Pod Save America - Trump's Arctic Humiliation

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

Donald Trump announces that he's reached a "concept of a deal" on Greenland, agreeing to drop his tariffs for … well, the details aren't exactly clear. Jon and Dan discuss what we know, Trump's invitation to Vladimir Putin to join his Board of Peace, and the most insane coverage of Trump's trip to Davos. Then, they break down Vice President Vance's appearance in Minneapolis—where he defended ICE's detention of a 5-year-old—House passage of additional funding for the Department of Homeland Security, Jack Smith's Capitol Hill testimony, and a New York Times/Siena poll that's so bad for Trump he's threatening to sue. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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with unmatched expertise of their regions to explore these new empires. What is a sphere of influence? Who's got one? And if you're not a predator these days, does that mean you'll pray? Listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Fabro. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, we'll talk about J.D. Vance's trip to Minneapolis to stand with the beleaguered Americans who need our support right now.

Ice agents. We'll also cover Jack Smith's testimony to Congress where he defended his decision to charge the current president with multiple crimes. Plus, Dan and I have been just itching to dig into the newest New York Times Siena poll, which is full of bad news for Trump. Just plenty of fun cross tabs for us.

But first, they're calling it more brilliant than Jefferson's Louisiana purchase, more monumental than Roosevelt's statecraft. at Yalta, more daring than Nixon's trip to China. That's right, Dan. Donald Trump, the president of peace, the darling of Davos, duked it out with Denmark over Greenland, and he art of the dealed himself into his greatest achievement yet. Let's take a listen. It's really hard not to see this through the lens of the art of the deal. The president's doubters were once again proven wrong. Europe and America are going to be rich

and safe and Greenland gets McDonald. Congratulations, Mr. President. You've done a great job, thank you. Thank you. So have you. He got us again. When will we learn to stop doubting this man?

So you may be wondering what's actually in this? John, do we own Greenland? Do we have it? Well, let's hear directly about what's in the deal from our secondhand recipient of a slightly used Nobel Peace Prize. Does this ultimately mean that the U.S. will ultimately acquire Greenland?

Well, I don't know if I can say that, but it could be. I mean, it's possible. Anything's possible. Does it still include the United States having ownership of Greenland like you've said you wanted? It's a long-term deal. It's the ultimate long-term deal. How long would the deal be, Mr. President? Infinite. There's no time limit. It's forever. The deal has broken the spacetime continuum. It is just, it goes forever.

As long as the universe exists, there will be a deal. Seems like the details are a bit fuzzy. Here's Fox News's Brett Baer, trying to nail down the details with NATO Secretary General Mark Ruta. Is it still under the Kingdom of Denmark in this framework deal? that issue did not come up anymore in my conversations tonight Mr. President. He very much focused on what do we need to do to make sure that that huge Arctic region

where change is taking place at the moment where the Chinese and Russians are more and more active, how we can protect that. That was really the focus of our discussions. It didn't come up, Chan. It didn't come up. So in the discussions with the NATO Secretary General that led to the concept of a framework of a potential deal that we're all celebrating,

what never came up was U.S. ownership over Greenland, which was the whole reason this entire crisis began. Is that right? That is correct. It is U.S. ownership of Greenland, which Donald Trump demanded three hours earlier, said anything short of that was insufficient and would put the entire Western world at risk. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And then he...

Threatened tariffs. Threaten tariffs. Threaten tariffs. Not only Denmark, but multiple other European allies, you know, made more than one insinuation that perhaps we would invade militarily. Posted a couple of memes. One picture of him flanked by his two boys, Marco and J.D. and a polar bear, I believe, with like a sign that said, like, you know,

Greenland, part of America, 2026. I don't if I can remember. There was also another picture he posted of most of North America with an American flag on it, because now we're owning Canada too, I guess. Yeah, the one I saw was implanting an American flag on Greenland, I think. Yeah, that might as along with Mark. I didn't, maybe I didn't look closer.

It's like the Neil Armstrong of our time kind of thing. Yes. I didn't, did that one have a polar bear? Maybe. I could be imagining the polar bear, but that's going around these days. So there is no deal. We did get a few more details from the New York Times about what has been discussed. Potentially more U.S. military bases, which we were already allowed to build. I was already part of the treaty, so we could have done that anyway. Though maybe the U.S. would control just the land that the bases are built on now, as opposed to just building the bases. on other people's land. Though, Prime Minister of Denmark,

not too happy hearing that, clearly not part of the negotiations. Denmark was not part of that discussion in any way. So they have, like, rejected that. Maybe there's a larger NATO troop presence in Greenland under American command, which again, the Danes had already been willing to do.

They could have done just under any president at any time. And maybe some ban on non-NATO countries getting mining rights in Greenland. which again, Dane's had already been willing to do. So what is this? What is this, John? What an existential question that is? What is any of this?

It's infinite. Why are we here? What is a negotiation that does not include the people who own Greenland? That's a question. How does that work? What is Mark Ruta doing, by the way, fucking freelancing? I think he drew, I think all the European leaders got together. One of them drew this short straw and they had to go meet.

with the delusional man baby who is thrown his weight around Davos. Like the whole thing is so embarrassing. It is embarrassing for the world. It's embarrassing to the American people. It's embarrassing for all the people who sat in that room who applauded, like this was not some insane fucking speech happening. It's embarrassing for the European leaders who are like sending friendly text to Trump to try to get on his good side that they can try to steer his insanity into a less

dangerous place. The only person not embarrassed by this is the person who should be. be most of America, which is Donald Trump. It's just so, it's like, what a gigantic waste of everyone's time. Like, this isn't, like, there are things that Trump wants to do that are crazy, that are the crazy solution to an actual problem. Right? Like, trying to build the wall and make Mexico pay for it. That's an insane, impractical, ineffective solution. But it is trying to solve a problem. It's not how most people would solve it, but it's trying to solve it. There is no problem here. He invented a problem and then created an insane solution,

caused the stock market to lose 2%, created all kinds of instability, caused people to sell off American bonds in the dollar, and threaten the entire Western world order for what? I also noticed, though, that, like, Trump, he wasn't even in those interviews. Like, he might have been a little tired

from all of his traveling to Davos and whatnot. And football games. And football games, and he's fucking old and deteriorating. So it could be any of those. But he didn't seem, he wasn't selling it. Like, he usually sells. the fake deals that he's reached.

He was kind of like, I don't know. Anything could happen. It deals infinite. Who knows? He had that long pause with Caitlin Collins. I haven't heard these clips yet, but right before we started recording, he did like a gaggle on Air Force One, I guess on the way back from Davos. So they asked him a few questions about this.

One reporter asked, were you worried about the market reaction to your tariffs on Monday and Tuesday? Like, is that why this all happened? And he goes, Trump said, the market reaction has been good, reporter. Well, the market came back only after you backed away from your threats. Trump, the market came up very nicely. And then they asked him about Denmark, you know, being on board with the, I guess, tiny pieces of land to give the United States that the U.S. military bases were built on. The reporter said, is Denmark on board with this concept? Trump, I'll let you know in about two weeks.

There it is. The classic. The old two weeks from now. This one has nothing to do with Denmark, but I'm just going to read it because it's kind of fun. I don't know if you see on Twitter, you can all Google this. It's out there. Trump now has like a big bruise on his left hand. He's been bruising on the right hand. He's bruising all over the place. Who knows? Reporter, we saw the bruising on your hand. Are you okay? I'm very good. I clipped it on the table. So I put a little, what do they call it, cream on it. I clipped it. I would say take aspirin if you like your heart. But don't take aspirin if you want to have a little.

a little bruising. I take the big aspirin. When you take the big aspirin, they tell you that you bruise. The doctor said, you don't have to take that, sir. You're very healthy. I said, I'm not taking any chances. That's one of the side effects. You know what counts is not taking chances, taking a massive dose of medication above a me on, which your doctor recommends. That's a chance. You take all the aspirin, you whack your hand, it bruises. You put some cream on it. It is, for all the conspiracy theorists, I don't really know what's going on. It is true that if you take lots of aspirin, you do bruise more easily and you cut more easily? It's a blood thinner?

No, the conspiracy here is that the presence of fucking lunatic who's taking too much aspirin. Because, you know, if two aspirin are good for you, how great do you think? 20 aspirin are. Yeah, well, make sure you take the aspirin, not the Tylenol or else it's, you know, late-onset autism for you, Donald Trump. So it is obviously not surprising that all those fox goobers would, uh, fluff Trump over getting absolutely nothing that he asked for. But some of the other media coverage has been wild. We were angrily texting about it this morning.

As we do. As we do. Here's Axios, which listed the first place winner. It had five winners of Trump's Greenland Climb Down. Guess who the first place winner was? Greenland? It was Trump. It was Trump.

Trump was the first place. place winner of Trump's Greenland climb down. And here's the explanation. Even with concessions falling far short of total control. Far short? Yeah, like, we mean far short? There was no concessions. There was no concessions.

There was nothing to fall. Trump can tell. It is far short, John. It is far short. It is quite far, but it is far. You know what? You know how far it is, Dan? Infinite.

Infinite. It's infinite. It's infinite far. It's infinite far. Trump can still. tout the art of the deal to his base and retreat from an issue that polls even worse than his handling of the Epstein files. Well, isn't that comforting for Trump and the rest of us? What a big winner. Yeah, I would say like Greenland should have got number one because now the

United States doesn't own them just like before. Greenland literally got, and in Denmark got 100% of what they wanted, except I guess berated and threatened. on the world stage and a lot of time wasted trying to figure out how to deal with the fucking madman that has taken over America. I did not get past number one on this list because at that point I felt I need to put. Oh, so you're not going to answer my question, which is where to Greenland land on the list? That's a good question. Should we look? Let's see. Let's do this live. Yeah. Top five winners. Winners. Greenland. Let's see. Five winners. Okay. Here we go. Here we go. Give us the winners in order. Okay. Yeah, we'll obviously start with.

five. Number five. Even Davos itself emerged with its relevance renewed. Oh my God. Oh my God. Okay. Number four, markets. Markets flex their muscle as a meaningful constraint on Trump's behavior.

Good job, markets. Thank you, markets. Number three, Europe. Europe avoided a potentially catastrophic trade war. Okay, that's fair. Europe did. Europe did win. Number two, Denmark and Greenland.

So there you go. All right. At least they made the top two. Yeah. The Trump, just to go on on the Trump winning, the Trump always chickens out, taco mockery popularized on Wall Street may sting, but the president's MAGA machine is already moving to sell the deal as a total victory.

Of course they are. And since they are, we must treat it seriously because they are the MAGA base. They are the MAGA machine. Okay, so there's that. Can we just say one thing about the Davos coverage in general? Yes, please. There is just something self-referentially gross about all the Davos coverage over the last week. All the media, all the insider newsletter types, axios, politico, semaphore.

They all go to Davos and they throw big parties and they hang out with their advertisers. And then they talk about how important Davos is. Davos is the winner of all of them. I wonder if they write any stories. while they're there about the Democratic Party being out of touch and two in bed with the elites. Yeah, well, just as an – And do you think they talk to Trump and all the Republicans and all the Trump administration people who went about that, about how they ran against Democrats cozying up with the elites for so long?

And do you think that's what they all talked about? Yeah, I think also I was surprised that no one that I could see reported from there pointed out that Donald Trump intended to give a speech on affordable housing to a group of moneyed elites in the Swiss Alps. Well, his Treasury Secretary talked about the average mom and pop retiring and buying what, five, 10, 11, 12 houses? That was another. That was a real thing that happened.

That was a real thing that happened with Scott. This is a billionaire president with a cabinet full of billionaires going to hang out with billionaires to talk about the economy. It's fucking bananas. And it should be covered as such. And instead they just fucking rampaged around Davos trying to like fucking blow up the world order. and threatening to invade Greenland

only to back down and come home with nothing but a huge bruise from taking too much aspirin. But also saying that Trump almost upending the entire Western world order at Davos made it relevant is like saying that O.J. Simpson made four Broncos cool again. Like what? You're just the scene of the crime

there's nothing cool about that. Jesus Christ. Oh, congratulations, Donald Trump. And Davos. And Davos, of course. You got to hand it to Davos. You got to hand it to Davos. Of course, Trump also scored another big Davos went on Thursday with the formal launch of his Board of Peace, where countries can pony up $1 billion to join an entity that was originally conceived to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, but has now turned into Trump's own model UN. It's just like his own little toy UN. Here's CNN, Caitlin Collins, again, who you heard earlier, asking a pretty smart question about the whole effort.

You talked about being concerned, Mr. President, about Russia trying to come and take over Greenland. If you're worried that Putin would do something like that, why invite him to join your Board of Peace? Because we want everybody. We want all nations. We want all nations where people have control, people have power. Yeah, I have some controversial people on it, but these are people that get the job done. These are people that have tremendous influence. But all babies are the board. It wouldn't be very much. So he was invited.

He's accepted. many people have accepted. I think I don't know if anybody that hasn't accepted. No fucking babies on board. I mean, a board full of babies would not work. It wouldn't. He's right about this one. I hate to say it. Also from the F-Whorst one gaggle. President Putin said that he may use frozen Russian assets to pay for his entry to the Board of Peace. Were you inclined to let him do that?

I don't know about that. I've heard that little. Who said that? President Putin. He said he was going to use his money? Reporter. Frozen assets. Yeah, that's fine. He's using his money. That's how policy gets made. What? Like, we don't want, we got to invade Greenland because we don't want the Russians getting a foothold in Greenland. But the war criminal that is currently running Russia can use the assets we all froze to pay Trump for a seat on his board of peace because you don't want any babies on that board. Did you ever get to the bottom of the paying Trump personally for this thing?

So it's going into a fund. Who knows? The bank's probably in Qatar like the rest of the... I have to be honest. I did a real deep dive on the Qatari Bank thing. Yeah, what do you think? It's okay. Well, it's...

It is not as crazy as it sounds on its face. In part because of our new ownership of Venezuela and oil, we have to invade a bunch of sanctions, so we have to put it in a banking cutter. Well, because we always love to follow the law. Letter of the law, that's the Trump administration. So they all pay a billion dollars. and the billion dollars is supposed to go towards still helping to rebuild Gaza and then other projects around the world, other war-torn countries, places.

Because we know from experience here in the United States that this administration and this president wants to make sure that money goes to foreign aid and foreign development overseas to people who need it. That's been one of his priorities since the outset. Yeah. So I assume that this is just it's all. going to a good cause. I mean, there is alternative plan that doesn't involve Putin. What's that? An agency within the State Department funded by Congress that could dispense aid to war-torn parts of the country to help people rebuild, have food, have clean water, avoid diseases. We could call it USAID as an option. That's as dumb as thinking there could be a body

made up of countries around the world that could help solve international conflict and you'd like call it the United Nations, you know? It's just just crazy. We have to tear things down to then rebuild up a lesser version of them. Which just Trump's fault making. What's Trump's name on them? That is basically the last 10 years. So no one, no one hasn't accepted. Everyone, everyone wants to be part of this board except for any of our actual allies. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, he gave a big speech at Davos that everyone's been talking about. And in that speech, he said, quote, we are in the mid-sum. of a rupture, not a transition, and that now is the time for the middle powers to band together. So big speech from Carney got all of our allies basically just saying, you know, the entire

post-World War II international order that America helped build and sustained for the last several decades. Seems like Trump broke it and it's going to be hard to fix and we're going to have to look elsewhere. What do you think? You feeling proud to be an American? That's great. Every once in a while, like, picture, I dare to picture what it would be like

if a Democrat wins. You think about all the things that they have to do. And I think about when Obama came in, because if people, you know, if those old nuts remember, it would be the world hated America because of the Iraq war. Like, we were laughing stock. I always tell sorry, my wife went to Ireland when she was in college and she told everyone she was Canadian because people were so mad about the Iraq war while she was there. And then Obama went around.

you know, everyone was like Obama's here. We did our apology tour. Everyone was really happy. We went back. Trump gets elected in 2016. The world could convince itself that this was a one-time accident of history, Black Swan event that allowed this fucking lunatic who represented nothing other than the views of himself to be president of the United States.

He goes through the whole thing. He leaves. Joe Biden comes back. Institutions are back. We're going to like, it's just his aberration. We're going to go back to what. has been a bipartisan consensus for 80 years about how, you know, Republicans and Democrats would disagree on how you implement that world order about money for

this versus money for that or even conflict here versus conflict there. But the idea that these institutions were absolutely essential to global stability in American security, that was something we all agreed on. And it's why absent Trump, there is largely a bipartisan agreement, at least in the Senate, about funding for Ukraine, right? Right. Like that that, like, there is a bipartisan census. That's gone. Now that Trump has been reelected, the world is never going to feel confident that the United States is not always four years away from electing an isolationist-dufus. Like, that's always going to be there.

And so the world order as we understand it, or at least as we understood it before Trump came back in, I don't think we're going back to that in any way should reform because it's, you know, Mark Carney's right. Everyone has to start these other countries who relied on the United States for security and stability are going to have to look elsewhere. They need a belt suspenders approach because even if a president Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, AOC, Joshua, whoever, comes in and goes back to the way, you know, Reagan, Bush, Obama, Biden did it, they can't assume that that's going to be that way 48 years later. And so like the world is headed to a very, very different place because Trump has like just basically shat all over everything.

And we should be clear that it's not just like we are pining for international rules and institutions just for the sake of it, right? Like they, but they the part when they weren't broken or when they worked better than they did even before Trump broke them and destroyed them, they kept us safer. They kept the world safer and they kept Americans safer and they kept Americans more prosperous. And it's going to be more difficult to live in a world where countries are turning to places like China for economic development, for security. I think Carney, I'm paraphrasing a line from his speech, but he said something like in a world where there's just more fortresses because different countries are making different alliances and trying to like build up their own security, then like that's a world that is more brittle, more dangerous, more prone. to violence, and that's where he's leading us. And like you said, like I believe and hope that Democrat wins, and the next president really does make great strides in repairing some of these relationships. But don't think we're going back for at least a generation at this point,

thanks to Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress and everyone who has allowed him to do this and supported him doing this. This is not to say that NATO does not need reform. that the United Nations does not need massive reform. But it's the basic idea that the United States is more secure if we work together with our allies, we have as many allies as possible. If there is international agreements that are adhered to, that there are security agreements that are adhered to, that we all are, that like working together leaves a stability. And that what Trump is pushing us back towards is a pre-war War II mentality of might makes right.

And that may seem great for the United States in this example. exact moment right now, but it may not be down the line. And so you have to sort of think ahead. And you just like it's all so it's not being, Trump is not replacing it with something else. Right. If you were to come in and say the way the world has worked before is not working. Here's a different way. It is just like tear it down, you know, reap the benefits and move on. And, you know, America got to be a superpower under that order, right? It's not just like we were one of a whole bunch of countries. The rest of the world, much of the rest of the world look to us

and they admired our values even if we haven't always lived up to them and our prosperity as a country, we're the richest country in the world based on that and we're the most powerful military in the world based on that, right? We didn't get to that just by playing by the Donald Trump might makes right rules.

But the good news is and the Board of Peace, we got a new crew, we got Turkey, we got the stands. You're Kazakhstan, your all the stands. We got the Gulf States in the Middle East. You get your Saudi Arabia's, your UAE, Qatar, Belarus, Hungary. Netanyahu, he's agreed to join the Peace Board.

Good news. Tougher news, couldn't attend the signing ceremony as he is wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes. So that's tough. Same thing with Putin. Another ICC war criminal fugitive. But, you know, he's also busy, you know, invading Ukraine. And he's signed up allegedly, though we haven't confirmed that.

so no one get too excited, but apparently he is going to use some frozen assets to pay for that fee. And, you know, Jared Kushner was out there today with a slideshow, making Gaza look like a fucking shopping mall, I guess. I don't know. It was pretty bleak, Dan. It was not a great couple of days for the world. I will say that. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace provides all the tools you need to promote and get paid for your services in one platform. Create a professional website to showcase your offerings and attract clients. Whether you offer consultations, events, or other experiences, Squarespace can help you grow your business. Squarespace offers a complete library of professionally designed and award-winning website templates

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So there's no risk. Subscriptions are also available for maximum consistency. Remember to head Zbiotics.com slash crooked and use code crooked at checkout for 15% off. All right. The war at home isn't going much better for America. Minnesota is still under siege by thousands of armed federal agents who are terrorizing citizens and non-citizens alike. Police chiefs and law enforcement officials in Minnesota held a press conference Wednesday to say that ICE officers are racially profiling U.S. citizens, including their own off-duty police officers in Minnesota, one of whom ICE officers, they boxed in. her car, they held her up at gunpoint, demanded to see her papers, and then when she began to film them, they knocked the phone out of her hand. Then she let them know that she is a police officer, and what did the ICE agents do? Do you think they apologized? Do you think they say, oh, sorry, we did. No, they ran away because they are cowards and they don't identify themselves. So that's what happened. That was a group of police chiefs, law enforcement officials,

that held that press conference in Minnesota. Wild. There was a, there was a group of police chiefs, There was also an AP story about an internal ICE memo that a whistleblower sent to the Senate that claims federal immigration officers now have the power to enter our homes without a judge's warrant, a memo that has reportedly been used to train the agency's newer agents. No more judicial warrants needed, only what they're saying is administrative warrants, which are warrants signed by ICE agents, to enforce immigration enforcement. and now they can use those to barge into a home where they suspect that an undocumented immigrant may be. There's also the story we heard on Thursday of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos who ICE detained while arresting his father

and then shipped them both to a detention facility in Texas despite another member of the five-year-old boy's household pleading, begging with ICE to let the boy stay in Minnesota, which of course they are supposed to do. Naturally, the White House dispatched its most empathetic senior official to Minneapolis, J.D. Vance, who held an event with ICE agents where he scolded all of us for not believing the government's lies. Let's listen. The local police chiefs have said their own off-duty officers.

So police officers are being targeted because they are a person of color and ask to show their papers. Is that a concern of the administration? Look, certainly is it a concern? Absolutely. The first thing we have to figure out is whether it happened or not. And then if it happened, whether there is a good explanation or a bad explanation. Of course, if somebody violated the law, if somebody racially profiled, if somebody violated the rights of one of our fellow citizens, that is something we will take very seriously. Nobody is talking about doing immigration enforcement without a warrant. We're talking about different types of warrants that exist in our system. But we're never going to enter somebody's house without some kind of a warrant unless, of course, somebody's firing on. an officer or they have to do something in order to protect themselves. No, I didn't say, and I don't think any other official within the Trump administration said that officers who engaged in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity, that's absurd. And I'm a father of a five-year-old actually, a five-year-old little boy, and I think to myself, oh my god, this is terrible. How did we arrest a five-year-old? Well, I do a little bit more

follow-up research. So the story is that ICE detained a five-year-old, well, what are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death? Are they not supposed to arrest, an illegal alien in the United States of America. If the argument is that you can't arrest people who have violated our laws because they have children, then every single parent is going to be completely given immunity from ever being the subject of law enforcement. That doesn't make any sense.

No one thinks that makes any sense. I mean, why aren't we congratulating the ICE agents from saving that five-year-old boy from the freezing cold and shipping him to Texas, where it's much warmer and he can hang out in a detention facility as opposed to his school or his home in Minnesota. Come on. Are you people crazy? I was so someone, so someone clearly told J.D. Vance after the performance he put on following the shooting of Renee Good in the White House press briefing room, that he was a little too hot coming out there and immediately calling her a domestic terrorist and yelling at everyone and acting like a maniac. And so they probably told him, you got to cool it down, take it down.

But you can still, you know, lie your ass off. No one's going to check any of your stories. So I guess that's what he did. What did you make at the press conference? I would like to put a blood pressure monitor on myself while I watch J.D. Vance speak. Because maybe it's because I'm just so numb to Trump after all of these years. But I find J.D. Vance to be more infuriating to watch. just the smugness, the high school debate champ energy he gets off when he does it,

the lack of charisma. The whole thing is just so infuriating. And like I guess what happened here is, I don't think this was necessarily about J.D. Vance, like, feeling, you know, not that you ever feel bad about anything because he seems to be largely soulless in a lot of ways. but, you know, just feeling like political pressure for us performance in the brief room. I think this is, can remember if you and I talked about it,

you guys talked about it on a Tuesday podcast, but, you know, there's that Axio story about how, you know, the White House political team had reviewed the rights numbers, and they were starting to feel that the chaos was not, was hurting them. They might have to take a different approach. And you could sort of sense when Trump did his 100,

you know, is one year press conference before heading to Davos that he tried to like see and the edges down on the rhetoric. He tried to, he, I mean, I say try with all the air quotes humanly possible around like a modicum of empathy for what's happened there for what happened to Renee Good, all of those things. I think J.D. Vance was there to try to lower the temperature, but he just can't.

Like, he's, he's infuriating in his presence. And he's so just dishonest about everything. He could, like, his, like, whole thing is to take something totally unreasonable, totally ridiculous and then just like gaslight it into a place of reasonableness for anyone who does not have the two brain cells required to understand that what he's saying is bullshit. Like, like just creating the false choice between detaining a five-year-old and shipping him to another state to keep him in a detention center or let him freeze it at. Those were not the two options on the table.

This was not like they did not arrest the father in the tundra. Right. Well, this is also, it's just like he, he did not look into the. story what he did because any of the any of the media outlets that wrote up the story and i read in the washington post you can read it anywhere else will have the family in there and the member and the people at the school that run the school and everyone all the witnesses saying that the someone in the boy's household was pleading with ice to let them keep the boy and instead what i said is they used the boy as bait to knock on the door and try to get other family

members to come out to detain. And of course, they couldn't find any others to detain except for the father. And so there was no reason for ICE to keep the boy with the father when there were other members of the household that could stay with the boy. And now the boy is, no one knows where the boy, like the boy is just in a detention facility in San Antonio. And we'll talk about this in a second, but the conditions in these detention centers, particularly the ones in Texas, are fucking horrific. And you can't tell me that they're going to be able to take care of a five-year-old. Imagine how scared he is. Imagine how scared this five-year-old is. And like, do you really think he's with his dad? Of course that. Who's been arrested and is going to be deported? Like this, terrifying, first of all.

It's just the lack of humanity from the people conducting the arrest. Like, all of a sudden, you find yourself like, you can see a world where you arrest someone. I'm sure this happens, like, outside of immigration from regular law enforcement. I mean, you arrest someone, and you now have a minor child. And it's like, what do you do with them? And there are plenty of options before you get to send them to a detention facility. Right. And so like this, no one cared enough to try to find a solution or to let him stay with the. I'll say like J.D.'s position, yeah, the position that everyone who doesn't like this,

the position we're all taking is you must not arrest anyone with the child, particularly, especially in front of the child. That's it. The child is now a shield. Everyone can go commit crimes. And what the libs want is no one can be arrested with their child. in their presence. That's what people are saying. Everything to its illogical conclusion.

Like that is his rhetorical style. Well, and then there's just like straight up lying. So right before that, he said, oh, I never said. Whoever said that there was immunity for officials, for ICE agents. So here's J.D. Vance verbatim in the White House briefing room after Renee Goods murder. Quote, the precedent here is very simple. You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action. That's a federal issue.

That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job. The unprecedented thing is the idea that a local official can actually prosecute a federal official with absolute immunity. I've never seen anything like that. It would get tossed out by a judge. So that's that. Then, let's see, the story about the law enforcement official, the off-duty police officer who was harassed and assaulted by ICE agents, he was like, yeah, obviously that would be concerned.

And we didn't play that part of the clip. But right after that, he said, we have to figure out if the story's right. Because most of these stories over the last couple weeks, these viral stories, haven't been right. Which is basically saying that all of the police chiefs in Minnesota and the local law enforcement officials who gave the press conference are fucking liars. Just calling the law enforcement officers liars. And we're not going to get the ICE agent side of that story because those ICE agents, we don't know who they are because they ran away like cowards. probably with their face is masked. And then there's this broader point about the entire press governance,

because the whole thing that is, I am here today because I think we can lower the chaos if we get more cooperation from state and local officials. Right. That's the problem is they are not cooperating. If they cooperate, then there would be less chaos. We'd go into fewer incorrect homes, et cetera. So the reporter's like, have you called Tim Walz?

I don't know he's a governor of the state. Like, seems like somebody you'd want to speak to if you wanted additional cooperation from state officials, I was like, no, I haven't called them. He can call me. He can call me. Oh, and maybe one reason why they may be hesitant to cooperate with you is because you dispatched your Department of Justice to investigate them for fake crimes.

I do think the biggest piece of news in all this is this ICE memo that the AP reported on that, you know, an internal whistleblower sent it to the Senate and then obviously leaked it to the Associator Press as well. And first of all, J.D. Vance's answer there was, what? a fucking Yale Law School. What a fucking embarrassment. Not great for Yale Law School, no. I mean, Jesus Christ. What was he talking about? He got the whole thing wrong. Well, he, I don't know he got it wrong. He intentionally used words that made it sound more reasonable to avoid getting at the actual crux of the issue, which is

who was signing these quote-unquote warrants. Who was signing the warrants, but also like we would never, we would never we would never go into a home without a warrant it's like well yeah you would in fact the elderly man who you dragged out of his home in his underwear

who's a U.S. citizen who you thought was some criminal that it turns out has been in jail since 2024 which DHS would have known a case of mistaken identity they barged his door down so they did so they

I don't know if they had if they had a warrant. It wasn't a judicial warrant. It wasn't signed by a judge. These administrative warrants can be signed by ICE officers. Yeah. I mean, that is the crux here. When he says, when J.D. Vance says warrant, he's not talking about warrant in the way in which we commonly think of it, which is a prosecutor and the police go to a judge. They present probable cause.

The judge then signs a warrant saying, yes, you can go in and find this person. and arrest this person, search the premises, whatever, which is how it is that laid out in the Constitution, right? This is your Fourth Amendment rights. These are warrants, essentially arrest warrants, signed by immigration officers to be enforced by other immigration department officers. And so the reason why the courts have generally said that these warrants cannot work is that the courts are supposed to be a check on the executive branch.

The executive branch cannot give itself authority to execute executive branch functions. Which is really interesting in this memo because they say, the memo says they can do this everywhere other than one district in central California because there's already been a court decision in central California in a case called Kid v. Majorcas, which said you cannot do that there. Also, even these administrative warrants that ICE officers sign do not allow them to go into people's homes. Right. It's just simply saying we are asserting this person is in this country illegally. You can go pick them up. And they are then trying to take that one step further to say that you can, because we sign that, then that is the equivalent of a judicial warrant to go into someone's home, which it is not. No court has ever said that. And presumably no court ever would. And here's why this is dangerous for every single American. So ICE comes to your home. Knock on the door. You're like, ICE is outside. I'm a U.S. citizen. I'm not fucking answering that door. Now ICE raids your home, bust the, the door down, comes in your home, searches, takes you away. And you're like, well, how can they do that? Well, they have an administrative warrant that they signed themselves that says they thought that an undocumented immigrant who was wanted for a crime happened to be in your home. What's your proof of that? We don't care. We just, we signed our administrative warrant ourselves.

Yeah. The point is it can be your home. Is it the government, like all the don't tread on me people is the government is just giving itself the power to go in anyone's home whenever it wants for any reason. And again, you might think like, well, that's, I mean, they're doing that now because they're trying to find undocumented immigrant. Well, yeah, but what is going to stop them from doing this to any American that they want to? And then if they do that, what do you do about it? Can you hold the ICE officer accountable? Well, no, because apparently they have immunity as well. Yeah.

Do we think the Department of Justice is going to hold them accountable? The Department of Justice that decided ahead of any investigation that Renee Good is a domestic terrorist. I mean, we're just, you know, I don't like to alarm people, but we're in fucking lawless territory here. That's alarming. Just because it's only happening in these cases that we're hearing about in Minnesota doesn't mean it can't expand to the rest of the country until the fucking Supreme Court gets off his ass and actually rules on this. Which, who knows how long we'll wait for that. Also, I was talking about these conditions in these detention centers in Texas where the five-year-old is being held. Horrifying.

I don't know if you saw the story about the Cuban migrant who died in the El Paso facility, which I have seen from reports is even worse. DHS, liars, had said that he died by suicide. Then the El Paso medical examiner does an autopsy and confirms that it was a lot of. homicide, which lines up with what his family heard from witnesses who said that they saw the guards strangle him to death. And then DHS, after those witnesses said that, DHS tried to deport them. The Washington Post also reported that five other people, aside from this Cuban immigrant, have already died in immigration detention the first two weeks of the year, including a 36-year-old man at the same facility who was swept up in the Minnesota raids.

We haven't talked about the detention facilities in a while because I think we've rightly been so focused on like ice rampaging through the communities. Everyone should check out runaway country, Alex Wagner's podcast, because she digs into the detention centers this week. It's a really great episode. But they are, it's really, especially the ones in Texas, just fucking like rotten food, rampant disease, very little medical care, very little access to medical care for people. And they're just leaving people there for, you can't get. phone calls, you can't, you don't know where you're going. They're just, they're just leaving people there to rob. I mean, the fundamental belief from the people responsible for these, these policies is that undocumented immigrants are less than human, which is why their rights

don't matter, their deeds and these matter to them. Undocumented. And now, people who are here legally. And frankly, anyone who doesn't look like them, right. Or anyone who doesn't look like them, or anyone who Yeah, that's what happened to Renee Good. Yeah. Right? It is, you don't look like us, you don't think like us, you dare to question us, you dare to try to protest, you dare to try to criticize us, we will fuck with you.

And we can do whatever we want. That is what they're doing. You can call it whatever you want. You can debate the term. You can debate the historical parallels, whatever. this is what's happening. So, you know, the other part of the administration's counteroffensive is to now to try to distract people with the story of the anti-ice protesters who interrupted a service at a church in

St. Paul, where one of the clergy is also the leader of the local ICE field office. So on Thursday morning, all the Trump MAGA media stars inside and outside of the administration took to social media to tout three arrests in the case, as if they had just caught bin Laden. Apparently, they also tried to bring charges against independent journalist Don Lemon, who accompanied the protesters into the church and was interviewing them.

Also, by the way, Don was interviewing the church officials. But the judge wouldn't sign off on the warrant to charge Don Lemon. That, apparently, according to Politico, enraged Pam Bondi, that they couldn't grab Don Lemon, sweep him up in this set of arrests. As they announced the arrest, Christy Noem called the protest, quote, the St. Paul Church riots. And Bondi called it a coordinated attack and wrote in all caps.

We do not tolerate attacks on places of worship. Really, they just really wanted to arrest Don Lemon, huh? Well, you know, it's Hamid Dillon, who's in charge of the Civil Race Division, went on Benny Johnson's podcast and basically promised to arrest on Lemon. or she was kind of goaded into it. And then Benny Johnson, like, sent out the clip was like, you know, Trump DOJ to charge Don Lemon. And so they had to, as has been true of most of the policymaking of this administration is right wing, is Trump administration official says something on a right wing podcast. It then becomes policy.

This is how they try to charge Don Lemon. I mean, you can argue that the entire occupation of Minneapolis flows from fucking Nick Shirley's YouTube video where he does this. ridiculously fake investigation of Somali-run daycare centers in Minnesota, pretending that there was fraud there, even though there's no evidence of that in any of the places that Nick Shirley showed, even though there was plenty of fraud that had been charged years ago in Minnesota, big fraud cases. I'm sure then the administration was like, oh, shit,

well, this kid's video is going viral about the fraud. We've already charged the fraud. In fact, the Biden administration charged the fraud. So now we've got to come up with new fraud. But until then, why do we just send a bunch of ice agents to Minneapolis and see what they find? Well, yeah, this is exactly. Because it is a fair question to ask where in all the cities in America where the Trump administration could deploy 3,000 ice trips, they pick Minneapolis. And it's because of the Somali community in Minneapolis, because in the right wing telling of this story, the focus is entirely on the Somali community.

Trump is, I mean, he has been almost explicit that Somali, you know, Somali people are less than human. And so they're, they're, they're, it's basically, it is this, it's like a snake eating itself. Sorry with the right wing medium. We're right back there again. Potts of America is brought to you by Smalls. Kill me Smalls. January is when we all try to reset. Why shouldn't this include your cat? Hey, cat. What are your news? New Year's resolutions, cat. It's 2026. Why do you still feed your cat like? is 1926. Yeah, just newsies. Oh, yeah. Fish that are like, I don't know about this Germany. Youthless stock ticket stubs. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Ticker tape. Ticker tape is weird. Ticker tape. It's sponsored by Smalls. For a limited time, get 60% off your first order plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com slash crooked. Smalls cat food is protein-packed recipes made with preservative free ingredients you'd find in your fridge and it's delivered right to your door. That's why cats.com named Smalls their best overall cat food. That's got to be one of the earliest ever URLs purchased, by the way.

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The DHS bill did pass the House on Thursday afternoon with all that seven Democrats voting no. But then, of course, the real test is in the Senate where the bill heads now. And it seems like, as of this recording, this time, Democrats, or at least all the Democrats haven't totally made up their minds. What do you think they should do? I don't know how you can in good conscience vote for additional funding for ICE without real restrictions. And that's not to say, like, we should be very clear that if the Democrats in the Senate

were to filibuster this bill, then it was not going to stop what ICE is doing in Minneapolis. They will, they continue, they have money in their bank. and they will continue to get money in their bank because, as we said before, and I think perhaps I did not say clearly enough last time as within the big beautiful bill, or whatever you want to call it, was a huge plus up in funding. That is mandatory funding. It is immune from the yearly appropriation cycle. So even if the government is shut down, that money comes. Democrats cannot shut the government down. Most of the governments have been funded. So this would only be DHS. I just don't know how you can do it. We can debate the politics

of it, right? And like whether they are good or bad or, you know, overstated or understated. But if I was a Senate Democrat, if I was in the House, I certainly would have voted no. If I was in the Senate, I would not vote for cloture on this bill. I would, I would not let the Republicans bring it to the floor. Are there probably enough senators the same ones who open the government a couple months ago to do it? That may be the case, but if it was up to me, I would not do it. Yeah, I'd be a definite no. I mean, even, Last time we talked about this, we talked about, okay, say they can't get a DH funding bill done, and it's just a continuing resolution, right? So it's just, you know, no one wanted to give DHS more money.

And so we're just going to keep funding it at current levels. And do you vote yes or no on that, knowing that it does nothing, right? Because you shut the government down, ICE has all their money. They keep going. Chris Murphy, who's going to vote against it in the Senate, you know, he was like, he, he, he, You know, had a long tweet thread about this. The DHS budget, it gives them an additional $28 billion this bill in addition to all the money ICE got in the big beautiful bill. To me, that makes it a like a fucking no-brainer.

And if you shut the government down, I do think you're, it is important, we should say, you shut the government down. ICE is still going to do what they're doing. They're not going to, it's not going to slow them down, which fucking sucks. And then somebody like, Democrats are shutting the government down. is a whole thing. And like, do you win that fight politically? I don't fucking know. But I think it's a pretty clear message that like, yeah, you know why I voted no?

I voted no because I don't think ICE, which we're going to talk about the New York Times poll, has a 35% approval rating. I don't think that fucking ICE should get 28, and Christine Ome should get 28 billion more dollars when everyone's health care premiums are going up and costs are up. and ICE is rampaging through communities, breaking the law, breaking down doors in violation of the Fourth Amendment, arresting people? Abs of fucking looting not? No. A couple, maybe last week before, AOC was walking out of Congress.

She was walking down the steps at night, and she got asked about what's happening there. And she made the point which I've not heard any other Democrat make, which is, if you want to know why your health care costs are going up, why we don't have money to extend the affordable care tax credits or all the other things you want, is because all the money is going to what's happening in Minneapolis. That's where their priorities are. And I think that that is a powerful message because it is about priorities. Like, this is where the focus is. This is what they are doing. They are not helping you. They are doing this. They are creating chaos in service of something that is indecent, cruel, and it's not making America any more secure. They're using your tax dollars to barge down the doors of your fellow Americans and like dragging them out into the street and sending five-year-olds to detention camp? Like, what? We're paying for this.

These people work for us. Ice works for us. Christine Home works for us. Well, theoretically, that's true. Right. But that's why you say, like, no, I'm not going to fucking fund that. I mean, just if we're being, like, as fair to the argument here of what would actually happen is. So here you're, you can vote for it. Right. And it will pass. And most Democrats will certainly vote against it. The overwhelming majority will vote against. It's something like probably 85% of them will vote against it. The question is, right, right, right, right. Are we going to get the right numbers? So in that world where they all, where it gets stopped, there probably is pretty easy to come up with a continuing resolution,

which says, you want additional money and certainty for the year. We want some guardrails. Chris Murphy listed a bunch. We talked about them last week, masks, warrants, all these other things, really common sense things in the Constitution. We want those in writing. That's the deal. In the interim, why we negotiate that, let's just keep it at the exact level. that was that last year continued resolution. Republicans probably say no to that because they think the fight over a shutdown DHS is good for them. This is actually something they did in the run up to the 2002 midterms when the DHS was unable to be formed because of a dispute over a collective bargaining agreement for TSA agents and other DHS employees.

And so you do end up in the situation. So like those are the outcomes. It's like not like strategically it's not simple. You make the right point, which is the. the polling says, it's very clear, and it's particularly going in the New York Times poll, that Democrats should not be afraid of being tough critics on ice or a fight over ice. We can debate whether that is the best issue to be talking about before the midterms, but it's not a bad issue.

Yeah. And I look, I, you know, the government funding debate and the shutdown stuff, It drives me a little crazy because part of what I think our side sometimes believes is that we have leverage and we don't have leverage because Republicans aren't going to change their behavior. And they have proven that. They have proven that this is the most important priority for them and they're going to find the money anywhere to keep doing it. So I don't think, you know, I think some of us even went into the health care shutdown thinking like, oh, maybe they'll change their mind and pass an extension of Obamacare subsidies. they did not. I don't think they would have if we kept the government shutdown.

They're not now. They just don't want to do it. Certainly, at least they were considering it on ACA, at least in the last couple weeks post shutdown. They would never back off on this. Never. But the question is, like, you know, this is a bigger

issue now, but if we now have paramilitary squads rampaging through the country, and they're in Minneapolis now, they've been in other cities, it's not getting better, it's getting worse, it's not slowing down, it's speeding up. They're going to spend more of the money. They're going to hire more of these

people. The people that they keep hiring are going to be worse, less qualified, crazier. They're giving him guns. They don't need warrants now is what they tell us. They can arrest whoever they want. They're shooting people without any kind of accountability whatsoever. They're going to be doing that. Then maybe you like, you send a message. You say this is what we're like the people of Minnesota, they are staging a, or a lot of people in Minnesota, they're organizing a statewide pause in daily economic activity. So basically, like a, they're trying to do like a strike, one day strike in Minnesota. They're not going to go to school.

They're not going to work. At least a whole bunch of people are trying to do this. And, you know, by the way, you can check out on Votes of America. If you want to, if you stand in solidarity with people in Minnesota, you can find a nonviolent event, protest event near you. You can call on Congress to rain and ICE. You can demand different corporations. stand up to ICE, maybe have contracts with them. I do wonder if, and this is, it's politics,

but it's a bit outside just, you know, electoral politics and congressional politics inside D.C. That it's, that it's time to sort of organize a much more nationwide response to what ICE is doing. That is, because it's, the midterms are nine months away. And, you know, we have three more years of the Trump administration. And at some point, when do you decide? that like, you know, we got to step up and get out to the streets and defend our neighbors here because they could be coming for any of us. So it's sort of like what I thought originally about the first shutdown, but it would be more that than some kind of strategy to assume that our leverage would be used to kind of get the administration to get ICE to back down just by virtue of a little

bit of shutdown. You're using as an intentional moment is what you're doing. It's not, because we should be, you made this point, I want to say it again, there is almost no chance that they are going to agree to take them masks off because we shut down the agency because they don't need the money in the short term. They don't need the money. Yeah. But it's time to maybe, you know, organize nationwide against ICE here. So the other big focus on Capitol Hill Thursday was a former special counsel Jack Smith's

appearance in front of the House Judiciary Committee as part of their investigation into Smith's old investigations of Donald Trump. Both the criminal charges brought against the president related to January 6th and the criminal charges he faced over hiding classified documents at Maralago. and refusing to give them back. Smith had already agreed to a deposition for the committee, but asked for an open hearing as well so that the country could hear him defend his actions.

Here's some of what it sounded like. President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the law. Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity.

This is all a show, and Mr. Smith, you're just the latest act that they've brought in. The fault does not lie with Donald Trump. It lies with Yogananda Pittman and the U.S. Capital Leadership team. We know, we know they had the intelligence. That was Michael Phonone, one of the Capitol Police officers. saying, go fuck yourself. Good for him. What is this? We were like, Jack Smith's testifying?

What's happening? How much does this matter? It's just this is going to go, I guess they're trying to investigate Jack Smith, these the congresses. Donald Trump was like responded by being like, you know, Pambondi should do something, of course. So this is a product of the effort to investigate the weaponization of government by, the alleged weaponization of government by the Biden administration.

They're looking at all sorts of things. I had the mispleasure of, I think that's a word, of listening to Jim Jordan's opening remarks this morning, very early in the morning. And it's insanity. It's like he talked about the Steele dossier, Fannie Willis and Nathan Waite. Like, it's all over the map. It's insane. It is like you have to be so embedded in right-wing conspiracy theories to know what's happening here. it is just so like, I guess it's funny that they're having this hearing with the

proposition of government at the same time that in the Trump's list of accomplishment a day for his first term, he includes weaponizing government in there and holding his political opponents accountable like they're doing it every single day and without any self-awareness they're holding these hearings. All the other hearings and depositions have been taken privately. Jacksmith demanded his to be done in public because all the people who worked for him have been fired from their jobs, the career prosecutor's FBI agents. So he wants to defend their work and have a moment.

Watching it is just so surreal because it just takes you back to... It's a rerun from a few seasons ago. It is, but just it takes you back to sitting in our homes during the pandemic on January 6th, just watching that horror scene take place, takes you back to a couple years later when the January 6th committee hearings happened and all that incredibly compelling evidence and testimony and videos were released. And you brought back to that day, these things it felt like moments that would forever change American politics, or at least the trajectory of Donald Trump's life, how we felt when and the reaction when Donald Trump was charged by in the classified

documents case, which is even brought up here, which is like the most obvious crime you committed. when he was charged in the January 6th case. And it's just this, it's all been just sort of whitewashed from, not from history because I think it'll be in the history books, but from the political conversation, we've just, because Trump won re-election after having done all these things being indicted, having fomented the riot itself, and the Republicans have all decided that it's cool as someone since I'm to murder you as long as that person's within your party. it's just we've just like the sort of it's just been all pushed to the size as if it doesn't matter anymore.

And it's like kind of almost it's surreal but nice or important to maybe to hear talk about that. Again, to be reminded that this was this giant fucking deal that was this incredibly dark moment history and that even if we're not caring about it now, like over the course of time, if we are lucky enough to make it into the future, that it will be remembered for what it is, which is this very deeply dangerous, horrific thing that that Donald Trump. Trump did. I saw that Hank Johnson, Democrat on the committee, asked at one point, since the charges were dismissed without prejudice after Trump won, I guess Smith could he be charged again after he leaves office? And, you know, Smith didn't really take debate, but did say that they were dismissed without prejudice, which means, yes, they can be charged again. Yeah. I mean, the problem in this is the president is the immunity ruling. That's right. But I mean, there's like,

Although, well, remember, the immunity ruling sort of lopped off a big part of the indictment, but some of it still remained. Like, before Trump won, we still thought there was going to, remember, there was still going to be a, there's still going to be a case. And the Fulton County case could be brought back because that is a local case and not relevant to this. My thing is, like, you know, good for Jack Smith. There's, there's things he couldn't talk about based on sort of evidence. Like, what I'm interested in someday is, you know, evidence that Jack Smith had that he was going to

bring it to trial that we haven't heard yet. And, you know, same in the in the documents case if Eileen Cannon ever. I mean, she won't. But if anyone can ever get that evidence, that would interest me. I think the Justice Department, that's one thing. It won't be the most important thing. But I hope that this is imagine this. Democratic president wins. Our attorney general goes out, promises full disclosure of the Jack Smith files, brings in a bunch of contact creators influences. Maybe not us, because we wouldn't get invited. You don't know who price. You don't know who the person's going to be. We might get invited. We might get invited this time. It gets handed, we get handed a binder and it's filled with all the stuff. It can happen. It'll be Brian. You might not be invited. I might not be invited.

Yeah, no, I might be invited. Yeah, you might, yeah, you might get invited. Definitely not love it. Maybe you and Tommy. This episode is sponsored by Better Help. The new year doesn't require a new you, but maybe just a less burdened you. Therapy can help you more. more easily identify. What is weighing you down? What is holding you back? And by offering you an unbiased perspective to better understand your relationships, motivations, and emotions. As you know, it's a horrible, terrifying world out there. You all need therapy. If you haven't done it yet, now is the time. 2026 can be better for you, for the people around you, for your loved ones, if you get some help. Better help therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully

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BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist, sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash PSA. That's better, help.com slash PSA. All right, let's get to some good news. A New York Times Sianapole dropped on Thursday morning. That's it. That's the good news. For me and you, it doesn't matter what's in it.

It's just exciting. I have to say I've been having trouble sleeping this week. And I had a late meeting last night and I didn't get home to late. And so I slept till, I saw the clock and it was 4.15 a.m. for the first time. And that to me was a win. It wasn't, it wasn't 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. And then I, like, grab my phone and I looked and I fucking saw the New York Times news alert on my phone, which is the only news alert I get from the Times. And it said, like, Times Sienna poll. And I was like, oh, boy. Oh, we got a time Santa poll. And so I, of course, texted it to the group. But then... The sad thing is, when you texted it, I was already reading it. I know.

Well, because then I opened our office slack. And right before you had already sent it to the office slack. And all of our East Coast employees, like Reed, were like, how did you send that before me? It's four in the morning. You got to wake up earlier, Reed. I've to tell you that all the time. I'm telling you that for 20 years.

Okay. Here are the top lines. And then we can dig into the details. Trump's approval rating is 40% with 56% disapproving. 64% of voters don't like how he's handling the cost of living. 58% don't like how he's handling the economy. 58% same number don't like how he's handling immigration. 39% don't like how he's handling our relationships with other countries.

So other countries, the rest of the world, you know, only 39% of us think that all that's going well. So just so you all know. And only 32% of voters think the country is better off than when Trump took office a year ago. 42% of voters say he's on track to be one of the worst presidents in history. Only 19% say he'll be one of the best. And that includes only 45% of Republicans, which is interesting. Meanwhile, in the 26 midterms, voters would favor a Democratic candidate over a Republican by 5 points, 48% to 43%. Trump himself is not only aware of this poll.

He has announced that he'll be adding it to his lawsuit against the New York Times and will demand to learn how the Times, quote, computed these fake results. must preserve all records, Nate Cohn. He then added two more posts saying that fake polls are out of control and, quote, dangerous, and that publishing polling he doesn't like should be a crime.

Are you worried that he might come for a polar coaster with Dan Pfeiffer? Or the message box, perhaps? Maybe the message box, I can see that. Polar coaster, he wouldn't dare touch Caroline Rustin, so it's fine. He's not behind the paywall anyway.

Yes, we hope not. But you should be. God, we hope not. But you should be, if you want to listen to Polar Coaster, the, the, One pod that Trump doesn't want you to hear, polar coaster. He's too scared to sue, polar coaster. Support independent progressive media.

Sign up to be a friends of the pod. Cricket.com slash friends. How is that for an organic push? Elijah is just, he is, he's swelling with pride right now. Okay. What are your thoughts on the poll? I have not had time to read your message box yet on the poll. So this is just fresh for me.

Let me give you the most important top line from this, which is Donald Trump's 24 winning coalition that included, obviously, his MAGA base and core Republican voters, but also Latinos, working class men of color and young voters, particularly young men, has collapsed. And his coalition right now in this poll looks almost exactly like his coalition in 2020 when he lost the election. All the people that he, like what it looks like right now. And this is one poll.

It's the best poll, but it is one poll. But it's also, it is consistent with the. the narrative of all the other polls we've seen over the last year, is the 2024 election was not a realignment. It was more likely to be an aberration born of the lethal combination of inflation plus Joe Biden's age. Those two things led us there. So what that means for the midterms, which is really interesting, is now the lesser engaged voters who are targets for Democrats again. The way this poll looks is higher turnout would benefit Democrats. We are actually winning people in this, on the generic ballot, we are crushing the generic ballot with Latinos, younger voters,

non-college, non-white voters, independent voters. Among people who did not vote in 2024, Democrats are up by 15 points on the generic. Wow. Wow. And so, and this is because, And the second part of this is, like, you read this, Trump is underwater on every single issue except border security where he has a net approval of three, I think. Just hugely underwater, everything. Economy, immigration. You went through all these things. But, and I think they all add up, you know, ice, greenland, all these things add up to this level of sort of chaos and dysfunction and distraction that is driving Trump down. But the poll is pretty clear that the economy is the main reason that his coalition has collapsed.

the voters who have left Trump are twice as likely to cite an economic issue as their top issue as the rest of the electorate. And so this is part of the explanation for 2024. We had a bunch of people who did not love Trump. They were very skeptical of him. They were very cost conscious. They were economically prioritized voters. They were willing to take a risk on him. He has now not only failed to lower the prices, he has raised their prices.

And they've started to look elsewhere. Now, the challenge for Democrats here is this is not really. downed to the Democratic Party's benefit. You know, this poll actually is more Republican than you would expect. Republicans still have a registration advantage. So we have a lot of work to do. But the opportunity... What do you think that's all about?

Because that was my one... I had one other point that I liked, and this is from Nate Cohn's analysis of it. One other point I liked in one other point that it was like, which is, yeah, as you said, party identification, self-identified Democrats had outnumbered Republicans for decades before Republicans edged ahead in 2024, and now Republicans continue to lead by three points in today's poll for party registration. So is that like they're pissed about Trump, but they're like maybe we still want to be Republicans, but we just want to be a Republican?

No, I think it's two things. One, we know from 2025 registration data that Republicans are still continuing to out-registered Democrats, a trend that's, which is the exact opposite of how it's been for many years up until the Biden years began. But the other thing is, is that these younger voters, these particularly 18, 29-year-olds, are much more likely to register as independents. And so the independent pool is bigger, but looking more democratic right now than it did in 2024, which allows Republicans to have a registration advantage yet still trail. That makes sense. Because for a while, the independent pool, yeah.

So in in 2024, the independent pool was looking a little more right-leaning. Yes. And this often happens after, this is why. When you win a first term, you almost always win independence. And even when you win re-election, you lose independence. And it's because who makes up an independent shifts. So a bunch of people who were independents who were like huge Obama supporters in 2008 just became Democrats the next time around.

And so the independent pool moved a little more, right? It was not surprising. There was like the natural sort of shift within the pool that happens after election. And then there was the true trend that Gen Z voters are much less. likely to register with a party than previous generations have been. One other point, and then we can stop on your point in the economy, you know, and Cohn says, Cohn who's, I'm sure, awaiting a subpoena or knock on the door, lawsuit at least. So about half of the defectors from Trump, so people who voted for Trump in 2024, and

then in this poll said, yeah, I voted for Trump in 24, now I'm going to vote for Democrat. Half of them cited the economy as the reason. the other half cited democracy, Mr. Trump himself, immigration, other things, which I think it sort of argues for the point that I haven't really articulated well, which is like, economy is the number one issue, cost of living for sure. But it's not economy cost of living at the expense of everything else. It should be prioritized over other things. But the people who go so extreme and say like, oh, it's just the economy cost of you can't talk about anything else. Like that is clearly not right because some of the defections from Trump are coming,

at least half the defections from Trump were coming from other issues. Well, even if it's right, it's impossible. It's just not a practical solution. You can decide all of our ads should be on the economy. You can make that decision. I probably wouldn't recommend that. But you could do that. I mean, that's what Zoron did. You can't, you can't run it. You can't. As a party, you cannot exist in a world in which you don't talk about all the other things that are happening, you only wait for those an affordability moment. Right, right, right.

All right, well, that's our show for today. And just a reminder, still tickets left for our Australia and New Zealand shows. But they are, they're selling out fast, Ann. Very fast. It's the hopefully just visiting tour. Who knows if it'll still be a joke. But again, we're in Auckland, New Zealand

on February 11th, and then we're in Melbourne and Australia on February 13th, Brisbane on the 14th and Sydney on the 16th. Getting some good guests. We'd love to see you there. Head to cricket.com slash events and you can get your tickets before they're gone. That's our show for today. Dan's going to be back on Sunday with a conversation with our old friend David Pluff. I mean, you know I'm going to tune in.

It's an audience of one here. It's just me for sure. I mean, we can just call you. I want to talk to Plub. And so everyone check that out. And then we'll be back with a new episode for all of you on Tuesday. Tune in. Bye, everyone.

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