The Adam Mockler Show - THIS is What Trump's Team is HIDING! w/ @TaraPalmeri ​

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

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Trump will face more resistance as he tries to flex his power. I do think, though, that as he faces more resistance, he'll try to flex his power even more and more. He will try to defy the judiciary. He'll try to defy Congress. Obviously, even an impeachment, it probably won't pass through the Senate because I don't think that the Democrats will win take back the Senate in this next election just because of the map. But first, I certainly think that the Democrats will win in this midterm election in the Congress, in the very least. And even though they aren't campaigning on impeachment, it's absolutely going to happen. I actually think it's funny that like, not funny, but it's interesting to see that impeachment is sort of like the dirty little word going on

right now. Like no one's saying it. But that's certainly what's going to happen. And I think the easiest thing to pin him for is the crypto money and this whole blockchain thing and the dinner and how much money he's making, certainly violates the emoluments clause, right? Maybe the jet from Qatar is involved in that as well. But that's, that's a, that's a strong place to start. I also wonder if he declares a national emergency, uh, towards the end of his term. I am joined today by Tara Palmary, a veteran journalist, often known as one of Washington's most fearless political reporters.

How you doing today? Thanks for having. me. What a kind intro. Some people might like that intro. Some people might not, but I'm cool being feared. I've been following a lot of your reporting lately. I cited your story about Bill Gates visiting the White House in a video. And yeah, you're doing, you're doing great work. I want to ask you some broad questions about your career. And then we can dig in and just have a conversation about the current admin. I know you have some questions too. But so I want to ask you, you covered the Trump White House during his first term pretty reluctantly. Now you're here reporting on the second. How has the

admin differed? What surprised you? Well, they're just so much more professionalized this time around. There are very few dissenters. There are fewer people who are willing to speak out against him, even like privately on background off the record. They seem to really be towing the line. But I will say when there are people who are unpopular like Elon Musk, they were definitely willing to talk about that. But there aren't people who are trying to stop his worst instincts. that's how other people thought of themselves as being inside the White House. They would be like, well, I'm here to be the adult in the room. You won't hear of that word ever.

I'm the adult in the room from anyone. They enjoy not having adults in the room. And if anything, in any way, being seen as trying to stop his agenda would be like a heresy. And so I think it's different. It's a little bit harder as a journalist, to be honest, to break stories. But Trump is leaky himself. Like, you can just call him. and he'll tell you what's going on.

It's, there's really, and, and even the stories about, like, the absurdities and what he wanted to do and, oh, my God, he wanted to send the National Guard, but, but he was stopped, you know, now he just does it. There's no one there to stop him. So whatever big scoop, I mean, probably one of the biggest scoops so far, I would say, is that Elon Musk was about to get a briefing on our war plans against China, and China is one of his biggest clients, right? So, like, one of our biggest scoops was about somebody other than Trump.

And Trump himself was horrified by it. Yep. I guess do you think that's how do you view Susie Wiles' role in the administration? Because you were saying that there's not really an adult in the room. But I've thought of her is pretty clever. Oh, she's clever. Yeah. That's a good way to put it.

Is she an adult though? Oh, she's absolutely an adult. I mean, she, but she's an adult who wants to survive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she goes along with the current. Imagine if you were an adult and your kids had knives and they were coming for you. What would you do to. survive you would give them ice cream all day long as many cookies as they want yeah yeah you become like

the yeah you become like the cookie the cookie um you you suddenly open up an ice cream shop in your house to survive so it's a different type of uh adulting you could say i mean everyone says that she says the maga serenity prayer except the things i cannot change and know the difference um so there are times when she steps in and she tries to like intervene and i know that with the Elon Musk case, she definitely knew when to step in and be like, okay, it's time to get this guy out of the picture. And she certainly helped move that along. But she wasn't protesting him the entire time. That doesn't really work for Trump because he kind of likes to, he likes to pit his, his people against each other. So if he got the sense that Susie just didn't like him because

of the power imbalance or Susie felt threatened by him or Susie felt that she wasn't able to express her ideas because of him. I don't think he would take Susie seriously. But when Susie can present the fact that very in, I guess you could say when she really chose the right moments to step in and make sure he became aware of things, like the China example, and say that story in the New York Times, that's real. Do you know what I mean? Like that and then that pissed Trump off and not just because it's a conflict of interest,

But he's probably thinking to himself, Elon's about to make a ton of money off of that. And it's funny with President Trump, like, I called him before I went independent. And I told him I was going to go independent. And he was just like, why would you do that? And he didn't understand it because he's such an old school guy. Like, he used to read the New York Post and call me when I worked there, right? That was his favorite paper. We used to call him a rent a quote because you could literally call him for anything and everything.

Or when I was on ABC News as a White House correspondent, like, he was more aware of me than because he was always watching TV. But so to him, he's like, why would you start independent media? And I was like, well, like, you had to give him like the numbers and like the figures and how people are blowing up online and like talk dollars with him. Like, that's how his brain works. So she certainly understands like how to move him in the ways that others don't. Yeah, I find it pretty fascinating.

She definitely selectively shows her face. She's known for not really doing that many public facing interviews, which is really unique for someone in the admin. I want to ask, how do you think? Well, I think she does them when there's a bad story that's about to come out about her. And then she's like, I'll do an interview. And it's smart. Yeah. Because that kind of keeps you, you know, there's a certain sense of scarcity around getting any quotes and comments from her. And then, you know, she can use it when she wants to because it's hard to, it's hard to get her. You know, she's exclusive. So hearing you talk about your time at ABC in the New York Post. It makes me wonder, how do you think, since you know Trump and how he views a lot of these

things, how do you think he views someone like Caitlin Collins, for example, who he's clearly combative with on camera. But part of me, I want to assume that Trump likes that game that he's playing, and he's playing that game intentionally, right? Can you explain to him what his philosophy is there? She's a foil for him. He needs someone to beat up on. I think there's a part of him that feels like he made her in some ways, and that kind of annoys him. He hates the idea of people becoming famous off of him. But I think there's a way he also respects her too. It's kind of a, and he's addicted to the media. Like he is addicted to the press. It is his heroin. I've heard this from multiple AIDS that work for him. I mean, I think from the fact that he just does not change his number and he

keeps it open and a lot of us journalists have it and he'll take our calls. Like he's addicted to the media. So I think it kind of goes both ways, but he needs someone to beat up on like the mainstream media. they're the enemy, right? And who better than CNN? You know? Let's talk about it after. Let me ask you one more question about your career. Can I ask you about connections that you built in the first term and how you're now leveraging these connections in the second term? Because networking is something that I've been putting a huge focus on lately and it pays dividends. So obviously, you both a lot of great connections. How have you been now taking advantage of those connections? Well, a lot of them I ask them to come on my show now, right? So I'm able to book some really

great guests, thanks to the connections that I've built over the 15 years of journalism. Because, you know, I'm still a little channel compared to you. I only started in March, but it's growing. And a lot of it is just inviting people on who I've known for a long time to debate and to come on and really just like take the hard questions. And I think that they know me through that. I think also a lot of people who work for Trump don't work for him anymore, but they have very close connections to the Trump administration and they still talk to them. So they can often give me kind of information on what they see going on and what they're hearing. You know, often it's not necessarily like the direct source that gives you the tip.

It's someone who's heard it from that person. And then you have to go in there and investigate yourself and try to get the direct source to confirm it. So that's just some basic like 101 journalism. But it's, you know, and I've learned a lot about him and what to expect. And what doesn't really shock me anymore. I think it's made me less reactionary. Some people want that. Like some people are saying to themselves, like, I want to go to a channel to feel with somebody, you know?

And maybe I'm not offering that in the same way that other channels do. But I'm kind of more thinking like I want to inform. Although I did feel like for the first time I wanted to put out a video about feeling because when I saw that attack this weekend in Minnesota, I just was getting so angry because I just had a debate with Scott Jennings, who you see on CNN often. I know him well. He's another person I've known for like, I don't know, very, very long time since he was a normie Bush Republican, right? Since he was calling for the whole party to get behind Marco and was blaming Trump for the insurrection. And he was like, the political violence is only on the left. And it just like blows my mind. It pisses me off so much because I'm like, stop. We have to stop playing this. It's the red team. It's the blue team. That's the violent ones. They're the ones who are breaking the rules and we're playing by the game. Like, no, it's happening on both sides. And I just hate. how even the violence has become politicized. And I think that there are a lot of really dishonest politicians and online provocateurs who are just feeding up red meat and blue meat to people.

And it's really causing a radicalization. And we need to turn the temperature down. And like I very rarely just like step in to like have an impassioned plea about how I feel about things. But I couldn't help myself. I was furious. And I just remember the fight that I had with Scott. And of course, like, you know, there were. there were follow-up posts on it being like Scott Jennings owns lib

podcaster like first of all like I don't really consider myself to be a lib podcaster I'm like sure maybe compared to them but to if you're if you're on the spectrum I really think I'm you know a journalist but owns him on like political violence so much it's like stop it that's not the fucking point you know like that's not the point of it we're not supposed to be debating who's worse We're supposed to realize, be reflexive and look within ourselves and think to ourselves, how are how we gotten to this point in America? You know, a sanctuary of freedom and free press.

Like, why are we, why are we like this? And the fighting about it, I don't think that's solving the problem. I agree. I agree largely. I think that extremism exists on both sides, absolutely, especially right now on the left, it feels like there is an increased tension with anti-Semitism and it feels like people are being radicalized online. But the only reason, the only part I disagree with is I just did a debate about this. And my main point was that it feels like on the right, it comes in a top-down way.

Like even this morning, the president made this post saying that Democrats are sick of the mind and are intentionally destroying cities. And I feel like saying that two days after somebody kills two Democratic politicians just inflames it. And I'm not trying to do the thing where I immediately politicize it. But do you think it's fair to say that the president uses uniquely inflammatory rhetoric? Oh, yeah. No, Trump has certainly created a situation in which the rhetoric is inflammatory. But like this, you know, and actually in the past decade, death threats against members of Congress have increased twofold and their families. Like that is an alarming statistics. And we're coming up to like 10, you know, a decade of Trump, right? I think people feel

more open and comfortable, you know, expressing threats. But death threats and, and, attempts, political, political violence has been happening forever. But yes, it feels really heightened. And his response does create permission structures. But it also riles up people on the left, riles up people on the right. I'm not going to squarely blame, though, President Trump for that. But I do think that was an astute point that it does seem to happen. You know, the whole the grassroots from the Democratic Party seems to be they seem to be the ones that are really fomenting the anger right uh whereas like the the poohas from the Democratic Party like the Obamas and the Bidens and the Clintons are like let's condemn it but the fact is that like

most people they don't have a lot of respect for those those party leaders anymore they don't really care for them they don't think that they really represent the party I mean they were all at Huma Abidon's wedding with Alex Soros and the Hamptons this weekend with Kamala Harris like this is the problem with the Democratic Party. I look at that story in the New York Times, and I'm like, uh, yeah, so people either think that that's representative of the party, or then they see the protesters who are sometimes,

not the protesters on like this weekend. I mean, the people who are super, super far left and give a bad name to the party, and they think that's representative. But the thing is, a lot of those, like, really, really far left protesters aren't even people that vote Democrat in the first place. The point is, some of our farthest left activists are kind of steering the optics of the party when they don't even vote Democrat. And then on the right, I think like 60% of sitting Republicans claim the 2020 election was stolen, whether or not they actually believe it. I don't

know. But a lot of them claim the 2020 election was stolen. So, so I'm not trying to do the whole thing where I make it like politicize immediately, but I just want to go back to the point of, it feels like on the left, it is more decentralized and like far left people in the right. Yeah, but I agree. But I don't think that like, I think that President Trump's rhetoric is like, is completely, you know atrocious but I I do think the fomenting of the anger like I don't think he called on Charlottesville to happen right like I just think that's a reaction um I don't think he I mean January 6th was a protest then he said to okay I don't think he called on what happened to happen you know he didn't condemn it he certainly didn't stop it well it was happening but

Sorry to cut you off. If he never lied about the election, though, the election fraud, it never would have happened. So I would argue that he directly led to that. No, I agree. I agree with you on that. That's a bit more complicated January 6th. But I think there's like the thing I don't like about this culture either is just

like everyone's trying to own everybody. It's like why is this, why can't we just like debate? And it happens on both sides. Like why does you have to own someone? Like why does everyone, why does someone have to win? And why do they have to be winners and losers in politics all the time? It just, why can we just talk? Yeah, that's been one of my philosophies.

So a little bit about my career, too. We talked, I've already learned a lot from you so far, which is amazing. So I started. I learned a lot from you too. I appreciate that. So I started when I was 21 years old going to these Trump rallies. And I would go to Trump rally after Trump rally. After the first one went a little bit viral, I developed this strategy where I'd go in there and talk to Trump supporters in a very respectful way.

As much as I love, I love Jordan Klepper and the content that he makes, but when he's making stuff for Comedy Central and dunking on Trump supporters, it's not as productive. So one of my most viral clips is a Trump supporter saying, we should stop funding Ukraine, let's put America first. And I go, I think funding Ukraine is how you put America first. I think when you fund Ukraine, you not only protect the border of sovereign nation, you're not only stopping Russia, but it helps our economy, our military, because we get to send old stockpile equipment. And I give this argument and this Trump supporter by the end of it goes, I've never even thought of it that way. Maybe we should be funding Ukraine. Now, of course, they're inside. They're in information silos.

Exactly. And they're not going to go into like, they're not going to go into an environment that they feel like is unfriendly territory for them. A lot of people have confirmation bias. They want to hear, they want to hear from people who have the same worldview as them. They want to feel soothed. The world is scary and uncertain. And it's easier to hear people tell you how you should think rather than give you information and allow you to think more critically.

And I think those are really smart questions and really smart presentations. And I think we kind of have, and that's what I'm trying to do. I do think it's hard because people are going to try to sniff you out for like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You have some sort of bias. You have some sort of agenda. You can't just be presenting for the sake of it. And there are also times where I'm like, this is messed up. And you know what?

Maybe my take on it is not going to be the same as somebody else is. But that's, you know, the fact that we are, you know, it's interesting. Like that is one of the strongest points for that counters the America first idea about Ukraine and philosophy about Ukraine. Yes. Going, you know, like you said, a lot of their factories are in South Carolina, or red states, right? B, a lot of these, a lot of the artillery and equipment is too old for us to use, right? and that was actually what sent that's what speaker johnson said yeah he made the same argument he said that as part of his legacy he wanted to make sure that they passed the ukraine funding mill

right then trump comes into power is a totally different totally different story i mean that's the thing it's like there's so much dishonesty from our from our lawmakers what do they stand for i don't know anymore do they stand for anything yeah i don't know and that's really disappointing because they're playing with lives in that scenario. I guess, like, the point is, what I started to learn is that if you talk to people in an empathetic way and you frame liberal issues or liberal beliefs, if you want to call them now, or just America First, like, beliefs like funding Ukraine in their rhetoric, like, yo, it helps you economically when we send this old stockpile military equipment

and then we rebuild it in America. And when that clicks and you can talk with some empathy, I think that's how we regain a lot of the power and ground that we've lost. but honestly the party right now is very a lot of people are very finger waggy and they don't want to have these conversations like i had a comment one time i made a video about charlie kirk and the comment was like adam don't give air to charlie kirk and i remember replying like charlie kirk is the air right now he's 10 100 times bigger than i am he's in the air they have all the power right now he's very hot right now yeah so the point is a lot of people on our side would rather shut down conversation or finger wag rather

than take an empathetic approach. And, yeah, I guess what are your thoughts? I mean, I like the word empathetic because it suggests feeling, but it's not even empathetic. It's just critical approach. It's just like thoughtful and open-mindedness. I do wonder, though, we're talking a lot about the right. Let's talk about the left for a minute. Like, do you think that there's an information silo on the left and that there's confirmation bias

that the Democrats can improve before 2028? Yeah, yeah. absolutely especially off the back of the last cycle i see it a lot in my audience sometimes i mean the vast majority of my audience agrees with me on things but there are information silos on the left whether you want to talk about the far far left i get accused of being a genocide supporter just for not taking a hardline stance and for having a nuanced position so those information silos are very harmful. I think that on our side, a lot of people, I kind of call it blue anon. It's like the opposite of QAnon. So after the election, I was arguing with a lot of my fans about whether or not

the election was stolen. But again, I don't know if this is broadly representative of the average. But you thought that the 2024 election was stolen. That's what I meant to say that I say 2020. Do you, do you believe that? No, no. Oh, okay. But there are blue andons that think that. Yeah, I was arguing with my audience and tried to get. though President Trump won every single battleground state. Well, to be fair, Trump claimed the same thing in 2020, but the Democrats, I don't know where they got this idea. They thought that Starlink stole the election somehow. Have you heard this? It was a random conspiracy theory that I saw online and I did a live stream after the election and everyone in my chat was floating it and I had

to push that away. So when I talk about information silos, that's what I think of. Like, why are these conspiracy theory. They exist on both sides. But is there something I'm missing? Where would you want to push back on what I said? I just think that like he won so decisively on election night. Yeah, of course. I think that was a big part of it. And he was able to capitalize on the fact that it took seven days to count the vote in 2020. But yeah, still, I don't appreciate, like I think it's, I think politicians using any sort of question or delay in vote counting. We were also in COVID. So that's another reason why I took seven days to count the votes, right?

To be fair, though, sorry to cut you up, but to be fair, Trump, even before the election happened said it would be the largest fraud ever seen. Oh, yeah. No, he was setting the groundwork. And then on election night, he declared victory early. He declared victory. And then remember, I think Mike Pence came up on stage and kind of meekly was like, we're still counting, but then Trump was declaring.

So, okay, this goes back to what we were talking about earlier. On the right, it's a top-down spreading of disinformation from Trump himself. On the left, there were decentralized election fraud theories in my audience that I saw, and I tried to shut that down to make sure that the information silo didn't exist. Now, to be fair, my content and its appearance and its content is pretty openly partisan towards the left. My content will be anti-Trump, pro-Ukraine, pro-democracy. But I try to give- You also pro-Biden when you started, right?

Yeah, yeah, pretty pro-Biden. I mean, I still think that Biden would, I was still, vote for Biden over Trump in 2020. Yeah. In 2024, you mean? In 2020, I meant. 2024, I would still vote for Kamala. Yeah. Going back to your original question about the information silos, and this relates to Robert Herr as well, I think I didn't bring this up because I wasn't thinking about it, but the biggest example of an information silo on the left would have been the 2024 election in Biden's age and everything. That's something that needs to be called out because we don't want to have the Trumpian, you know, Trumpian sort of characteristics

on our side of covering things up. Like if you're not with us, you're against us, right? Well, no. What I find Trumpian about Biden's cover up, if you want to call it dad, is that the 2020 election, Trump tried to hold on to power in any way that he could. This is how I view it. He used all the means at his disposal to try to hold onto power likely due to his ego or his inability to accept to accept a loss that's how i view it biden seems to have kind of done something

similar in 2024 due to his ego due to his inability to back down he also put us in a really really rocky position and honestly it kind of uh yeah it was uh not good for the party for sure yeah not good for the country yeah yeah i agree more so the party and it's all the it's all part of the reason why people have lost trust in political parties. And I do think that there is an anti-establishment movement that's growing right now. And I think people who, this is part of the reason why I am the way I am is I've always been a person who questions authority, whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I don't really trust people necessarily. I don't think they're always bad. Like, I think we need leaders, but they need to feel the heat of being held to account.

And if we prop them up as like demagogues and people who can save us, I think we're, we've, we've lost the plot. You know, this is a democracy. This is not a monarchy, as they say, the no kings parade. But let's make sure that that's true on both sides and that people who want to rise up in 28 to be, you know, Democratic challengers and on both on both sides and Republican challengers that they know that they're going to face tough questioning. I think a lot of people are sort of enticed by the podcast route right now because they feel like it's an opportunity for

them to talk about culture and that's obviously like politics is downstream of culture and to not have to take tough questions and they can sort of, you know, like show their lighter side, which people used to do on late night TV anyway, right? But, I don't want them to fall into this trap where they avoid taking tough questions and like have to answer for it because a lot of the people that want to run in 2028 were right outside, right in front of the cameras after that Biden debate. Like Gavin Newsom saying, don't believe you're lying eyes. He's amazing.

He can jump. He can run. He can juggle. And, you know, Gavin was one of the people in 2022, November 22, I remember on Thanksgiving reading this, that he had met with Jill Biden. told her i'm not going to run against i'm not going to run against him against joe and it's like you know he's become one of the stars in the party because of the fights um over immigration but he lost a lot of credibility in my mind yeah i think that uh it's definitely not a good look

but it's totally i don't mean to what about immediately but Donald Trump was able to recover from a way bigger lie, in my opinion. And I know the Biden one is a little bit more fresh, but the American people seem to forget things decently quickly. I mean, Trump like cooed the capital and it didn't affect people's day to day lives. So it, nothing really manifested from it long term. He regained power four years later. Can I ask you a question? How do you view the Trump administration progressing over the next few years? Because we're six months into it. And I feel like it's been uniquely chaotic. And I'm not even saying that because I make liberal content. I just mean like I feel like if you look objectively at what's been happening with Elon Musk and Signal Gates and the protests, sparking. And then Trump saying this and that, I feel like it's uniquely chaotic. Do you view it as calming down or do you think that maybe it'll be amplified by like if the economy starts to tank a little bit? I feel like all of these shenanigans and the Qatari jets aren't going to be fun in games anymore. How do you view things progressing?

I think that if he continues to be unpopular, he will get blown out in the midterms, and then he'll face impeachment. And he'll face a lot more resistance from the Democratic Party. People will talk more positively about the Democratic Party because right now, obviously, there's a lot of disappointment that they're not punching back hard enough and that it's only the far left that seems to be really showing its might. So I do think that Trump will face more resistance as he tries to flex his power. I do think, though, that as he faces more resistance, he'll try to flex his power even more and more.

He will try to defy the judiciary. He'll try to defy Congress. Obviously, even an impeachment, it probably won't pass through the Senate because I don't think that the Democrats will win take back the Senate in this next election just because of the map. But first, I certainly think that the Democrats will win in this midterm election in the Congress, in the very least. And even though they aren't campaigning on impeachment, it's absolutely going to happen. I actually think it's funny that, like, not funny, but it's interesting to see that impeachment is sort of like the dirty little word going on right now. Like no one's saying it, but that's certainly what's going to happen.

And I think the easiest thing to pin him for is the crypto money and this whole blockchain thing and the dinner and how much money he's making certainly violates the emoluments clause. right? Maybe the jet from Qatar is involved in that as well. But that's, that's a, that's a strong place to start. I also wonder if he declares a national emergency, uh, towards the end of his term, which for some reason would, I don't know, in, in some way push back an election or change the date of an election. I don't know if that's possible with the, I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but you've seen it happen in Israel, you saw it happen in Ukraine, that, you know, when they're in the middle of a war, they're able to move elections around. And so I wonder if he does that to try

to stay in power for longer. I think it'll be interesting to see how J.D. Vance bears sounds like he's not willing to give him the endorsement. And I understand that because he wants to hold on to power, be relevant. And if he's already endorsing his predecessor, it makes him look lame, Doc. but he also seems like Marco Rubio a bit and he likes to watch them fight with each other. Why do you think, though, that the Democrats just left the border open for so long? I reject the framing that the border was entirely open, but that's not even an important point to debate. I get what you're trying to say. I think that's here's my answer.

When you see a clip of Obama in 2012 talking about the border, in a roundabout way, he actually sounds sort of a hard-ass, kind of like Trump, but just without the... You deported more people than Trump per day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but Trump uses more bombastic authoritarian rhetoric. He started the family separation program. Yeah, yeah, but the thing is, Obama doesn't go up there and say that they're all, like, rapists, murderers, and illegals. And Obama wouldn't use that rhetoric.

And I'd like to think Obama at least still had a humane, like, view of these things. And then I think the Democrats were overreactionary to the Trump era. This would be my analysis on the spot. I'd have to think about it a little bit more, but this would be my analysis on the spot. When Trump comes into power and starts saying that immigrants are murderous, rapists, drug dealers, whatever you want to say, those overgeneralizations obviously just are not good. It's not good to dehumanize or to have an outgroup like that. And I think that Democrats took a reactionary stance and didn't really know how to reclaim that Obama era immigration rhetoric. Because then if Biden would have come out and use those Obama lines, people would have been like, you sound exactly like,

Trump, blah, blah, blah. So a combination of having Biden, who wasn't the best at articulating our beliefs during his term. I mean, he wasn't the best at defending his policy for obvious reasons. That's combined with Democrats being a little bit reactionary after the Trump-era aggressiveness around immigration. I mean, remain in Mexico worked. Wait, say that again? Remain and Mexico worked. Yeah, it did. And they stopped it in February 2021. I also think that the border being open is kind of a red herring, though. Wasn't immigration across the planet's kind of a mess during COVID and during the COVID years? Obviously, Biden could have used stronger rhetoric, but I don't know if they left the border open when a lot of the problem was asylum seeking, right?

Which means people are going through the proper processes. Right. But people get, you know, it incentivized people to move to cross the border as well. Yeah. The fact that, you know, people, they are aware of the president who. coming into office, their policies, and they make those decisions when they're deciding whether to come to the country or not, right? But I do want to get back to this whole idea, though, about Trump being loved. He really does love being loved in the same way that he loves the press and would kill for fawning press. Like, they used to print out, this is one of the first stories

I broke when I was at Politico back in 2017. His team would print out positive stories about him and feed it to him every morning so that he had a positive mood, his positive media diet. And they would just show him like, you know, it would be like the daily caller or a bright bar. And it would make him feel really good. And someone that I spoke to this weekend who has known Trump for two decades, maybe longer than that, said, I bet this Stephen Miller policy on immigration is probably starting to irk him a little bit. That he doesn't, like there's a part of it that he liked. He likes the strong man, you know, presentation.

He likes to show that he's going into big cities and breaking up crime and, you know, lawfare, this and that, keeping, you know, keeping the streets clean, even though honestly, I think it's, it is actually, it's antagonizing people in a lot of ways. But, you know, when you hear him do the walk back on the immigrant farm workers, or you hear him do the walk back on the migrant farm workers, or you hear him do the walk back on the migrant farm workers, the, the migrant workers, the migrant workers, the migrant workers, at hotels. I mean, I was looking at a story in the New York Times from, I think it was 2018, about the woman who was on an H-1, I think, H-2B visa, who had been cleaning, you know, she was his personal maid for decades. And, you know, he's, he hires these people at his properties, Marlago, Bedminster, all of his, his properties, they are run on the backs of migrant workers. And I think he's conflicted on this one. as much as he wants to seem like a hardo.

And I think he's pushed by Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. And then he has to walk it back like you saw. And he realizes that what we really need is immigration reform. And unfortunately, there is no one in this Congress that has the backbone to do it, at least on the right, but even on the left, too. I mean, they have certain demands that the right won't agree to. And I think that meeting in the center is just something that no one is really willing to do. maybe a very few, a small amount, but that doesn't make a majority, right?

Yeah, I entirely agreed with your analysis. I think until the point where you said he realized that we need immigration reform, I do think Stephen Miller is pushing him to be more hard line in immigration than he actually is. We see that with a lot of issues, but I don't even know if he cares about immigration reform. Obviously, the argument would be that he shot down, or he got Congress to shoot down Lankford's bill back in 2023 was that? Yeah, a political tactic so that he could be reelected, right? Yeah. I don't think he cares about reform. I actually would argue that Democrats care more about reform. And here's the thing, just to really quickly back up and clarify, I am okay with deporting people. If they're a criminal and if they're here illegally and they've committed crimes repeatedly, of course, I'm not going to push back against that. Deporting criminals, people who have genuinely committed crimes is fine. But I think like the removal of TPS from people when you promised you wouldn't do that. Or I think that like going into some of these more people that are just working, genuinely just trying to work and make a living, I think that's

when it starts to step over the line. So I want to give a nuanced position there and say that, like, as a Democrat, I'm okay with the deportations, of course. But going back to Trump being pushed a little bit too far. Yeah, I think that Stephen Miller is influencing his policy in a way that's making him more unpopular. And it's interesting. Sorry, what's up? No, I was just thinking the same thing and he likes those poll numbers. Yeah, and I was right about to say, immigration, or at least the border, was the one thing he was above water on in almost every pool. And now there are polls showing that he's below water. So I've heard theories that he could use Stephen Miller as a scapegoat and push him out.

I don't quite know if that's going to happen. I know Trump does like to do that with some people. What do you think? Steven's been around for a while. So he wouldn't do that? It's over a decade now. Okay. And Stephen is the MAGA Wright loves Stephen.

Yeah. And he's playing a dance right now because I think at the same time, the reason you saw him even kind of like do this dance where he's like, I'm going into big cities and I'm busting up big cities. I'm going to keep the farm workers because that's the red state flyover people. You know, that's a reaction to the right freaking out about him saying we're going to keep certain H2B workers or migrant workers. So he's playing a delegate dance. I don't think he will ultimately get rid of Stephen Miller because he is an icon to the MAGA.

Right. I mean, Trump was a Democrat at one time, right? I don't know. I wonder sometimes what do he even thinks. about someone like Pete Hegseth, removing Harvey Milken's name from a warship, you know, a decorated naval officer. It's just like, you know, Trump in his day used to hang out like Roy Cohn was his boy. And he was openly gay.

He was kind of openly gay. He was kind of closeted, though. He was a little closeted. But it just, you know, I hope you enjoyed my interview with Tara. If you made it this far, make sure you drop a like. Make sure you comment, hi, Adam, so I see that you made it till the end. I love you all, and peace out.