Pod Save America - Trump's Gaza Ceasefire Takes Hold

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

President Trump travels to Israel and Egypt to celebrate the return of the hostages and the end of military operations in Gaza. Tommy and Lovett react to the ceasefire, discuss what's next for Gaza, Israel, and Benjamin Netanyahu, and debate how much credit Trump deserves for brokering this peace deal. Then they turn to ICE's latest violence against immigrants and protesters, a new attack on constitutionally protected free speech at The Pentagon, and the latest from the ongoing government shutdown. Then, Leah Greenberg, Co-Executive Director of Indivisible, discusses this weekend's upcoming No Kings protests and Republicans' attempt to paint them as a "hate America" rally.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. Get tickets to CROOKED CON November 6-7 in Washington, D.C at http://crookedcon.com 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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On today's show, it's a huge moment for the world as the Israeli hostages come home and a ceasefire begins in Gaza. We'll explain how this deal happened and what comes next. Then we've got some new court rulings on Trump's invasion of America's cities, a crackdown on free speech at the Pentagon. And of course, we are still stuck in a government shutdown. But there are some key dates coming up that might force action. Finally, Levy catches up with Leah Greenberg from Indivisible, one of the organizations helping to organize the No Kings Day protest this weekend. And not unrelatedly, one of the groups being targeted by the Trump administration. administration as a domestic terror front.

It's getting to be a long list, huh? Wild. Long list of domestic enemies. Indivisible. It was good-hearted and sort of civic-minded organization that you could imagine. Yeah, just encouraging people to care about what's happening and get involved. But let's start with the latest from the Middle East. We are recording this on Monday afternoon at about 3.30 Pacific time overnight.

All 20 of the living Israeli hostages came home, as did the remains of four of the deceased Israeli hostages. Nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners were released by Israel. That breaks down to about 1,700 people who were picked up in Gaza since October 7th and held there without charges and about 250 others who are serving prison sentences, including for violent attacks on Israeli citizens. Trump arrived in Israel on Monday to a hero's welcome. He gave a speech at the Knesset. It was a mix of a justifiable celebration and then the usual hyperbole and bullshit. Let's listen to an excerpt. If you think, we settled eight wars in eight months, that I'm now including this one.

one, by the way, if that's okay, they may say, well, that was quick, because yesterday I was saying seven, but now I can say eight, the hostages are back. The forces of chaos, terror, and ruin that have plagued the region for decades, now stand weakened, isolated, and totally defeated. And because of us, the enemies of all civilization are in retreat. This is the historic dawn of a new Middle East. understated. There's a point where he said that we've been waiting 3,000 years for this.

3,000 years. Yeah, it's a long wait. It's a long time. It's pretty amazing to solve a conflict before at least one of the major religions involved was created. Yeah, he's good. He's that good.

So after that appearance, Lovett, Trump flew to Egypt. There was a big summit there on the Middle East peace featuring a bunch of world leaders minus the leadership of Israel and Hamas. Let's pause here. How are you feeling about all this? So it is just an unalloyed good to see hostages returned to their families.

Cannot imagine what it is like for those families to have their child or their sister or brother family member kidnapped, hidden away, not sure if they're alive or dead, not sure even if they are alive, they will remain so. that is a kind of torture that that is a that is an unimaginable circumstance so that is a beautiful thing to see also reports today that aid is surging into Gaza that that humanitarian aid is able to flow much more than before to help people many who are living under famine conditions that is also welcome and incredibly important that that sort of was my reaction to it and then you know you start to see the immediate kind of old debate not old debate but the kind of the the beneath the very good news sort of the contours of like how hard this is going to be moving forward the acrimony about

those that view what happened in Gaza as a genocide while those somehow claiming that because Israel was willing to end the conflict at the return of the hostages. That means its conduct in the war was justified when it was not. The fact that Gaza is leveled and Trump is signing a document with a bunch of leaders that I don't, have we seen it yet? No. Claiming that they're all going to take part in the rebuilding, even as we have no idea what they're even agreeing to. You just beneath the surface of what is a very, very good moment is the reality that Trump can kind of do his bombastic celebrations around. But this remains a really difficult and intractable situation. And it's just so unsurious the way he talks about it. It makes

you terrified for what could happen. Yeah, it's unequivocally a good day. I'm glad the hostages are home. I'm glad that there's a ceasefire. I hope it all holds. Like, period, full stop, right? I think a question a lot of listeners are asking is, like, how much credit do we think Trump deserves or doesn't? I would argue, like, people might not like to hear this, but I think he deserves a lot of credit for getting this deal done, because Trump clearly put real pressure on Netanyahu to say yes to the deal. While at the same time, the Egyptians, the Qataris, and the Turks pressured Hamas to say yes and make some real concessions that I think we can get into in a minute. But, like, the broader backstory, if listeners remember, like, Trump laid out this 20-point

peace deal. He let... Netanyahu kind of like massage and shaped the deal before it was public to make it more advantageous to the Israeli side. But ultimately what Trump did that I think was really important in that moment was he forced Netanyahu to say yes. And I think that happened in part because Trump has a lot of leverage because he's a popular Republican leader and Netanyahu needs him, but also because the Israelis had just fired a bunch of airstrikes into Doha, the capital of Qatar, which pissed off a lot of people and Netanyahu didn't want to piss them off again. So Trump pockets this yes from Netanyahu. Then a few days later, Hamas responds to that

the plan with kind of like a yes but they're like yes we do a hostage release yes we would transfer governance to some technocrats but we're going to ignore the rest of your whole proposal especially the parts like we have to disarm and no longer exist et cetera and this is the moment where i think trump like was really pretty smart he like he just took that yes from hamas and he ran with it he didn't call nettingahu he didn't coordinate a messaging he didn't let netting yahoo like shape it in the public he just said yeah this is great this is historic This is world peace. And if anyone asked, like, well, what about the other stuff that you put forward that Hamas has to do that they ignored?

He was like, ah, it's phase one. You know, like, we'll get to that later. And that allowed all the parties to get into more detailed talks where I think then surprisingly Hamas gave this big concession where they said the IDF can remain in parts of Gaza. There's some reports that they might control half of the Gaza Strip. And what the Wall Street Journal says is like Qatar and Turkey said to Hamas, like, it's now or never. you agree to this, or we no longer are going to give you diplomatic cover, we're kicking your political office out of the country. And the Egyptians were like, and on top of that, we're not going to lobby for you to be part of the future governance of the Gaza Strip. And so they said yes, and they

agree to it. And everyone else just like punted on all the other stuff about Hamas disarming and having to de-radicalize, et cetera. And also Trump, like he let Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner meet with Hamas directly. Usually that's done through intermediaries. That doesn't happen. And that, I think, got them over the hump of feeling like, okay, Hamas, that is, if they give up the hostages, as sick as it sounds, that's their leverage in this deal, right? And they needed Trump's assurance that he would force the Israelis to go through with the rest of the deal. So I do, like, I really think he played a critical role here. So this is the part that I, the, the original Trump plan required Hamas to disarm seek exile outside. of Gaza, not be part of governance. Is that still what is expected? Do we know what the outcome

is going to be for members of Hamas? Are they allowed to remain in Gaza? Do they have to simply not be part of the government? Do they have to declare they're no longer part of Hamas? Like, do we have any sense of what happens? I think that's all to be negotiated now. And I think you're right. Like, that's why the steel is so big. It's an enormous moment. It's like the entire, everyone is real, like, exhaled for the first time in two years, right? But there's so much work ahead. To your point, though, about, like, how much more there is to do. Like, it really is a mixed bag for the people of Gaza and the Palestinians, because, like, hopefully the ceasefire holds. I mean, it's been two years of fighting, I assume it will. But, like, this is a generational

reconstruction project. And you mentioned all these leaders who got together today who assigned some deal that we haven't really seen yet that says they'll fund it, but it's going to require a lot of focus, a lot of money. A lot of governance, right? Like, like, we don't know what it's going to look like for like what is what what does Israel security look like on the border of Gaza now how big of a like buffer zone are they going to they're going to demand and keep like how much are they going to require uh in terms of like visibility into what becomes of Gaza who is going to oversee it it supposed to be Tony Blair last week I don't know if it's still going to be Tony Blair next week Trump is going to lead the board of peace still I assume right and then it's you know

it's like who is contributing this money who is over overseeing this rebuilding. The place has been leveled. You know, there's been like an effort to say, like, oh, you know, you know, Joe Biden was in a different position than Trump. He, you know, that this is not because Joe Biden failed to put pressure on Netanyahu in a way that Trump did. I don't know about that. But Netanyahu was sending the IDF into parts of Gaza, taking it, leaving it, retaking it, leaving it more level than it was before. They have raised all of Gaza to the ground. And by the end, this seemed to be a conflict in which Naini was just having the military kind of move up and down this kind of leveled place while claiming that they are fighting this brutal war because it's the only way to secure the release of the hostages, while at the same time claiming that Hamas doesn't care whether their own civilians live or die. So now Gaza is completely destroyed.

There are still millions of people there who have no place to go. It needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. We have no, like, if there is some security threat that Israel views as taking place inside of the strip, are they going to send more military back in? Like, we just have no fucking idea. Or just air strikes and perpetuity. Like, it's just a, like, the next phase is so tenuous. Yeah, and it's so, right, exactly.

Like, it's a huge relief for Israelis. I think it's much more mixed back for the people in Gaza and for Palestinians, more broadly because, look, this is like the biggest ceasefire that's been brokered because of just the scope and duration of the fighting since October 7th. But it's one of like a half dozen ceasefires that have been brokered in Gaza between Israel and Hamas in the last 20 years or so, right? So these things get broken. And it's this generational reconstruction project. You're right. Like Gaza is unlivable. Something like 70 to 90 percent of the structures are destroyed. There's no plumbing. There's no water.

there's no food for like there's no way to sustain life there without aid and I think there has to be an effort by the international community to make sure that what's happened like a year from now that is not just nicer tents across the Gaza Strip that there's actually a process put in place to like begin to rebuild for people and it's also this is what's frustrating me a little bit is it keeps bidding called a peace deal it's nothing close to a comprehensive peace deal that would lead to a Palestinian state that's not even being discussed it's it does nothing to stop settlement construction in Gaza Obviously, like, those are big, those are big, more challenging tasks that wasn't, you know, not everyone was seeking to solve through this ceasefire agreement. But Trump is like, it's a new ton for the Middle East. Well, that, so what was it a few months ago that, uh, Mahmuda boss has denied entry to the United States. He's not a right to come to the United Nations, uh, because he's a security threat. Now he's in Egypt meeting with Trump and shaking his hand.

So like that, like it's like, part of what makes this also kind of confusing is it's so much based around Trump's ego and specific relationships and the job people are doing to kind of make Trump feel like he's on their side or to make them feel like they're on Trump's side. Like I guess, you know, Abbas had posted something about, about the threat on Trump's life during the campaign. And now all of a sudden they're kind of shaking hands and he's trying to like lift him back up to what end, I don't know. Yeah, that relationship is very odd. I think there's a real question of kind of Netanyahu's future and what happens with him. I mean, well, on this Biden question, I think it's worth talking about. Like, I talked to a couple of people on Biden's team about this over the years. Like, the kind of outlines of this plan, I don't think it was special.

It wasn't some, like, perfect 20-point plan that was like the red jigsaw puzzle that picked the lock. I think it was Trump using his leverage in a way that Joe Biden would that kind of change things. Now, the politics are different. Like Trump let Steve Wickoff and Jared Kushner talk to. directly to Hamas. Imagine if a Democrat did that, right? The entire Republican Party would light itself in fire and probably prosecute that person. But like Trump, no one will say anything about it. Like, we don't want to relitigate all the Biden of it all. But like the times Biden pressured Netanyahu. It was usually about like humanitarian access and aid getting into the Gaza Strip.

It was not about real pressure to end the war. I wish he'd done that. But I think what the Biden people would say is, well, you know, Biden knew that Netanyahu wanted Trump to win the election. And in this case, you know, Netanyahu knew that he'd pissed off Trump, he would lose not only support from all the Democrats who are already gone, but also from Republicans if Trump turned on him. So he felt pressure in a way he didn't. Now, I don't know that I agree with that. Like, I think Biden had way more leverage. He just never really used it. But that would be the argument from them. Well, yeah. And there's some truth to that. There's also, I do think time matters, right? It's now, it's been two years of brutal conflict. And you have.

have like just the again Gaza being leveled that you have hostages families the families of hostages protesting outside of Benjamin Netanyahu's home the only the other than a few like rescues which I'm glad took place that there was a big hostage exchange in November of 2023 very early in the conflict there was another one in January of this year why during a ceasefire during a negotiation right like this was always going to require a negotiation could Joe Biden have gotten to this point sooner? I have no idea. But like the, the, the, we are in part of the, we are in, the mess we're in with Trump domestically is because we're constantly being told how Joe Biden was not responsible and was constantly overtaken by events. Like, does Trump have more room to maneuver?

Absolutely. Why? Why is Donald Trump able to maneuver more than a Democrat? Right. Why is Joe Biden's leadership so fragile and brittle that he doesn't have the space to take chances and push Bibi or, or send emissaries to meet with Hamas in a way that Trump does. How does he have the flexibility that a Democrat doesn't? And like, why don't answer that rather than say how much easier of a job Trump had? I don't believe the job of being president is easy. But Joe Biden certainly doesn't make it look possible. Yeah. No, I think you're right. Look, it's been two years, right? Both sides were exhausted by two years of war. But I also think Biden missed a big opportunity when the Israelis killed Yaga Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 of the attacks. That was about a year ago. You know, that could have been a good window. to try to push to end the war. Trump also missed an opportunity, right? I mean, he brokered that ceasefire in January. The Israelis and Palestinians were supposed to negotiate phase two of that ceasefire, which would lead to a permanent end of the war during, you know,

that the first ceasefire that they had brokered and they just never did it. Yeah. And part of this also is Netanyahu, we know, his political interest required the war to continue. That might explain why it had gone on for as long as it did, but it doesn't allow for the war to go on forever. Right, right, right. At some point, it would end.

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Make sure you enter our show name at checkout so they know we send. you, helixleep.com slash crooked. The issue of Netanyahu's political problems was front and center today. Presumably now that the fighting is over, the pressure could start rising again on him, on his corruption trials, on his leadership, and the push for elections, though Trump had a helpful idea for how to handle those corruption charges. Let's listen. Mr. President, why don't you give him a pardon?

I happen to like this gentleman right over here, and it just seems to make so much sense. Cigars and champagne, who the hell cares about? So Cigars and Champaign, that's a reference to Case 1000, which is one of the several corruption cases against Netanyahu. In that case, he and his wife are accused of taking like hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cigars and champagne from, you know, donors, et cetera, friends in exchange for political favors.

So love it. Like the conventional wisdom shared by, I meant yours truly as well, was that Netanyahu wouldn't take this deal because he would lose the right flank of his governing coalition. They would then pull out of the government. And for Netanyahu, that would mean losing power and also the risk of prosecution. But he did take the deal, which leads you to wonder why and about his political standing. I noticed Netanyahu was booed when Steve Whitkoff mentioned his name during his speech at hostages square over the weekend.

But then, as we heard a minute ago, Trump was like, give the guy a pardon and he all but endorsed him. Do we think, like, Israel can finally get rid of this guy? How are we feeling? You know, the, we have to see what, like, this is just a, like, as you said, there's a moment of, like, it's a profound relief, right? Like, kind of the end of, of, well, hopefully the end of, of, like, this war. part of the reason Netanyahu felt political pressure to prolong the war is that once the war

was over the attention would then turn not just his corruption but to his abject failure to protect Israel from the worst act of violence in its history and the fact that he was had his attention focused elsewhere the fact that even you know internal documents from Hamas make clear that the that the division and internal conflict over his effort to take over the judiciary had made Israel look weak to its enemies. That's real. That is real. And that will start, that will once again come to the forward. But the bigger, I think, issue here, and this will be part of what we talk about in terms of Israel's place in American domestic politics, too, is the damage to Israel's standing in the world will remain. I hope this ends. I really do. I hope the ceasefire

holds. I hope we're at the beginning of something new. I really do. But it does not end the moral stain of how Israel conducted this war, even if you view Hamas as being responsible for it, which I do, even if you believe Hamas could have ended the war sooner. They prolonged it. I believe that. Absolutely. The fact that Israel was justified in conducting this war in defending itself and the back that it had an achievable goal of releasing the hostages is not like a a logic force field that allows you to to ignore the brutality of how they conducted it in the collective punishment they inflicted and that stain will continue and getting rid of Benjamin Netanyahu be part of how you move past that but it won't be enough because Israel will be held responsible for how for what

it did and like how Israel moves forward I don't know but part of it will be moving past Benjamin Netanyahu in the politics he represented. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, the accountability question is really two parts. It's like, Netanyahu has never taken any accountability for October 7th. He has demanded from others. He has fired others, but he is like deferred on his own. He said, oh, after the war, that's when we'll figure it out.

Well, it's after the war, buddy. Like, let's see if you're going to investigate yourself. But also, you have to ask, like, if a country and a leader can get away with killing 67,000 more people in a conflict like? this, periodically starving an entire population, committing war crime after war crime of being accused of genocide by countless scholars, like, what does it say if they just get away with it? Like, what is left of, like, international laws and institutions that are supposed to prevent this kind of stuff or achieve some measure of justice? If someone like BB Netanyahu faces no accountability, maybe is reelected, gets a pardon because the president of the United States

stands before the Knesset. And basically, Trump's argument there is like so perfectly Trump. It's like what you got yours, right? You got your security in exchange. He got some cigars and some bribes. Like, what's the big deal? He just got his beak wet. He just got his beak wet. Yeah. And the like the ugliness of just like it's like I'm here. I'm in a good mood. Like Benjamin Andrews has been on my side. I've been on his side. You got to let these kinds of things go. We're just doing business here. Just a guy doing business. And by the way, like, uh, uh, uh, he's not been convicted. He's not, you know, in the United States, the pardon power is different.

He can be, he can be, you can pardon someone preemptively. Now, that is an attack on the rule of law, but it's something that's happened to your idea. Like, it would be unprecedented for an Israeli president to pardon some, a prime minister, before he's even been convicted of a crime. Yeah, it would be disgusting. So, okay. And also that. So let's look and turn.

We don't make this all about American politics, obviously, just an enormous moment. in the world. But I'm curious, like, we've seen this huge shift in U.S. support from Israel over the last two years, especially within the Democratic Party. Does Gaza, does a ceasefire in Gaza change that? Is this inexorable? Are there too many broader structural challenges like the need for a Palestinian state sort of standing in the way? You know, it's not, it mirrors what we were just talking about. The way Israel conducted this war has done so much damage to its standing amongst American Jews among the American left. You see it in the way in which anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism have a blurry line between them in a way that is very disconcerting for Jewish

people, especially Jewish people who are appalled by what Israel has done in this war. At the same time, you see groups like the Anti-Defamation League use anti-Semitism like a cudgel against people with legitimate criticism. And all of that has turned what was an issue that was pretty broadly felt, which is support for Israel's right to exist now kind of in question. And I don't know what happens from here. But I do think it starts with American Jews being able to hold two ideas in their mind at the same time, which is that Israel absolutely has a right to defend itself, but it does not have a right to commit atrocities. And that an Israel that does not protect human rights of Palestinians is in Israel that is not safe, an Israel that is an Israel that is a pariah.

And so that if you believe in Israel's right to exist, if you want to have a safe and prosperous Israel, you have to advocate against its conduct of the war and in going forward a different kind of leadership in that country. And so that's where I'm at on this. But I do think like a lot will depend, I think, on what happens in Israel and also what happens with any plan to rebuild Gaza. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of talk about Israel's political problems. the U.S. is purely partisan, but I think it's more generational. Yeah. I think it's like people under 40. They've only seen Bebeen and Yahoo running the country.

And they've seen him his corruption, his racism, the fighting in Gaza, the lack of accountability. And they wonder, why does the U.S. have to funnel arms to this country? Why am I paying to bomb a kid in the Gaza Strip? Like, there is an older generation of Americans that was raised at a different time in a different era, a different generation of leaders. leadership in Israel that views Israel very differently. It's like when you'd always hear Joe Biden talk about gold of my ear and this like, you know, beacon of democracy and hope in the Middle East and this, you know, like the story of this like mighty little country, right, like fighting off its opponents. But I think younger people like just see it very differently. And I think, you know,

you mentioned it earlier, like the tactic like the ADL and other groups have taken to try to silence debate. I think it's been really damaging. I do too. And by the way, like, if it's alienated to me, like, I'm sorry, but I'm like, I got to be in the place where you're going to want, like, I feel like I am extremely critical of Israel. I am extremely critical of people that are knee-jerk, anti-Israel, and who's, and who do not see enough of a distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. I have, like, pretty clear in believing Israel has a right to defend itself. I hold Hamas responsible. And then I see the way in which they go after Mamdani in a completely bad faith way and how when he goes and meets with Jews, it's not the right Jews

for the ADL. I see a lot of shit like that. I just think it's counterproductive because it turns people who have legitimate, it makes opponents of people who have real and valid questions about Israel. And you want those people, right? Including, by the way, a lot of Jews, lot of Jews, especially younger Jews, who do not understand how their parents feel about it, do not understand this. And there is a lot of talking past each other, right? Because they go to the story of like Israel founded, you know, and that it is a bastion of Jewish safety in the aftermath of the Holocaust. It is a place where Jews expelled by Arab countries came to find safety. But that is an old story. It's an old story. And an old story about Israel's founding because of

The Holocaust is not going to help us any more than an old story about how Israel is some colonialist project is going to help us. Like, where do we, what, how does Israel conduct itself now? How does it defend itself in a way that, that upholds a basic defense of human rights now? Like, that, that to me is, is, is what matters. Yeah, and just, like, doing this broad brush thing, we're telling everyone that, like, all anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism is wrong. Or, like, passing BDS laws across the country that, uh, essentially,

make speech illegal. Like why is it that people like you and I can be more critical of the U.S. government than the Israeli government in certain settings? And like, by the way, it's not just you and me like having this conversation. It was Charlie Kirk and Megan Kelly had nearly an identical conversation about their frustration with being screamed at or called anti-Semitic if they didn't agree with, you know, 100% of like Netanyahu's line. And I just think like that's such a bad way to do politics. You're just going to turn people off. Yeah. And by the same token, like there is a lot of like kind of uh i hear it all the time it's a very easy thing now to be like oh you know it's because they're in the pocket of apex apex often described as kind of

foreign involvement in the u.s when it's funded by american jews becomes about like jewish money and like they're like clearly that is a that is a threat of anti-semitism that exists on the right as well that i think is really dangerous and at the same time like the because uh being anti-israel became almost like a shibboleth in certain parts of the left, it became so kind of almost casual for people to be chanting things like from the river to the sea and other kind of expressions that while those who say them might claim are not violent or don't speak to violence, it is kind of a like a kind of abstracted idea that just that if you were to follow to its conclusion would require what, all Israelis to leave a massive, terrible and violent conflict, whatever it

be, but it's like, Israelis are there. The Palestinians are there. They all deserve dignity, peace and human rights. And like everything after that, you know, I don't know. Yeah, it's just feels like the two-state solution is very far off. And for all the concern, you know, you and I might have about criticism of Israel vying anti-Semitism or tropes. Then you also have Donald Trump speaking for the Knesset, giving Miriam Adelson a shout out, talking about how she's worth $60 billion and how she was the one who got him to move the embassy or to think about the goal on heights and you're just like oh my god this is like we're on another planet right now by the way also says to her like i don't know if she likes israel or america more right which by the way like

like the and i know it's like well you know he he's because because don't rump is on the right and kind of seen as like an ally of nan yang he can make jokes that are basically about dual loyalty which is like i i don't care what he means or what he thinks i don't care like like that is it's correct that's fucked up yeah it's really bad okay well good healthy god As a section from us. We are going to take a turn, though, because Trump, he's over there playing peacemaker in the Middle East, but back at home, he's pressing ahead with sending troops into our cities and having ICE unleashed violence on immigrants and protesters. On Saturday, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that National Guard troops could remain federalized in Illinois, but they maintain for now a lower court's ruling that blocks the troops from being deployed to Chicago streets. But if Trump's plan was to inflame tensions here, he is succeeding.

The Times had a great look at how things have escalated just in the past month to the point where agents, and tactical gear are firing tear gas and projectiles at reporters and peaceful protesters, including notoriously a pastor. A federal judge imposed new temporary rules on force last week, but it's not clear that they're taking hold. On Friday morning, an employee of the Chicago TV station WGN, woman who is a U.S. citizen who is not part of the news department, was tackled and pinned to the ground by massed border patrol agents during a terrifying neighborhood raid that was caught on video. But this might not all be enough for Trump, as J.D. Vance suggested to NBC's Kristen Welker on Sunday.

Are you seriously considering invoking the Insurrection Act? Well, the president's looking at all of his options. The problem here is not the Insurrection Act or whether we actually invoke it or not. The problem is the fact that the entire media in this country cheered on by a few far-left lunatics have made it okay to tee off on American law enforcement. So the media is the problem, love it, not the troops in the streets. it's um there there is a there is a point that he's making that i do like there is this strange thing that seems to happen where trump does some kind of escalation he is just sending troops into portland or chicago he's uh trying to defy court orders by kind of getting around the order

by getting troops from california to chicago and texas to portland whatever he's trying to do meanwhile you've got mass ice agents on the streets they are backed up by uh uh uh uh uh uh members of the military, this like unprecedented effort against the wishes of, of state and local leaders. And then all of a sudden the question is, but, but is he going to do the insurrection act? What about the insurrection act? It's going to do the next one? What about the next one? As if like that's the most important question. Like, Vance isn't wrong about that. That isn't the most important question. Whether or not he invokes the Insurrection Act to send troops into American cities or continues to have American troops on our streets, protecting

ice, like both are very bad, both are very dangerous. Why are they wearing masks? Why are are they there? All of these are the more important questions. I think whether or not he does the insurrection act is a pretty damn big escalation though, right? I mean, it's something you have like members of the U.S. military active members conducting law enforcement, like imprisoning people, zip tying American citizens, throw him in jail. Like that'd be, it is an escalation. And he's like, oh, the media is at fault. I think it is an escalation. Of course it's an escalation. I think it's very dangerous. Do I think like members, like you have ICE, which is increasingly a collection of people that are kind of ideologically committed to the Trump project. No doubt. They're scary. It's a

bunch of three percenters and oathkeepers getting recruited and extreme people. And, you know, the U.S. military is a much more diverse group of people who did not sign up to be part of Donald Trump's, you know, urban police squad, which is what they would be. I'm not saying it's not a really serious escalation. I do think it's that what I'm getting at is more this idea that like, oh boy, but the next thing Trump does, boy, that's going to be crazy, right? He's already doing crazy shit. Like, there's plenty of bad happening that he that jd vans can be questioned about and like what we've seen over and over again is trump loves spitballing about the next thing he loves being asked about like are you going to suspend habeas corpus he didn't even know what it was he was like probably

who's he you know like so it's like that that's like i like i'm not i i like come away with this is just we're constantly asking the trump administration officials to spitball on how much worse they're willing to be and the answer is always worse yes they might do it well so the the vibes in Portland are a little different. We got protesters. They're wearing costumes. They're wearing animal suits. There was a naked bike ride. Where do you land on the antics in Portland? Does protesting naked defuse the idea that there's a violent Antifa army? Does it make us look absurd and fringy? Something in between? I don't think Portland's going to do well in the battleground states. I don't really care. Like, naked people on bikes in Portland, you know what? Keep Portland weird, you know? And if it's going to be,

let it's do a thing. Videos of naked people on bikes. everything that points out how ridiculous it is to claim Portland as a city at war. Was the Chicago Marathon this weekend? I think it was. Like the Chicago Marathon, you know, it's like, this isn't, we're not a conflict zone. Yeah, no. And so I like, have at it. Be weird.

As long as you're peaceful, be as weird and freaky as you want to be. Yeah, I think, um, I'm there too. I think if I had my choice between like dressing in a silly costume weird or a fringe, like nudity bike ride weird, I'd go. with the costume because I think Republicans would like nothing more than to spin the naked people on bikes as going for your children or like

whatever the worst version of it is and you know look we don't always have to think like them I'm not scolding anyone for protesting if you're going to protest more power to you credit to you for putting your body out there get in front of some ice agents but I don't want to see your dong either so that's where I am

yeah I guess here's a thing it's like the march of the Pete Buttigiegs will have to take place elsewhere Portland is going to do it its way. Yeah, I, like, I hear you, but like, my, like, it's, it is what is. I'm just saying, like, all things being equal. If I could choose one, I, you know, I choose the Yoshi costume. Yeah, for sure. Let's just hear, though, how later on the show, you're going to hear from Leah about the no king's protests and all the organizing going into them. But here's how Republicans are already

talking about the no kings protests. They have a hate America rally that's scheduled for October 18th on the national mall. It's all the pro Hamas wing and the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, Antifa people. They're all coming out. The terrorist wing of their party, which is set to hold, as Leader Scalese just commented on, a hate America rally. No King's protest, Maria, really frustrating. I mean, this is part of Antifa, paid protesters. It begs the question who's funny in it. Is it Hamas, Antifa? Are we hate in America? It's a confusing. It's a super group. Yeah. I was at the first No King person. You were at the No King protest last time. And it was so inspiring. It really was. It was so moving.

It was a lot of people with American flags, a lot of people out there with their dogs and their kids and their signs. A lot of people who Mike Johnson doesn't care about. Mike Johnson doesn't care about the concerns of people that don't think exactly the way that he does. He doesn't care that millions of people are genuinely afraid for their country, also heartbroken by what they've seen in their country, like genuinely upset, not because they hate America, because they love America. Right. And they're upset about it. And they know better. It's like January 6th was a day of love now, right?

That we're spending that terrorist attack against the Capitol as okay now. But like a bunch of people getting together in West Hollywood holding signs with strollers listening to speeches. Like, give me a fucking break. It's so insulting. It's also like just the way they've defined these terms down, like terrorism pro Hamas. Like terrorism. What are you talking about? What are you talking about?

And it's both ridiculous, but also it should trouble everyone because right now we're like, terrorists are people you kill, right? Terrorists are organizations that need to be disrupted and dismantled and taken down by law enforcement or the U.S. intelligence community or what have you, right? And so, like, that is the kind of slippery slope with that kind of language to Stephen Miller's dreams that worries me. Yeah, we're far down it because it's not just what they're describing, how they're describing this protest.

I talked about this with Leah a bit, but, you know, they're on indivisible, which was founded after Trump to just organize people at the local. level, little chapters of people getting together to figure out how to do their duty is on a list of people, a list of organizations to be investigated. You have Christine Ome at this Antifa roundtable last week saying that that Antifa is just as dangerous as Hamas and MS-13 and Trenda-A-Ragua, right? As they're blowing up boats without any criminal charges or any other other evidence than what they're just sort of kind of reassuring us, they know about the people on these boats, lawlessly.

Yeah, that's the thing. In Venezuela, right, they're saying, okay, if you're part of a drug cartel, now you're a terrorist, which means we can now kill you for suspected drug smuggling. Like, that's the path. And you are an unlawful combatant

from a non-state actor terrorist group of a cartel. It's like, we can kill you from above and then use the footage to make a snuff film that we put on social media because we are murdering, because you're killing us with drugs

as if, like, they're, I don't know, like forcing us to take them at gunpoint. Yeah, it's really bad. I remember the first boat they hit was traveling off the coast of Venezuela, saw a plane above it or something, turned around to go back, then it was struck, and then whatever, the drone or the airplane or whatever, to the second pass and hit the boat again to kill all the people who survived.

And there were so many people on that boat that most experts you talk to think there's no way that it was just drug smugglers, that there's probably also some people, some migrants who are trying to, you know, go to another location from Venezuela on that boat. We're just innocent victim. So deeply, deeply messed up stuff. And we don't kill drugs, drug smugglers. That's a criminal enterprise. You have to arrest people. Interdict the boat. You can capture the boat. Yeah. You know where it is. You have it on video. You know where it is. You have it on video. an accident. It's a system built to keep Americans down. The bank's profit, the creditors

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of attacks on constitutionally protected speech, let's talk about their new rules for reporters covering the Pentagon. So the Pentagon first announced this policy in a memo release on September 18th. That memo demanded that Pentagon reporters agree to submit their coverage to the government for approval before publishing it, including reports about unclassified information, those who did not sign risk losing their press credentials. That did not fly with basically anyone in the press corps. So the Pentagon released a revised version of this memo on. on October 6th, that dropped the language about submitting their coverage to the government in advance, but replaced it with a threat to take away press credentials from Pentagon

reporters who, quote, solicit information that has not been approved for release, which is what we usually call reporting. Love it. It feels like this couldn't be a more obvious First Amendment violation, no? Yeah, I mean, look, Pete Egg Seth hates, he's paranoid about people leaking to the press. He's been on a kind of a warpath about this from the beginning. There's all kinds of reports internally have been worried about who's leaking against him. He kicked out outlets from their offices to be replaced by people like Newsmax and O-A-N.

They also like kind of changed where reporters allowed to walk in the Pentagon so they couldn't go in as many places as if like these reporters were some kind of security threat as if this hadn't been just sort of policy for a really long time. And like a good thing, like just a good thing that, hey, like this is the Pentagon, the home of. of the most powerful military on earth. But guess what? Here, journalists can walk around and ask people questions. Like, that's special about us. That's a beautiful and good thing

about us that they don't appreciate. And so now they're releasing this. Obviously, the New York Times, Washington Post, other outlets you would expect, said no. But so do Newsmax. That they didn't want to sign it. That was earlier today.

Earlier today. They're refusing to sign it because this is an old line. Journalism is everything that's unauthorized. What's authorized is PR. Right? That's what PR.

PR is publishing the stuff they want you to say. Everything else is journalism. And they're not going to sign a document. And by the way, you can take away people's press passes. You can tell them they can't go to the briefing, not even holding the briefings anymore anyway. It's not going to stop these people from doing journalism. They're just going to do it from their fucking phones. Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah. I think they have until October 14th, the reporters do to agree to this policy. So we'll see what happens after that when this comes out. Yeah, so this is coming out tomorrow. When you're hearing this, it's Tuesday, they're until the end of the day today. Yes, exactly. So yeah, it just criminalize it. It just tries to penalize basic news gathering. And I think this is a long-term mistake because there is this anti-war kind of isolationist part of the MAGA movement. They don't want America in foreign wars. They don't want us to nation bill. They don't want the Pentagon to waste money. They don't want service members getting killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, right, faraway places. And my arguments, all those people would be like, okay, so you want a strong Pentagon press corps. Like you, this building is spending a trillion dollars a year. They need more oversight. They need.

more scrutiny or else we're going to see more waste, fraud, and abuse. And I'm like, I personally, like, when I was on the NSC press team, like, I had a lot of arguments with reporters about publishing classified stuff. That range from, like, sitting down with the New York Times and learning that they had a quarter of a million State Department cables from WikiLeaks and just being like, okay, like, guess we're fucked. Or, like, one-off conversations where, you know, you're like, can you please be less specific about how we got that information and just say like reliable intelligence instead of like

intercepted communications or something like that. But when I look back on that, I really think the balance of concern was overly tilted towards national security over and over and over again. And that over classification is still a massive problem that has not been tackled at all. And what these new restrictions will do, like you said, like reporters, they're not going to stop reporting because they can't walk around the hall. But like in totality, it slowly chips away at their media access and their ability to do their job and their relationships in the building. And it's like you said, replacing like real outlets with fake right wing ones. And it's just like right now Pete Heggseth, who was technically a member of the media until like six months

ago, is just mocking them on Twitter. Have you seen this? He's doing like hand emoji waving at them. And like the real threat to national security is what this guy is putting in his signal chats. It's not NBC News. Well, also, it's like you, he, he, in one of these things, the Pentagon doesn't belong to the press. It belongs to the people. And I know that Pete Heggseth doesn't understand that the press is meant to be our representative and getting information. But by the way, like, he needs to be able to tell the story what's happening at the Pentagon. Right. He'll continue to do interviews. And that starts by building trust with major, you know, report news outlets that have the resources still, uh, to, do journalism about what happens in our foreign policy

and what happens in our military. You know, like, every week, it seems like J.D. Van sits down for another interview with a major outlet, like NBC or ABC, and then he gets a question he doesn't like. And he's like, why does this even fucking exist? You don't matter, yeah. It's like you're here, you're here, have you. You're doing it.

You're doing it because like it or not, like you don't, you see value in talking to these people. And like, P can be like waving goodbye. Like, oh, what a tough guy. You don't need NBC. okay. Like you're just doing, you're just doing damage to your ability to lead a department that presumably at some point would like to inform the American people about what it's doing, not just the people that are watching OAN, but everybody. Yeah, it's just so childish and petty.

Speaking to which, by the time you're listening to this, the government will have been shut down for two weeks celebrating its two week birthday. And as is the case with most two week olds, all we're getting is screaming and lots of shit to clean up. Democrats still aren't signing onto the House funding bill. Republicans still aren't negotiating with Democrats on health care premiums, and Mike Johnson won't even bring the house back into session. Instead, they're trying to extort leverage by firing people. On Friday, Grim Reaper Russ vote announced the layoffs of 4,000 federal workers, mostly at Treasury and HHS, and J.D. Vance made this promise during his tour of the Sunday shows. Let's watch. The longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts are going

to be in. And Maria, to be clear, some of these cuts are going to be painful. This is not a situation that we relish. This is not something that we're looking forward to. But the Democrats have dealt us a pretty difficult set of cards. Do you think that the firings are like really putting leverage on the Democrats more than just the whole government? I don't, especially when they like kind of giddily talk about how they're going after Democratic programs and basically explicitly saying its leverage. The bulwark actually covered one set of cuts that is eliminating our government's capacity

to do mental health programs and substance. abuse treatment programs, which is sort of ironic, as we were just talking about, because they're claiming, in order to protect America from drugs, they can kill narco terrorists from the sky, but they're eliminating the programs that have helped reduce opioid deaths, which actually happened from 2023 to 2024, which actually a great thing. I mean, still too many, but a good thing. But now they're decimating the programs that actually help people who are addicted to those drugs. But we only know that because reporters are piecing it together because this is so ham-fisted and haphazard, and they're not really interested in telling us what they're doing.

Everything that they're doing is only underscoring that, while this is a fight over health care, this is an administration that is lawless and doing kind of an authoritarian takeover. It should only make people more resolved to continue holding a line on health care at the very least. Yeah. And the next big inflection point is Wednesday when troops will start missing their paychecks. But Trump announced Saturday that the Pentagon is going to be moving funds around to make sure that there's no gaps in pay. So, like, part of me hears this and I'm like, okay, it's really bad that Trump is doing. this without Congress being involved. The other part of me is like, okay, well, it's good, I guess, that service members are getting

paid, but also Trump is kind of giving up what seemed like what they thought was their biggest point of leverage against Democrats, but I don't know. Where do you come down? I don't know. This seems to me more in the kind of like, like quotidian way in which administrations, during shutdowns and outside of them kind of like blur the lines and kind of move money around semi-legally. like Trump in the way that like you know there was a Congress passed a law that said

after a shutdown people have to get paid what they missed the law is crystal clear and so the OMB signed in 2019 by Donald Trump by Donald Trump yeah and the OMB puts out OMB under Russ vote puts out a memo saying actually the law doesn't say that because if you read this clause a certain way Congress has to actually say to pay people back which doesn't really makes sense because the whole purpose of the law is to make sure people are paid back after shutdown. If Congress has to also say it, then you don't need the law that was passed specifically to do this. It makes absolutely no sense. But they're putting out the draft memo. Why? To intimidate people, to make people think they might not get back paid, to kind of make the shutdown more

painful, to make Democrats feel like they're responsible for more pain. And so like the kind of moving money around to pay troops, fine. Trying to kind of lawlessly figure out ways to hurt people, that is exactly why it was necessary to kind of draw the line on this shutdown. And Republicans keep saying, you know, whatever things we agree to with Democrats, we'll just use the rescission's process to claw back money anyway. So it's like, I don't know what we're supposed to trust from these guys. There's also like a bigger point, which is I feel this in my life. I hear it from others.

I feel like doing this show. This shutdown is just not commanding people's attention the way previous ones have. And I've kind of thought about why that might be. Like part of it is because the drama around whether the government will shut down is a big deal. And then once it's shut down, it's kind of like every day is just the same terrible shit. But also maybe it's because Trump is just kind of like causing chaos in so many other ways. I guess today he just wants to be talking about whatever's happening in the Middle East. And that's for once kind of good news.

But it is notable that like I'm sure it's impacting a lot of people. I don't mean to minimize that in any way. I'm sure there's like government workers listening or like screw you. I'm not getting a paycheck. I'm scared. I'm not dismissing that at all. But in terms of just like the broader media conversation, I just don't know that many people are noticing. Yeah, it doesn't feel like what it would have, it feels like it's less of a like concentrating event than it was in the past. Like in previous shutdowns, it was like that was all the news was shutdown day, whatever, like everything was focused on that. I do think part of this is just like Trump is a chaos agent. There's a lot of

shit happening. You've got, you've got ice, mass ice agents on the streets, like causing chaos. You've got troop deployments. You have what's happening in the Middle East. You have just the, he's charging his political enemies. You look at the list of things. And like, yes, it's not getting as much attention as it used to be. I wonder the same thing, because I do feel it, like, which is, this used to be a bigger deal. I mean, it is true that over the years, they've kind of chipped it. They've, like, they've passed laws to make shutdowns less impactful, right? Like, to allow. certain checks to go out to, like, provide certain capacities. So, like, it has, because it is a, it's a smaller share of the government than what it

used to be. I mean, last, you know, shut down in the 90s, that's where, that's where shit went down. I mean, that, like, that, that's changed the course of history that one in 1998. Yes, that's well said. But to you, add to your list, I do remember that. I do remember that, yeah, add to your list of, um, uh, things that are kind of just not making news that Trump is doing. On Friday, he threatened a 100% tariff on Chinese imports and then gave himself like a, uh, until November 1st to enforce it and then seemingly walked it back. So yeah, this is where it's like constant. It's constant. You never know, you never know like what what was the what was the like precipitating incident to cause him to say this to walk it back. It caused it the stock market to do a dip

and then recover. You wonder who's making money on that. Who's aware he's going to do that? Who's aware that he's going to undo it? Like there's just like oh like he's just like the amount like he's a chaos agent in the markets. And now it's like once again, you know, he sees the, who knows, right? He threatens this thing. He sees the market. He realizes it goes too far. He walks it back. Who knows? And some of it, by the way, like you look at the like Trump in, uh, in this sort of summit that he's called together. And you see all these leaders talking. There was one, uh, moment caught where he's talking to, uh, one of these leaders. And, and that leader brings up meeting with Eric. Oh, uh, Indonesia, right? Yeah, right. Indonesia's leader brings up that he's going to be with it was it with Eric and

Don who are not involved at all in anything government related. They don't touch anything government related. There's no reason that they would need to meet with the head of a foreign state. But yeah, Trump's telling them to go talk to Don. Right. And then you have leaders kind of going up there and saying, God, we got to get this fucking guy the Nobel Peace Prize. He made a joke at Norway's expense, which I thought like he handled it fine. Like it's better than bombing Norway over this. Yeah. But like, it's just also personal. So you just never fucking know. Yeah, everybody he trotted up to the microphone was like, give this man the Nobel Peace Prize. Even I was like, I'm going to give you Israel's greatest prize that's never gone to a non-Israeli citizen.

And then you'll get that other one. I'm like, okay, we get it. Okay, one last thing before we get to love its conversation with Leah Greenberg. If you flew on a plane over the holiday weekend, you may have seen a video of Christy Nome, the Secretary of Homeland Security, playing at TSA checkpoints, blaming travel delays on Democrats. Let's watch. It is TSA's top priority to make sure that you have the most pleasant and efficient airport experience as possible while we keep you safe. However, Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government.

And because of this, many of our operations are impacted and most of our TSA employees are working without pay. We will continue to do all that we can to avoid delays that will impact your travel. And our hope is that Democrats will soon recognize the importance of opening the government. Airports in Seattle, Portland, Cleveland and other places said they're not going to air that video because it obviously violates the Hatch Act, which prohibits you. of federal assets for political purposes. Meanwhile, a separate far more fun, Nome video is making the rounds as well.

Let's watch that one. Our government agents are working without pay. Luckily, my boys at ICE don't mind. They're in it for the love of the game. And how did I find them? By running ads like this. Do you need a job now? Yeah.

Are you a big tough guy? Yeah. Tough enough for the army or police? No. But do you take supplements that you bought at a gas station? Daily. Do you like to use zip ties because people in your life don't trust you with keys? You know it.

Then buckle up and slap on some Oakley's big boy, welcome to ice. I like that Tina Fey. Somehow the accent runs from North Dakota to Alaska. It's sort of like one kind of loose mountain accent. Yeah, it was basically just long nose. Sarah Palin with a hat on. But I didn't see that. You flew over the weekend.

I flew over the weekend. I didn't see that at. Did you? No, I didn't see it. No, but I doubt they would play it. Minneapolis. I feel like Minneapolis. It's such a bastion. Yeah, I flew out of Burbank, which a couple days earlier had had no air traffic controllers on duty. Yeah, in the evening, in the evening, in the evening. Yeah, we talked about it. I'd love it or leave it. For a brief flickering moment,

LAX was the best airport in Los Angeles. It was only those four hours. Yeah, Hannah texted me was like, uh, did you see these reports? Is this true? Yeah. Yeah. My flight was delay getting back here today, but only because a pilot called in sync. So I can't really blame known for that. Yeah. Because it's so, like, it is such a, like, it's a small thing, doesn't really matter. Do I think that, like, you're going to really get people on the line at the airport to say, like, you know what, I am going to change my party registration. Democrats are a bunch of fucking assholes. You know, like, I don't, not really that worried about it, but it's, there's such a, like,

there was a, there was a, like a, a meme going around that said, hey, like, I have a theory. Everybody's 12. And it's like, why are people eating only red meat and franchise? Because they're 12. Like, oh, there's crime. We should put the army on. it, you're 12, you know? And it's like, oh, like, you're mad at the Democrats and you're a head of the Homeland Security. You can make a video and show it to everybody. And you're

really mad. You're going to express it. And you're like, you're 12. You're supposed to be a fucking adult. Yeah. It's one of the things where it's like, it is, we're from the before times before Trump. It is a shocking violation of the law for people who went to like worry about the Hatch Act and try not to violate it and like actually be concerned about these kind of things. To see that video, it just like makes you realize that everything, you know, it's just absurd. I know I'm kind of of the view that propaganda works in aggregate in the long term and that like videos like thus and that all the other ways that government officials are just blaming Democrats through government channels and official communications through emails and letters to

workforces. Like I worry that's up. I do too. I do too. Jokes aside. But it's it's there's something about like Mike Johnson saying it's a hate America reality or Christy Noem feeling like, you know what, I'm going to make a video where I blame the Democrats. and I'm going to play it at all the airports, right? Like, there, it's, I didn't realize how important, like, forbearance was, right? Like, we talk about the way in which Republicans are shameless all the time and how powerful shame was as a way of preventing terrible politics. But there was also just this idea that, you know what, like, I may be mad, I may be angry. I might fight Democrats annoying.

I may want to beat them. But I'm just going to, like, I can be a little bit reserved. And I cannot say everything and go all the way because we're sharing a country. And there'll be a Democrat in this job one day, and presumably I would rather them not attack Republicans on the screens while you're waiting to go through the airport. That said, when you're waiting on line at the airport and you see the person responsible for the line, I don't think it's always helpful. That's a really good point. I know. Like when Eric Garcetti used to welcome me at L.A.X, it'd be like, we got to get rid of this.

I was like, if you're responsible for this airport, we got big problems. Yeah, I have the same exact thought about no one. It's like, ma'am, you don't want to be seen in this setting. This is not good for anybody. Okay, in a second, we're going to get to love its interview with Leah Greenberg. But before we do, we want to tell you about some big news. Cricket Media Reads is releasing our next book on January 27, 2026. It's called Hated by All the Right People, Tucker Carlson, and The Unraveling of the Conservative Minds by an incredible journalist named Jason Zengrily.

You know him from New York Times Magazine, lots of other places, just one of the best in the business. The title comes from Tucker himself. When he visited Hungary in 2021, he praised Victor Orban for being hated by all the right people. And Jason wanted to write this book about Tucker because, you know, the key to understanding the Trump age is understanding how we as a society stop seeking truth and started seeking outrage. And Tucker's path from, you know, one of the best magazine writers or long-form writers in the business to what he is today kind of traces that path. So it's an excellent book. I've read it. You will all love it.

And you can pre-order your copy of hated by all the right people at crooked.com. slash books. Also, California voters on November 4th, you'll vote on Prop 50. It is a ballot measure to stop Trump from power grabbing extra seats in the U.S. House and hanging it onto a federal trifecta. You've heard power grabbing as a verb like that before. Until I read it. The best way to make sure Prop 50 passes is to vote yes on November 4th and to make sure everyone you know knows about it. So Vote of America's hosting an event on Wednesday, October 15th at 8 p.m. We'll get you up to speed on how to take action. You don't have to live in California to join. All you need to do is go to Votesaveamerica.com slash prop 50. This is paid for by Votesaveamerica. Votesave

com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. Also not paid for by any candidate or candidates committee. I have a limited series that is on the love it or leave it feed in today's attention economy. The only thing worse than being hated is being boring. That is true in politics. but that is because it was true in reality TV. That is the world reality TV built. I love reality TV. It is my escape. It is also clear to me that you can't understand politics in this moment

if you do not understand how to win at Housewives. In this series, Love It or Leave It Presents, Bravo, America. I am sitting down with icons of reality TV. I had an amazing conversation with Dorinda Medley, with Parvety Shallow, who is one of the greats of Survivor. I talked to Olivia Plath, who was on, welcome to Plathville about what it was like to escape a Christian fundamentalist community.

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you'll hear Love's conversation with Leah Greenberg from Indivisible about the No Kings protests. Pod Save America is brought to you by Bombas. Follow us here. Kids are back in school. Vacations are over,

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your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash crooked, code crooked at checkout. Joining us now, she's the co-executive director of Indivisible, one of the organizations behind this weekend's No King's protest. Leah Greenberg, welcome to the pod. Great to be here. So the last No King's protest was on June 14th. It was time to counter Trump's military parade. Several million people turned out. It was genuinely surprising just how much enthusiasm there was. Maybe that is a poor reflection on me. I don't know how surprised you are by the turnout. but what led to the second No King's protests? What is this organized around why this weekend?

Well, one of the things that we heard and we felt from the first No King's protest was, you know, people needed to be part of a movement. People came out in the numbers that we saw because there is growing understanding in this country that something extraordinarily dangerous and threatening is happening. And there is a need for broad, popular mass defiance of that. And so over the summer, as we have seen these repeated escalations, right, the passage of the one big beautiful bill that rips health care away from so many people, the attacks on D.C., on Chicago, on Portland, the ways in which this administration is escalating attacks on the First Amendment across civil society. You know, we've been feeling collectively that it's time to bring together again,

everybody across the country who will take that stand against authoritarianism, against corruption, against attacks on our neighbors. And so, you know, it was an understanding. that we had a moment that we could collectively build on and we had a frame that we could collectively build on and that it was going to be important to continue to foster that sense of mass popular opposition and defiance as the administration tries to consolidate control. So you've been getting a lot of free press. Mike Johnson called it a hate America rally.

Why do you hate America? I mean, look, this is honestly, it's ridiculous. and it's sinister in equal parts. I think it's notable that he called it a hate America rally because he can't bear to say out loud the name of the actual rally, which is no kings, which is about the most American sentiment in the entire in the world. Personally, as somebody who led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance, about 100,000 people in Philadelphia at our last rally, it was a little bit of a surprise to hear that.

But I think we can also be really clear about what's happening, right? Which is that, one, they are flailing, they are panicking, they don't have a mess. on why they are shutting down the government to stop people from getting health care. So they're just trying to grab for anything they can. And two, they're trying to legitimate and set up for the broad attack on civil society that Donald Trump and Stephen Miller have very clearly signaled that they are going to wage. Yeah. So speaking of that, we've seen this effort to tie a whole bunch of peaceful, progressive organizations to a nefarious organization called, they're calling Antifa, claiming that all these disparate groups are connected and inciting terrorism and

violence. That is obviously chilling. And then it turns out Indivisible is specifically named as one of the groups potentially being investigated. What was your reaction to that? And are there any signs that this is anything beyond just something in a document somewhere inside the White House or the Justice Department? Well, look, I think we have to understand it first in the context of the authoritarian playbook, which is that across a bunch of different fronts in society, they push as hard as they can and they claim powers that they don't have. And they see whether people allow them to do it, allow them to get away with it, whether they fold in advance. And we saw that in how they interact with businesses. We see that in how they're interacting with higher education and law firms. We're seeing that now and how they're interacting with civil society.

And so I was not surprised as they started to escalate. I have not been surprised that they are targeting a bunch of the entities that they perceive as mobilizing their political opposition. And it's also really clear that this is a moment when collectively we have to stay rooted in who we are, what we value, what we stand for, and say, we are simply exercising our First Amendment rights. there is a first amendment right to protest this government and the harm it is doing to regular Americans. And, you know, whether or not they're going to try to assert powers that they don't have to wage this unconstitutional crackdown, somebody's got to stand firm and say, we're here and we're going to exercise our rights. And the best way to push back against this kind of unlawful, unconstitutional overreach is more free speech. So yes, I hear that. But they could try

to hurt organizations with process, right? Indivisible is an incredible organization that popped up in response to Donald Trump. And it has mobilized people and it has engaged people entirely peaceful in every way humanly possible. But that wouldn't stop them from trying to put the government on organizations they don't like. And I am genuinely curious. Like I think that two things can be true. One, you have to be defiant of something like this and not and not treat it, not allow it to change what you're doing. Well, at the same time, organizations on the left need to be ready and buttoned up and figure out how they're going to be prepared for anything that may come.

And I'm just want to understand how you're preparing. Absolutely. Well, I mean, the short version is we take these threats seriously. We prepare in advance. We think about what we need to do, both to make sure that we're a thousand percent intensively clear on our own values, on our commitment to peaceful, peaceful protest and nonviolence that we train and support people all over the country for something like. like No Kings intensively to make sure that they are capable of holding peaceful, joyful events everywhere, and that we're, you know, we're preparing our own organizations in the event of some kind of unlawful or unconstitutional effort to shut down peaceful protest and organized opposition.

So we take it seriously, but we also understand that part of the purpose of this cycle of threats is to throw you off your game. It's to distract you. It's to make you back down in advance and not do things that you previously would have done out of the fear of repression. So a big part of what we are trying to collectively do, both as an organization and as we call for and move forward with the No King's protest, is break that cycle of anticipatory obedience, is say, we have these powers. We have these rights. We are going to continue to assert them. And if you want to stop us, you are going to have to show that you are prepared to do unconstitutional things. And then we will continue to push back. So let's talk about what that looks like, because we've seen millions of people come out at the previous protest. I hope we see the same this weekend. I'll be out there. I think a lot of people at Crooked are going to be out there. We're all going to be. The first time, it was an incredibly inspiring day because you saw all these people showing up for No Kings that was that was aligning with a bunch of unions that were coming out and

that had been protesting with immigration groups that had come out and were protesting. It was entirely peaceful, patriotic. It was a beautiful thing to see. There's two big, big reasons. Big corporations, colleges, law firms, media organizations capitulate to Trump. One, they give him power he couldn't take, right? They are afraid of him and they bent. The other is that they're not afraid of the opposition, that they don't view the vast number of Americans who don't want to live in an autocracy as any kind of political problem they have to worry about. We've seen signs that that can change. There was a lot of pressure on Disney over Kimmel, but for the most part, they haven't been wrong that Trump is a bigger political problem than those that don't like Trump

in terms of consumers and their reaction, how do you make sure, or how do you transform this incredible enthusiasm that you have helped reveal and show, make clear that that exist around no kings, how do we turn that into actual political actions, turn that enthusiasm into specific pressure points and changes? Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that we think about a lot at Indivisible is, you know, we've moved into a stage of authoritarian consolidation. And power moves differently as an authoritarian and starts to take more power. And you have to think not only about your formal political representation, right, your member of Congress, your senators, et cetera, but the other places in your life where you have some leverage, you have some ability to weigh in, your faith institution, if you have one, your higher education institution, if you are a student or an alumni, your workplace, your professional association, the places where you actually, your role as a consumer, the places where you have some power over institution. that are making decisions about whether they're going to enable and go along with Trump or whether

they're going to push back. And so after the first No Kings, we trained about 250,000 people in strategic non-cooperation and how to kind of campaign and target and apply pressure to some of those pillars of society, those institutions that are not your formal elected officials, but that are in fact shaping how power unfolds in this moment. And so we're seeing some of that come to fruition, right? There is more organized campaigning, getting up and running every day as it relates to higher education, bringing together students, bringing together alumni, people pushing back on this effort to get a bunch of institutions to sign a compact with the Trump administration. So we're seeing some of that. I think the Kimmel incident was a really important moment for people in demonstrating our collective power as consumers.

And we're definitely looking at how do we continue to apply that and support it, you know, things like pushing on the target boycott and also figuring out additional ways to use our leverage. And I think we also just have to ask people to collectively figure out how do they push back within their own sphere of influence, right? Who are you? Are you as are you a consumer? Are you an alumni? Are you a member of an institution locally that has some power to push back? What are they doing? What could they be doing? You actually have to figure out how to work that leverage. Yeah, it's interesting. There's like a, there's a vicious circle that certainly Democratic leaders, they just don't have a lot of trust. either morally, right? They're not viewed as sort of morally courageous leaders. It's the truth. And they're not seen as sort of strategic masterminds.

And so they have neither kind of strategic or kind of moral trust. And so people look around. They don't see people doing things. A lot of the times you've helped prove a big exception. And they look up and they don't really trust what they're hearing from above, right? But you kind of, you can imagine a, like a virtuous circle where an organization that produces is something like No Kings can direct people into a specific action. People heard about friends and others and people online canceling Disney Plus. Suddenly, there's something that was happening

organically. And I guess my question is, how do we then, how do we, how do we get that next step, right? Like, how do you, this is our second No Kings protest? I'm very excited about it. How do we then turn this into a, what's the political action? We get this big group of people to take next. Yeah. Well, first of all, I wouldn't, I wouldn't overlook the value of continuing to push Democrats to stand up and to push back, right? Because fundamentally, we've been on this journey with the Democratic Party over the course of the last nine months where we are trying to move people into a resistance posture. And it has been a work in progress. And also, they are in fact currently, you know, really actually going out on a limb to push back on millions of people

losing their health care, seeing health care prices rise, holding their leverage as it relates to the shutdown, that's actually a huge progress. And, you know, and I think when you get back to that question of how do you move institutions from being afraid, more afraid of Trump than they are of potential consequences for enabling Trump, a big part of that is, is there an opposition party that seems like it's actually willing to use its leverage in the future if it regains power to investigate, to enact consequences for people who went along with this regime of lawbreaking unconstitutional actions? And we've seen. a few of those moments where Democrats really start to say, and there's going to be consequences,

but we need to have more. Because part of how we got here in the first place is, frankly, senior level, senior level MAGA folks did not experience consequences in 2020 after they literally tried to overthrow the government. And so they have correctly concluded that the modern iteration of the Democratic Party is not one that's going to have consequences next time. We have to fix that perception problem. Yeah. And to your point, right, why did we end up in why were Democratic leaders willing to go hard for a shutdown? They did it in part because they felt pressure

from their voters who said, hey, I need to see a fight from you. And to their credit, right, there were a lot of people that were critical, I think, of making the fight about healthcare. There's some people that thought there shouldn't be a shutdown. There's some people that thought the fight needed to be over the entirety of the authoritarian takeover. But they focused on this issue

and it does seem to have Republicans on their heels. That's right. And, you know, look, politics is the art of the possible. And the ability of the Democratic coalition to successfully align around one issue is, it's a step forward. Is it exactly how, you know, if I were in charge of all messaging of everyone, maybe I would do something differently, it doesn't matter. They were actually collectively able to get together around health care. And I think what we've seen over the last couple of weeks is that that was a good gamble. It is breaking through in a way that, in a way that a lot of people were really skeptical. of you have helped put together with a bunch of organizations what is going to be a ton of people patriotic people who love this country and don't want to see what's happening to it continue who are peaceful who are going to show up with kids and with dogs and with signs and then you have republicans like trump and mike johnson and all these other people claiming it's some sort of hate america antifa radical riot there may be places where random people decide to, you know, throw a trash can, set something on fire, right?

Like, they're going to try to use those examples. Or there may be other people that show up to try to turn protests into something chaotic and dangerous, right? How do we respond to that? How do we make sure, like, how do we make sure that everyone understands that the no king's protest is a peaceful action by people wanting to make their voices heard? Well, first, I think we do everything that we can to ensure that they are peaceful actions, right?

and that is training tens of thousands of people in safety and de-escalation and making sure folks have safety plans in place wherever they are to support peaceful and joyful events. So that's the first piece. The second, I think, is pre- messaging this exact playbook, right? It's really clear as Republicans go on the offense against millions of Americans coming out to express their First Amendment rights, that what they are trying to do is create the permission structure for a broad crackdown on civil society. We can see that coming, and we should be saying that right now, right?

That they are collectively trying to put the wheels in motion to support this Stephen Miller vengeful quest to go after anybody who opposes them. So I think we can tell people that story in advance in a way that helps them understand it if and when Republicans put that plan into action. And then finally, I think we all have to just collectively understand that we're in a moment where there are risks on all sides. And the way that we talk about, the way that we talk about that in this country, a lot of times it's about kind of like, should I speak out? Should I do something right now? What we don't talk enough about is the long-term risk of living under a consolidating authoritarian regime, where we are poor, we are less safe, our kids are more likely to be killed by gun violence. We're all more likely to die of communicable diseases because there's no public health infrastructure. Risks to all of us are going up all of the time. And we have to think about it in terms of, you know, what is the path?

What is the collective action that we can take that puts us on a different path for this country? And that is actions like No Kings. And that is actions like coming out this weekend. Leah Greenberg, thank you so much for your time. Everybody get out there this weekend. We will see you out there. It's going to be fun. I'm going to bring a dog or a sign.

It's probably going to be a dog, if I'm going to be able to. That's our show for today. Thanks to Leah Greenberg for coming on. John and Dan will be back with a new show on. Friday. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts.

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