Some More News - Even More News: Grok's Meltdown, Donald Trump's Rampant Corruption, and Ms. Rachel w/Mehdi Hasan

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

Hi. Zeteo's Mehdi Hasan joins Katy, Cody, and Jonathan to discuss interviewing Republicans, Zeteo's new documentary about the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh, Afrikaner "refugees," Ms. Rachel, and Trump's corruption tour of the Middle East.PATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.com#evenmorenews #AfrikanerRefugees #grok Check out at https://shopify.com/morenews ALL LOWERCASE and learn how to create the best retail experiences without complexity.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If you're looking to streamline your audio advertising buys and maximize your revenue, look no further than Triton Digital's Programmatic Audio Advertising Exchange, A2X. The private exchange consists of only licensed broadcasters and top-tier internet radio publishers, assuring the quality inventory and brand safety you can trust. Visit www.tritondigital.com to learn more. Why hello and welcome back to Even More News, the first and only news podcast. My name is Katie Stoll.

Thank you so much, Katie Stoll. Good Eve morning to you. I am Cody Johnston. Thank you for the news. Jonathan is also here. Hi, happy to be here. I'm so glad you're happy to be here. Yeah, unlike every other time.

Yeah, it's beautiful to be here. And oh so glad you're happy to be here. Yeah, unlike every other time. All very happy. Finally. Yeah, miserable to be here. And oh boy, I am so excited. We have a very great guest this week. Mehdi Hassan will be joining us once we get through the holidays and stuff later in the episode. And it's wonderful.

So that's a little treat for you to look forward to in just like five minutes. Anyway, but let's talk about holidays. But first, the important stuff. Yeah, yeah, that can wait. Because Friday, May 16th is National Do Something Good for Your Neighbor Day. Aw.

Bake them a pie, I like that. Bake them a pie, bring their garbage bin to the curb. Block ice from entering their home. All of these are good suggestions. Those are good suggestions. Wasn't there a, I feel like there was a woman on Twitter who at one point was like, I baked my neighbors lasagna because it seemed like they were ordering pizza every night.

And then everyone got mad at them for like assuming stuff about their neighbors. And like it turned into a big, like the word, like one of those like Twitter things, like guys, just let the person Pretty nice to make a fucking lasagna. I think the social trust Fabric of society has fractured enough that if my neighbor just came to me and said here's a pie or here's food I say what what's what's the idea? What are you doing? What do you want?

Yeah, I drop off food all the time. I really should. You've shared such wonderful tales. Like, you know, hard labor with leaves. Oh, yeah, the leaves are a real battle out there, folks. It's no joke. Rake that forest. OK, Saturday, May 17, National Pack Rat Day. I did almost say National Rat Pack Day.

I was waiting for you to say that. Which would be very different. Were you? Yeah, I was like. If that's not a holiday, maybe it should be. But Pack Rat Day, okay. So it's actually not a day in celebration of being a pack rat.

Apparently it's about how bad it is to be a pack rat. Call it Pack Rat Bad Day. Bad Pack Rat Day. Bad Pack Rat. Bad Pack Rat. Brat Rack Pack Day. Brat rack pack day. Brack pack, whatever. Back up. It's tough, there's a fine line.

You know, you're like, I'm ever gonna need this thing. I wanna get rid of it, maybe, but what if I need it? Use your own judgment. Spark joy, my friends, go through it. Spark joy. Have a conversation. You don't need it. It's hard to give this advice though with the whole threat of tariffs and everything's good.

It's so expensive. You might need that stuff. You might need it. You don't know how much they're gonna cost. So use your discretion. Yeah, I would say there's two angles, two angles that can help. The sparking joy, obviously,

and also I would say imagine that like there's like an encroaching fire potentially making you evacuate your home and you have to like sort of look around and be like what's what should I take what should I take take that mindset and then sounds like you're just sharing your trauma from the fire. That's a hypothetical and also that's fine. But then and then sort of like puts you in the mindset of like what do I really need actually like Like, what would I take? What like, and then you're looking at other stuff like, I should just throw that away.

I could, that could burn and I'm fine. You are correct. That is a good way to think about it. Like what is important to you? Or do what you do every week, which is ignore these holidays. Oh, I will probably do that then. You're right.

Yeah. Okay, so now let's introduce today's guest. We have award-winning journalist, bestselling author, columnist for The Guardian and founder of Zateo. We are so excited to welcome Mehdi Hassan. Hello, welcome. Thank you, Katie, lovely to be here. Zateo is now more than a year old.

Congratulations, happy birthday Thank you, Katie. Lovely to be here. Zateo is now more than a year old. Congratulations. Happy birthday. Happy belated. What lessons have you guys learned from building a new media organization from the ground up? So many lessons. Thank you. We did celebrate our birthday. We launched last April, 2024. The main lesson is don't launch a company with four people because it's really hard. And don't launch it in Ramadan if three of you are Muslim because it's really hard.

So we'll never launch another company again with four people in Ramadan. That's the first lesson we learned. The lesson I learned is journalists are not very good at business, so it's good to hire people who know what they're doing and then delegate. So that helped me about six months in. I realized we need a CFO, I need an assistant, which has been very useful because I'm actually better at journalism,

believe it or not, than I am at payroll and HR and- All the business stuff. I'm honestly thrilled to hear every element of that answer because that's how I feel on a much smaller scale. Yeah, you can't do it with four people. Looking at your site and being like, how can't do it with four people. I've been looking at your site and being like, how do they pull it off? They must have a huge team. Four people is too few.

Well, now we have 12 full-time people and about half a dozen contractors, so we're growing rapidly. Jonathan, I'm going to let you ask this next question because you are our resident Miss Rachel expert. Super fan, yeah. Being the only one with a child. I have a two-year-old son, so I've seen Miss Rachel on TV more than any other individual person the last several years. And Miss Rachel's real name is Rachel Accurso. You interviewed

her recently. She is potentially one of the most outspoken celebrities right now about Gaza and the threats that children in Gaza are suffering. She's taken some heat for this. Some groups have come after her. What struck you the most about meeting her in person and did she seem fearful of continued blowback from this? She's a wonderful person. I don't have young children. My children are much older, so I haven't been directly exposed to the Miss Rachel phenomenon. But Jonathan, you're not the first person to say, all I do is watch her in my house. Many parents have reached out to me, including journalists, politicians, ordinary people

saying, wow, I have people in my family who have never watched anything I've ever done. And they're like, wow, you got Miss Rachel? My kids love her. So it's been amazing the response. And I told her this when I interviewed her. I said, look, I've interviewed presidents, prime ministers, world leaders, celebrities. Never have I had a response like this from friends when I said, I'm going to interview Ms. Rachel in a couple of days.

She's huge. 14 million subscribers on YouTube, several million on Instagram. And not just subscribers, people love her. She's in their home every day. She helps their kids learn language. So when she speaks out on the biggest moral issue of our time, the genocide in Gaza, people pay attention and obviously the bad faith people pay attention and realize, oh, we can't

have this person saying this stuff because it's not like a politician or a journalist. We can use our usual tactics to shut them down. So there's been some bad faith attacks. I don't think we should exaggerate them. One thing that the pro-Israel right does so well is imply that they're bigger and more popular than they are when they're not. And therefore, I don't know if you saw New York Times ran a piece this week on Miss Rachel after my interview with her and they quoted some of my interview with her.

But it was, I don't want to call it a hit job per se, but it had a negative bias. The reporter came with his own biases. It was clear that it was, the headline was ridiculous. Why is she, why does she care about this? Well, because she cares about kids being killed. It featured the stop antisemitism account as much bigger than it is. Wild. Well, it was the only quote they had in the piece. I mean, that's what's funny. They go, oh, some people say she's antisemitic and funded by Hamas. Ridiculous suggestion.

And the only source that the great New York Times with all its journalistic and ethical standards, they found an anonymous right wing pro-Israel website. No one knows who runs it, no one knows who funds it. And they stuck it in there to go, hey, they say she's funded by Hamas, which was insane. And then they quoted one single Jewish teacher when many, many Jewish Americans love Miss Rachel and agree with her on the violence in Gaza. So the whole thing was absurd from the Times, but I'm glad she sat down with me because you watch that interview, Zateo.com, sorry for the plug, watch the interview at Zateo.com and you will see she's a very genuine, God-fearing, loving mother of two children who, yes, I think she is worried about her own safety because people are viciously

attacking a children's educator on YouTube. And children's educators on YouTube are not used to being attacked. I am, You guys might. She's not. Especially for speaking out for children. Like, just the framing of, like, why is she, why does she care? What does she do for a living? That's the answer to your question. It's such a simple... Yeah, there's people who say, well, she should stay in her lane. This is her lane. Literally, like, children, early years education is her lane. So when she sees children in Gaza...

By the way, she's not going out there like saying, okay, how do I jump on the anti-Israel bandwagon? Kids in Gaza are literally DMing her on Instagram, and I swear to God, I saw it with my own eyes, she responds to every child individually. I saw it with my own eyes after we finished taping, she made videos for the kids of every member of the team in the studio, she cares.

So if kids in Gaza are messaging you saying, Miss Rachel, I watch you, and I've lost my home, I've lost my parents, I've lost my limbs. She met with a child who's lost her limbs, Rahav, who we spoke about. What is she supposed to do? What is she supposed to say? Get lost. I don't want to upset stop antisemitism.com.

Like, it's absurd. She's extremely genuine. And unlike some children's entertainers, you see what she's doing. You look in her eyes and you're like, this is who she is. I mean, her energy was palpable, that same energy, in your interview with her. She's incredibly authentic.

She's very emotional. An incredibly brave person. And it shouldn't, I shouldn't have to say that that's an incredibly brave move. But it is. She's braver, she's braver than most elected congressional Democrats. Let's just be clear. A hundred percent.

Speaking of genocide and Zateo, uh, you have a new original investigative documentary called who killed Shireen. It's about the murder in 2022 of Palestinian American journalists, Shireen Abu Akhla. It's fantastic. I, I watched it last night. It rocked me. I'm not exaggerating that.

I'm disgusted. It's not necessarily a shock, but there is a lot of new reporting in there. I very much encourage everybody to go check this out. Without revealing too much, can you run through some of what you guys discovered through this process? So the film can be watched if you're a subscriber at whokilledshireen.com. It's a Zateo original documentary made with District Bear Films. It's led by Dion Nissenbaum, former Middle

East correspondent for the Wall Street Journal Pulitzer nominee. He did a lot of reporting. He and his team did what the US State Department, the CIA, the FBI, either refused to do or couldn't do. And that is identify the soldier who killed a Palestinian American journalist, a US citizen. Katie, do you remember when Joe Biden said, if you harm an American, we will respond? There's an asterisk on that Biden statement. The asterisk is if Israel harms American citizens, then we just turn a blind eye. Israel has since killed multiple American citizens, including teenagers in the West Bank. But in 2022, they killed Shireen Abu Akhli, an Israeli soldier. First, they blamed it on the Palestinians. Then they said,

okay, it was us, but it was an accident. It was crossfire. What Dayan and his team found out is actually the Israeli narrative is bullshit. They also discovered that there was a cover-up in the Biden administration that knew this stuff, that knew it was an intentional killing, but covered it up in the internal investigations, and they identified the soldier who did it, and the... Fairly easily, might I add. I mean, not to dismiss the work, but it wasn't a long timeframe that you were producing this,

and you got the answer. If we could do it, I'm sure the FBI could have done it, but the problem is the FBI said, hey, Israeli government, can we please go to Janine to check out what happened? And the Israeli government said no, and the FBI said pretty please, and they said no, and the FBI said, hey, Israeli government, can we please go to Jenin to check out what happened? And the Israeli government said no. And the FBI said pretty please. And they said no.

And the FBI said okay, we won't go. That's how much value they place on American citizens when it's the Israeli government on the other side. And of course, this is the Biden administration. Don't even get me started on the Trump administration, which is America first. But again, there is an Israel exception all of the time. And this documentary is really important because the argument that's made in the film, both by people we spoke to and Dion and his team is that if the American government had

put their foot down then, drawn a line in the sand with Shireen, an American journalist killed by Israel, maybe we wouldn't have seen 200 plus Palestinian journalists killed since October the 7th. Israel had that impunity. They saw, hey, we can kill an American and a journalist and get away with it. So why not another 200 Palestinians in Gaza? Right, you're basically giving permission to do what you want without recourse. I think, honestly, so chilling for me. And again, not a shock, but just to see the capitulation

and the fear for some reason as to stand up for an American journalist, American Palestinian journalist, it's shocking. Like you said, you've done many, many, many interviews throughout your entire career. And they're not always gonna be like a Miss Rachel type interview, where you're getting information,

you're getting to a person, and it's more of a conversation, it's less combative. One thing we have talked about on this show for since I can't even remember, since the beginning, is just sort of this inability for so many people in the media to be able to tell a person to their face that they're lying when they're very, very clearly lying. And you're one of the very few journals, I think,

out there that you're able to do interviews and call these things out, these moments out. Part of it is because you seem to have this Rolodex of information ready. And we've always been sort of like, well, if you're going to bring up a quote of somebody that they said, a person like Donald Trump is going to be like, I didn't say that.

So a useful tactic would be to show them the clip, literally like, well, you did say that and here it is. You can't say that. So a useful tactic would be to show them the clip, literally like, well, you did say that and here it is. You can't deny that. Does things like that come to consideration for you when you're preparing for an interview with certain types of people where you know, like, if I asked this, they're going to deny this so I need to sort of be prepared for that denial? Very much so.

Is it funny you mentioned Donald Trump? One of the few times you saw Trump flustered in a debate or in a TV show, do you remember the first Fox presidential debate, the one where he attacked Megyn Kelly afterwards? In that debate, Megyn Kelly and co actually played a montage of his clips in salty water and it was there, the receipts were on screen and he was furious. But yes, that's the way I was trained, that's the way I became a producer and then a journalist. I write about it in my book, I wrote a book called Win Every Argument and there's a whole chapter in there on the importance of preparation, on the importance of having a plan, having a document, having a strategy. If they say

X, I say Y. If they say A, I say B. You almost have a kind of chart plotting out the potential interview. And yes, you do have moments where you want to get ready to kind of corner them. And some people call it a gotcha. I think that's a kind of unnecessarily derogatory term. It's pulling people to account when they're caught lying. The classic example of that, when I was at MSNBC, I did an interview with Vivek Ramaswamy that went a little bit viral where I watched a lot of his interviews beforehand and he was under pressure at the time because he was, I'm anti-woke, I'm anti-Soros, I'm anti-diversity, DEI is bad.

But he had taken a scholarship from Soros family when he was in college and his defense when right wingers attacked him was to say Well, I was poor. I took the money. Why would I turn down 50 grand? And I noticed that he kept saying check my tax returns I didn't have any money at the time so we actually checked his tax returns and I printed them out and highlighted them in yellow and I'm interviewing him and he goes, check my tax returns. I said, they're right here. And you see his eyes narrow and he's standing like, there's a moment, it's his deer in the headlines.

It's a great moment for me as an interviewer because we prepped for this, we planned for this and he walked straight into it. Now, the receipts are important, I think. And too many journalists, they do go into interviews without. There was an interview the other day that Trump did with, who did we, with Welker, Meet the Press, with Kristen Welker, and she was asked, I think, I can't remember what the

stoppage was, but I remember he pushed back on something and she had to quickly, quickly check her notes. And luckily she had that. But a lot of journalists go in without. I don't know if you watched the Terry Moran interview on ABC with Trump, where he said, he's got MS-13, literally that's exactly what I was thinking about. This is what I was complaining about. I was like, someone bring up the picture. Someone show it.

Why did Terry not have the picture? Why did he not pull it up? No, but the opposite, Terry Moran was trying to get out of that. Yeah, let's move on, Ukraine, let's move on. Exactly, I was killing myself. Every time he spoke, it was like nails on a chalkboard. I, in that moment, as Terry Moran would have said, this is the greatest moment of my life.

My children being born is secondary to this moment I have, with Donald Trump telling me that he thinks MS 13 was really written on the knuckles of this guy. I'm going to stay here now. If the rest of the interview doesn't happen, it's fine. We're going to stay in this moment. Right. He does the exact opposite. He's like, no, no, no, I don't want to talk about this.

Trump is digging this hole, and instead of helping him, he's like, no, no, no, I'll get you out of the hole, and we'll go talk about Ukraine, where you're much stronger territory. And at one point he says, instead of saying you're lying, Cody, to go back to your point, or you're wrong, he says, let's agree to disagree. Huh? We're gonna agree to disagree on whether up is down, black is white, hot is cold, whether the sky is blue. No, you don't agree to disagree

on demonstrably false statements. It feels so cowardly. What are you afraid of? Like, why are you there? No, he was 100% scared. I mean, I would be scared too, but like, take your shot while you have it. That's the thing, cause there's,

he even said, I think in that interview, like, you know, I don't even know who you are, but I'm giving you a chance or whatever. So like anytime you're going to interview, especially him, know that that's it. You will never talk to this man again in your entire life. This is the moment you have. That's how I approach every interview, to be honest,

because otherwise you do have an access issue. Which I sympathize with some of the Sunday morning anchors who pull their punches because I get it. They need to get big guests on their Sunday shows or the whole concept doesn't work. If you're too tough on Lindsey Graham on Sunday on Face the Nation, he ain't ever coming on Face the Nation again, and you need Lindsey Graham to give you your quotable, quotable Republican.

You don't need Lindsey Graham. Imagine needing Lindsey Graham for anything. But anyways. Well, he's going to say something. My position is, look, I interviewed John Bolton. It was one of my first interviews after joining NBC. It was a big get. I had only been on air like a month.

No one really knew me. He didn't know who I was. And I interviewed him and I pushed him obviously on Iraq and his support for the MEK. And I brought the receipts. He got super annoyed. He got annoyed to the point where he said, well, I only gave you 20 minutes and 20 minutes is up and I'm done. First of all, any interview says the time's out is like running for the hills. It's really embarrassing. But B, it wasn't. It was 14 minutes gone. I had a person in my ear giving me time. It's not 20 minutes. We actually still have five minutes left. But the point was, I know that John Bolt

was ever going to do another interview with me and I'm fine with that. You got the one. That's all you need. I don't think Donald Trump's's ever gonna do another interview with me, and I'm fine with that. You got the one, that's all you need. Yeah, I don't think Donald Trump's ever gonna do another interview with Jonathan Swan, but Jonathan Swan did the best interview ever of Donald Trump, the only solid interview in four years as president. Is there anybody in the administration now who you're like,

I wish, I just want? Because they've got more so than the first term, just like all these freaks and all these blatant liars. JD Vance is a different category of liar than Donald Trump is a category of liar. Elon Musk lies in a different way. Yes. Stephen Miller is a very prepared liar. Is there anyone who like... I don't know if you see Miller on cable, he just shouts very loudly. Oh, yeah. I prefer to avoid the freak shows because I don't actually value... I like to be back Ramaswamy and doing that interview because whatever you think about the guy, he's not dumb.

And I think the dumb folk, like as much as people think I enjoy this, shooting fish at the bottom of the barrel, whatever the phrase is, it's not enjoyable to me. I actually prefer a challenge, someone who's interesting, prepared, back and forth, not some freak show. Like our interview RFK would be insane.

So I would probably avoid the freaks. And if I had to interview someone and they agreed, I mean, JD Vance is obviously attempting target he came after me on Twitter and ran away when I asked him some questions. I probably think Marco Rubio, I think Rubio now is the Secretary of everything. He's responsible for a lot of shit. He's enabled a lot of Trump's worst instincts and excesses. Trump may anoint him as his heir weirdly, despite the fact that Rubio questioned the size of Donald Trump's penis live on television. I think there's a lot to talk to Rubio about,

how his views on Trump changed, how his views on USAID changed, what he thinks about Russia and Zelensky in the Oval Office when he was sinking into the couch. Just generally, what about, I mean, number one reason to talk to Marco Rubio, he is at the forefront of this administration's assault on the First Amendment. It is Rubio who is personally signing off on every student who is having their visa

removed, having their deportation done because they wrote an op-ed or said something Rubio didn't like. He is literally the single biggest threat to free speech in modern American history, Marco Rubio. And Ksenia Petrova, right, who has not spoken about Israel and Gaza, I don't believe. They think that Putin just wants her back, the scientist at Harvard. But anyway, yes, they're canceling visas left and right. She had a frog or something in her luggage that she didn't declare. Yeah, frog embryo.

Frog embryo, some bullshit. Frog embryo. Frog embryo. Some bullshit. Frog embryo. Okay. For science. Okay. While we still have you, we're going to go through some stories that we've got going on this week.

Jonathan, what's first up for us today? Well, this was happening when we recorded on Monday the Afrikaners 59 white people from South Africa that the administration considers refugees despite canceling the refugee program, the people from Afghanistan, Haiti, Nicaragua, et cetera. Because Trump in his own words says that they are fleeing a genocide. They're not. Look that up or ask Grok, we'll get into that. But now the refugee program is gone. But any white

person, I guess, from South Africa who wants to come to the United States with refugee protected status can do so. This is such a multi-layered story. There's so many Trumpy things about this story. I don't even know where to begin. First off, he's always been obsessed with white immigrants, right? Put aside South Africa. In his first term, we always remember shithole nations, right? He was talking about African countries, Haiti. People forget the other part of that leaked conversation. It wasn't just shithole nations. It wasn't just why are people coming here from shithole nations. The corollary to that from Trump was why can't we have more people from Sweden, right? He made that very clear that he wanted blonde-haired, blue-eyed white people to come into the United States of America.

So it's always been a racial thing for him. And the whole debate is Trump or racist, like anyone who still thinks he's not racist, like insanity. You can go back to the 1970s and the DOJ case from Nixon about him and his dad not renting to black people. You can go all the way through Central Part Five. You can go through to Muslim ban and very fine people and send them back to where they came from, Ilhan Omar and AOC.

Like the guy is, if he's not a racist, nobody's a racist. But this is like the cherry on the cake. This is the racist cherry on the white cake. No refugees can come into the country except the white fake refugees. The argument is they're fleeing persecution and genocide. By the way, we finally got Donald Trump to say genocide, it's not about Gaza or even Ukraine, but about the fake one in South Africa. Of course, a lot of this comes from Elon Musk.

Let's be clear, there's a Musk angle to the story. Musk has been obsessed with the idea of white genocide. You can take the boy out of apartheid South Africa. Can you take apartheid South Africa out of the boy? He's obsessed with his old country and they're being mean to me because I'm white. He has filled Donald Trump's ears with this. Tucker Carlson, again, people forget in the first term, laid the groundwork for this on

Fox primetime. He talked about white genocide and what was happening to white farmers and Trump then tweeted immediately about it that night. So a lot of this has been festering, they've been laying the groundwork, they've been kind of watering the soil to do this. And second term, they're just going all out with no shame and no excuses. I saw a press conference where Trump was asked by a reporter, like, how come? What about other countries where people are persecuted? And he just dodged it and talked about, oh, I don't care about their skin color, but these people are being

treated very badly. I actually think the issue is not whether there is a white genocide or not. Like, obviously there's not. We can talk about that separately. But the point is, even if there was, how do you justify only allowing one group of people from one country and, as you said, Jonathan, literally ending the refugee program in this country. Not the people crossing the southern border, just for people watching who don't understand how this works. The actual UN vetted refugee resettlement program, where the UN goes, checks everyone out, says these are legitimate bona fide refugees, we're going to send them around the country

and every country takes their fair share. That one is the one he shut down. So this is the problem now. It is like there's no other explanation for this other than racism. Like there's literally none. You know and I know there is no argument that even the most ardent Trump supporter can offer that explains why these white folks

from South Africa are coming in. I foolishly, and I do mean foolishly, keep hoping that there is some sort of line, some sort of moment where people are like, wait a minute, I see it. Because, and there isn't. There's no frog in boiling water. There's nothing.

It's, it's... Or frog embryos. Oh, it's not, it's not a frog embryo. It's not unbelievable, but it feels like it should be. And there are elements of this story that are funny, which we're about to introduce, which is the grok of it all. But at its core, this is deeply, deeply... Oh, it's so obvious and so, yeah.

Disturbing, upsetting, wrong. The only, I think I mentioned this earlier in the week, like the only thing I've seen from the Trump side of it all is like, so like, you want all these other refugees here, but you don't want the white refugees here? You're racist. Like, it's literally just reverse racism. It's all they have. Which is why I said we shouldn't get bogged down on whether it's a genocide or not. I'm saying

take the white folks from South Africa. Fine, bring them all in. But what about the rest of the folks? How do you justify not allowing them in? And look, it's South Africa. Again, if you wrote this in a Netflix writer's room, they would say, don't be silly. Yes, Trump gets re-elected and to prove he's not racist his party endorses the neo-Nazis in Germany and then they get white-truth Africans to come into America. Like you cannot make this shit up it's beyond parody. After saying that all the Haitians are eating people's pets in Ohio. By the way what happened about that? How can we never talk about that? No update. It's almost like it wasn't true. I asked JD about it every couple of weeks and there's no update on that. JD's not getting back to you on that?

He's not getting back to me. He's not responding. Maybe he just stopped eating the cats and dogs once Trump was inaugurated. He's busy getting humiliated by the Catholic Church, I think, once every few weeks. He's too busy to be dealing with you, Cody. We got to talk about Grok briefly,

because for about two or three hours yesterday, whenever anyone would ask Grok, which is Twitter's AI thing, and you can ask it stuff anytime, at Grok, is this true? At Grok, what's the weather tomorrow or whatever? It'll reply and for about two to three hours, it replied to everything with white genocide, farm attacks and kill the boar is a racist chant that is from South Africa against white people. However, courts and experts attribute these to general crime, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It would soften at the end, but no matter what people were asking, it would reply, white genocide. And then all those tweets got deleted after a few hours. It's very clear that someone programmed it to respond to queries with this information. We didn't actually say that. Did they do a bad job though? Did they try to do something? Someone programmed it to respond to queries with this information. We didn't actually say that. Did they do a bad job though? Did they try to do something, but are they incompetent?

And they couldn't do the thing they tried to do? It would appear that they said, respond to queries with blank. I've missed this. Have they given an explanation for it? Oh, I don't think there's been any official statement. There's no press room. But the explanation is clearly that they were trying to get Grok to say white genocide.

There's no way.. But the explanation is clearly that they were trying to get Grok to say white genocide. There's no way. It says, quote, I was instructed by my creators at XAI to address the topic of white genocide in South Africa. I mean. So I will say, I'll take that with a grain of salt, because it seems like, with all the available information, the obvious assumption is, yeah, they instructed it to talk about this, and they did a bad job,

so it brings it up all the time. It is also the big shit up there. But they instructed it to talk about this and they did a bad job, so it brings it up all the time. It is also the mix shit up thing. But they were trying to rig the AI. Yes, exactly. But Grok's explanation seems like a sort of easy thing for an AI to do, like, oh yeah, it is this. And then it's sort of guessing what it was told to do.

I don't know, but it's obvious that that is exactly what happened. It's chilling. It's very, very, yeah. it was told to do. I don't know, but it's obvious that that is exactly what happened. It's chilling. It's very, very, uh, yeah. It's that combination of like this malicious intent and utter incompetence that marks everything. But also the gullible audience. There are millions of people on Twitter who will treat grok like, you know, the divine final word and they will believe this shit. And this is a problem we live in today. The biggest threat to our democracy is a bunch of ignoramuses getting information from the wrong place.

It's interesting though, because the Grock, I so resent Musk for making us talk about this AI named Grock like this, but we're going to. So when Grock talks about this, he also does say generally the truth, which is the interesting thing. I've seen at least a lot of people be like, Grok, is this true? Not just about the white genocide, but about other stuff. Where like, it's like, yeah, Grok is pulling from information. No, it's been very critical about Musk. Have you seen the screenshots of when Grok is asked about who spreads the most misinformation on Twitter?

And like, Musk will come up, who's been, has Elon Musk been community noted? And they'll say, yeah, one of the highest community noted people. So I've seen that, and that must piss off Musk and he must be rigging the system. Just like, remember, remember community notes itself when it was catching Musk out, he said, oh, it's being gamed by foreign governments. We must work on community notes.

Like that's who he is, thin skinned child. But the fact that this is all new for us, we're all, for society in general, how we interact with this and it's learning and growing and I don't know, they can work out those bugs where... Oh yeah, they'll be able to do it better the next time. And then the other point I had into what you've said, Mehdi, the amount of people online that will just take it at face value immediately, was last week, the week before that piece about all of the college students exclusively using chat GBT.

And how huge of a problem this is we are creating a society of people incapable of parsing fact from fiction. We're outsourcing our critical thinking is what we're doing. And we have a Department of Education that's run by a former WWE executive who's trying to shut it down. And the conspiracy theorist in me is like, OK, why would you want a Department of Education if you are Donald Trump and the Republican Party?

Education is a threat to you. And we're going to use public school funds for private schools and homeschooling, and the whole system is going to crumble. And I think there's a number of college papers being turned in today that mention white genocide because they were not proof read when they asked Grok to write the paper. I'm sure it's happened. We should talk a little bit about Trump's Middle East trip. He's been all over the place. Saudi Arabia, Doha today, he met with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharah and agreed to lift sanctions on the country,

which Trump said he was doing as a favor to Mohammed bin Salman from Saudi Arabia. And it came the day after that Syria suggested that a Trump Tower be built in Damascus. But whatever, that's not- That's unrelated. You're just saying a bunch of random stuff at the same time, to try to weave your little narrative that there's something else going on. I do the weave, it's true.

Mm, the weave. I don't even know what to say about it. It's just like everywhere he goes, it's like he's complimenting everyone. There's blatant corruption and quid pro quos out in the open. I mean, him and MBS are best friends right now. He likes him almost too much. I mean, MBS gave Jared Kushner $2 billion

after they left office last time in preparation for the Trump second term. So that must have helped. Look, it is, first of all, the corruption is so brazen. It's like nothing we've seen before. And I said this on Monday night in DC. We did an event. And I said to the audience, and I'll say it to you,

I can say this, and it's not racist if I say it, but the Indian subcontinent is known for a lot of corruption. India, Pakistan, my parents are from India, like Indian and Pakistani politicians are known for being corrupt. But even Indian and Pakistani politicians would blush at this level of open corruption. In India and Pakistan, they at least try and do it

under the table, like briefcases are exchanged behind the scenes. They don't say, give me a plane openly, right? Your most ardent Trump supporter would say, I like the transparency though. You were very critical of President Biden and his family's foreign business dealings. You supported an impeachment inquiry as a result of it. Are you equally concerned about President Trump's family's business dealings, especially given the fact that he is in a region now where his family has billions of dollars of investments in

Doha and Saudi Arabia, and the fact that he has a crypto business now where he's auctioned off access to the White House for the highest bidder in his mean coin. Look, there are authorities that the police executive branch ethics rules. I'm not an expert in that. My expertise is here in the House. I'll say that the reason that many people refer to the Bidens as the Biden crime family is because they were doing all this stuff behind curtains, but in the back rooms, they were trying to conceal it and they repeatedly lied about it and they set up shell companies and the family was

all engaged in getting all on the dole. Whatever the president Trump is doing is out in the open. They're not trying to conceal anything. It's also, he got it from Qatar, which is a country that the banger people hate and pro-Israel people hate and I always get attacked because I do a show for Al Jazeera. It's like, you're a Qatari agent. I'm like, I'll tell you what, they pay me to do a show for Al Jazeera. They never gave me a plane. That's your boy. So the corruption is insane. I also think some of the stuff he does is so beyond parody. I spent about, I think I spent the first couple of years of the Trump presidency, first term,

making jokes to friends. I wish I'd tweeted it. I don't think I tweeted it, but I definitely told friends. I used to make a joke saying, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi could stay alive, would be alive today if he had offered Trump a Trump Tower in Raqqa. That was my joke in Trump 1. In Trump 2, it's real life. The former leader of Al-Qaeda has said, you can have a Trump Tower in Damascus. And Trump's

like, all sanctions are lifted. You are a very attractive man. Quote, you're a very attractive man, he said to him in Saudi Arabia. So again, the Netflix writers room would kick you out if you said, let's have the former leader of Al-Qaeda meet with the guy who did the Muslim ban and say, I'm going to give you a Trump Tower in Damascus, and he'll lift all sanctions. Saying it out loud sounds insane, but it's weird. It does, actually. That's like, yeah, laying it out loud.

Is Al-Sharah still on that global terrorists list? So technically, Donald Trump was breaking the law by meeting with Ahmed Al-Sharah. And I'll be honest with you, if Barack Obama had done this, there would be articles of impeachment. 100%. And by the way, they would have been legitimate articles of impeachment because they would have said, Republicans, well, you met with a globally designated terrorist who we still

have a $10 million bounty for. If Donald Trump had met and stood in a photo in the middle of MBS and Jolani, as is formally known, if Barack Obama had stood in that picture, Republicans would have impeached him and then someone would have assassinated him. That's what would have happened in Obama's term. Obama got shit just for bowing to the Saudi King. Do you remember this? He went and he bowed his head a little bit as protocol. Fox ran it on a loop.

Obama sold out America. He's bowed down to the Islamists, the Saudis. Trump gets planes from the Gulf, meets with globally designated terrorists, calls MBS his best pal after he killed a journalist who was living in the US. Again, the rules are different. We have another three and a half, four years of our heads exploding from the lack of consistency in American politics and media. That's it? Oh, thank goodness that's it. Only that.

Yeah. And meanwhile, okay, so you're new best friends. You're fine with terrorists, I guess. But we're going to call the cartels a terrorist organization. And we're going to call the enemies within terrorists. The people keying Tesla's are the terrorists. Serious point here, right? This is administration led by Rubio is cracking down on mainly Muslim students, foreign students who have said anything pro-Palestinian. They're being called Hamas.

They're being called terrorists. You have someone like Mahmoud Khalil, who everyone who knows him, including Jewish students, say he's never harmed a fly. Whatever you think of his views, and his views are not pro-Hamas either. He's very on the record talking about equality for everyone living between the river and the sea. Mahmoud Khalil is locked up and smeared as a terrorist and Hamas couldn't be there for his child's birth, something he'll never get back even if he's freed and they don't plan to free him anytime soon. And yet Trump can meet with Ahmad al-Sharah. And I actually, by the way, let me be clear, I'm fine with Trump meeting with Ahmad al-Sharah. I think people should meet with enemies. That's the whole point of diplomacy. You sit down with your enemies, not your friends.

I'm all for Winston Churchill, George or not war war. But you know, A, the hypocrisy that you're locking up people at home who aren't terrorists while meeting with people who have committed horrific crimes, sure as. And then B, this idea that terrorism now, can we all just agree it's the most empty label of all. One day you're a globally designated terrorist, next minute you're a president in a suit meeting with the US president who came to power. Let's not forget, Donald Trump won the 2016 election

partly because of ISIS, right? There was the Orlando attacks, people were living in fear of terrorism. Trump came along with his Muslim ban. I'm going to secure this country against the secret Muslim in the White House, Barack Obama, against all these terrorists living in our midst. ISIS is next door to you. And the irony is he's the guy who went to meet the former leader of Al-Qaeda in Syria. So that again, it's a double standards, it's the hypocrisy, it's the weaponization of this term terrorism and used in all the wrong ways. It's the waste of 25 years of a war on terror that cost trillions of dollars, killed millions

of people, killed thousands of Americans. As someone who spent my entire life reporting on the war on terror. It's kind of absurd that we just said, all right, it's fine, let's just meet with the al-Qaeda dude and drop sanctions. Why didn't you do this on September the 12th? Well, because Donald Trump wasn't gonna get a plane or a golf course, I think.

Plus, he was all excited that he had the tallest building in Manhattan. Building in Manhattan. That's true. If only George W. Bush was as corrupt as Donald Trump, we might have avoided decades of war. If only. In hindsight, it's 2020 though. Mehdi, we don't want to take up any more of your time. We know you've gotten out.

We are so grateful to have spent this time with you. We appreciate it. We're all huge fans. Yesterday, I was nervous and excited to have you on and our director was like, don't be nervous. He seems like somebody that we'd all want to hang out with. And you know what? He was right. You are. Thank you so much. The next time you're in town, let's play poker. Only be, only be, actually, Ms. Rachel walked into the studio and said, I'm nervous. And I said,

there are many people who I've interviewed who should be nervous before I interview them. You're not one of them. Probably not. You're not John Bolton or Eric Prince or Vivek Ramaswamy. My nerves just came from the fact that I respect you. So we're really grateful for your time. Oh, that's okay. Thank you so much.

It's been such a pleasure. I love the stuff you guys do. It's been a great time chatting with you. Thanks for the... Thanks for plugging, Zateo, and the documentary, which is very important, WhoKillsSharin.com. -♪ Who KillsSharin.com? -♪ Hello, my little Salamanders. When Cody and I started this show, it seemed like we had

to figure it out all on our own. Scripts, set up, filming schedule, logos, bags of crickets to feed the many amphibians inhabiting the studio. Finding the right tool that not only helps you out but simplifies everything can be a game changer. For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the e-commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the US. From household names like Mattel to brands just getting started

like Cricket World, my local mom and pop cricket outlet. We need as many crickets as we can get, the frogs are insatiable. So get started with your own design studio, build a beautiful online store to match your brand's style, and get the word out about your business using Shopify's many, many valuable tools. Plus, they can help manage inventory and shipping. In case you're trying to get rid of, I don't know, 500 Northern Crested Newts, just to use one little example.

So if you are ready to sell you are ready for Shopify turn your big business idea into With Shopify on your side Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com slash more news go to Shopify.com slash more news Shopify.com slash more news, shopify.com slash more news. And we are back from our conversation with Meddy. Thanks again to him. Thank both of you for being there.

But now we wanna talk about the big, beautiful bill that is going to be decimating for so many people. It's beautiful. It's triple B. It won't be this way ultimately, but it's this way now. Right, right, right, right. But what's been proposed? Yes, the House GOP's revealed its bill.

It will extend Trump's tax breaks for rich people and corporations. But of course you need to cut stuff to do that. You gotta spend money to make money. You gotta cut things for need to cut stuff to do that. You got to spend money to make money. You got to cut things for us to give stuff to them. The big headline here is that it would effectively remove 8.7 million people from Medicaid. That's more than that, isn't it? Well the Democrats are circulating the 13.7 million number, which is true, but in fairness,

those 5 million extra people will lose coverage when a subsidy to reduce healthcare costs expires at the end of the year, which it was designed to do. So ideally, any new budget bill would keep those going. So the fact that the Republicans definitely have no intention of doing that means 13.7 million people are going to lose. But there's the context. I had the community know the Democrats.

But splitting errors, neither sides being fully honest. 8.7 real now. 8.7 additional people will be thrown off their healthcare in addition to the 5 million who were just already going to lose. Right, exactly. That's what I mean. That's the thing. Yeah, the 8.7 million regarding this bill and the five extra million because it was going to happen.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and just say, I don't think either number's okay. Oh. Then just me. Well, what number is okay to kick people off? I would love more people being on it. Oh, so you want to add, you wanna take away negative numbers of people.

All right. The good news is that the Republicans, we're gonna assume that there's votes, there's midterms, there's elections, there's consequences for doing things people don't like. So under that assumption, the Republicans are in a bit of a pickle because a lot of their states expanded Medicaid

over the last few years. More people use it than ever before. Josh Hawley, Republican Senator from Missouri, was on Fox News saying we shouldn't cut Medicaid because 20% of Missouri is on Medicaid. Do you agree with the speaker? Is this bill not a cut to Medicaid? Well, the right thing to do is not to cut Medicaid. So I'm glad to hear him say that Manu, it ought to be just a basic foundational principle. It is wrong to

cut health care for the working poor. And that's what we're talking about here with Medicaid. My state is a Medicaid expansion state. Over 20% of Missourians, including hundreds of thousands of children, are on Medicaid. And they're not on Medicaid because they want to be. They're on Medicaid because they cannot afford health insurance in the private market. It's not a great vote if this is effectively what happens. Now they're trying to say, well, we're just getting rid of a loophole, X, Y, and Z. But Now they're trying to say, well, we're just getting rid of a loophole, X, Y, and Z, but what it will do is what it will do. But they kind of put themselves in this position

because the budget they passed a few months ago said that they had to take from this one specific bucket to make cuts, and that bucket is mostly Medicaid. So. A bit of a situation here, folks. You guys really got yourself in a pickle. Man of the people, Josh Hawley stepping up. It's so funny whenever things like this happen

where it's like your entire party's ideology is against your constituents. And then as soon as he's like, well, maybe I should actually stand up. There's a quote from him from yesterday. Which is no Medicaid benefit cuts. Listen, if you wanna do work requirements, I'm all for that. I bet every Republican Republican and I bet most Americans would agree with that.

But we're not talking here about just work requirements. The House goes much, much, much further than that. This is real Medicaid benefit cuts. I can't support that. No Republicans should support that. We're the party of the working class, Mono. We need to act like it. I think if you have to say that, maybe you're not. Maybe you're not the party of the working class. Maybe if you need to tell your party to start acting like you're the party of the working

class, maybe you're not. Maybe you're actually antagonistic to the working class. And Josh Hawley is still actively antagonistic to the working class because he has no problem with work, you know, what do we call it? Paperwork requirements, I believe, was proposed recently to really point out like what... Right. We're going to means test the hell out of this. We're going to copay for anyone who's not below the federal poverty level.

He's totally fine with all of these things, but just stripping away the benefits that he's coming out against. The objects are all too bad. And he's pretending that everyone is against that. The president's against that. We all, none of us want to take away your health care. Who wrote the bill, dog? Why is that what it's doing then? Yeah. Well, who knows?

Who can say? Biden. Who can say? Biden on this one. It does some other stuff as well. Yeah, it does a lot of bad things. It makes states pay for more of SNAP, which is previously called food stamps. They're going to have to dig into their budgets or decide not to do some of it at all.

It's got 50 billion to finish the border wall, which Trump said was finished a few years ago. $45 billion for new immigrant detention centers and 14 billion for immigrant transportation. That's a lot of billions for the camps. That's a lot of billions for the camps. A lot of money. Yeah. Yeah, they've put so much money aside for this. Even the what? Homan, the guy with a fake job.

The borders are the borders are not a real not a real anything. Talking about how much money they're going to get and how they are like ICE is coordinating with all these different departments, organizations to do this massive push in the coming months and year that will require all this money to make all these new facilities and get all these organizations working together to raid and detain people probably unlawfully because that's what they like to do. It is, that is very chilling. It's a lot of money.

Yeah, it's very scary. They're probably gonna get a bunch of that. Like they're not gonna even get a fight from Democrats who don't wanna look soft on immigration because of the polls, blah, blah, blah. They're gonna, they're doing this through budget reconciliation. So there's not gonna be a democratic filibuster. Democrats who don't want to look soft on immigration because of the polls, blah, blah, blah. They're doing this through budget reconciliation, so there's not going to be a Democratic filibuster. They can do it along party lines, but it does mean they can't have very many defections.

They only have a three or four vote lead in the House, three in the Senate, if you include Murkowski, Collins, and McConnell is always in this group now. So whatever. There are other bad things. There are some good things. One of the other sticking points for Republicans would be this salt tax thing as well, which, I don't know, I was texting Jonathan about it before the show. Apparently, the last Trump, Trump 1.0. The first guy.

Used to be you could have an unlimited detector state and local taxes from your federal government right off whatever. And then they eliminated that or brought it down to, I guess it capped it at 10,000. And now as proposed in this, it would raise it back up to 30,000. But for conservative senators in blue states, don't like it because those are the richer states. They want to be able to write off all of it. I'm unclear if this would benefit

people of all economic varieties or just the richest, the reachies, but that seems to be a sticking point. Yeah, most of us take the standard deduction and don't have enough write-offs to get above that. So probably would help wealthier people. This is specifically GOP house representatives in blue states that are very concerned about this. You know, I think it's Mike Lawler. Does he represent Long Island that kind of thing where they say well We're in such a high-tax state

We need to be able to get that and deduct that from our federal taxes because it's it's very purpley out here and if I don't do that, they might get rid of me and There's like five or six of these blue state Republicans who could hold the thing up because, you know, the same way, what was it, Gates did this a few years back, you can hold it up if you've got like your one thing. But the problem is, is that if you get rid of the cap, that's taking like $600 billion over the next 10 years from the federal government and they need that money to pay for the tax cuts and all the stuff they wanna do.

So that would just make more people's healthcare you have to take away. So someone's gonna have to make a tough vote here, again, onto the assumption that there are midterms in 2026 and people can vote these freaks out of office. But there are some potentially good ideas in general, but also bad in execution that we're gonna walk through. Yeah, so one of these is very much based

on a Cory Booker proposal from a few years ago. Every newborn baby would get $1,000 in a savings account that they're calling a MAGA account. Boo! And family members can contribute to this up until the child reaches 31. I assume it would be only babies that they consider US citizens, so their parents would have to have a social security number or something. I'm sure they will find a way to exclude the baby's little one. Oh yeah, you gotta exclude.

You gotta exclude, Sean. Depends on what the Supreme Court decides about birthright citizenship, I guess. I mean, they're not gonna weigh in on that. I don't know. I know. Does sound like Cory Booker's proposal, more or less. They're probably not calling it, I guess that's why they're, certainly they're not calling it a Cory Booker account.

But I mean, they call, like, Cory Booker called them baby bonds. He obviously should have called them Booker bonds. Like, no one gets the branding. You gotta do the brand. You gotta do the branding, you gotta sign the checks. Whatever. You know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime,

no tax on car loan interest. So this is interesting. Another thing I was confused about in texting with Jonathan before the show, not confused, I mean, he, Donald Trump campaigned on 100% no tax on tips, overtime, et cetera. But what this actually is,

is no tax on tips up until a certain amount instead of what was. So okay, so there's that. But also when you dig down into it, I'm not against this idea inherently. I think that that would be very beneficial to a lot of people, but sort of incentivizes people to work only in jobs that are tips. Oh, 100%. It doesn't make it easier for people to work because it doesn't make it easier for people to work in a service industry. It doesn't make it easier for people to work in a service industry.

It doesn't make it easier for people to work in a service industry. It doesn't make it easier for people to work in a service industry. It doesn't make it easier for people to work in a service industry. It doesn't make it easier for people to work in a service industry. call it a tip and then like that's so much of why he is allowing this to happen. Like it's not because,

oh, I care about the service industry. No, it's just because it's this other kind of loop. And also it's a nice thing to say. That's a feels like, hey, actually, yeah, I want that. That sounds great. And that would certainly affect people's, some amount of people's lives. But it doesn't offset everything else.

Well, it's just a weird way to single out one group of relatively low income people for a tax break, but not everyone else. This is what I texted Katie, because I thought it was a good analogy. All of a sudden, for the first time ever you'd rather be the valet at the hotel than working behind the front desk, even though these are both service jobs in a very similar vein.

So it's just kind of confusing. Like why not just give everyone below a threshold a tax break? You don't want to do that. Or like raise the minimum wage. So like servers don't are Relying only on tips and things like that Because we're the only country that has that sort of we're tipping culture culture exactly

Yeah, and by the way, the bill says that it's restricted to jobs that are typically considered tip Jobs and that in itself is kind of vague because that has shifted over the years. That could be so many. So many things. Coffee shops are tip places now, but they wouldn't necessarily have been 30 years ago. There's a lot of things where you're not sure whether you have to tip or not. And now it's because they flip the screen around, we're all tipping more than we used to.

I would, of course and and not every Person in the service industry would agree because they make Often a lot of money with tips, but I'd be in favor of abolishing Tipping and making sure everyone gets a good wage like ideally Everyone's getting minimum 18 an hour and then we don't have to deal with this You can make a lot of money in tips depending on the restaurant and your skill there, but it is not, yeah, like you're saying, you shouldn't be extending to all these other avenues where like, well, now you're relying on tips and I'm not gonna, you gotta make tons of tips

at a coffee shop. That's not, no one's going in there ordering hundreds of dollars dollars worth of coffee. Like, well, I got a tip big, you know? One other thing that is kind of good in there is that it increases the child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,500. But, it's a big but, requires a social security number to get it, which would exclude non-citizens who, again, have U.S. citizen children. Yeah, it'll be an extra $500 tax credit for me and stripping away needed tax credits for millions of people.

Yeah. Fuck them. These people. But you can also get, you can get social security numbers if you're non-citizen for certain, for work permits and things like that. But it does seem like you're saying a way to exclude people. Before we go, we have one more newsy news to news into your news.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments earlier today for the Trump administration's emergency request to throw out nationwide injunctions over its birthright citizenship executive order. This is not weighing in on the merits of the illegal, blatantly illegal birthright citizenship executive order. This is not weighing in on the merits of the illegal, blatantly illegal birthright citizenship executive order, but they are taking up the question of nationwide injunctions. So for example, if someone sues in California

and they say, you're right, this executive order is illegal, does that shut it? Should that be able to shut it down for the whole country? And in fairness, both, you know, conservative and liberal justices have occasionally said, you know, it's kind of a pain that that one federal judge in one place can do this. The party that's not in power loves it because it can shut down what the president's doing. And of course, conservatives loved it when Biden was in office because one judge could just say, oh no, you can't do the student loan

forgiveness this way. And then the whole program is shut down. Unfortunately, the debate they were having at the Supreme Court today was like, there's no way to get rid of nationwide injunctions and fill it with anything. Kavanaugh seems to think you can replace it with a big class action lawsuit, but like Katanji Brown Jackson and other justices brought this up that, are you saying that hundreds of thousands of different people all have to sue and to get relief from, again, this thing that we know

is blatantly illegal. In the same suit too, yeah. Right, it kind of doesn't make any sense. How would you go about doing that? The conservatives should understand this because they're the ones who are going, what are you gonna hold, 20 million trials? All I could think about when reading about this. First thing that came to my mind.

So I read some of these arguments, it's pretty interesting. It's unclear how they're gonna rule and then if they're gonna take up birthright citizenship. It's interesting to note that the administration, the Trump administration, just asked them to rule on the nationwide injunction thing. They didn't appeal the birthright citizenship ruling. So the justices were even like, how would we rule on that if they're not going to appeal

it? They'll just say, okay, you, it doesn't apply to you, but we're still gonna do it to everyone else. It's a way, if they get rid of the nationwide injunction process, that means the Trump administration will never appeal anything to the Supreme Court under the assumption that it could come back against them. So they'll just say, OK, well, that person,

it's fine for that person, whatever. We'll do it everywhere else, is what they'll say. We know Thomas is on board. We know how Alito's gonna go. Kavanaugh, it seems, was like, ah, maybe class action lawsuits could do this. Barrett did not seem like she was liking this. In fact, she appeared shocked.

I don't know why she's shocked, but she appeared shocked when Solicitor General John Sauer, she was like, so you'll agree to abide She appeared shocked when Solicitor General John Sauer, she was like, so you'll agree to abide by a federal court ruling, and the John Sauer who's representing the Trump administration is like, generally, yeah, but we reserve the right to if we think it's wrong. Like, she was like, what are you talking about

if you think it's wrong? It's like, well, where you been, lady? Yeah, I know. It's like, right, it's like, well, hey, yeah, like that's not how it works. What are you talking about? You can just generally like decide whatever, but like, ma'am, it's been years.

What are you, like, what is this? Yeah, like- I guess I don't fully understand this or how it would be legal or okay in any capacity. I- Well, because like the process is of one federal judge rules against you, you appeal it.

It goes to an appeals court. That appeals court maybe rules against you. You go all the way up to the Supreme Court. But if that's not how it works, if you can still do the illegal thing to the 349 million other people who didn't sue, then you would never appeal and it will never get to the Supreme Court. So if they rule this way, they will be effectively sidelining themselves for anything that's like a national thing like this.

Oh, yeah. It appears to me. It just removes it just removes the judiciary's power. That's all it does. This is part of the process of stripping away their power and putting more of it into the executive branch, which is all they've been trying to do for so long. I apologize if this is the stupidest questions anyone has ever heard, but seriously, what would be the role of the Supreme Court in this?

I mean, in those cases where it does get up to them, but then things would not. It would be very, very few because like John was saying, like, well, if you're going to keep appealing up to the Supreme Court and then they say, we can't do it, we'll just let them say we can't do it to this person or this group of five people, whatever. And then it puts a lot more pressure on like the ACLU and different groups to, cause it takes time to get a class action lawsuit together. That's different from one person.

So no, it's absurd. This is the party that's anti-frivolous lawsuits. And now we're gonna increase the class action lawsuits by the dozens. Like who knows how this- They hate class action lawsuits. Right. This is so bad. Plus they're taking away their bribes

if they're less important. They, the bribes, the bribes- Why are we- We're not gonna like that. Who's gonna wanna bribe them now? Why would you wanna be a- We've got all this Nazi memorabilia to hand out. Leonard Leo or whoever is gonna- Why would I wanna be a SCOTUS

if I don't get a fucking prize? So anyway, I don't know what they're gonna do. And this is one of those that they're seeing on their emergency docket, so they could rule on it in three days or two months. Like who the hell knows? We're just at their whim. We're gonna have to throw out our whole agenda next week

if they rule on this thing and talk. That's the shitty thing about summer on the news podcast is June and July every Thursday You're like what are we gonna talk about today? What's illegal now? That's all yeah I mean or vice versa someone should start a podcast about how these people suck Do you think do you think eventually they're gonna have to rename their podcast seven to? Nine oh we lost yeah coming coming to you from an undisclosed location

somewhere in Europe. We are the 9-0 podcast coming at ya. Oh god. Anyway, I guess we've done it, we did it. We did, we done did it. That's right. We did done did it. Good show, good show, good show.

Like when you're shaking hands at the end of the game. Let's go eat some orange slices. Also, Mountain Dew and pizza. Mountain Dew and pizza. No, we love you very much. Much! Much! Pizza!

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