The Bulwark Podcast - S2 Ep1011: Susan Rice: This Is Bloody Serious
Episode Date: April 1, 2025The administration admits it mistakenly sent a Maryland father with protected status to the Salvadoran penal colony—but at the same time, it says the federal courts have no jurisdiction over him bec...ause he is now in a foreign country. If some of us have no due process, that opens the door to none of us having due process. Meanwhile, Trump's administration seems hellbent on destroying the U.S.-led world order, Marco Rubio is acting very un-American, and we actually do have long-standing protocols for how a president's national security team should discuss a military strike. Plus, Mother Jones reporters show the absurdity of ICE's assertions about migrant gang membership. Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, along with Noah Lanard and Isabela Dias, join Tim Miller. show notes Atlantic piece on the Maryland father sent to El Salvador Tim's Bulwark Take on ICE's 'mistaken' deportation Mother Jones on the shoddy tattoo evidence being used to disappear migrants
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hey guys, it's Tim. I've got a little programming note for you and a monologue about some of
the news that has come out overnight with regards to the El Salvador prison. So first
up, we had Susan Rice today. She was great. We taped her podcast yesterday. Part of the
reason I'm doing this monologue is that we were cut a little short, but here's the thing.
My mother always said we went on vacation to a new city. She's like, you don't want to see all the sights on your first trip to the city. You
want to leave yourself wanting more. So I think that's nice. I left myself wanting a
little more with Susan Rice. We can go deep on Benghazi or the nature of the Western world
order at another time, but she is just really, really good on Mike Waltz and the comedy of
heirs of the man that is in the job she once
held for President Obama.
So that's coming up next.
Last night, there was an Atlantic story I'm sure many of you have probably seen that I'm
going to get into more here in a second about Kilmore Abrego Garcia.
He's a man in Maryland, father of two.
His five-year-old has a severe disability, autism.
He can't speak.
He's been here since he was 16 years old.
He's fleeing the gangs in El Salvador.
Somehow we lumped him in with the Venezuelans and claimed he was
trend to Aragua and sent him back to El Salvador, to this gulag.
And the story is awful, but what the Atlantic reported is that it was a mistake.
And the government actually in a court filing is that it was a mistake. And the government actually
in a court filing admitted that that was a mistake, that this was not a person that was
meant to be sent there, but said that we can't do anything now because he's in El Salvador's
custody. So I fired off a rage take about that at about 1 a.m. last night that you can
go listen to over on YouTube or on the Bullwork Takes podcast feed.
And so I just want kind of programming note on that. And then I want to expand on my points.
The more takes feed, like I've had some when we were at our event in Phoenix,
and people were really excited about it, loving it because they kind of want to
hear our reaction to all of the horrors as they are happening.
I've heard from other people that it's like, I can't live like this and hear
about this stuff every minute.
I got to tell you, I get it.
I totally understand on all counts of this.
And you know, we're here, I'm here, I'm serving y'all.
So if we're doing stuff that isn't serving you, you don't, don't let it take a break.
Like take a day off, take a couple days off, whatever.
And there's some people that want the quick takes because that's all they have time for,
right? Some people that just really want to know what's happening minute
by minute. I get that. Others just, you know, want to listen to me on their daily constitutional.
Whatever works for you, I think that you should be ensuring that this is serving you and serving
your needs. And so I 100% support that. And if there's something we can be doing better, you just let me know. My promise to myself as far as serving my needs, I said
this I think in the very first podcast with JVL and Sarah after Trump won was that the
only way I can deal with this, this next four years of fucking nonsense is to care what
I care about. To not be fake outraged over Trump's stupid shit. If I'm not actually outraged to not focus on
something just because I think it might matter in some triple
bank shot in the midterms, like that's not the point of what
we're doing here. I don't like what I say on this podcast is
like not going to be the determining factor on who wins
the Colorado seventh district next year in November in 16 months.
I think that my obligations are higher than that.
And so to that point, all we have in this world is like our ability to control our own
choices and to try to influence things in the way that we can and either in our communities
or using our platforms, et cetera.
And I'm going to do that no matter what I think is politically whatever, useful.
I like obsessing over that right now.
I think it's really stupid.
And in this case, in the case of the El Salvador Gulag, if it was a 20% issue, I said this
on Twitter the other day, you could call me Mr. 20 because I don't give a fuck if it's
a 20% issue.
It's wrong.
And I'd get a tattoo that said Mr. 20, but I'd worry that then they'd send me, shackle
me and send me on a plane to San Salvador.
So no more tattoos for me.
But here's the good news for you guys.
There was a poll about this and turns out I'm not Mr. 20.
You guys aren't because I know I've been hearing from you and you agree with me.
We're Mr. and Mrs. 47.
Americans oppose the deportations of Venezuelan migrants without hearings by double digits,
47% to 35%, according to an economist YouGov poll.
Most notably, only 32% of Republicans said they believed that the deported Venezuelans
are actually all gang members, as the administration claims.
Only one in three Republicans believe that. And
a majority of Americans said they thought that the administration is making many or
some mistakes in its deportations. So, this goes back to what we were talking about with
Bill, just show Joe Rogan. I don't know. I mean, I have a pretty low view of my fellow
Americans for putting this fucking moron back into the White House again
But I don't have such a low view as to think that we cannot convince people that it's bad
To send gay makeup artists to a torture dungeon in another fucking country with no due process and no ability to appeal I don't know. I don't know that we're quite there yet as far as the depravity of our neighbors and our fellow Americans
So that was a little bit of good news.
The bad news is that this administration isn't doing anything about Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
They shook him down when he's going to pick up his child from his mother-in-law's house,
the kid's grandmother's house.
They cuffed him.
They sent him on this plane to San Salvador and then on a bus and then
to this terrorist prison.
He hasn't been able to contact his lawyers, he hasn't been able to contact his families.
It is just an unbelievable nightmare.
It's an unimaginable nightmare.
You think like to be him or to be a spouse, having your spouse just be snatched off the
street when they've done nothing wrong. He had
no criminal record here. The thing that you see that the administration is now saying is that,
A, they don't have jurisdiction, which is such bullshit. We're paying El Salvador to hold these
guys. So I think we have jurisdiction. That'd be like me hiring a babysitter to watch my daughter.
And then if something bad happens, people are like, I had no jurisdiction over what happens there.
It's like, what are you talking about?
We are paying for them to hold these people.
So we do have jurisdiction, but that's what they're saying.
And the other thing they're saying is that this person might not have been trend to Aragwa.
Because remember we did the Alien Enemies Act because we're at war supposedly with trend to Aragwa.
That's why we can go around the Constitution to invoke these extreme
measures because this is a supposed war that we're in with this Nicaraguan gang, excuse
me, Venezuelan gang. They don't even claim that this guy is in that gang. They do claim
that he was a member of MS-13 based on some 2019 filing where another person that he got
scooped up with in some raid accused him of that. There's been no evidence of it. A judge gave him temporary
status, said that he was protected because there was credible fears that he'd be hurt if he was
sent back to El Salvador, that he'd be targeted by gangs. Our buddy John Favreau tweeted about this.
Our not buddy JD Vance, quote tweeted Favreau to say this. My comment is, according to the court document, you apparently didn't read, he was a convicted
MS-13 gang member with no legal right to be here.
My further comment is that it's gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported
while ignoring citizens they victimized.
This guy didn't fucking victimize anybody.
He is not a criminal.
JD Vance might really have come to admire Putin and despise our European friends,
as they said in that text message with Pete Hickseth. But in liberal democracies, in free
countries, there's a difference between accusation and conviction. When J.D. says that he was a
convicted MS-13 gang member, I don't even know what that means. We don't convict people for being gang members, but he hasn't been convicted of anything. The
judge gave him protected status during the Trump I administration. So it was a time when
Trump had jurisdiction over immigration. They ruled that this person was a gang member.
Do they have new evidence? They're not even claiming to present new evidence.
They're not saying that they have anything.
They're just saying that Donald Trump and JD Vance have the right to send a dad with
a disabled kid, who's an American citizen, by the way, to a fucking gulag and that we
just have to say, okay, yes, sir.
It is Stalin-esque behavior.
It's like we're sending people to Siberia
with no recourse and JD Vance is unapologetic about it.
He's totally wrong.
There was no conviction.
In the later tweet he talked about,
this was a Biden administration thing.
He was wrong about that.
He had to edit his tweet to change it.
Like these guys are just making shit up as they go along.
Here's Conor Lamb.
The VP is lying
about a building trades union member who a judge ordered not to be removed, never committed a crime
in 14 years, and has a five-year-old, is now trapped in a Salvadoran prison no one can get out
of, Catholics, union members, believers in the constitution, take note. I agree. Thank you,
Conor Lamb, for speaking clearly about
that.
The spokesperson for the White House was before this all came out, but there have been other
stories, obviously, that we've been covering of people. And at this point, look, and we're
adding on to segment two of this bonus interview that I did yesterday with the reporters of
Mother Jones who have talked to 10 of these family members of the people
that are there. And they're like, we looked through the list and saw evidence of criminal
behavior on a minority of the people. But they spoke to 10 family members and they're
like, you know, you can only know what you can know from reporting, but they don't see
any evidence that any of these 10 people are gang members. Now, this Maryland person was
not included in that, Kilmar Garcia. André, the
makeup artist, wasn't included in that. There's a New Yorker article out today on the makeup
artist, on André, that says that André's lawyers believed that actually the guy that
was yelling that we talked about before who was crying, who was crying for his mother
screaming out, I'm a gay barber, their lawyer thinks that's maybe somebody else because
they don't think André would describe himself as a barber, as a makeup artist. And so who
the hell knows? Maybe they got two gays down there. So anyway, here is Caroline Levitt
with her cross necklace discussing the people that we've sent to this hellhole yesterday
and whether they are actually doing vetting to verify that these
people are gang members or criminals.
Our agents on the front lines take
deporting these people with the utmost seriousness and there is a litany of
criteria that they use to ensure that these individuals qualify as foreign
terrorists and to ensure to ensure that they qualify for deportation and
the president made it incredibly clear to the American public that there would
be a mass deportation campaign of not just foreign terrorists but also illegal
criminal aliens who have been wreaking havoc on American communities and shame
on you and shame on the mainstream media for trying to cover for these
individuals who have this is a vicious gang Andrew this is a vicious gang, Andrew. This is a vicious gang that
has taken the lives of American women.
The government filed in court, which says all-
And you said yourself there are eight criteria on that document.
No, they need eight courts.
And you are questioning the credibility of these agents who are putting their life on
the line to protect your life and the life of everybody in this group and everybody across
the country. Oh yeah. She's so outraged. She's so outraged. Oh, how dare you? How dare you? These people
are gang members. And this is like, this is sick. It is incumbent upon them to demonstrate
that these people are criminals. Like this is not how things work in a free country. You just get
to shout down, it's Andrew Feinberg's reporter, a good reporter over there, as she's shouting down, shame on you, shame on you.
Like, no, shame on you. It is incumbent upon you to demonstrate that people, that at least
there is beyond a reasonable doubt, familiar with that phrase, that they are in a gang or
committed a crime or even came here illegally. These other, like again, Kilmer Garcia was here illegally.
Like a judge had given him protected status.
I don't know what the political ramifications are of this,
but this is the grossest thing we've done in a long time.
Bill and I were talking about this in a lot of ways
and everybody remembers, and I was growing up,
I remember the Abu Ghraib scandal
and how massive that scandal was growing up remember the Abu Ghraib scandal and how massive
that scandal was. That was horrible. It's just a nightmare that what we did. This is worse in a lot
of ways and these are people that are here legally, that have family members that are legal, that did
nothing, that we are sending to another country we don't even have. There's no oversight, there's no
recourse, you know, at least in that case in Abu Ghraib there were brave people within the administration
that were whistleblowing, that were speaking out. We that we're brave people within the administration that we're whistleblowing, that we're speaking
out.
We don't have that option here.
Like what we're doing here is the worst thing that this country has done in a long, long
time.
And I'm not going to turn away from it or focus on whatever kitchen table issues or
Donald Trump's third term, whatever other stupid shit people want to talk about.
So that's that.
In segment two, we've got Noah Leonard and Isabella Diaz from Mother Jones that have spoken to the family members of some of the
folks we've sent to El Salvador. And then here in segment one, we've got Susan Rice, who talks with
the other, I just think absolutely critical thing that's going on here, which is just the
reorientation of our foreign policy, the requisites of our foreign policy, and frankly, how it ties to economic policy with tariffs as well. So she's really
great on it. Stick around for Susan Rice, Noah Leonard, and Isabella Diaz. We'll see you soon.
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Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast.
I'm your host, Tim Miller, delighted to
welcome back someone that served as
national security advisor and ambassador to the United Nations during the Obama administration. She was
Biden's chief domestic policy advisor for two and a half years. It's Susan Rice. How are you doing?
Susan Rice Great, Tim. Good to be with you again.
Tim Miller Much, much to discuss. You know, you're a fan
favorite from all the cussing from the last, from the pre-election podcast. We've had enough more
to cuss about now. So I look forward to it. I guess at the beginning, when I was
thinking about what I wanted to talk to you about, I was kind of like, you know what?
I should just ask her what is the most alarming, what's the thing that alarms you the most
from the first, you know, call it nine weeks of the administration and why don't we just
take it from there?
Jesus, Tim. I don't even know where to start if you go with that question.
I mean, I'm profoundly alarmed by the dismantling of the federal government and of vital programs
from Meals on Wheels to veteran services to healthcare that so many Americans rely on. I'm profoundly concerned by the trend of retribution
and the effort to undermine our democracy
by trying to intimidate the media and law firms
and universities and anybody who will stand up
to this administration.
Internationally, it's exceedingly concerning that we are essentially abandoning our traditional
Western allies in NATO and Canada and Asia and aligning the United States with Vladimir
Putin and Russia as we sacrifice Ukraine on an altar to Trump's ego.
At the same time as we are cozying up to Russia, we are placing ourselves in the camp
that is the axis of authoritarians. It's not just Russia, it's China and under Xi Jinping, North
Korea and Iran, who are all a quadripartite virtual alliance of their own. So that's extremely concerning, the trade war and efforts to punish our best trading
partners and traditional allies and undermine their economy, the effort to threaten Canada and
Greenland. I mean, I could go on and then we haven't even gotten to signal gate yet. I mean,
let me summarize. This is a wholesale effort to kill America's democracy and sacrifice
our global leadership.
Yeah, that's a good summary.
I agree with basically every sentence in that, I guess with one caveat, I do think that we
are, you know, at least in some ways, still trying to challenge Iran and being hostile
there.
And I guess that like gets us into Signalgate, right?
So before we get to kind of the, you know, Yakavy Sacks execution of it, I am wondering
just what you thought about the broader policy with regards to kind of Yemen and countering
Iran in the region.
Well, it's not clear to me the extent to which we're countering Iran.
I mean, remember Donald Trump who blew up the Iran nuclear deal under, negotiated under
President Obama when I was national security
advisor and claimed that that would be the way to emphatically prevent Iran from getting
a nuclear weapon.
That strategy of blowing up the deal and applying so-called maximum pressure has failed abjectly.
Iran is closer to having a nuclear weapon than it ever was. And now Trump is making nice to Iran, asking Iran to come, please, please, please, to the
negotiating table.
And Iran is giving them a stiff arm.
So that's on one side.
On the other side, you've got JD Vance revealed in this signal text chain to be more interested in punishing our European allies than in taking
military action against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen who are attacking international shipping
and American warships. So I don't know exactly where they're coming from with respect to Iran.
It seems as incoherent as much of the rest of their policy.
Pete Yeah, it's interesting that you bring that with the JD, because that's where I was going to go next.
When you look at that signal text chain, was it the vice president's, like,
substantive policy arguments on top of just like what seems to be a deep personal disdain
for our European allies that he and the Secretary of Defense had? And was that the thing that jumped
out to you the most from the actual substance of
the text exchange?
That was certainly one of the things that jumped out at me about the substance of the
text exchange.
But it seemed to be a view shared not only by J.D. Vance and the Secretary of Defense,
but Stephen Miller on behalf of the President and Michael Walsh.
The notion that our efforts to ensure freedom of navigation, which the United States has
upheld globally since the 18th century, is somehow merely a favor to our European partners
that needs to be repaid in some extortionary fashion is extraordinary in itself and very simple-minded and transactional
and counter to U.S. national security interests.
We have the United States as a major global player, blue water navy, and reliant on commercial
access via the seas everywhere.
We have a long-standing historic interest in freedom of navigation, which it does seem
the Secretary of Defense acknowledged in this conversation.
And yet, we have many people purporting to represent the President's views, suggesting
that that's a service that we can extort repayment for.
Mind you, no evidence that any European country had asked the United States to take military
action at that time and place against the Houthis.
But nonetheless, we're supposed to extort them for payment.
Mad Fientist Yeah, crazy.
I want to go into Europe more, but just the biggest picture on the text chain, you had
Waltz's job at one point.
There's a new story out just a little bit ago about, I guess, two US officials have
said that Waltz created and hosted multiple other sensitive national security conversations
on Signal with cabinet members, including separate threads on how to broker peace between
Russia and Ukraine, as well as other military operations.
And just like the existence of this is crazy. And is it like having been in that chair,
I just talk about why this is just so outside the norm
and what struck you about it.
It's mind blowing for several reasons.
First of all, those conversations that were captured
in the Signalgate text chain that Jeffrey Goldberg published
were in so many ways and
by every definition classified.
There's no doubt about it.
Simply the discussion, the deliberative discussion that the vice president, by the way, initiated
in that text chain, which I've studied carefully, he initiated a conversation about whether
the United States should engage in military action against a
foreign adversary.
And then it was spun into a bunch of comments and deliberations about the impact on the
region, on our European partners, on Egypt.
All of that, the deliberation itself is classified.
And then you get Hegseth coming in with the super crazy, which is the details conveyed in an
unsecure commercial application of forthcoming US military operations, which could have directly
put US servicemen and women in harm's way, pilots, seamen, and women.
It's insane.
Now that they have done that, they seem to claim that there's no reason for concern or
remorse and now we have the stories that this is not a one-off situation as it obviously
wasn't because nobody objected to having these discussions over Signal.
This is how they conduct the foreign policy of the United States.
Anybody who knows anything about national security knows that a signal chat can be hacked
and stolen by our most sophisticated adversaries.
Even knowing that, they continue to do it.
Remember who's on this chain, Tim?
Marco Rubio, who was the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
John Ratcliffe, who did a prior stint as DNI.
Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth, who were military officers.
They know what is classified.
They know how to handle it.
And if they don't, for more than one reason, they have no business being in those jobs.
But this is not a group of neophytes who woke up yesterday, Mike Waltz saying.
And so they are deliberately, whether it's for expedience, laziness, or an effort to
hide from the presidential records requirements and the Federal Records Act documentation
of their deliberations and decisions, they are engaging in negligent, reckless behavior that's putting
the United States and our men and women in uniform at risk.
I'll take all of the above on that expedience and trying to avoid the records act.
I want to get back to our friend Marco, but the Hague-Seth exchange was the one that struck
me the most.
And I've never been on these types of deliberations.
Our audience hasn't for the most part.
So you have. And so I'm just wondering what you made of it.
He seems to be trying very hard.
It's just like, I can't imagine Bob Gates or Leon Panetta, like feeling like they,
you know, doing all caps pathetic, talking with the Europeans or like giving
specific details on a chain such as this, feeling like he needed everybody's approval.
I don't know.
It just read like somebody in way over his head to me.
I don't know what you made of it.
Well, I think, frankly, he wasn't qualified to begin with.
I don't know what being a Fox News commentator or a host has to do with running the most
sophisticated military in the world in a department that is the largest employer
in the nation.
He ran two small nonprofits for veterans into the ground.
I think there's a real question about his qualifications to begin with, but this was
not handled in the serious professional way that significant decisions of national security
consequence need to be.
Nothing more sensitive than imminent military operations.
He seemed to care less or to be so amateurish that he went ahead and puts that information
in a place that our adversaries could have easily taken it.
How would those conversations actually work?
For people that haven't been in them, you're trying to make a decision, Bob Gates is trying
to read you in on where it is.
Are they all happening in a secure phone call?
How did that work?
It's an excellent question.
National security decision-making proceeds by processes that have been long-standing
for decades and that we all have followed to date
to greater or lesser extent.
So let's take this example that we're dealing with of an imminent military operation or
at least a consideration of one.
What should happen?
Well, first of all, there ought to be a series of meetings held in the secure confines of
the White House Situation Room, which is
in the basement of the White House, very secure facility.
You can't take in your cell phone.
You can't take in your Apple Watch because those devices, we know, can be hacked and
turned into listening devices for our adversaries.
You leave all of that far outside of the Situation Room.
You go into the Situation Room and you have a conversation that is prepared and structured.
You have an agenda.
You have a detailed policy options paper.
You have a military concept of operations.
You have a diplomatic strategy.
You have a communications plan.
And the cabinet level or deputy cabinet level principles and deputies as we call them,
will meet in a series of discussions to very carefully weigh what are the right options,
what is the timing, what are the regional and global diplomatic, strategic, economic consequences
of the proposed actions. They work through all of these things and then take the issue to the president for his
decision laying out the risks, the benefits, the challenges.
And then what should happen is the president should convene his cabinet-level principles
in the situation room, and they should have a discussion in which, or maybe multiple discussions,
in which a decision is taken.
And then it should be carefully executed and preparations and precautions should be taken.
When you take military action like this, we need to make sure that all of the American personnel in the region,
who could be the victims of retaliation by the Houthis or the Iranians have taken, are on lockdown and secure,
whether it's our diplomatic personnel
or our military personnel,
that our allies have been thought about and accounted for
and that they are not going to be targeted in retaliation.
They're all these complicated things
that go into thoughtful deliberations and decision-making,
none of which happened on that text chain, which is inappropriate for that kind
of discussion, and none of which delved into the complexities that I just outlined.
Yeah, one more thing on Hegsath, another new story that has come out about him is, I guess,
he brought his wife to a couple of sensitive Pentagon meetings with foreign military counterparts.
This is a report from the
Wall Street Journal. I talked to Mark Warner I guess last week and it just
seems like recklessness over and over again.
It is recklessness over and over again. I mean his wife undoubtedly does not have
a security clearance. If she did it would be completely unnecessary and
inappropriate. And even for people that have security clearances and discussing sensitive information with
foreign counterparts, they need to have what we call a need to know.
You don't just get to have access to information even when you have a clearance.
You have to have, for the execution of your job, a need to know that information. So it is impossible for me anyway to conjure a rationale for his wife, my husband, or anybody
else's spouse or partner to be in a sensitive meeting that's not a social occasion with
foreign counterparts.
If it were a social occasion, that's a different situation.
That doesn't sound like what this was.
I want to get back to Marco, who you referenced, Secretary of State.
Your former colleague, Ben Rhodes, wrote this.
I thought he summed it up pretty well.
The Rubio legacy to date, he's ended USAID democracy funding, terminated Radio Marty,
which is a Cuban radio station that was funded in part by USAID, mass deportation of Cubans
and Venezuelans, anti-free speech
policies that mirror the Cuban Communist Party, great investment, Florida hardliners.
It is pretty remarkable.
I don't know.
Rubio had to be a type of person that you had some overlap with policy-wise when you
were back in the Obama administration, certainly not across the board, but on some of these
types of issues, USAID, people fleeing communism, rights of people fleeing communism. What do you make of just
a total abdication of all of those past views from the Secretary of State?
Well, you also neglected to mention the rounding up and deportation without due process
and deportation without due process of Venezuelans, Haitians, and others sent to some gulag in El Salvador and then onward in some cases directly back to Venezuela.
And now the apparent rounding up of a Russian here legally, but likely to be now deported
back to Russia, having opposed the war with Ukraine.
It is a very different Marco Rubio, to put it politely,
than the one that we had all been familiar with before.
And I can't get into his head or his motivations, but it certainly seems
to be a 180 from where he was and where he's been frankly all his career. And I don't know if
this makes him at all uncomfortable, but it surely makes those of us watching from the outside
uncomfortable on his behalf. I'll be a little more impolite because look, we can have some
disagreements on foreign policy and the right approach to the situation with the Houthis or
whatever. It is sick what we've been doing
with these folks that are fleeing communism. That is central to Marco's past, central to,
as a former Republican, former neocon, central to our worldview about America's role protecting
freedom in the world, being a shining city on the hill for people fleeing oppression and communism, that we are taking people that fled communism and sending them to a gulag
in a different country is about as un-American as anything I can imagine.
And he's essentially the point person for this policy.
Yeah.
It's remarkable and it's horrific.
I mean, for the United States to be sending people to foreign gulags or back to repressive
communist regimes is something I never thought I'd see.
I do feel like there's been a little less outrage from the Democrats on that issue than
I've seen on others.
Do you know what you make of that?
Are people scared about the immigration being a political loser or what do you make of that?
I don't know. I'm not sure I would do you make of that? I don't know.
I'm not sure I would agree with that premise,
but I, but I don't know.
You know, I think everybody needs to
understand everybody.
I don't care if you're an American citizen,
you know, white male, Christian, Republican,
straight as an arrow, anybody in this country
who walks the streets
needs to fear a situation where the government believes
it can pick you up, detain you,
and deport you without due process.
Because even if you're a citizen,
they can claim you're not, and without due process,
you don't have the opportunity to prove
that you're a citizen.
You don't have the opportunity to prove
you're not a criminal.
And so, you know, people may think that, oh, well, these brown people who must be Venezuelan
gang members and came here illegally and committed crimes, I don't mind if they get sent to El
Salvador.
We have no way of knowing if those people are anything other than brown people.
We don't know if they're non-citizens.
We don't know if they came here illegally. We don't know if they're non-citizens. We don't know if they came here illegally.
We don't know if they're gang members.
We don't know if they've committed crimes
because none of them had the opportunity
to have their cases heard.
And in a world where there is no due process for some,
there is no due process for any of us.
And we all need to wake up and understand
how bloody serious this is.
Let's talk about the European view really quick.
My colleague, Jonathan Last wrote yesterday about how Europe has to take the situation
with Greenland and what we've seen in these signal chats very seriously.
Possibly might impact their thinking on their own nuclear umbrella, their own defense posture,
having to go alone without the US.
Obviously you talked to former counterparties in Europe.
What do you make of the binds that they're in right now
when it comes to our allyship or our one-time allyship?
Well, I don't have to talk to counterparts
to know based on my 30 years of experience in this field
how incredibly angry, betrayed, distraught they all feel.
We have built a US-led world order that has done an extraordinary job of securing the
American people and our interests since World War II, And it has been predicated on our global alliances
and partnerships, primarily with Europe and Canada,
but also in Asia.
And when the US administration and President
of the United States pulls both the economic
and the security rug out from under them,
and by the way, it's not a one-way street,
it's a two-way street, the only time NATO
has ever invoked Article 5 of our mutual defense treaty was after the
United States was attacked on 9-11 and the Europeans came to our defense and our support
and Canada in Afghanistan and actually a number of other non-NATO partners.
In a world where we are threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our Northern neighbor in Canada and Denmark
and Greenland.
There is no question that the Europeans and others
have to look at this in their own interests
and recognize that as Mark Carney,
the Prime Minister of Canada said,
we're not in the same relationship that we used to be.
This is a very different world
where they do not anymore feel
they can trust the United States as an economic partner, as a security partner, and as a partner
that shares their values. And that is extremely damaging to our national security and our national
interests. And this is damage, Tim, I'm afraid, is going to be extremely hard to repair.
Pete Slauson One of the members of the Signal, I forgot to ask you about that I needed to pick your brain on
before I lost you, was Steve Witkoff.
Did you catch his interview with Tucker Carlson
or clips of it where he talks about Donald Trump,
Putin giving Donald Trump a painting
and how he gained all of this trust with Putin
and some more thoughts about, you know,
some other autocrats like, what do you make of this? Tim, I read about it.
I can't be bothered to watch Tucker Carlson.
Okay.
I mean, I can't be bothered to watch Tucker Carlson usually either, but he's interviewing
the point person for the negotiation between Ukraine and Russia, which is a pretty important
person you'd think, even though he's a former real estate man.
But it's like, that's insane, right?
He's bringing back a painting?
What I've read of that interview is really extraordinary.
But bringing back a painting, you know,
there are plenty of foreign leaders who've tried to
co-op Donald Trump with blandishments and gifts
and deals on the side and economic benefits.
That's not particularly new.
But Steve Witkoff, essentially embracingin and all of putin's demands
are going into any potential negotiation with ukraine is is far more disturbing to me than some
probably ugly portrait of donald trump we have in mr witkoff it appears as somebody who either
doesn't know or doesn't care about the history of this
conflict, doesn't know that Russia was an aggressor and a serial aggressor starting
in 2008 with Georgia, attacking Ukraine, Crimea and the Donbass in 2014, and then invading
Ukraine again in 2022 with the aim of taking the whole country. If the president's special envoy is okay with Russia serially eating neighboring countries
and continuing to roll through up to and through NATO bounds, then he is essentially saying
he's okay with the potential of a World War III. And the whole reason why the United States, Europe,
Canada, and many others have been so staunch
in our support of Ukraine and its right to defend itself
is because it profoundly risks our security
and our interests if the lesson that Putin learns
from this further adventurism is that there are no bounds
to what he can do and nothing that will stop him. The lesson that Putin learns from this further adventurism is that there are no bounds to
what he can do and nothing that will stop him.
Do you have a text chain yourself with other security officials where people are centered
around like, can you believe this guy?
Do you see this?
You guys share notes on Steve Witkoff?
Look, I think many folks who served at senior levels in national security roles in Democratic and
Republican administrations prior to this, including Trump won, are bewildered.
Well, I'd recommend, if you have one of those sections, you could rename it Huthy PC Small
Group.
Just a little fun gag for your friends.
All right, last question.
In that group, a serious one to end.
I don't know, Ambassador, I'm pretty alarmed by how young folks are pretty disillusioned
by just the whole notion of the US world order that we've been talking about here.
If you look at the polls, there's just so much lack of confidence in our ability to
be a leader in the world, or that we should be a leader in the world.
This is across the partisan divide really, as you get younger and younger.
You've been involved in all this.
Are there any lessons we've
learned? Is there anything that you kind of reflect on and say, oh, we should have
done a better job making this case or that case or this policy or that policy?
Like, what do you think explains the increasing distrust of us playing a role
in the world among our fellow Americans?
Well, I think that's a great question.
And it's got many different
aspects. The answer is many different aspects to it. First of all, I don't think
we've done a good job educating the American people and particularly younger
people about our role in the world, why it matters, what is happening around the
world, and how those developments directly affect US security and US
interests. People don't understand that, you know,
we can't operate as an island in a world where we face not only hostile foreign powers like China,
Russia, Iran, North Korea, but where many of the threats that affect Americans most directly,
whether it's the impacts of climate change or the risk of pandemic disease or transnational criminal
organizations or transnational terrorist organizations.
All these transnational threats easily cross borders and affect the United States directly.
Our economy, our health, our security is threatened by disease and pandemics.
We learned that the hard way.
That was with COVID, which was a far less deadly in terms of mortality rate pandemic than we
would face for example if bird flu got out of control or if Ebola got out of
control. So you know people don't understand well enough how our security
is inextricably linked to that which happens overseas. That's one problem.
Another problem is that we've gotten into stupid and long and costly wars that have
taken a real toll on the men and women who served and their families and on our security.
I would go back to the Iraq War in 2003, and I don't think we can escape the consequences
of that. I think further, young people look around
and they see that we claim to be a force for good
and a great moral leader,
and yet they can cite innumerable instances
of American rhetoric not living up to our behavior
and arguably some very real instances of hypocrisy.
And so I think all of those things, and I'm sure there are many other factors, combine to leave
people questioning it best and disillusioned it at worst.
The further we get away from the generation that fought and died in World War II, who
really understand that what happens in Europe and what happens in Asia ultimately
can directly affect us, the more we need to lean into education and understanding and
leading in a way that not only garners the support of allies and partners and friends
around the world, but of the American people who also have to be invested in this.
And I have to understand that America first, if it becomes America alone, is exceedingly
dangerous for America.
And that we don't have the luxury in the 21st century of putting up walls and barriers
and assuming that what happens beyond our borders is of no consequence to us.
It's precisely the opposite.
I wish we didn't have so much breaking news. I could have done a full hour with you on
that topic alone. So maybe another time. All right. Thank you so much to Ambassador Susan
Rice for coming on the podcast. Let's do it again soon.
Good to be with you, Tim. Thank you.
All right. Thanks so much to Susan Rice. Stick around for a bonus segment with Noah Leonard
and Isabella Diaz from Mother Jones. Hey guys, Tim Miller from The Bullwork.
I'm here with Noah Leonard and Isabella Diaz of Mother Jones.
They wrote this great piece I've been referencing last week about the Venezuelans that we have sent
to the El Salvador Hellhole.
It was called You're Here Because of Your Tattoos.
And I wanted to talk to you guys about the story.
Thanks for doing this.
Yeah, thanks for having us on.
Yeah, thank you.
So, you guys have talked, you said in the article to family members of 10 of the Venezuelans
that we've sent to El Salvador.
I guess we think there's somewhere
between 238, maybe more total that have been sent. I want to go through a couple of the
specific people that you talk about, but just broadly, what are you hearing? What are you
learning from those conversations with these family members?
Yeah, absolutely. So we spoke to, like you said, 10 families, lawyers, relatives of people
who had been sent to El Salvador. And when we first started talking to them, we weren't sure they were in El Salvador,
and their relatives weren't, because there was no official list.
So it was a really kind of horrific situation where some of them had maybe recognized a
relative in one of the very fascistic propaganda photos that the government put out in El
Salvador.
Others just said, like, oh, we talked to them.
He said he was going back to Venezuela.
He never arrived.
Therefore he's probably in El Salvador. So that's where things stood as we talked to them. He said he was going back to Venezuela. He never arrived. Therefore, he's probably in El Salvador.
So that's where things stood as we started reporting it.
And yeah, we were finding these people on social media,
through their lawyers, kind of all over the place.
I can't even imagine just like the horror
of some of the family members,
like where you see these videos of them,
that they've been, their head shaved,
like they put their head down,
being treated just really horribly shackled.
What was it like?
How were they dealing with processing this emotionally?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's kind of an unimaginable situation to be in.
In most of the cases, the families had no news of their relatives and loved ones for
a few days since March 15 when
the planes took off.
So they were doing this kind of desperate scouting of the internet for any clue, looking
at photos that the Salvadoran government released, like you said.
All of these men were sent to the terrorism confinement center, were put in this white
prison uniform, they had their heads shaved.
And so these family members were looking for any evidence, trying to identify them based
on tattoos.
So seeing a rose on the neck that was peeking through the white t-shirt.
And that's how they learned of the fate of their relatives.
And then later on, when CBS News released a list of the 238 or so men who had been sent
to El Salvador, they had the final confirmation.
And your conversation with the lawyers, like, at this point, the legal recourse here is
pretty murky, right?
Because if they were, you know, if they were still on American soil, you soil, then I think they would have greater ability to obviously access
their clients, for example, et cetera.
So what are lawyers saying about this process?
I mean, are they fatalistic about it?
Are there options?
Yeah, so there's a wall suit that
covers some of the people sent there, about 2 thirds
of the people now from the ACLU.
And that's the one that's been getting
a lot of press attention, the one where the Trump administration flouted the
court order. But yeah, it seems like from the court hearings we've been listening to is they're not
super optimistic or the judge isn't certain that he has authority over these people anymore because
they are now in the custody of a foreign government. So, I mean, we are paying, the US
and United States is paying for $6 million for them.
So maybe there's some recourse there, but I wouldn't say there's a ton of optimism.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, we know for a fact that some of the men who were sent to El Salvador
without due process, they had upcoming hearings in US immigration courts.
Some of those hearings were for asylum cases where they might have legitimate claims.
You know, one of the people we write about in the story, his lawyer said he had a very good case for
fleeing political persecution from paramilitary groups aligned with the Maduro regime in Venezuela.
They were sent to this maximum security prison in El Salvador without having an opportunity
to show any evidence before an immigration judge.
A lot of them also came through legal pathways through the CBP-1 application from the Biden
administration.
They had their hearings moved and then were deported shortly before they were supposed
to appear in court.
Yeah, I think that's an important point though.
You guys tell me, but at least in many of the cases I've read, maybe in all of them, these men were coming through like at least quasi legal means, right?
It's not like they were sneaking across the border and had been captured.
Like some of them were in third countries, either Mexico or Colombia, you know, applying,
going through the process.
As you mentioned, some of them came to the border, but then, you know, said they had
an asylum claim.
They used the CBP one app that the Trump administration shut down, but was the legal way to kind of
get a hearing during the Biden administration.
So a lot of the pushback that you saw from Victoria Sparks this weekend was like, these
guys are illegal.
You don't get due process if you come illegally.
But I know the folks you talked to, and it seems like did they all or at least most of
them were trying to come through legal pathways. I think everyone that we most of them were trying to come through legal pathways.
I think everyone that we talked to was certainly trying to come through legal pathways.
Many officially came to the border ports of entry through like Isabella said, through
the CBP-1 application.
And even in the other cases, no one we talked to that I'm aware of tried to sneak into the
country.
For example, in one of the cases, Neri Alvarado, he left Venezuela in late October, but he
only ended up entering the US in April because he was stuck basically waiting for one of
these appointments for months.
And when he couldn't get one, he just walked over and turned himself into a border patrol
agent, which is what a lot of people were doing at that point.
So that technically under the law counts as an illegal entry, but the goal is to get yourself
into US custody so you can present your asylum case.
Yeah, well, let's talk about some of these cases
in particular, since you mentioned Nareal Varado,
we'll start with him.
Folks will be familiar,
because we've been talking about him.
This is the guy that had the autism awareness tattoo,
kind of like the rainbow ribbon tattoo.
Talk about his case.
Yeah, so this was one that really stood out to us.
We came across it because we saw a TikTok,
actually, from the bakery that he worked at in Dallas. They had posted a TikTok basically in Spanish
and one of our star bakers has been sent to El Salvador. So we called the bakery, got
in touch with his boss who was a great guy, had become his friend. And basically at that
point we were talking on Thursday about 10 days ago and he wasn't entirely sure yet that
his friend was in El Salvador, but he was pretty sure
because he had made the calls around and he hadn't shown up in Venezuela as they'd been
expecting.
But yeah, I mean, there he was.
From everything we learned from our reporting, it was just a complete, as his boss described
him, a stand-up guy.
I talked to his older sister and it was just like the love that she had for him was so
clear.
I mean, I said, what type of guy is he?
How would you describe him?
It's like, oh, he's the type of person who would never hurt a fly.
Anyone who spends even an hour with Nary will tell you what a nice guy, what a sweet person
he is.
And that's evidenced too by a video that we shared last week too.
It's a video made by the swim club where he volunteered and worked helping children with
developmental disabilities, including his brother who's 15 and has autism.
And that was part of the reason he went to the United States
was to support his brother.
And he has a big tattoo that's an autism awareness ribbon
with his brother's name, as you mentioned.
And then his two other tattoos are similarly innocuous.
One's in English, it says brother, brothers,
and the other says familia.
I mean, like you could not have more innocuous tattoos,
yet that seems to be how he got in this drag net.
It's quite the cover for being a gang member, you know, volunteering at a youth autism,
you know, swimming meet camp. He was the one that you guys specifically said, I guess you
said Hernandez spoke to Alvarado. Was that Hernandez's boss?
Yes, that's right. Yeah.
Yeah. So his boss spoke to him before he sent to El Salvador and he said, there are 90 of
us here. We all have tattoos. we're all detained for the same reasons.
From what they told me, we're all going to be deported.
So that's like a first person evidence that like that's what they were telling them.
It was these tattoos were the reason they were being sent to, well, they didn't know
at the time being sent to El Salvador, but that was essentially the justification.
Yeah.
And that's the second time that that had come up in this case.
And that's why Hernandez is such an important witness here is because he's a US citizen.
He's Venezuelan, but he's lived in the United States for about three decades.
And so he was able to visit Neri in detention as this was happening in a way that a lot
of these family members in Venezuela were not able to.
He visited Neri one day after he was detained as well.
He was detained on February 5th by ICE.
They showed up outside of his apartment and said, Neri Alvarado, we're looking for you.
They ended up bringing him into the Dallas field office.eri Alvarado, we're looking for you.
They ended up bringing him into the Dallas field office and there they said, do you know
why you're here?
And according to Hernandez, they said, we're looking for people with tattoos, Venezuelans
with tattoos.
We know you have them.
Why don't you explain them?
He ends up explaining his tattoos and just like any normal person, this apparently Puerto
Rican ICE agent said, you're good, but why don't you go down the hall and just check
maybe with my supervisor or another ICE agent.
And for reasons that remain unclear to me, they ended up hauling him into detention anyway,
even though an ICE agent said, yeah, you don't have anything to do with Trende Aragua.
There's been some great reporting about this in the Washington Post and elsewhere.
It seems like a lot of this Venezuelan men were targeted for ICE detention sometime in
like late January and then February, picked up during your routine ICE check-in over suspicion
about their tattoos.
Like we show in our piece, a lot of them, most of them without any relevant as a signal
of any type of criminal activity or tie to gang
affiliation. So, yeah, you lead the story with another example of Arturo Trejo, I might be
butchering. Yeah, Arturo Suarez Trejo. Yeah, and as a three-month-old child and as a singer,
and I guess I guess you spoke to his wife and also a similar situation where
no criminal record, this is all based on the tattoos.
Talk about that conversation.
Yeah.
So that one we had come across of Venezuela and it was Alice D'Amelo had covered him and
got in touch with.
So older brother Nelson and Natalie through that.
And yeah, I mean, last year, late last year, him and his wife Natalie were planning to
go to the United States together.
They realized that she was pregnant and pretty far along into her pregnancy.
So he ended up going by himself and then he was going to work in the United States as
he ended up doing to help support his wife and newborn baby girl.
And instead, he ends up also getting detained in early February.
In that case, it seemed like ICE had gone to his house because they were looking for
someone there.
They found that person and then they just ended up arresting everyone who was in the
house.
And like a lot of the other cases we highlighted, he had an upcoming court date.
He's supposed to be in court, I think it's on this Wednesday or Thursday, and he's not
going to be there because he is in El Salvador.
And he's one of the people, his wife recognized him in the video.
He has a tattoo of a hummingbird on his neck, which she told me it you know, it's meant supposed to represent, you know, harmony and good vibes, good energy, very innocuous.
And like you said, yeah, he's a singer.
He's a very good singer too.
Like if you watch his music videos under the name Suarez VZ LA, like they're good music
videos, someone who was coming here to advance that career and also work here and support
his family.
Yeah.
I mean, it seemed like that story also, it was like, she's like, okay, well, if I
need to deported, at least I need to port it back to Venezuela, I can see my baby.
And instead, like we sent him to a Gulag.
These people had no idea that they were going to be sent to a foreign country, right?
They were told directly in many cases that they were going to be deported to Venezuela.
And in some cases, they expressed relief that they were going to be reunited with their families
and meet their newborn children.
So a lot of the family members described to us
this situation as a kidnapping, essentially,
and their loved ones being tricked by the US government
and sent to El Salvador.
Are there any other examples?
I mean, you talked about this Frisgaroth William.
Just talk about any of the other specific folks who you spoke to, their families.
We talked to Frisgaroth's brother, Carlos, who is in Caracas, Venezuela.
He talked about how they owned this streetwear, sportswear brand in Venezuela, this business,
and that Fritz Jarev came to the United States in hope of expanding that business.
He waited for several months in Mexico for a CBP-1 appointment.
He was with other family members who were kind of let in, and he was held back, supposedly,
over his tattoos.
And he was sent to an ICE
detention in Louisiana.
And we also, we got to see some messages that he actually sent to his family while he was
detained in Louisiana, you know, talking about how he never imagined that he would be in
prison over tattoos.
He had obtained a declaration from his tattoo artist essentially saying, you know, this
is a creative, you know, kind of work.
There's nothing, you know, meaningful behind this.
Like, you know, he's someone who has no criminal record.
He didn't have an order of deportation.
And, you know, he thought he was going to be going to Venezuela.
And he, too, ended up in El Salvador.
And there was another also sister we talked to
who said that her brother
didn't even have a tattoo before he left Venezuela. He got a tattoo in Mexico, a tattoo of a clock
that he got as a gift from his roommate as they were both waiting for the CBP1 appointment. And
this roommate, you know, got the date before him and to celebrate they went and got a tattoo
together. So he didn't even have a tattoo
when he was in Venezuela and I think that speaks a lot too.
Pete Yeah, it's kind of crazy, you spoke to ten folks or, you know, family members or lawyers,
whatever, related to ten of the people that have been sent there. It doesn't seem like the one
that's gotten the most attention that we've been talking about a lot is this makeup artist, Andre,
and he isn't in your story even, so that's another person. In these conversations,
do you talk to anybody and you're like, I don't know, that guy might be a gang member. I mean,
it's like, it's hard to believe. And it's one thing to say like one or two people got through,
we need to focus on elevating these stories, it was a fuck up, we need to get the makeup artist
home. And I believe that. So, another thing that like seem like if it is at scale, that potentially
many of these people are wrongly accused.
What's your sense for that?
Yeah.
We probably, so after CBS published its list, we've now searched for a majority, or not
a majority, but probably close to 100 of the people on that list.
And yeah, in a minority of cases, I want to say 10% maybe, I've seen evidence that such
and such person was arrested in this
place for some sort of criminal offense.
Doesn't mean necessarily that they were convicted either of that offense, but that was a small
minority of the cases.
And from the ones, we were talking to anyone we could talk to.
And it's quite telling that all 10 of them had tattoos.
We weren't looking for people with tattoos and we weren't sure what the story was going
to be when we started it because it was all so new.
And yeah, I mean, like you said, and when Neri mentioned,
you know, he's in this detention center in Texas,
and he looks around basically and says,
oh, everyone here, there's 90 of us.
We all have tattoos.
I've also been told they were looking for people with tattoos.
I guess that's why we're here.
And of course, you know, maybe some of those people
who had tattoos had a prior arrest,
but you know, from what we've been able to see so far,
that's a minority of the people.
And it also would help here if the government who
has sent these people to El Salvador with no due process
or recourse would provide any information.
Like before we published this story,
every single person who's named in the article,
we sent their name to ICE and DHS saying,
if you have evidence that this person is a criminal
or a terrorist or, to use their language,
they're calling these people heinous monsters.
Please provide anything and zero response and zero response even after this article
and others have gotten.
Yeah.
And we've seen the DHS spokesperson, Trisha McLaughlin, like sending things.
And I think this is important because this is what the government's saying right now.
She's like quote tweeted or whatever various people online who have been pointing out,
you know, that these cases seem very weak, you know, by saying, oh, no, we have more
evidence.
We have more evidence.
It's not just the tattoos.
And she said things in that regard.
And I think that is creating at some level, like a chilling effect on people speaking
out, particularly politicians speaking out.
I think that there is a concern, you know, if you're a Democratic politician, you're
like, I don't want to stick my neck out and have then it come afterwards that the person that I was saying was wrongfully detained, detained actually was a gang member and trying to argue or actually committed a rape or whatever.
And so I think that they're like in a vague assurances that no, they've got more material and all these people is contributing. So I don't know. And what is your guys? And I think that's the important part of like continuing to tell more and more of these stories, right? Because there is this
caution towards speaking out about it. I mean, the administration themselves, they've admitted
in court filings that many of these Venezuelans have no criminal history. You know, they have
tried to like reassure, I guess, the American public that they are going through
this rigorous process to identify the alleged gang members and talking about how they are
not just relying on social media posts or hand gestures or tattoos.
But since our story came out, there has been more evidence that the ACLU obtained these
internal documents that shows that DHS appears to be relying on this
Alien Enemies Act Validation Guide, where they attribute points to the alleged gang
members to be deported.
So a tattoo is worth four points.
Being associated in some way, leaving the same residence as someone who is alleged to
be a Tren de Aragua member. So that's kind of the system that they seem to be
following. And, you know, there are plenty of experts, experts
out there that can tell you that, you know, tattoos are not
really, you know, a trustworthy kind of signifier of Tren de
Aragua membership.
Two quick things out on that is like one with a judge, one of
these in a different legal case, this came up in the
Trendy Aragwa accusation.
The government submitted its evidence for why this person was Trendy Aragwa.
A federal judge said, it was the end of the day and I was kind of falling asleep at that
point in the day and I read your declaration and it was so horrific that it woke me up.
Normally, in a criminal case, I would throw you out of court if you tried to submit this
kind of evidence.
The second thing is, this is why we have due process in this country. Like we shouldn't
be having this conversation. Now us as journalists saying like, hey, these people who are disappeared
in Del Salvador, you know, to the best of our knowledge are completely innocent of the
allegations. Like this should have been happening in a courtroom before a judge with a prosecutor
and a defense attorney. And just to be clear, like even since your story is out, you've not
heard from any spokesperson of the government, anybody at IH, anybody at DHS offering more tangible evidence that
these people are criminals beyond the tattoos.
Zero on or off the record.
Nothing.
Truly remarkable.
Guys, thank you so much for your work.
Noah and Isabella, we'll keep monitoring as you guys are covering this story and we'll
talk to you soon.
All right. Thanks for having us on'll talk to you soon. All right.
Thanks for having us on, Tim.
Thank you.
All right.
Thanks to everybody.
It was going to be a shorter pod with Susan Rice and here you go.
You got a marathon.
You got a good show, long show.
Call your senators.
Get mad about what is happening and what we're doing to people who absolutely do not deserve
it and deserve due process.
I'd appreciate it.
It's a solid for me.
We'll be back here tomorrow.
We're going to talk a lot tomorrow about the elections. I'd appreciate it. It's a solid for me. We'll be back here tomorrow. We're
going to talk a lot tomorrow about the elections. We got election night. So if you are in Wisconsin,
if you're in the sixth district in Florida there from St. Augustine, give or take down to about
Daytona Beach on the Atlanta close to Florida, or if you know somebody in one of those places,
remind them to vote. It's election day in America and we'll be back tomorrow with
Sam Stein to break that all down and whatever other horrors the Trump
administration has for us. So we'll see you all then. Peace. my friends coming right in many a mile
friends you get some silver you get a little gold what did you bring me my dear friends keep me from the gallows, oh
I couldn't get no silver, I couldn't get no gold
You know that we're too damn poor to keep you from the gallows bone
Hangman, hangman, holding a little war I think I see my brother coming right in the middle of the mire
Brother, you give me some silver as you get a little gold
Brother, you give me some silver As you get a little gold Why did you frame me, my brother? Keep me from the gallows' bone
Brother, I pulled your silver silver Yeah, I pulled a little gold
I put a little love in every thing Keep me from the gallows' bone
Keep it from the gallows' foe
Yes, I've told you Keep it from the gallows' foe
Hangman, hangman
Turn your head away
I think I see my sister coming
Right at me, my, my, my, my
Sister, I blow ya The The Bullork podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.