The Bulwark Podcast - Stephanie Ruhle and Tom Saenz: Why Aren't People Freaking Out?

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

If Zohran Mamdani, as NYC mayor-elect, held a dinner with finance bros and threatened them with a huge wealth tax if they didn't sweet-talk him and say how much they agreed with his political vision, the Wall Street community would freak out. Yet, this version of a shakedown is *really* happening at the White House all the time and in response, the country's most powerful and wealthy business leaders can only trip over each other as they jostle for the chance to cut up Trump's well-done steak. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is tripping over its own rulings to green-light ICE's racial profiling in Southern California. Stephanie Ruhle and MALDEF's Thomas Saenz join Tim Miller. show notes Maggie Haberman pursuing the White House's 'hoax' theory on Epstein Job Garcia's video of his arrest—includes non-visuals when his phone was in his back pocket Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund Bulwark Live in DC and NYC at TheBulwark.com/events. Toronto is SOLD OUT Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/ BULWARK and use promo code BULWARK at checkout.

Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We've got a doubleheader today in segment two. Tom Sines will be here to talk about how racial profiling is now legal in this country. Yay. A little Supreme Court update. But first, she's host the 11th hour on MSNBC and senior business analyst for NBC. news. She was formerly managing director at Deutsche Bank. It's my girl, Steph Ruhl. What's up? Hi. I'm just canoeing out of here. I'm great. Hi. You've hung out with a lot of rich guys in your day, you know, working at Deutsche Bank. And I assume you've been to some 50th birthday parties. I assume some of them might have been a little pervy. This birthday book feels like a category difference from just your standards. This is a different level. This is a different level. This isn't like there's pictures in there of like taking it too deep doing karaoke or even you know like a bunch

of guys like you know at a bachelor party with like hooters waitresses standing around like no like the amount of just like real deep purve and and it's super gross because these are like giant men of substance and this begs the question was what Jeffrey Epstein and I'm not telling you there's facts behind this. But this begs the question is what Jeffrey Epstein really did for all these guys just created the greatest netherworld for them to get laid. Okay? Because we're talking just super nerdy, nerdy guys who are now really successful guys, but they actually don't have access to find some. And I'm not talking about somebody under the age of 18, find some hot young thing. Many of them, not Donald Trump, worth billions of dollars. They don't want to get a divorce.

A divorce is going to cost them $4 billion. dollars. They don't want to not spend Christmas with their kids, but they do want to have a side hustle party life. First of all, where are they going to meet a young girl? They can't, a hot chick. They can't take them to the, they can't take them to the Super Bowl or a hotel or a nightclub or a party. And so Jeffrey Epstein's like, I have six different Shangri-La palaces. You can get on my plane. We can call it a water charity. We can say it's a math think tank. And nobody has to put their real name on the flight register. For any of these guys, you might say you're willing to pay millions of dollars for that, right?

If Jeff Bezos, who has nothing to do with Epstein, but if you remember, if that guy couldn't keep his dalliances with his now-wife, Lauren Sanchez, a secret, and ended up with penis picks on the internet, if you're Jeff Bezos and you can't manage to get your thing under wraps, well, what Jeffrey Epstein offered for all these business dude was just a naughty euphoria for them to get their groove on, And it's super gross.

And it was his whole brand, I think, is the other thing. Like, the 50th birthday book, like, if you, I've been going through the letters, there weren't, there weren't jokes about other stuff. You know what I mean? Like, look, I've been to some gay birthday, gay 40s, you know. There are some grinder jokes, you know. There are some things like that that happened, right? But also the other interests of the person come up.

Totally. Music or hiking or whatever. Like, there's no other interests. There's no other interests. There's no other interests. But that's it. And it's not even like, you like to party, you like to travel. It's like, you like them young and hot and dirty and naughty.

And I'm like, and think about it, every person who participated in that birthday book has a PR department, okay, has one or two assistants. And no one thought to say, dial it back on this, which just makes me think they were so far off the rails. And this is why there is a huge appetite where people are like, dude, just release the files. And it's important to remember, and I'm certainly not forgiving Donald Trump. He's one of many, many, many, not just in this book, but in Jeffrey Epstein's web. Not the only political figure. Yeah. It's not a great list to be on.

There's the woman who is one of his victims who's in the book, and she writes thanking him. And I say victim because she was young initially when he had groomed her or whatever. But he's like, thanks to you, I've met Prince Andrew, President Clinton, Donald Trump, Kevin Spacey, Michael Jackson. Not really the list you want to be on if you're the president. Michael Jackson, Kevin Spacey, Prince Andrew. And again, it's not even just the party boys. It wouldn't be good to be gross and yucky if it was just Donald Trump and the party boys of the 80s. But it's like a bunch of pedos.

It's a bunch of pedos. But who's on the list? When you think even about these women who were targeted, right? So, like, I have definitely been in some crazy, unsavory, I can't believe I'm here. How on earth did we, like, wake up in New York City and two days later we're in a different country? I know what that is like. Separate podcast about that. My interest is piqued.

Okay, like, I know what that is like. That's for Buller Plus members only. We'll be doing more on that. I know what that's like, but I also know what that's like as a grown woman with a college education and a career, okay? These were young, young women with almost no education who were pulled out of high-risk situations at home in hopes that like you become a massage therapist, maybe you get a job at a spa or a resort or because their situations were so bad.

and think about what they were thrust into with these people. It's just horrible in every single way. Yeah. Okay. Last thing on this. I was annoyed by some of your competitors. We won't name anybody who are doing this thing now with the Trump book and the news space where they have to be like, now there's no evidence of wrongdoing with Trump.

And to me, I'm kind of like, okay, well, if you want to say there's no, he's not been charged with anything, or there's no evidence of pedophilia. Yeah. Like, okay. But there's like a decent amount of evidence of wrongdoing at this point, right? I mean, A, they're covering this stuff up. We've learned there was another letter in there that mentioned him with this check of that, you know, that was from Trump to Epstein allegedly like a very bought a woman. I was a gag check, I guess, but still pretty gross. Multiple of the women have said Epstein brought them to Trump Tower. I interviewed Stacey Williams who said that she was of age then, but she said that Epstein brought her to Trump Tower and he groped her. That's her allegation, right? I do feel like there's people that are kind of scared to just say the truth here, which is that like we don't actually know the extent yet. And there's obviously a cover up and there has obviously been some type of wrongdoing, right?

Like, that's okay to say. Yes. But I don't know that people are scared to tell the truth. People are scared that their news organization won't exist anymore and they won't be able to cover any of this. So I would push back on you that we're now in. such an oppressed situation where you have a president who's threatening to sue you and wipe you off the face of the earth and would like to if you're a news organization or you're a public figure that's critical of him. And so if people are being extra, extra careful in how they

couch things to protect themselves from a legal standpoint, knowing how dangerous these times are, so be it. I'm glad those news organizations exist and I'm glad people are covering those stories. You disagree. They're scared. They're a little scared. That's fine. For some legitimate reasons, because some of their corporate bosses have folded at the other companies.

Okay, but hold on. They're also scared because they don't want to get fired. They don't want to lose their job. They don't want to get sued. Think about these reporters at the Wall Street Journal who were reporting on the birthday book. Trump is suing News Corp. I mean, it's like out of Dr.

Evil for $10 billion. that's a, do you know what I mean? Yeah. No, it's intimidation. I guess that's the point. Intimidation works, I guess. It's just all the thing. But they're still covering the, no, intimidation really would be working if we weren't

talking about this, right? Donald Trump wants this not covered at all, right? And now that he's on to this new line, it's a hoax. Well, what's a hoax? It's a hoax that Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile. It's a hoax that Galane Maxwell was also involved in this. All these hundred women who have come forward, are they lying? Like, he's not even articulated.

what the hoax is. And so the fact that this remains in the news, I don't think people are as intimidated and scared as you're intimating. Great point. And to this point, while we're defending the honor of journalists, that was a good point. I mean,

I was still, I think some of the stuff that we've seen on where we're like, well, I have to caveat that there's no wrongdoing. There's wrongdoing here. But anyway, while we're defending the honor of journalists, Maggie Haberman,

and that very point was awesome in the press briefing yesterday. I didn't have this poll. But I'll put it in the show notes. She gets a lot of heat. But she was like to Caroline, she's like, what is the hoax exactly? Is the signature of the hoax? Is the friendship the hoax? And they just, they don't, they can't answer it.

It's just, they're just like, hoax. Because hoax is like the code word in MAGA world. So like even in the Jeffrey Epstein case where you've got the Lauren Bowverts and the Tom Massey's and the Marjorie Taylor Greens who are like, we want more information. It's like as soon as the White House rolls out the word hoax, they're like, it is a hoax, hoax, you know what I mean? Like that's like that's the kryptonite. And I go on Maggie Hamerbin to just say, I'm going to press pause.

Yeah. To you, press secretary, to the president. Explain to me what's the hoax. Which part of that? Those hundred women who were out there demanding justice while you ordered a fly over with our tax dollars for no reason. Yeah. That was more than I expected.

But, you know, once we start hearing about Stephanie's trips to Dubai, you know, You can't think a pervy topic and think we're not going to get into it. Yeah, okay. Delete Me makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. It's easier than ever to find personal information about people online, having your address, phone number, and family members' names hanging out on the Internet can have actual consequences in the real world. More and more online partisans and nefarious actors will find this data and use it to target civil servants. political foes and even outspoken citizens posting their opinions online. As somebody with an active online presence who has people that want to give me shit online,

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added 911,000 fewer jobs between March 2024 than March 2025 than previously estimated 900,000 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Like a lot of elements there. Like one, the economy is worse than we thought, it seems like. Number two,

this adds to like the Trump ability to just sort of eliminate the credibility of statistics coming from our government, you know, they're going to weaponize this. What is happening with all that? What's your take on that news? So I'm going to say multiple things, but like, yes, this is definitely going to feed Trump's argument that like the BLS sucks, their data sucks, blah, blah, blah. So I'm going to give an analogy that I'm stealing from Daniel Coe, who used to be with the labor department, who said Trump going after the BLS and the numbers

is like slashing your neighbor's tires at midnight, and in the morning, waking up and screaming and yelling that their cars is sitting in your front yard. This administration has been aggressively cutting the budgets, cutting staff, like the group within the BLS that is designed to figure out, how do we use better measures? How do we optimize thing? He wiped that group out. When I see these numbers, when I see these revisions, I think about investors, I think about farmers, I think about business people. I think about every type of business person out there, farmers aren't using this number that much, but all different business verticals that depend on these numbers to plan. When we get giant swings like this, it's hugely frustrating. However, I understand why we get these giant revisions. It's a sign.

When we are in an economy where you get really big revisions, it means there's a giant shift. Something is happening, right? A very big shakeup. So I think there's multiple components that like- We have multiple checkups happening now. Huge immigration shifts, tariff shifts, right? Yes, and that's deeply impacting, right? I'll make this last point.

So for anybody who says, like, I don't know, things aren't so crazy, the stock market is still up. Let's pretend you're the CEO of a company and I'm an investor. If I'm an investor, all the Trump news, tariffs, no tariffs, that, that's fine for me. As an investor, volatility is part of the game. At 2 p.m. I can buy an entire portfolio of stocks, and at 205, I can sell my entire portfolio. That's me. But if you are a CEO of a company, it takes you months and months and years to plan your business, to plan acquisitions, to plan growth opportunities, to plan hiring, to plan firing. So real businesses where you have hiring, that's where you're seeing this huge disruption, these giant swings.

I mean, lots of the biggest investors out there have less than 50 employees, right? They're sitting in front of a computer, you know, in Bermuda, for goodness sakes. So anybody who says, there's not a big disruption, the market's fine. The market and the economy are two different things. And getting these giant revisions is another sign that we are having huge disruptions in our economy. The one thing, I guess, is it will give Trump what he wants by accident on the rate cuts. And I do think that it also, we might do just. It's a tiny bit of Biden at the very end with the new Kamala book, but it also does, I think, put a little bit of a different perspective on what the state of the real economy was in 2024, which is you have some people, some people in Democratic world and Biden defenders who want to be like, everything was really great. It was just a vibe session. And it was kind of not. Like, we were already kind of soft in 2024, it seems like, in addition to inflation.

We were, and inflation was a bear. And because the Fed had to set rates where they were, it made it more difficult for businesses to operate. Right. Like, that just is what it is. The economy was fine. The economy wasn't booming under Biden. Inflation was a problem. But I just would take you back to, remember, the president said he was going to lower prices day one. We were supposed to get this flurry of business, booming, booming, booming, and we haven't. What we have is the biggest companies in the world who have something to offer Donald Trump going to the White House, tap dancing forum, getting side deals cut for themselves, getting exemptions, getting no regulations, and their businesses are only growing. If you're a business that doesn't have something to offer this White House or the Trump business universe, you are struggling, right? Listen to any of the big retailers, manufacturing. Yeah, John Deere this week. Last week, Donald Trump said, you know, I can't wait next year when I'm walking in the palaces of genius when he was talking to the tech leaders. I'm like, what palaces of genius is he talking about

as manufacturing numbers are showing you that they're going down? What we have is an AI boom that could actually end up being a bubble. And that's also masking things. So Jamie Diamond yesterday at the NBC saying the economy's weakening. He's not sure if we're on the way to recession or not, but it's definitely weakening. We were joking together offline about Scott Bessent on the Sunday shows this weekend trying to do, don't believe your lying eyes. Things are fine, actually. Don't listen to Jamie Diamond. Don't listen to Goldman Sachs.

Okay. Listen to me, a failed hedge fund investor. But that's it. He even got, he gave Kristen Welker this weird attitude when Chris and Welker was literally just giving the definition. We call that serving face. Of the way tariffs work, that they are a hidden tax on the American consumer. in American businesses, and he got real smirky, snarky at her.

And he's like, you got that from Goldman Sachs. And she said, yeah, that's a Goldman Sachs report, right? A Goldman Sachs report. And he's like, I built my career trading against Goldman Sachs, and I built quite a career. Well, I would just say this. Every person that Scott Bessent worked for, every major investor, and he worked for George Soros,

and he worked for Stan Drucken Miller. Stan Druggan Miller, maybe the greatest living investor today. And I bet my life that Sandra Ruck and Miller 100% knows who pays the tariffs, and it's ultimately the American consumer. And Scott is not being intellectually honest. And I think Wall Street is giving him that pass because they still hold out for hope that he's the most rational, normal person in the White House. But he is absolutely hurting his credibility every time he goes on TV and he's just dishonest about

the tariffs. And one lesson, the other thing they're hoping for is that the court over bails him out on the tariffs. Okay. This is the whole thing. Trump's most graceful exit from the trade war would actually be the Supreme Court saying, yo, dude, for real, these things are illegal. You can't do them. Like, look at the case of Brazil where everything has been, it's about trade deficits. In Brazil, we have a trade surplus. And Trump said it out loud. He's doing this because he doesn't like the way Bolsonaro is being treated. I would bet my bottom dollar that Scott Besson is behind his desk praying that the Supreme Court punts this.

Because if they do, Trump would get the exit he wants, right? We won't get the trade war. Markets will soar. Businesses will be thrilled. And he will get to get on his grievance soapbox and say, I wanted to bring back jobs. I do care about the heart of America. But the system, the man, the courts, they stopped me. Yeah.

So we'll soon find out. If the courts knock it down, he's going to find other ways. It will continue to be a disruption. y'all look i've got a lot of strengths and weaknesses like everybody else in this world and i'm just so thrilled i've got sarah longwell and others running the business around here because i just i don't want to be in charge of things anymore and um one of the things that i found that i was not as good at that i thought i would be is hiring it's a pain in the ass it's harder than you think to do interviews i trust my instincts my instincts can be wrong sometimes it's hard to

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Zuckerberg, Altman, the all-in podcast guys, Sundar was there, a bunch of mid-level tech CEOs, his finance chair was there, wink, wink. And then there was also Tim Cook. All of these guys were pathetic, so I hate to single out Tim Cook, but I'm going to anyway. I want to listen to what Tim Cook said to Donald Trump at this roundtable with you. Thank you, Mr. President. Very few people have been able to do what you've done.

Congratulations. Thank you, sir. That means a lot to me. I want to thank you for including me to see. It's incredible to be among everyone here, particularly you and the First Lady. I've always enjoyed having dinner and interacting. I want to thank you for setting the tone such that we could make a major investment in the United States and have some key manufacturing, advanced manufacturing here.

I think that says a lot about your focus and your leadership and your focus on innovation. innovation. I also want to thank you. Thank you again. For helping American companies around the world. I want to thank the first lady for focusing on education. There's nothing more for this in education. That's enough. It goes on another minute. I want to thank you for learning that my last name is Cook and not Apple. I want to thank the first lady for focus on education. Is she focused on education? We follow this every day. What is she even talking about? That was news to me. So here's where it's funny but not. Artificial intelligence is going to change every aspect of the way we work, live, and play. We already know how damaging social media companies have been to us.

Just yesterday, there was a hearing on the hill with two former meta whistleblowers saying that the company knew information about how some of their practices were harming. or dangerous for young people, but they didn't care. They let it go because they wanted young people to be using their system because they were losing young people to TikTok. Yeah. And meta is doing nothing to change their practices. They're making it worse, really, honestly.

Correct. No matter how many hearings the government has had, we've had no regulation of these social media giants. Like they truly are living, the Mark Zuckerberg move fast and break things. Social media platforms, that's in the rearview mirror. AI is the gargantuan future. Every person at that table was an enormous stakeholder in the AI universe, and they want to have control of how it's regulated, how they can build it, and what it's going to look like here, and they will become masters of the universe, giants among giants like we've never seen. So for them, one quick, humiliating dinner, great.

They can erase that dinner. They can not listen to this podcast. Tune out of the news when they get back on their G5s and go home, and they got what they wanted. They danced for him, and he was happy. It's so, they're just so cucked, though. Isn't this the point of having, we done this for us? Is that the point of like, fuck you money? I like, really, Zuck goes another clip.

Just because the audio is muffled, so I didn't play it. But like, Zuck, like, Zuck is like, Trump asked him how much money you're investing. And Zuck kind of stutter, stutter, stutters, then throws up a fake number. And then they catch him on a hot mic, like, leaning over to Trump saying, sorry, sir. I'm not sure what number you wanted me to go with. Like, how insane is it? I mean, literally, Mark Zuck, I look over and it's like, sorry, I went off script for a second.

Sorry, I missed my line to the director of the show. And that's the most important point that you're making. Like, these people are rich beyond their wildest dreams. How much more do you want? Was it worth it to do that? Apple's balance sheet is also huge. What do they need for the? Tim Cook could just not go.

I'm not asking him to be the Bullwark podcast. You know, I don't need Tim Cook live tweeting, shit posting the president. He's the CEO. He's got shareholders. I get it. But, like, couldn't you dial it back 80%? Jamie Diamond style. Yeah, right?

Jamie's fine. Jamie Diamond was asked yesterday and was like, yeah, yo, it looks like the economy is slowing. Earlier this week, Ken Griffin of Citadel, like one of the biggest hedge fund managers in the planet, who is a Republican, who, you know, left Chicago, hated Chicago, thought it was crime-ridden, set up shop in Miami, blah, blah, blah. I mean, he's as Republican as it gets. He was out there very publicly this week saying how damaging it is for the president to go after the independence of the Fed. And what's so alarming and disturbing is how few voices of influence in the business community are saying anything, right?

They're either saying nothing or they're taking it to that tech dinner level where it's like, who baby? They're not going to regulate AI anyway. I don't know. And I guess if you're Tim Cook, maybe worries that they targets you with tariffs of China. But I guess my beg to somebody like Tim Cook is, did you make him do it first? Like, okay, I don't know. Maybe I'll give you a pass if, you know, you needed to go to the White House and, you know, tuck your tail between your legs.

I know it would be bad. It'd be the sign that we're an authoritarian country. But like, could you at least, like, you know, stare him down? Could we play a little game of chicken? Because he's a wimp. He's a wimp. He always backs down. He tacos.

Like, he's not really going to do this. He doesn't want people paying 800 or whatever, $8,000 for their eyes. iPhone, whatever it would be. He doesn't want that. People would be complaining about it. So stare him down. Okay, you just hit the perfect point because the argument I've been trying to make somewhat in defense of the business community is if you're the CEO of a company, it's not your job to serve the American people. It's your job to serve your customers, to serve your shareholders and to make sure your employees are there and thriving. So I completely agree. I don't expect a CEO to go Ben and Jerry's style and rage against the machine. Um, right.

However, there is a middle ground between that and going to the White House and saying, and it is such an honor to be looking across from you, and I love your steak well done, and can I cut your food for you? Like, that's another level. Melania, your manicure is so perfect. It's unclear to me why you'd have to get to that level. And I would end with this question, though, to you, what has happened in America? Do you remember in the first Trump administration, if a CEO of almost any company even went to the White House for a manufacturing council or this council or that council and didn't even say a word, just went there, they would have boycotts from their employees, right?

They would have movie stars who were in their commercials or endorsed their products speaking out against them. I'm asking you, what do you think? People have been beaten down. people have been beaten down by it people don't think it worked right i don't know like on my on my jen z how to do with cam caski who started march for our lives asking this a lot and he's just like i don't what do you want from us like we protested gunner uh you know the shootings in schools more shootings in schools didn't get much results we protested trump the first time trump's back like what i think that people are beaten down by it as the answer i guess but still like i don't know leaders have a responsibility

to do things i have more contempt for the action billionaires than I do for their employees. But I hear you. But isn't that amazing that like, when Charlottesville happened, all those CEOs were like, we have to get off the manufacturing council. Yeah, right. And you now have ice raids happening. Right. Right. The court saying, we're down with racial profiling on the streets of L.A. And no companies are saying to their CEOs, you can't do business. You know, like, we have to stop this. Like, I'm, I'm more of questions than answers about that. Yeah, and maybe you can give me a more satisfying answer than James Bennett did yesterday on this question. Because here's the other thing, like, there's this

asymmetry, also that the Democrats don't benefit from this. This is not one of those. I'm asking a question I really know the answer to. I genuinely don't understand it. Like, Elon wasn't at that dinner. I don't know what happened behind the scenes, but like the whole origin story, everybody tells me about Elon hating Biden is that he didn't get invited to a dinner. I think Biden was wrong to not invite Elon Musk. Yeah, sure. I are too, but I'm just saying Elon was there yesterday. Nobody's saying that he's going to go socialist now. No, I mean, but let's go, hold on. The night Elon Musk didn't go to the dinner was the night Tesla's board was communicating

that Elon Musk would like a trillion dollar pay package over the next eight years. So he was busy working on other stuff. Okay, got it. Okay. Well, let me do this. This is the counterfactual I gave a minute. If Zoron right now did this, he said, I'm about to be. mayor of New York. I'm going to have a dinner. All the finance guys, all your old friends,

all the CEOs of the banks, got to come to this dinner. And you got to talk about how handsome I am and how great my wife is and how you're interested in halal food now and how much you agree with my vision. And if you don't do that, then I'm going to do a wealth tax of X, X, X, X, X percent. And I'm going to use all the power I have in New York mayor's office to punish you. everybody would freak out every businessman in america would freak out and i i don't understand why this is different i genuinely don't like why are they doing why aren't they freaking out okay that's an amazing question i don't have an answer and i'm going to give it back to you in a different way all right the exact people that you're talking about who are freaking out

here in new york about mom dony freaking out these are the people who are the people that are saying, if we have five government-run grocery stores with reduced prices, we are going to turn into Soviet Russia. There's going to be breadlines. Like, they're losing their mind over Mamdani. This is what I don't understand. Mamdani is not going to get any of his extreme agenda items done. Or let's say 90% of it, he's not getting done.

The governor Kathy Hockel is going to stand in the way. The city council is going to stand in the way. Yet these people here are just panic-stricken. over it. Yet none of them are saying boo about an actual president who is blowing through the rule of law, who is taking control of every single element of government that he can and co-mingling and co-mingling. And bullying their companies. There's something important that I want people to remember that, you know, when you see the president get involved or when the government suddenly takes a stake in Intel and we heard from Hegset and we heard from Lutnik that maybe we're now

going to take a stake in defense companies. It's not just the companies that our government now invests in, it's every other company in the industry. As soon as you have government, insert itself, distort the markets, it distorts everything. Why aren't we seeing those same people freaking out about what they think Donald Trump is doing versus Mumdani? And my gut is they think they know how to work Trump. They think at the end of the day, Trump's their boy. Like Trump can do mean things, but they're like, we can get him to do mean things to other people. Invite him to play golf, you know, line his pocket. Tell him I think he's cool. Tell him, I think the office is beautiful. And they fear Mamdani because they're like, Mamdani actually hates us. Mammani actually

wants to stop us. Yeah. And I don't know how to deal with a Muslim 33-year-old socialist who I like his, I know I deal with an old white guy. I'm not defending his policies. Like I'm not going to be getting into that. You said the right thing. They don't know what to do with Mumdani. Right? They look at Mamdani and they're like, hold on. Were those like the occupied Wall Street kids with the banjos outside our office 10 years ago that we stepped over that we thought went away. If that, if those kids are now the mayor, we don't know what to do with that. That's a good point. Okay. We got around a semi-satisfying answer. If you are a rich person listening to this podcast and have a better answer. Please let me know. Final topic. I want to talk about the

blue anon element a little bit. Blue anon. This is the left. These are kind of some of the resistance crowd who we love and appreciate who listen to our various shows sometimes and who you know i don't know think that comla really won in some cases she did not win just really quick on this now that i didn't mean to bring this up but i should mention this comla did better in the states where the campaign mattered than in the other states so if there was anyway it just doesn't it doesn't make any sense it doesn't make any sense are you talking about like died in the wool democratic super fans who can only hear one narrative no matter what. Yes.

Yes. They don't want to hear any information about Trump succeeding or any information about the Democrats doing bad. That was one example. You had another example this week and you tweeted about how you were at the U.S. Open and like it wasn't. Trump didn't get booed as much as everybody says and everybody's got to calm down. It was kind of a mixed back.

We have the Kamala book out today. I just want to mention one of the things. I'm going to get into this more on the next level. But, you know, she in this book, in this one excerpt, lists all the things that I complained about, about Job Hyden, last. year that people got mad at me for saying about how he let his ego get in the way, about how he's reckless, about how the White House didn't defend her, how she was self-conscious about how she had to,

like all of this stuff that some of us were saying the Biden was doing that was wrong that people got mad about. And I just, I connect to all those things that's like, you can't figure out how to do things better if you don't accept in any information that you don't like, right? And if you hear from somebody that Donald Trump wasn't really resoundably booed at the U.S. Open and you get mad at them. you're not really you're living in a fantasy world and you can't you can't win something you can't be

successful if you if you aren't living in reality i guess that would be my point shame on me for trying to express an experience but shame on all of us that now that we live in a social media universe the trolls want to kill you no matter what they need you to perform a role that they think you serve they have put you in a category and they want you to do x and if you're not doing x they're done with you but it's absurd because if you don't tell the truth or if you don't just express reality you're going to lose anyway right so it was incredible i went to the u.s open on sunday right i went to the u.s open and i'm leaving and i see all these articles like he was resoundingly booed nobody wanted him there like bringing a and i was just like that wasn't my experience i'm like

there was a delay don't get me wrong i was just trying to make the point, Donald Trump was a non-event at the U.S. Open, right? Many people didn't want him to go. Like, we never want presidents to go. Like, most presidents don't go to major events because it causes huge delays and expense. Like, it's annoying. It's problematic. But what Sunday was was crazy amazing tennis, okay?

You had the number one and number two, best tennis players in the world. We're all, you know, clinging to our seats. It's so unbelievable. And Trump did get dissed in the fact. that when the two players spoke after the match, nobody acknowledged that he was there. When Alcores runs up in the crowd to get to his family, he doesn't even acknowledge that the president's there.

However, I'm like, he wasn't, maybe they were showing more on TV. I was there, and it was a really polite day of tennis. People, I didn't see aggressively booing him. I didn't see people in crowds in MAGA hats. Some people booed, some people cheered. It wasn't that big of a deal. What ended up being a big deal to me is people like,

Stephanie Rule is calling, you know, this news outlet a liar. But I'm like, boys and girls, two things can be true. Donald Trump can be doing terrible, horrible things. And he also went to the U.S. Open and it wasn't the end of the world. It was kind of a whatever. And that's kind of important to accept, actually, by the way. Yeah. Because if you're living in a world where actually everyone really hates Donald Trump,

and really he didn't even really win. And the end is near for him. And he might be dying. Have you seen the cancals? If you live in that world, like, that's a fine place to live. I would like to live in that world. It would be nice. But you're not addressing any of the root causes of how we got here, right?

And we have to understand what is really happening in the world in order to fix it. I think you just said the most important thing when they go, everybody hates Donald Trump. If that's what you believe, you're also wrong because everyone doesn't hate Donald Trump. I just had a roundtable on my show the other night. And every person at the table, people in their immediate family voted for him twice and would vote for him again. And I'm not saying that's great, I'm not saying, but this idea that the whole world hates them, the whole world doesn't hate them. And people still would vote for him that aren't hardcore magas. I'm not defending that they would vote for him. But I'm acknowledging

that they would vote for him. It's sort of like, if you remember back in sort of like Hillary Clinton days, or sometimes when people talk about Elizabeth Warren when she was running and you'd say things like, I don't know if she could win people over. People don't like her style. They don't like the sound of her voice. You'd be like, that's sexist, that's this. It may be all those things. But if people aren't going to vote for that person, it's still okay to say it out loud.

Just like you wanting to talk about flaws in Kamala Harris or Joe Biden, those are realities. And you can talk about them or not talk about them. And when you don't talk about them and when you pretend they're not realities, then you're suddenly surprised and you lose credibility. Amen. All right. How hot did Carlos look in person? How did Carlitas look? Adios meo. Oh, my God. Oh, man. What a man. What a lucky lady. What are that British tennis gal is. All right. Go. I appreciate you very much. It was so hard to get you on. It was so hard to get you on. And thank you. I know your schedule is full, extremely full. And you have a lot of really important stuff. Potentially, I'll be available to you next March. We'll see.

All right. Thank you, girl. We'll talk to you. soon. Up next, Tom Sines. Hey, everybody. We are going on the road this fall, and I want to see you. Sadly, our Toronto tickets have already sold out. So I'm plotting a return to Canada. You guys just wait on that. But there's still tickets left for our events in Washington, D.C. and New York City in October. Come join me, Sarah JVL, for two nights of camaraderie and joy and resistance and podcasting and maybe some special guests at the D.C. event, we might give a big middle finger to the masked agents of Donald Trump that are roaming, the city's three streets. And we'll be back

in New York a couple times later. First time we've been in New York in ages, the last time we had a live New York event, it was, I can remember because it was during the Nuggets title run and me and a handful of the folks who came out, went and watched Jamal Murray, like put up 40, I think, on the Lakers after the podcast, was quite enjoyable. Maybe we'll have a similar night. We'll see. And if you really want more time with us and you don't want to just place a bet that you'll end up at the same bar with me after, because you never know, you could pay for VIP tickets. They're included in the sale.

It'll give you earlier entry into the show, and you can hang with us for an intimate Q&A. You can check out all the details and get tickets at the bulwark.com slash events for more. that's the bulwark.com slash events. See you all on the East Coast. All right, we are back. He is the President and General Counsel at the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Maldef.

It's Tom Sines. Welcome to the Bullwark podcast. Tom, how you doing? Thank you. But wanting to leverage your expertise on this, we have a bunch of stuff happening, including just this crazy case with when your clients I want to get to.

But first on Monday, in an emergency decision, the Supreme Court lifted a Los Angeles district court judge's order barring racial profiling. It's now going to allow ICE to stop and detain anyone they suspect is in the U.S. illegally based on little more than whether they're working at a car wash or Home Depot or speaking Spanish. What did you make of that ruling and the implications? Well, first, it's a very surprising ruling from this court, which, as you know, just two years ago, decided that consideration of race, even though allowed for 45 years under Supreme Court precedent,

consideration of race in a very narrowly tailored manner for university admissions was off limits. So they changed precedent to say that you cannot consider race as even a narrow factor in making those decisions. But in this case, the majority of the justice has concluded, based on longstanding Supreme Court precedent that they're not revisiting, that race can be a consideration in deciding if there's reasonable suspicion to question someone about their immigration status. So the inconsistency on this very court, this set of justices, between what they did to change longstanding law in one area with respect to race, and then doing nothing, indeed taking the extraordinary action of lifting an injunction put in place by federal judges

in the Ninth Circuit and in the district court is really extraordinarily inconsistent and something that I think this court needs to explain. Yeah, we can use race for detaining you. You can use your race to detain you, but not to give you a leg up and getting into college. Junitive okay, but ameliorative, not okay. Got to explain that to us. The Kavanaugh ruling was particularly just jarring the language and what he wrote. He does this caveat where he writes,

if the officers learn that the individual, they stopped as a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they can promptly let the individual go. It's almost as if he is not existing in the real world or he is just trolling us. I mean, like, what did you make of that statement and the rest of the Kavanaugh verdict? It is very much ivory tower reasoning. He has no understanding of how this actually goes down. And he could have gained such an understanding if, like Justice Sotomayorin indicated in her dissent, he actually looked at the evidence and looked at what was going on in the city of Los Angeles. He would understand that that notion, that it's some polite encounter that ends once I say I'm a U.S. citizen, is ludicrous. That's not what

happens. This is violent assaults on individuals based largely on race, language, and the fact that they may be dressed like they're about to engage in construction or day labor or landscaping. And that by itself should never trigger the kinds of assaults, often by masked, unidentified individuals that we saw white spread in Los Angeles. So his reasoning is not as supported by the evidence, and it's very unworldly. It's ivory tower reasoning. I don't think that he would be feeling the same way if people could get detained just because they were in Lacost shirts and, like, doing keg stands. Like, that doesn't... Carrying lacrosse equipment.

Yeah, Caring La Croscrow, right? Well, that is that. I mean, again, that was unfair when they were wrongly targeted, the La Crosse. That same logic does not apply to day laborers at Home Depot. I want to get into the specifics what we saw in Los Angeles and your client, but just a little bit more on the kind of the legal side of this. It's hard for me not to be cynical about the Supreme Court. And at times, they have, they have rebuked Trump. They've reviewed Trump quite a quite a lot, you know, to be honest. But in key moments, they have upheld allowing Trump to do what he wants to do, maybe out of fear that he would rebuff them if they didn't, you know, and creating a constitutional crisis, maybe out of ideology, maybe out of, I don't know, I can't get into their brains. But it all seems very strategic and cynical. I mean, in this case, you had in 1975 a unanimous ruling from Nixon appointee, Powell, saying that border patrol agents violated the Constitution when they stopped a car. because the occupants appeared to be of Mexican ancestry. The justices all agreed that the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches like a motorist Mexican appearance.

And this is exactly that, right? Like, this is the same thing as that. And so what possible rationale would they have for overturning that precedent besides, like, cynical, political considerations? Well, first of all, I think that they should understand that the legitimacy of the court doesn't just depend on whether the president defies. them. Yes, that would be a constitutional crisis. But they are also undermining the legitimacy of the court by engaging in this kind of decision making that, as you've indicated, you can't understand as a real person on the street. It makes no sense. And why the inconsistency between this decision and the decision two years ago and SFFA, none of it makes sense. And that kind of misunderstanding of

what the court is doing also undermines respect and potentially creates a crisis in the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. The specific issue, of course, Kavanaugh would say he's only saying that race is one consideration. But again, in SFFA, they said race can't be consideration, even though it's a minor and narrowly tailored consideration at all. But in this case, you can consider it as one factor of many. The problem is, as your question implies, a lot of these things really are race in a different guard. I mean, if you say, oh, I went to a particular place because a lot of Latinos are there. And therefore, a lot of them are going to be undocumented immigrants. That's the same as race. Right. So if you go to Walmart, right, because lots of Latinos shop there, that's just using race multiple times in race itself, in language. And then because you pick the place based on the race of the people who are there, that's really just race all at once and in one fell swoop. it's not race as one consideration of many, which is what he's saying precedent allows. So it'll be interesting to see how you comply with this when, in fact, what they're doing

is taking race and using different iterations of it and nothing besides that to decide who they're going to go target and question and really detain an assault. Well, like, what is the rationale? Like, what is your understanding for why doing this on emergency? I mean, this doesn't, it doesn't seem like it was urgent or an emergency in any way. They could have, you know, done this in a normal, you know, Supreme Court session, had a full, you know, review and made a decision. Like, what do you make about? The misuse of the shadow docket, as they call it, is very troubling because it means that this was not argued for the justices.

They didn't have the opportunity to throw questions at the parties and have those questions answered. If they had done that, they might have a better and more realistic. sense of what's going on on the streets of Los Angeles and elsewhere. But they didn't do that, so they only had limited briefing, and they issued an emergency stay of an injunction. It's extraordinary and should be extraordinary, meaning unusual. But it's not under this court, particularly when it's something asked for the by the Trump administration. Of course, you know, Kavanaugh talks about how the balance of the equities weighs heavily in favor of the government. That was in some ways the most bizarre part of this concurrence, suggesting that somehow if we stop for a day or a week or three months, this kind of activity, somehow our federal government and the people's interests will be unduly impaired in comparison to the rights of U.S. citizens who happen to fit the profile, lawful permanent residents who fit the profile, and folks with other status who fit the profile who are going to be assaulted, are going to be.

detained are going to be harassed. So his balance of the equities is perhaps the most bizarre and inexplicable element of his concurrence. Speaking of examples of what's happening on the streets, I want to talk about one of your clients here, Hobbes Garcia. He was held for more than 24 hours after a violent arrest at the Hollywood Home Depot. He's a U.S. citizen. He was picking up an order at the store. And he's taking a video of an ice encounter at the store. And he's taking a video of an ice encounter at the store. For the folks in YouTube, I want to put this video in right now. That is insane what he was, what he caught there, just the behavior of those ice

agents, masked, breaking the window of the other Hispanic-looking person in the truck, and then I guess he ends up getting detained. Talk about what happened there. He's videotaping that to document what they're doing to the man who is in the truck. And because he's doing it, he gets targeted, violently taken down, and arresting even though he's a U.S. citizen, as you know, this is not unusual, unfortunately. What we are seeing too many places across the country is that if U.S. citizens, particularly Latino U.S. citizens, have the temerity to take out their phones and videotape the misconduct

of the officers, they will be taken down, violently arrested, and detained. And that's what's happening to too many folks across the country. it's an indicator of the power that these officers believe they have, despite Justice Kavanaugh's assurance to all of us that they're well-trained and making decisions based on a totality of the circumstances. That's certainly not what we see in any video tape. These are folks who are acting like thugs, whether they are or they're not. They're acting like thugs. They're wearing masks. They're not in uniform. They don't have badges. They don't identify themselves, and they take folks down for things that are clearly protected by the First Amendment,

like videotaping what they're doing, like advising through shouting advice to individuals who are confronting the immigration enforcement of folks. Those things are all protected. I think it's very telling that when this case first came forward, and we've now filed a claim against the federal government and the Federal Tort Claims Act. But when it first came forward, the spokes person for the Department of Homeland Security said that what it was engaged in included verbal harassment, and that's obstruction. Well, no, it's not, because the First Amendment says that verbal, verbal speaking is protected by the Constitution, and verbally harassing cops or any other enforcement authorities is not obstruction. It is protected by the First

Amendment. But that gives you an indication of what's going on. which is violations of people's rights, thinking that they will be undertaken with complete impunity, in part because of decisions by the Supreme Court, like the one issue yesterday. Like, what's the rationale for detaining him for so long? They have not. I mean, they were supposedly considering prosecuting him for obstruction. Obviously, they had no evidence to support that and ultimately had to let him go. So it's just an extended, yeah, it's just an extended harassment, basically.

we're going to punish you because you took out your phone and were videotaping what they were doing and were advising the guy who they were confronting in the truck. And also the treatment of the guy in the truck is preposterous. Not knowing the whole details, you know, I don't know, maybe he had a weapon on him or something. But like, there's no reason to be, you know, shattering the glass of a truck, pulling somebody out, being masked, manhandling them, right? Like that, what is the rationale for this type of treatment? There isn't. That's clearly excessive force. You're supposed to use the force reasonably necessary under the circumstances. That's way beyond, as you can see in the videotape, which is why Kavanaugh's reassurance that excessive force would be controlled, would be deterred through civil lawsuits, is ludicrous. And he asserts that, recognizing in response to the dissent by Justice Sotomayor that there is potential for excessive force, he assures us all that the

the civil court system will work to prevent that from occurring. Well, the videotape, as you noted, pretty much demonstrates that's false. What we have is excessive force by people who are basically enforcing civil violations, not criminal violations, civil violations by undocumented words. Since you're kind of obviously seeing other examples of this out there and like hearing from other potential clients, et cetera, I mean, there's a. One that's gotten a lot of attention. There was also those at the cannabis farm in Camarillo out there was George Redis.

He's a 25-year-old U.S. citizen and army veteran. He was detained by his for three days and three nights as part of their raid of that cannabis farm. Totally falsely. Again, this is important in the context of the racial profiling, right? This is the person that was a U.S. citizen, gets detained as part of an immigration raid, is Hispanic, appears Hispanic. How extensive is that type of behavior? What are you seeing out there? It's widespread.

There's no question. What we have are a bunch of folks who have been inadequately trained, are sent out without being told they must identify themselves on their uniforms, without being told you should not be wearing a mask. And they're acting like abductors of folks. They're not acting like law enforcement at all. This is widespread harassment that then is backed up by long term, I think three days is long. long-term detention, folks, they have no reason to hold. So this is not unusual. This is what's going on. It should make us all question, what is the purpose of this activity? It is, in my view, inexplicable that the administration has undertaken this activity only in blue states and in blue

cities. Because if it's so wonderful, so positive, so productive for us to engage in this kind of behavior, you would think he would deliver that benefit, that boom, to the folks who have supported him first. And so he should be doing this in red states and doing it in red cities to the extent that are in. But the truth is, he's using this as political retribution for communities that did not support his candidacy any time he's been on the ballot. And it is designed to intimidate. It's designed to inspire fear. It's designed to catalyze people leaving. Leaving the country. And that's not just undocumented immigrants. It is designed to catalyze people leaving who do not support his agenda. All right. Tom Zines, thank you for the update on all this.

Appreciate the work that you're doing very much. Once again, it's the Mexican-American legal defense and educational fund if folks want to support it. And I hope to be talking to, well, I hope I wouldn't have to be talking to you again soon, but I expect that we will have to be talking again soon. Thanks again, man. Thanks. Thank you. All right. Thanks so much to Stephanie Ruhl. Very challenging person to book. Very important booking and I appreciate that she came on the pod today. Also to Tom Sines for all the work that he's doing at Maldeth and all the other folks out there fighting for immigrant rights. It's just such an important cause right now. Appreciate both of them. Appreciate you all for

listening and being here every day. We'll be back tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. We'll see you all then. Peace. You used to get it in your fish nests. Now you only get it in your night dress. Discarred all the naughty nights for niceness. Landed in a very common crisis. Everything's an order in a black hole. is my past, though. A bloody memory's like an Ed's a basco. Remember when you used to be a rascal? Oh, the boy's a slag.

The best you ever had, the best you ever had is just a memory. And those dreams, but as daft as they seem, as daft as they seem, my love, when you dream them all. Flicking through a little book of sex tips,

remember when the boys were all electric. Now when she told she's gonna get it I'm guessing that she'd rather just forget it Clinging to not getting sentimental Said she wasn't going but she went still Like she had to make her to be gentle Is it a mecca dabber or a betting pencil Oh the boy's a slag

The best you ever had The best you ever had Is just a memory And those dreams When as daft as they seem As daft as they seem My love when you dream Oh, flow, where did you go?

Where did you go with audio with audio with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown?