Lindsey Graham's campaign. And so, you know, enough of a shift. You get a really kooky Republican nominee. Who knows? But yeah, outside shot. Lindsey Graham left quite a hole. So close. So close.

We almost get out of this. We should also talk about McConnell, who offered a proof of life photo as an attempt to finally quiet the rumors that he was dead or incapacitated after being rushed to the hospital following a collapse at his home on June 14th. On Sunday, McConnell released a statement

from himself and his physician, who stated that his prolonged hospital stay was the result of a fall associated with his post-polio condition and that he was also being charged, treated for a mild case of pneumonia. There was also a photo of McConnell sitting in a hospital bed, holding the Sunday sports section of the Washington Post alongside his wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. You guys will be shocked to learn that many in the poster community are falsely claiming

that the photo was reused from 2023 or AI generated. One person who decided to buy that was Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson. Can't believe they got Ron. Who gave an interview today saying, I just heard from a source, that was an older photo. The source was Brock. Yeah, who's your source? That's so funny.

You know it was a tweet that got texted to him. Of course. What have you guys made of the fact that so many people online left and right and of the U.S. Senate are convinced that a very alive Mitch McConnell is not alive. I watched a video of someone analyzing the shirt collar. Do you want?

I watched a video. I'm not buying it. I was sort of interested in what the theory is. Oh, I know. I know. And like that. It's more just how you're spending your time. That's what you believe.

The shirt was the shirt was like kind of folded in the same way as another photo from the past and that it was sort of brought in. I don't I don't totally buy the theory. It did look like it was different to me. It is weird that we're doing like Zapruder film breakdowns of photos in the videos that CNN posted. Well, here's the thing. The reason that like it was you had a fall and then a mild case of pneumonia and that's why we haven't heard anything for the last. That to me was the weird part. And no, there wasn't cardiac arrest,

even though there's like a lot of reporting about the audio from the dispatch in which you were found in cardiac arrest and unconscious and resuscitated before being brought to the hospital. Maybe it wasn't him. Maybe it was somebody else in that house. But like part of this is

he's a single photo holding the day's newspaper. That's what hostage takers released. Literally. To give you as little as possible. Right? Like, oh, you're the state, the test for a senator is not, are you, alive, right? Like, yes, that's a bare minimum, but not sufficient, but not sufficient.

So perhaps a video might be helpful. So, of course, there's going to be a lot of speculation, especially when a lot of old politicians have been shown to be lying about their health and hiding how sick they are over and over and over again. Jill Biden saying she thought Joe Biden was having a stroke, a lot of reporting about the concealing of how he was aging. Mitch McConnell disappeared for three fucking weeks. They were rolling Diane Feinstein to the Senate after she was no longer copus mentus.

So, yeah, people are suspicious when they're told that an aging politician is fine. Like, there's a conspiratorial mindset on the internet. There is obviously paranoia on the internet. It flourishes there. But it is, I think, not unreasonable to be skeptical when you hear from politicians that they're ancient and fine. Well, and I think some podcast I was listening to on vacation, maybe it was this one. You guys talked about the... I don't listen to when I'm a vacation.

I don't hear a few things I wanted to catch up on. There was a, there's also political implications, which I think fueled the conspiracy of things, right? Which is, and I believe that it was August 3rd or 4th. August 3rd, yeah. That, like, they were worried

that maybe Thomas Massey would jump into a race and as an independent and then tilt the race to the Democrats and so there's some kind of machinations there. And BTC was floating the theory to me that there was concerned that Andy Bashir might run and could actually win the C. Now, I had not heard that until I talked to BTC,

but I like it. Brian Toddocone. Yeah. If then not and not happen the lingo. And then Andy Bashir was all saying that he is going to challenge the constitutionality of the Kentucky law

that says he can't appoint a replacement because he believes that the constitution of the state is clear that the law violates it. I was also like also the implications of what would happen in a Senate for just those several weeks where they're losing a vote.

You have TILUS. even with whether McConnell McConnell is absent regardless right now. The four people like Corn and Tillis, Collins and Berkowski, if the Graham seat is filled

and McConnell's back, those four can lead to a tie, right? But if they all vote no right now, they can really kind of gum up the works. And the gram seat is filled tomorrow. Yes, the Gram seat's full.

That's not happening. Tuesday. I think it's supposed to be filled on Wednesday. But you started to think about what would happen in a lame duck if there's a Supreme Court vacancy. Right? Like that to me is where they're like, oh. Got to get that McConnell.

Got to get that proof of life. I also think like everyone thinks every photo is AI now. That's... I sent my friend a photo of Erling Holland with a stuffed raccoon holding a tequila bottle and he asked me if it was real. So thanks for that, fucking Sammel. Every funny photo I laugh at now, I do the same thing.

I'm like, is it real? Is it AI? The liar's dividend. Even the AI checkers now when they're like, they do that on some of like the writing, you know, they're like, oh, 80% that this was written by AI? And you're like, was it? Is that right? Is that lying? Like, and if we're just, let's be harsh, like, this is 100% Mitch McConnell's office's fault.

Like, their boss went into the hospital on June 14th. They didn't offer any real information for weeks. And then they did this weird leak to the worst liar and asshole on CNN, Scott Jennings, and had him claim that he'd just done a 20-minute call with Mitch McConnell where they talked about NATO and Iran. And that was the funniest aspect of this whole story for me, not the conspiracies. The like, and was saying the same thing? or we also said the same. They're like, yeah, because it's like, oh my gosh.

They're talking about, you've had pneumonia. You're in the hospital. Quick, let's talk about the straight of Hormuz. It was like a head of state readout that you would do from the White House. And also, by the way. The two leaders talked about the following issues. One of the topics that came up in both their conversations, according to these reports, was the grand Plattner story.

And it's like, so you've, you're talking to Mitch McConnell. You say he's your friend. You identify him as Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky senators, if we were thinking you were talking about somebody else. You think he might be dying. Your last conversation is going to be about grand plan. Plattener? You know what?

You know what? Before we throw too many stones from our glass house, I'm just envisioning one of you guys in the hospital and me trying to call you. Yeah, we pit him pretty quick. Yeah, he would be, yeah. Tommy, how's it? Hey, as you're like, did I miss anything in the news?

What's happening on Twitter? Yeah, and he'd be like, you don't want to know, buddy. It's actually worse out here than in there. We would, though. We would probably joke about politics, unfortunately. We don't talk on the phone. We don't. We don't talk enough.

I don't, I haven't answered my phone since 2013. You guys are our phone friends. If you guys are in the hospital, maybe. Maybe. We'll see. Yeah, no, the Republican Congress. I don't want to take a call. That's true.

That's true. Okay. Thank you. Noted. Hey, Dan Tiberski here. I'm a podcast host, a journalist, and now with my newest project, the author of my own manifesto. Well, it's a manifesto about manifestos. My search for inspiration in a world that feels more infuriating, more out of its freaking mind with each passing hour.

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The Republican Congress does have quite a to-do list, though. They've got the Todd Blanche confirmation, AG confirmation. They've got Jay Clayton for DNI, the NDAA that we just talked. talked about the Iran War supplemental, FISA, the whole FISA thing that we talked about before the break, that still hasn't been renewed. I think Tom Blanche is in trouble. I hope so. I think Todd Blanche is in trouble. He's supposed to have a hearing this week. We'll see if it continues, but like a number of questions swirling. We're going to talk about the war against the press next. But there's that. There's, even though it's DHS, there's

now been two other ICE killings we haven't even talked about. There's a man in Houston that ICE killed and now just today as we're recording on Monday in Bitterford, Maine, where I just was, there was a, it seems like a 26 year old Colombian man who had complete authorization to work in this country and was shot and killed and the warrant that ICE had was not even for him, apparently. And so I would imagine and hope that Todd Blanche at DOJ would get plenty of questions about what kind of investigation they're going to lead into these killings. Susan Collins just said that, you know, the DHS Inspector General out of Boston is going to, like, take over the investigation internally. But I don't really have a lot of faith in an internal DHS investigation.

Which is a report to general. Yeah. Right. It feels like the DOJ or it feels like the FBI has to get involved. But again. Thumb Phyllis needs to just decide to like, like man up and fight this terrible appointment and care about stuff. I mean, like, he says things occasionally that are helpful and he's critical of Trump, but like use your power while you can do. Also, with McConnell Gaon, I think that eliminates their one-seat majority on the Appropriations Committee.

Yes. And they can't schedule hearings. And it might impact the supplemental funding requests for more Pentagon spending or something. More broadly, it's just like, it's a reminder that the margins in the Senate and the House are so thin that you have one death or one prolonged absence or one something. It can just like completely hamstring the party in power. I got to say, I think that supplemental is never getting through. I think that because that's for the election. Even though that's 50, only 51 votes, like you have Collins, Houston.

in Ohio and Sullivan in Alaska who are all facing very tough reelections. You can't let all three of them go. You're also have Murkowski. And then you have Murkowski who just, you know, just out of principle. Imagine that. I wanted to do it. But that's four Republicans on a supplemental to vote for more money for war. And then maybe you get Federman.

Also like the house is tricky. The house is tricky. There was a, even the Republicans internally are calling it a zombie Congress now. They just, they have no margins. And they're all angry and they're all mad at each other, too. They're not, it's not like a well-run machine here. Let's talk about the latest front in Trump's war on the press. Late on Friday, the administration issued subpoenas to four New York Times journalists

who reported that the White House at the urging of the Secret Service had decided to use the old Air Force one during the NATO summit in Turkey as a security precaution. FBI director Cash Patel, who spent eight hours working from the White House on Friday, has been tasked with overseeing the investigation. The Times, Senate Democrats, and press advocacy groups have all criticized the move, which came through the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Jay Clayton, who's also Trump's nominee for Director of National Intelligence. The DOJ wrote on Twitter on Saturday that, quote, every administration has addressed the crime of leaking national security information, adding,

quote, reporters are not the targets. Those leaking classified information are. What did you guys make of this one? This is just an obvious effort to punish and scare these journalists, because a normal leak investigation would figure out who in the government had accessed the information. They tried to narrow it down in attempt to find the leaker that way. But instead they sent a bunch of federal agents to the homes of these reporters on Friday night. And they were like show up to a grand jury on Wednesday. That's not the normal process. Also, the FBI is a weird anecdote in the story about how the FBI was the one warning the reporters not to publish in advance.

I don't know why they would be the ones or asking them not to publish in advance for security reasons. And as you mentioned, like Cash Patel gets summit. He was going to fly to Chicago to see his girlfriend perform at a country concert. Every story notes that it's in the parking lot of some venue, which you are. is very funny. But instead, poor cash, couldn't go to Chicago. He worked out of the White House for eight hours, apparently constantly updating the White House staff on this investigation into these journalists and coordinating with them. And so it's so obviously they're trying to punish this reporting. Apparently Trump was very mad about the reports by Air Force One. On some level,

you can step back and be like, okay, reporting on security measures embedded in Air Force One, like there is a risk there. But everyone knows. knew about this. Like, this was sort of like the conversation about the Katari gifted Air Force 1 in advance was that you couldn't put in place these countermeasures, specifically the missile defense stuff, in time for Trump to use it. And that was like, that's what happened. I mean, that was the assumption was that that piece of whatever countermeasures that had would be the hardest and take the longest. Yeah. And so if we already, everyone was speculating once he wasn't taking that plane back, there's going to be reporting on why. If the why is security, if Trump is, is Trump is,

was pissed now that he won't be able to use the plane because now the the secrets out on the fact that the plane isn't as secure as the original ones that took a decade to build. Just another lesson, buy American, you know. For sure, yeah. And then the DOJ putting out this statement saying, oh, a lot of classified leaks have often been investigating, which seems to be confirming the story, right? Because they're now saying, so there was. Yeah, every leak investigation kind of confirms the underlying reporting, but yes.

But also, like, they're trying to say, oh, well, we're just doing this sort of normal course of investigating a leak. But as Tommy said, the sort of the operations are reversed. But also, like, there is an understanding that if you're trying to get information from journalists who are covering that that is a serious thing, Garland put in place protections for journalists to protect against this exact kind of thing, Pan Bondi rescinded those protections. Yeah, I mean, going after the journalist, is opinion the journalist 48 hours. after the story is just completely backwards, just for all the people who would be like, oh, Obama, the Obama administration did this and other administrations, it's usually the last resort

is to subpoena a journalist if you absolutely have to. You don't start the investigation that way unless you just want to intimidate people. And like half of the leak investigations under Obama were holdovers from the Bush administration. Like there's all these caveats to this. Look, I understand the criticism of it, but anyway, it's just not comparative.

It's just really, they're not the same in any way. What happened then and now? All right, one more explosive piece of news before we get to love its interview with Brian Tyler Cohen. The country is currently experiencing a cyclosporiasis outbreak, a parasite that causes severe intestinal illness and diarrhea. Cases have been found in over half the states in the country, including over 2,500 cases in Michigan alone. While cases of the intestinal illness tend to rise in spring and summer of every year, this year's outbreak has been particularly extreme, raising questions about how the administration's cuts to the FDA and CDC may be affecting the federal. response. Nicholas Florco at the Atlantic pointed out that as a Friday, CDC's case tracker of the outbreak had not been updated reporting less than 200 cases. An obvious undercount, just Michigan alone

has more than that. My only question, is RFK Jr. at fault for America getting explosive diarrhea? I think the question is worth asking. I think we don't know. But CDC's lost roughly a quarter of its workforce. They stopped requiring surveillance of cyclospora after It's been tracked for decades. Yeah. One of the ones that it cut one of the pathogens that they were tracking in the budget cuts. And it's also just hard to measure the cost of having like just incompetent boobs at the top of all of these agencies. Like there's a lot of just dogs that aren't barking, right?

The kind of thing like serious professionals do. Because they're, yeah, they're sort of in a permanent squat. You know, when your dog has that, you know, a dog sort of has those long. long poops. You know, they're just, you know what I mean? They're like walking across the lawn because they're just in poop position for a long time. That's Michigan right now. That's pure Michigan. They're not even having, there's no lettuce and tomato on the Taco Bell Supreme anymore. That's what this country used to be. That's what Thomas Trump has done. I was reading about this in the Wall Street Journal. And sure you were. The following sentence was she went to her

local Taco Bell on July 7th and by the next day her stomach was upset. I'm like, uh, a dog bite space. Yeah. I think I've had it since I was 17. It's just, I mean, My reaction to this was what you said, love it. Like, what are, what disease are we not tracking because of Doge? Oh, my God. Because of R of K thinks vaccines are causing it. Like, God help us all. Still a screw worm on the border.

Yeah. There's a, there's a worm eating cows in Texas. It feels like that should be a bigger deal. Also, I mean, I was at the farmer's market this weekend. We didn't buy like raspberries because Hannah had seen something somewhere that said raspberries might have it. It's like, I don't know. It's scary.

Not to get darker about this, but this, for me, goes into the category of like, the high class problem that Brian writes about in his book, after Trump, how do we willpower? Like public health agencies have been so decimated under Trump. And this is the true with almost every agency across government. It's like, I don't think people understand that when they leave and a new administration comes in,

it's going to be incredibly difficult to replace all of these experts and officials. Because you can't just, like people got other jobs. You can't just call up everyone that Trump fired and who had been, who had all this expertise for decades. and be like, oh, yeah, can you come back now and it's gone. No, new jobs. And so...

Yeah, Michael Lewis wrote that book about all the data that's being lost. Or there was a section of that book about the federal government that talked about all the data and that is not being tracked or the longitudinal studies that were ended, all the research that was terminated, right? Like, that's just the price we're going to pay for a very long time. And all the investments, it's an MRNA vaccines and other things that could provide the, like, game-changing, you know, cures of the future. Yeah.

And I think the next administration is probably just going to have to be honest about the whole that we're going to have to dig ourselves out of because there's a political issue with that too, where suddenly there's an outbreak and, you know, the next Democratic president or the CDC official was like, well, we were hamstrung by all the cuts in the Trump administration. No one's going to be like, okay, no, don't worry about that. We understand. Yeah, like we spend on, like there's so many ways in which what we're talking about are all the kind of offensive, like not morally offensive, but, you know, proactively offensive ways in which Donald Trump is, you know, destroying institutions and and wrecking the government and, you know,

focused on the wrong things. But I remember when we were working on some speech about some unrelated topic and there was fear about swine flu. And so there was a meeting and it rose to the level of the president and then he gave a brief topper at some speech. Swine flu topper. Swine flu topper. And it ran through what the latest he learned from from the agencies and what people needed to know.

And that did two things. One, it informed the public about an ongoing public health. threat and whenever the president speaks to something, it is an organizing force inside the government, gets people to attend to something, figure out what they're doing, explain what they're not doing, what's happening. And none of that happens when Donald Trump is president, none of it. And there's just a, like, it's, it's a hard to measure price because it's the, it's the cost of incompetence that just shows up in people being sick after you're going to talk about. I think everyone here has been quite sober and serious in talking about Senator Graham and not talking about all the jokes that

were being made on Twitter over the weekend, but I didn't need to read one, which which is from an L-L-L-G-O-P, which has said, they have to move the dead senators quickly so Bobby Jr. doesn't try to eat them. Tommy, as we were talking about this, I was thinking to myself, can I read that tweet? Is it too much?

No. And I'm glad you did. I got you did. I'm really glad you did. I'm glad you did it. I'm glad I got out of the pot because it was a good one. That's a good place to leave it.

Do you think he was gay? Okay. Well, I think probably, but we'll never know now. It doesn't matter. It never mattered. It never mattered. You see that Trump? ordered all flags in the United States to half staff.

And I know this is my only, no one cares about this was me. He does not have that authority. He is responsible only for the flags on federal land because it's a free country and the sovereign states of this country can decide what they do with their flags and the sovereign citizens can decide what we do with our flags. And if we want to lower our flags for Lindsey Graham, we can do it.

I appreciate that Weho lowered their pride flag to have staff as a little bit of a goal. They did, and the American flag, both of them together, which I thought was a little bit of a But a moving, a moving troll. You know, yeah, exactly. Moving troll. But I hate when Donald Trump orders everyone to lower the flags.

Like, there's a free country as far as I'm concerned. All right. Well, on that note, after the break, love its conversation with Brian Tyler Cohen. About all of this. Positive America is brought to you by Mint Mobile. There are things in life that you don't want to be transparent, like your swimsuit or your search history. But when it comes to your wireless billing, transparency is everything. That's why Mint Mobile's wireless plans have no gimmicks and no gotchas.

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includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot capable device required availability. Speed and coverage vary. See mintmobile.com. Joining us now, he's a progressive host and author of the new book the day after How to Weield Power in a Post-Trump world, which is out today. YouTube's best boy, Brian Tyler Cohn, welcome to the show. Love it. Thanks for having me. So you have your new book out, which we will talk about. But before we do, I wanted to get your reaction to, uh,

what we're seeing right now in some right-wing media. I want to start with Tucker Carlson, who has become increasingly critical of Trump. Let's roll a clip. You betrayed us, and it's the betrayal that makes it so bitter for people like me and maybe you who voted for Trump and I campaigned for and with him. You know, it's like, really? We really believe that you were going to at least try, and in the end, it's all about cryptocurrency scams and wars for Israel. I mean, I can't. I can't believe you did that. Hiding the Epstein stuff?

So he goes on in that video to say that you can't even ask questions about Butler. So there's a mix of his like America First stuff, the anti-Israel stuff and the conspiratorial stuff in there. What do you make of Tucker's turn against Trump lately? I don't know that it's so much this virtuous stand as it is Tucker recognizes. not where the puck is, but where the puck is going. And he can see how unpopular Trump is, how he's losing popularity even in his own base.

And it's because he has defied his own campaign promises. I mean, nobody forced Trump to engage in a foreign war in the Middle East after promising no new wars in the Middle East. That was him. Nobody made Trump suppress the Epstein files after they all campaigned unreleased in the Epstein files. Nobody forced Trump to launch a trade war against all these foreign countries that would raise the prices of everything.

That was him. And so obviously that's rubbing the Republican base the wrong way because it's completely diametrically opposed to everything that Trump campaigned on. Tucker wants to retain relevance in that base. That is his audience. And so he can both give himself a little bit of independent cred by going after Trump on stuff that's already unpopular

and kind of recognize that Trump is not going to be there forever, but he wants to have a longer career than I think what spans just Donald Trump's specific tenure in office. And I think that's, look, he is a savvy operator. I think that what makes him a little bit more savvy than a lot of other people in that space who only recognize, okay, right now I have to tie my fortunes to Donald Trump, and whatever he does, I have to blindly defer to him, and that's it. And I think that that's going to drag a lot of people down because they're only focused on today and not tomorrow. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, Tucker is a challenge for Trump because Tucker has fuck you money and seems to be pretty happy wherever he's ensconced making his shows from his home. So he's not on the, I mean, he's on the take. He's on the take. But he doesn't need Trump in the same way that say like a bunch of other either media figures still feel like they need Trump or or members of Congress or others in the sort of conservative ecosystem who are afraid to be on Trump's bad. in part because they don't feel like they have, A, they need him, they need him, but also,

B, they don't feel like they have an independent, trusted relationship with the base. You know, you see, you see the Republicans just wanted to have an event with Trump to sign the housing bill. Trump allows the housing bill to become law, but doesn't sign it as a fuck you to the Republicans because those Republicans want their event with daddy. They want to take the picture because his imprimatur on the bill. does more than any words they can say because they don't have that kind of relationship

and Tucker does seem like he's in a different category. Like their brand is just kind of glomming on to whatever Trump does and frankly, we've seen there are no longstanding principles, there are no core beliefs or core values, it's just whatever Trump says becomes gospel for these people who are hangers on for Trump. I mean, these people were anti-war during the campaign and now they're all explaining why actually what Trump is doing is completely fine.

They have the ability to rein him in. They're a co-equal branch of government, but instead they just day by day contract all of their autonomy over to him. And so whatever stance he adopts, whatever errant synapse fires in his brain and words fall out of his face, that becomes gospel for this GOP.

And you're right. Tucker doesn't abide by that same principle. He doesn't need to. It's not like Trump can post a mean tweet and end his career in the same way that he can for somebody like Bill Cassidy or John Corny. But really what it does is just destroy, the Republican brand, but that's what Trump wants. He wants the brand to just be slavish devotion

to him and whatever he says and does. Yeah, there's also the ways in which Republican politicians, Trump, media figures deal with the conspiratorial mindset in their audience, whether they ignore it, embrace it, fight against it. You even seen like right-wing figures like, Chris Rufo talking about the danger of this kind of thing. You hear that in a lot of what Tucker has been doing. You also hear it in Candace Owens. And Ben Shapiro, let's just roll the clip without any introduction. Today, we are going to uncover the real murderer of Charlie Kirk. It's time. We've been working for months on a deep and detailed investigation. It's not who you think. Today, we are going to discuss who was really behind Charlie Kirk's assassination, Candice Owens.

So Candice Owens has obviously been saying unhinged shit about the killing of Charlie Kirk. And Candice Owens has also been at war with Ben Shapiro. I think this is his way of striking back with some parody about it. It's also coming at a time in which maybe in part, because of the conspiratorial turn on the right, like Ben Shapiro's lost some relevance, lost some audience. What do you make of that little civil war?

I mean, look, the reality is that when it comes to conspiracy theories online, that's the currency of the internet, that's even more pervasive in right-wing circles. But the interesting part of this is, in large part, that's what Republicans tapped into as it relates to Epstein. And that brought a lot of people

into the political process. why a lot of people voted. They believed that there was this, you know, basically upper echelon of politicians and people who can commit heinous crimes with impunity. And that gained a lot of traction. And when we saw that that was in large part what happened with the Epstein files,

it backfired on Trump because now you have people who believed it. And it was largely borne out in what we saw. And Trump decided not to release it. anything other than half of the files, deigned to release half of the files, but continues to hold on to the other half. And so in this instance, you have people who kind of

bought into what felt like a conspiracy theory. It ended up being in large part, I mean, there were obviously elements of it that were untrue, but in large part, accurate. And now it's turning against Trump, because he continues to suppress these files instead of release them. So I think that's one instance in which,

You know, you have a political party that is already prone to this stuff. And it's going to create a lot of, I think, disaffected voters on the right. Because this is where they operate. This is where they live. And now they can see that Trump has no interest in actually delivering on that specific point. The EFstein files as this way of signaling that you're willing to take on the powers that be, right? whatever that, whatever that means. But, but also part of it, too, is like, the, the comfort of some far-off enemy that is truly the ones responsible. Like, that's a lot of what Trump does more broadly.

It's this idea that, that what is the source of our ills? It's not structural. It's not systemic inequality or broken systems for the failure to build housing or just the, like, the ordinary, quote unquote, ordinary dangers that lurk for children everywhere, that there is. some super plot of super elites. And that's the real threat. Now, two things can be true, right? Like, there was and is now a big cover up around Epstein. There was a network of connected people who supported this person even after he was exposed. There's clearly nefarious doings and how he got such a slap on the wrist when he was first brought up on charges. And obviously Trump has been covering up for him. But that a lot of right-wing media is about,

this sort of comfort of like you are the folk, you are the good people and the good communities and the enemy is it's the immigrants or the trans people or the cabal of Jews operating a pedophilia ring, right? When when like actually like the real challenges and problems in your life are closer to home, but it's much harder to face that. And a lot of right wing media is just about stoking that feeling and telling people over and over again that like they're doing, hey, keep at it. Keep at it. Once we get rid of these, once we get rid of these trans swimmers and, uh, and, and, uh, Jewish cabals, then everything's going to be coming up America. You know, we, we've seen this as a recurring theme for so long. I mean, I remember

elections where it was, um, migrant caravans and then it was gay marriage and then it was, uh, trans people. And it, and it's, you know, they're, they're really effective at finding some boogeyman to vilify as the source of all of society's woes. I think that they're going to run up on a wall in this election cycle because obviously they're all trying to do it again. You know, they run the same playbooks over and over and over again. In some ways, Republican elections from the early 2000s look identical to what they're saying today. But they ran an entire election cycle based on culture wars in 2024 and trying to perpetuate this idea that, okay, if only we can get they-themes out of swimming, then everything will be solved. And in fact, now these people, the Republicans, have full control of government.

They have the House. They have the Senate. They have the White House. They even won the popular vote on that message. And what do they have to show for it? There's no Democrats in control to gum up the works. So what Republicans have to show for it right now is a country that is sicker, poorer, and hungrier than it's been before.

A country where prices are not going down, they're going up. Inflation's not going down. It's going up. Health care is not more expansive. It's been contracted. Food assistance is the same. We have not fewer wars, but more. The Epsine files are not released.

They're being suppressed. And so given the fact that there's no Democrats to blame for any of this, Republicans are going to have to confront the fact and especially their base confront the fact that, hey, maybe if I keep voting on these culture war issues, especially issues where like 10 people in the NCAA are at the heart of our entire national discourse, then, you know, that's not going to result in better outcomes for regular Americans. That's just going to be more culture war issues. that allow Republicans to consolidate power and then just do with that power what they want.

And Trump kind of unable to grapple with the actual problems he claimed he was going to fix is distracted by the reflecting pool in the ballroom. He's doing pit stops on the lawn. He's doing challenger campaigning. He's doing the kinds of things you do when you're out of power, complaining about the things you complain about when you're out of power. But of course, he, you know, he has the controls. So now let's talk about what happens if, at a.

And I believe they're called Democrats. That's how you pronounce it. I've never, I've only read it. I haven't heard it said. I've never seen one. But these Democrats are talking. An elusive creature, yes. These Democrats, and they're, I think they're nocturnal.

No, but, but, their main weapon is the strongly worded letters. It's strongly worded letters. So, look, the hope right is that we can win the House. The Senate is not off the table. I want to get to what you're talking about, what you hope for Democrats in a post-Trump world. But before we get there, Democrats would have to. model what it looks like for them to be in power if they win the House. What do you think a Democratic

House majority that has control of committees and subpoena powers but can't legislate without getting things signed by Trump? What does that look like to you? It looks like investigating what we can investigate right now, which is the rampant corruption that we're seeing across the government. I mean, my God, Trump's kids are taking in millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts, DOD contracts. We're seeing short sales. five minutes before some major White House announcement that makes somebody a millionaire a hundred times over. We're seeing, you know, these foreign investments via World Liberty financial into Trump's

meme coins and stable coins and cryptocurrency. All of this stuff is happening in broad daylight. It's clear that it is beyond illegal, but there is this sense that crime is just legal in the Trump era so long as a Republican commits it or you're willing to pay Trump the requisite amount, you know, a million dollars to get a pardon or whatever you need. So I think that in this rare sliver of time where hopefully when Democrats have the gavels, they'll use that time. Obviously, you can't legislate, but you can use that time to investigate this stuff. And by getting a lot of this stuff out there and starting these investigations, hopefully you pave

the way for the DOJ to pick up, a Democratic DOJ to pick up where they've left off. I mean, the January 6th committee, in large part, was able to inform the prosecutions that came afterwards. I would argue that those prosecutions came too little too little too late. And the fecklessness of Merrick Garland's DOJ is in large part why we're here. But the reality is that we can use this time not only to win, you know, the messaging war, because this stuff obviously resonates. I mean, restoring the rule of law against a corrupt government is in large part what Trump himself ran on against the Democrats, except he's doing it a thousand times bigger.

But it also has some practice. effects because then you can have a DOJ that uses a lot of what Congress was able to find on these fact-finding missions to actually move forward and prosecute some of this illegality. So we can get back to a world where law and order actually exists. So there's a lot of polling about views of Democrats. And Democrats, it is a deeply tarnished brand. It is unpopular, obviously, among Republicans, but also Democratic voters are deeply frustrated by the Democratic Party.

We've seen insurgent campaigns, defeating incumbents. What does it look like to have a Democratic party after Trump that you think meets the moment and meets the expectations of the most engaged Democratic voters? So I think if Trump has shown us anything, it's that a lot of the institutions that we take as a sacrosanct are not. I mean, Trump is barrel through everything. He doesn't listen to the law, the Constitution, the courts, attorneys, any other branch of government. He just does whatever he wants.

I mean, you would not find a Democrat ever who would get into office and then raise the east wing of the White House to the ground. It just wouldn't happen. There's so much deference to norms and traditions and institutions. Trump has shown that if there's a will, there's a way. Now, he's done it for self-enrichment. He's done it so that he can enshrine the Oval Office in gold and build a ballroom for himself and laundering. and launder money through foreign countries into his own pockets and his family's pockets and build up his real estate portfolio.

So he's doing it for bad reasons. My argument is that Democrat should look at what Trump's doing and use that for virtuous reasons to deliver Medicare for all. It is long past time that we have universal health care in the richest country in the world. It's crazy that we don't. To combat climate change, the existential issue of our time, to expand voting rights, especially at a time when they're contracting across the country amid the fall of the Voting Rights Act. There are so many things that we can do that we allow these norms and traditions to block us from

doing. But I think we have to get past this idea that even the smallest speed bump is going to be an obstacle for us. Our Democratic officials are not in government so that they can pay deference to the institutions of government. They're there so that they can deliver outcomes for people. And if that means they have to find a way to circumvent these hurdles, these processes, then so be it. Because the reality is, I think we're going to have a small window of time where we already know that there was a largely disillusioned with Democrats' block of voters. That's why they went over to Republicans.

Now we have a disillusioned block of Republican voters because, you know, Trump lied about everything that he was going to do. So already trust in government is at extreme lows. we have a second, I think, I believe, we're going to have a second bite of the apple here where we can bring people back into this tent. But if we don't deliver, if it's good enough that Democrats can just notch symbolic victories and get caught trying before eventually something inevitably goes wrong, then I think you're just going to lose large swaths of the population. And when you have an electorate that's that disaffected, I think that's the conditions in which autocracy thrives. I think it does start to become about what it looks like. I agree in the sense that Democrats need to take from Trump a willingness to push harder against the lawyers, basically.

And we have better lawyers than they have. But you got to sometimes, you know, push your lawyers fine. Like I think Democratic administrations have been too differential to the lawyers, especially around questions that are kind of, I would say, more like philosophical rather than like kind of on the page. But at the same time, the Supreme Court has had, has given him immunity, which was a terrible decision. They've ruled with him more often than they haven't. But he has been stymied by the courts in part, especially the lower courts, in part because they have been so hamfisted and so aggressive in trying to do things that are just run against the plain language of the law. So I do want us to learn the lesson from Trump that we can be more aggressive and move. faster and try things based on what we believe are like solid legal grounds, even if they might

be questioned by the courts. But at the same time, like, he's cheating. We're trying to prove the game's worth playing, right? Like, we're playing against cheaters. But we believe in the sport. We like the rules of the sport. We are, you know, we're trying to make sure people like, you know, like we, we're watching them get away with murder and bribing the refs and all the rest.

But we're trying to make a case to people that democracy is a game worth playing. As you have in the book in the conversation with President Obama, we have a tougher job than they do. In part, we do believe in that part of democratic practice is understanding that laws are made by people and not one person deciding what the law is. Right. I'm definitely not advocating for tearing down or democracy. I'm advocating for making it work for people, making it a more efficient process. I mean, you know, you've spoken at length, whether it's something so granular as housing right here where we are in Los Angeles, or whether it's these, you know, these big issues like Obama's, you know, ultimate goal was to get single payer health care. That's what the ACA was initially viewed as being. So I think that, that, you know, in either one of those scenarios, either when you're looking at a local level or big ticket ideas on a federal level, it's not necessarily a matter of tearing government down.

It's a matter of making it, making it work for actual people and delivering outcomes so that you're not just allowing yourself to be stymied by what Republicans view as the smallest speed bumps ever and what Democrats view as just immovable impasses. Speaking of immovable, they, prop Mitch McConnell up holding up the newspaper like he's a hostage. Did you, do you find that reassuring? What do you, like, are we meant to, he's not. speaking, he's just a statement, there's a picture of him. He is alive. I don't think that's the only

question people have for their senators. What do you, what do you think is going on with Mitch? I'm really skeptical of conspiracy theories, but I mean, he looked really good in that picture. Yeah. I think if you've just been unconscious for like three weeks, maybe you would have less color in your face. So look, again, I try not to spread conspiracy theories. We don't want to do conspiracy theories. We're responsible people. We're responsible people. But. responsible people, but. But we live in an era where it's easy to fake stuff. And he looked damn good in that hospital bed.

So I'll just leave it at that. I don't know. We'll just leave it at that. I think conspiracy theories thrive online because it rewards people who are, it rewards kind of paranoid and kind of cynical sentiments. But it also, I think, speaks to something about this era where, like, I don't think, you You don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to have a lot of questions about a senator checking into the hospital on June 14th.

There being an audio from the dispatch saying someone was unconscious and in cardiac arrest. The only statements are coming from his staff and then the only sign of life is a single picture posted without any video or comment directly from the senator. So part of it is it's the internet makes people. not trustworthy, but so do these fucking people. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, that you cannot, if you're a Republican, you can't be surprised when, when this is the, this is the environment you have to contend with. The same environment that you in large part created and nurtured is now kind of turning against, well, one of their own in Mitch McConnell. And hopefully this fall,

we can, you know, defeat some of them and then eventually have power. And then we can wield that Brian, thanks for joining. The book is The Day After How to Wheel Power in a post-Trump world. It is out today. Everybody should pick it up and everybody should subscribe to Brian's YouTube where he is getting good information to people and competing with, as we're all doing, competing with the right on the internet to try to, you know, get some wins in that algorithm. Brian, good to see you. That's it. Love it. Thanks so much. Thanks to Brian Tyler Cohen for coming on the show. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Padsave America is a Crooked Media production.

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