The Adam Mockler Show - Trump SCREWS HIS VOTERS with DISASTER BILL

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

Consider becoming a member to support my work: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8DA4o0SyaGfyVaBLbF5EXg/join Adam Mockler with MeidasTouch Network is joined by Michael Popok of Legal AF to break down the disastrous Trump "big, ugly bill" that just passed the Senate. Popok explains how the bill is a massive betrayal of Trump's own voters and details how the Supreme Court has created a "law-free zone" for Trump's authoritarianism. Join my Substack as a free or paid subscriber: https://www.adammockler.com/subscribe Become a member to support me! https://www.youtube.com/Adammockler/join https://patreon.com/adammockler Adam Mockler Socials: Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AdamMockler/ Discord: https://discord.gg/y9yzMU3Gff Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adammockler/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/adammockler.bsky.social Twitter: https://x.com/adammocklerr/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/Adammockler Contact me at: [e-mail] Adam Mockler - amock LLC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, Trump's terrible bill is now passed through the Senate, and it's on to the House. I just had a great conversation with the one and only Michael Popock about this very thing. Watch until the end for a surprise. I am joined today by the legendary Michael Popock of Legal A.F. You've seen him on the Midas Touch Network. Now he has the Popok firm. How are you doing today? I'm doing great, Adam.

This is a thrill for me. I was so glad when you reached out and said, why do we do something together? We should. We've been working in the same network for like, I mean, I've been working there for over. year now, and we've never been on camera together. So there's a lot happening in the world of law and politics that we can dig into. Let's start with some of the bigger stories. Then we'll go broad and talk about some of our experiences in the industry. But to dive in, the Senate just passed the big ugly bill, if you want to call it that. J.D. Vance was the tie-breaking vote. What's standing out to

you about this bill and your coverage of it? What are you talking about the most? I think what we're all talking about, which is you always, you hurt the ones you love. And Donald Trump has found a way to, and his voters don't realize it yet, or they don't seem to care about it. They seem to be more focused on cultural issues than how it impacts them. But one trillion dollar cut in Medicare and food stamps, that's enough for me. The 11 million people being thrown off the insurance rolls through changes to ACCA and different things, that alone, if any Democrat had ever proposed that, that is the third rail. that would be political suicide and malpractice.

But Donald Trump, despite the polls that show he's wrong, despite the fact that the polling is showing that the independents are abandoning him in large numbers, which bodes terrible for him and great for democracy come the midterms, he's just on borrowed time. He knows he's going to be lame duck very, very soon, and he's trying to pay off all of his debts, even if it means rewarding the upper, upper, upper, upper, 1%, half a percent of America, and crapping all over his voters.

And they won't realize it yet until they're thrown off of Medicare, thrown off of Medicaid, don't have welfare, don't have food stamps. The ones that argue, well, this is an austerity program, right? We're all tightening our belt. We're not all tightening our belt. There's nobody, you know, the oligarchs and the tax cuts for the wealthiest percentage in this country. And all you're getting in return is no tax on tips. I mean, this is, the asymmetry about this is so devastating.

We have to find a way as a party to better communicate to his voters that they have bet on the wrong horse and they're getting kicked in the head. Yeah, there's also an asymmetry in the permanence of the tax cuts. So the tax cuts geared towards the richest of the rich. They're more permanent and long lasting. And then the tax cuts that they're, he's kind of dangling above middle and lower class people. and they go away after a few years. You know, earlier on the live stream, I was live talking to my audience

and we were trying to list out everything wrong with the bill and it was just so much that I couldn't fix it or figure it in one list. It was like flooding the zone in a bill because even beyond the massive debt problem, they're now trying to create an immigration state. Like the funding to ICE is going to go from $3.4 billion to now $45 billion or so in 2029.

Imagine that type of increase. It's wild. And then there's changes to election integrity, slashing of Medicaid, of course, the redistribution of wealth and the permanence of the tax cuts. But there's also massive cuts to green energy. It was like 900,000, 850,000 jobs are going to be cuts from green energy from Biden bills. And then changes to housing and urban development. It's just top down an awful, awful bill. What do you think the way forward is for Democrats to consolidate power?

the midterms people in the comments were asking me what do we do earlier when i was live yeah well i know we were we were on pins and needles about whether this was going to get passed after 50 votes and all sorts of things yeah i wanted it to get past because that not not because i i endorse anything that's in it yeah but because you need to hold the party and maga responsible follow the money once one now we still have to get through the house but let's assume it gets through the House. This is their policy agenda. We can talk about esoteric things like Project 2025. It's another page at a Project 2025. That doesn't mean anything. But when somebody goes to a closed door of a Social Security office or doesn't get their pay or doesn't get their disability or the

child goes hungry in the red states, right? Or the infrastructure, a package that Biden had signed, but now Donald Trump has defunded, means that there's no jobs in their community. This is now codified in the bill. The policy of Donald Trump, the depraved policy of Donald Trump and MAGA are now there for all to see. Now, it's going to be up to people like you and me, Midas Touch, and the rest to go through the 900-page bill once it's finally become law and explain to people. You got to talk truth to each other first, right, Adam? That's the first thing. We have to empower our audience with knowledge. Once they have the knowledge, then we've got to run the bastards out. There's numbers of ways to do it. I don't want to have anybody just sitting around

until the midterm election to take it, to take them out and run them out on a rail. We've seen six, seven million people hit the streets at rallies by 50-51 and other organizations. We need more participation in our participatory democracy. And we have to like kind of reclaim that, right? Just the way the Tea Party movement did 20 years ago, 25 years ago, the Democrats, whatever that means to be a Democrat. And you can see from elections in New York, it doesn't mean the same thing to everybody. We're not a monolithic party. We're a very large tent party, right? And I'm talking to independents too and moderates and everything else. Fair-minded people can no longer be the silent majority. We have, we don't longer have the luxury of being silent. And so we've got to do

that. Now, and it's not just waiting, like as I said for the midterms, there are local elections. There are judge elections. You should think about running for something. Run for school board. Run for your local town council. You know, help, you know, volunteer for an elected official in your community that you think aligns with your values. Help them get elected or reelected. There's lots of things to do.

Here is, step one, learn, come, have a fellowship, shoulder to shoulder on your channel, my channel, my distutch, and all of that. But then you've got to take, you've got to put it into. action. And that's what's going to make the difference as we lead into the midterms and beyond. You know what? I really like the argument you made about this passing almost being a necessity so that people can connect the dots to their vote. Because I think one of the worst things that could happen for democracy is Trump having an absolutely lucky presidency where he sits back and everything glide, like he just able to build off the back of Biden's policies, which were largely good for the economy. I'm not saying, of course, we want bad things to happen, but voters being held

accountable for their actions and connecting the dots straight up is the best way to disincentivize people from rolling the dice and voting on another orange freak in the future, right? Absolutely. Look, we're not the grim Reaper channel. We're not like hoping for the demise of American democracy or, but we have eyes and ears. We know that the U.S. dollar is the worst that's ever been. since 1973. We know that confidence of the American economy is at its lowest ebb.

We know that 67% of Americans in a recent poll, including 70% of independents, are not proud to be Americans under this administration. So we have to, as you said, pull it together and connect the dots

so that when people go into the voting booth, we never make this mistake again. Can we pivot a little bit to the Supreme Court? It's been packed with a lot of profile, high profile cases throughout this term. It's like case after case, just heavy hitters. How have you viewed the direction of the judiciary lately, especially in regards to, there was a recent Supreme Court about the, there's a recent ruling about the judiciary's ability to, you know, rule on executive decisions. And that kind of related to birthright citizenship. So how have you been viewing the direction of everything? Yeah, I just had a good interview today. It's going to be up on the legal AF channel with Leah Lippman, strict scrutiny, professor out of Michigan. We were kind of going back and forth about what did we just see? What do we just watch in the last nine months?

When you see the statistics, the ones that Roberts will push, it's that, well, only four, listen to these numbers, Adam. Only 4% of the cases were split along the ideological lines. But it was 100% of the cases that we cared about. 40% of the cases were unanimous. Okay, forget that. Let's talk about the eight to two. the batting 800 in emergency applications by Donald Trump,

including about things that matter to us on immigration, on transgender and LGBTQ plus rights, and on birthright citizenship. He had, you know, the only way you can describe this term is that it was a group of MAGA right-wing Republicans who were hell-bent on benefiting a person named Donald Trump. Not so much the presidency. just Donald Trump.

And so there's no other way to sugarcoat what we just watch. You know, we said at the beginning of the term, are we watching the rise of the Amy Cody Barrett court? Is she going to be the right, right, center, moderate or something on some of these issues? The answer to that is no, no. Donald Trump figured out in the first term over the Muslim ban that if he made emergency applications, it was a way to cleave the Supreme Court, put them into the respective ideological corners.

and that would be the quickest path to victory for him rather than going through the normal route of a writ of certiorari and people don't remember. We had 60 other cases that got decided this year as well. But the ones that matter where Donald Trump pressed his hand is the one where he was rewarded for that. So moving into the next term, and we're going to have a lot of things over the summer,

a lot of emergency applications. There was just an oral argument at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals about immigration and deportation and the alien enemies act. which based on the panel looks like it's going to be a win for Donald Trump back to the United States Supreme Court just this summer. You know, they think, oral vacation now, forget it. They're going to be open for business before the term reopens.

So what we're looking at is a Supreme Court that is unwilling to save America from an out-of-control rogue president. And what we think is going to happen is the dissent, the dissents that are written by Katanji Brown Jackson, Kagan, and so it's a moment. and Sotomayor, are going to be read by history as being in the right, as they call out in what's happening in plain sight, which is the destruction of our separation of powers, a presidency that's elevated above all the other branches, and a complete, as Kintaghi Brown Jackson put it, a law-free zone that he's allowed to operate within. And even though

we're like, God darn it, it's dissent. I wish they were. the majority opinion. The sense matter as well to speak to future lawyers, future law students, and to the future. And a lot of times they're found in the right and they're complimented. This court's going to go down, as I've said before. It's already circling the drain of history as one of the worst courts I've ever seen in my lifetime. And I've been studying the court for at least 40 years. Yeah. And to build on what you were saying about them being unwilling to reel in a rogue executive or a rogue president, I would also argue they created the conditions for this with their immunity ruling.

Was it over a year ago? Maybe two years ago? I don't know. Just a year. It seems longer. Yeah, yeah. I mean, eternity.

But since then, it's been full of rulings. And like you said, the 4% that matter didn't go the right way. The 4% that Trump was able to put his thumb on, such as, I don't know,

the recent ones regarding executive power and courts. I mean, this is an argument I have with my right-wing friends a lot. I have a little group chat of a few right-wing friends. And they happen to be lawyer. So we're always going back And it's kind of like the most raw form Of right wing arguments, I would say

Like when I listen to Ben Shapiro or whatever I view that as like probably the most raw form of the arguments Then when I go to the Trump rallies It's like a step below because they're just regurgitating everything But um you know One time we talked before I was heading into a Jubilee debate in L.A And you helped give me some advice on the Kilmaramondo Obrego-Garcia case Because I am not studying law

I dropped out of college like a year ago because digital media as something that I'm really devoting a lot of time to. But I want to talk to you a little about your journey overall and what advice you'd have for someone like me. So, like, first of all, when did you know that you wanted to become a lawyer or study? If you made it this far in the video and you want to see the rest, you can click the join button below. If you're subscribed to the channel, you will see a join button.

The rest of the show will be under the members-only content. We will be providing a lot of value in the members-only tab over the next few years. I mean, forever, we are building out different shows. new IP, new property in Chicago, and a lot of these shows will be free. Every single show will be free, but we'll have behind the scenes content, extra content, and more personal conversations for the members, for the more personal members. So if you want the rest of this episode, go join below. I love you all and peace out.