The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3568 - Trump’s Fresh Assault On The Fed; Pritzker Resists Fascist Chicago Takeover

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

It's a classic News Day Tuesday on Majority Report On Today's show: Trump is attempting to fire Federal Reserve Govenor Lisa Cook via tweet, accusing her of mortgage fraud yet no charges have been filed. This is just the continuation of his crusade to influence interest rate cuts. As the Pentagon reports that preparation for a National Guard invasion of Chicago started months ago, Illinois governor JB Pritzker fires back and points out that 13 of the 20 cities with the highest homicide rates and 8 out of 10 states with the highest crime rates are red states. Missouri GOP Representative Mark Alford is scorched at a town hall by a farmer, In the Fun Half: Graham Platner is peppered with horrible questions on CNN and answers them all perfectly. Ben Shapiro lies about how much he can bench press in a pathetic attempt to shame Zohran Mamdani. Wesley Bell desperately attempts to justify receiving millions from AIPAC and Crypto. Hakeem Jeffries writes a strongly worded letter in another feckless display. All that and more. The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: NUTRAFOL: Get $10 off your first month’s subscription + free shipping at Nutrafol.com when you use promo code TMR10 SUNSET LAKE:  Head to SunsetLakeCBD.com and buy any three 4-packs, and you’ll get a fourth one for free. Just add four 4-packs to your cart and use the code LABORDAY25 at checkout Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech Check out Matt’s show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon’s show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza’s music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder – https://majorityreportradio.com

You are listening to a free version of The Majority Report. Support this show at join the Majority Report.com and get an extra hour of content daily. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Tuesday, August 26th, 2025. My name is Emma Vigland, in for Sam Cedar, and this is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, in Trump's continued attacks on Central Bank independence, he says he's firing Fed Governor Lisa Cook, who he legally cannot fire unless there's wrongdoing. so what do you do

let's make something up on that front too the stock market tumbled in reaction to this news particularly U.S. long-term bonds indicating a global lack of confidence in U.S. financial governance and the dollar Trump's steep tariffs

on India take effect today effectively raising the rate to 50%. This is because India is continuing to buy Russian oil, by the way, and I don't know how this squares with the anti-Ukraine sentiment of his base, but who knows? Germany and Canada strike a minerals deal, circumventing past U.S. trade relationships, another predictable outcome of Trump's tariff war. Lutnik says Trump is thinking about equity, state. and defense contractors with U.S. taxpayer money. You know, the industry that doesn't get enough U.S. taxpayer money. Trump wants to prosecute flag burning.

The extremely well-established Supreme Court precedent on this front would take issue with that executive order. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago leaders stand united in opposition to Trump's threats to take over the state. city. A federal judge blocks the immediate deportation of Kilmour Kilmarr-Abrego-Garcia, telling the administration they are, quote, absolutely forbidden from sending him to Uganda. That's some good news.

And here's some more. A Utah judge says the state must redraw its congressional maps, which could add a democratic seat around Salt Lake City, which they currently have kind of divided in half. Marco Rubio is attacking Stanford University's student newspaper for pieces that oppose genocide. Israel's far-right Minister of Settlements, who, there's a theme here, has been accused of sexually abusing her daughter, says West Bank annexation will start this month.

It's already started. And lastly, UAW workers at GE. Aerospace Authorize a Strike, which could happen as early as next week. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome to the show, everybody. It is Newsday Tuesday, and we've got a newsday for you. Straight up. No chaser.

Hello, Brian. Hello, Matt. Lots of news to get to, per usual. although like it's still it's always the same like four stories genocide and Gaza Trump's attempts to takeover cities in an authoritarian manner fascist immigration policies and the economy collapsing we're kind of just cycling through those four at this point but they keep developing every day and last night there was a major escalation in Trump's attack on the

independence of the Fed, another theme here, which is a part of him really tanking our economy, because as he continues to attack the independence of the central bank, with every attack comes more freakouts from the investment community that needs our central bank and our financial data to be independent of the whims of an insane man in the White House, because this is the bedrock of confidence in the United States economy is that we have accurate data and fed independence. So Trump decided that it's time to fire. The Federal Reserve Governor posted this on truth social, an official White House letterhead, although the legality of this is very dubious. We're going to be talking about that in just a second.

using his authority under Article 2, he fires her of her position and basically at the bottom it says the Federal Reserve has a tremendous responsibility for setting interest rates and regulating reserve and member banks the American people must be able

to have full confidence in the honesty of the members entrusted with setting policy and overseeing the Federal Reserve. That's a great sentiment people tend to agree with that. The problem is that Trump's assessment of who provides him with full confidence is basically... Why is a black lady running the bank? Well, that's the other angle.

And I want to get to Jeffrey's statement on this, but Trump's obsessed with targeting black leaders, black women in prominent roles in civil service, Lisa Cook, is the latest, but prior to this, he went after Carla Hayden, who was the librarian of Congress and fired her, and Gwen Wilcox, the NLRB member, which her firing has prevented the National Labor Relations Board from reaching a quorum, effectively allowing the court system or the arbitration system set up to not function so that employers, can union bus without recourse. But also Westmore.

Westmore. And he's attacking with his attacks on cities, Karen Bass, right, like Brandon Johnson. I mean, you know, it's, I saw a statement from Brandon Johnson. And it is, it's, there's this thing where you can tell he wants to put the emphasis on a wider, um, sort of attack, uh, than just on himself personally as a black man. I think there's like, I think that's a good instinct to do because I think everyone needs to see like the, the, um,

implications of this, but it is also just played patently obvious that Trump is singling out black leaders. It's too bit clanshit and it's from shadow president Stephen Miller and Donald Trump with the auto-sharpie. Like we should start using that. Trump's a big-time racist too. Trump's a big-time racist, but we'll show later the, uh, how he's being just handed executive orders. I mean, the pitch time for these actions must be 15 seconds before he gets on. on board with it. He's the the finding of these folks and singling of them out feels very Stephen Miller to me. But Trump is overall just really pissed because interest rates remain high.

And as a recap for people, interest rates in the immediate aftermath when COVID hit were like they dropped them down to basically zero percent because the economy had slowed so much that they wanted to heat it up. But since really early 2022, the Fed had. has been raising interest rates to combat inflation. Now, COVID did cause inflation. There were shocks and disruptions to the supply chain because of this global pandemic that meant that there were work stoppages.

Obviously, millions of people died. There had to be precautions, so work slowed. And there were bottlenecks. And prices went up because we had issues on the supply side. but when those were corrected two three years later prices stayed high and then you check the earnings reports or the corporate profit numbers that are made available with publicly traded companies and you see that in 2022 corporate profits hit a record around 3.5 trillion Huh, new record in 24.

$4 trillion in corporate profits. Meaning corporations were knowingly keeping their prices high, taking advantage of COVID shocks, and they just kept raking them in because if inflation was hitting everybody, including all everybody at the top, wouldn't corporate profits remain the same? Do we have this chart here I sent?

This is a pretty good example. here or visual for folks I sent this in Slack but I it's a chart with purple bars

from Sherwood here you can see this is one of the pandemic hits and corporate profits even amidst the economic slow down for the rest of us and even amidst the inflation that was really hurting people's pocketbooks so um that

and wages we see also lag behind profits so since like basically may 2023 rates hit 5% and they've continued to go up and they have not gone down below that and trump is trying to bully the Fed into lowering rates because he wants to heat up the economy but the problem is is that now we're experiencing a genuine inflationary

period because of the tariffs tariffs function as a compounding sales tax on the side of folks who are consuming it from consumer goods because the importers pass on the tariffs when it comes into the country

onto wholesalers, onto retailers, and then those are passed off onto consumers. So the Fed does have a legitimate reason to be cautious about reducing rates here as we get dire economic numbers for the past three months, and we're seeing a potential recession on the horizon. So the stock market responded really poorly last night to the firing, his announcement

that he says he's firing Lisa Cook. The dollar keeps falling, et cetera. Because, again, if you can't trust central bank independence and things like employment data, why would people want to invest in the United States economy? And the law also says Trump can't do this. So Fed governors are supposed to only be able to be removed for cause. Now Trump is making up a cause, accusing her of having, being fraudulent because she has two primary. residences, you know, Republicans would never have multiple homes, right? She's got a condo in one

place and then a house in another. She's refusing to resign, as she should. This was the statement that she put out last night in response. President Trump reported to fire me for cause when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so. I will not resign. I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I've been doing since 2022. um she's right that he can't do so but that's the pretext is that she has a home in michigan and a condo in Atlanta and she described both as a primary residence this is a suspicious living in Atlanta uh if this is such a right if this is such a uh criminal act by her then press charges they don't have charges that they're filing because he's just

throwing this out there. It's a pretext. Yeah. Same thing you did to Adam Schiff and Letitia James, too. It's like one of his moves. Exactly. And he never, of course, the hypocrisy of it, it's almost like not worth going over.

Like Trump goes after mail in voting. He voted by mail in Florida. I, you know, he's been driven. He goes after illegal immigration. He uses immigrant illegal undocumented labor for his literal, like, most famous. tower yes so um and wife right uh forgot about that so just uh it's insane um it seems like he's not going to be able to legally do it although he will try but again this is all because he wants

jerome paul to lower interest rates and um in part this is uh this is another embarrassment to America and how we don't have a functioning state. Because like Emma said, the inflation that we saw around COVID was around things that should have been dealt with through different mechanisms than raising interest rates like price controls and that sort of thing. But we don't have a government that can do that. So just like after the financial crisis, where it was sort of the opposite issue where we actually had a lot of leeway to lower rates, to be negative. interest rates and that ended up instead that was to address the massive financial crisis what should have been done was Congress paid for people to stay in their houses not giving a whole bunch of money

for speculators to play with hoping that it would all balance out in the end and instead what we got was you know the Silicon Valley bubbles the giant banks are too big to fail remember when that phrase was in the lexicon anyone remember that and and that's where we're here now we're still relying on the Federal Reserve to fix all the problems with an economy and that's because the rest of the government isn't functioning. It's just

stopped functioning. And there were efforts in terms of enforcement on the FTC side under Biden to combat this. Like we know that they were going, they were launching investigations, Lena Khan, Jonathan Cantor into

some of the worst offenders here who took home the highest proportion of record profits, which is basically oil and gas and grocers, grocery and food suppliers like Tyson and other, you know, poultry and meat manufacturers. They were the ones that were taking home these record profits in addition to other sectors, but this was the most acute and ripping off the American consumer. And there was an attempt with enforcement. But this is the thing when you don't have Congress that functions in a way that also is an enforcement mechanism not like we can't just have agencies do this and enforce the laws we have to have legislation

that improves our agency's ability to do this enforcement but but congress has not been a functioning body as matt said for decades yeah and it's corrupted We can shovel money to like aircraft carriers and Israel, but to actually like solve the problems of, uh, of this century, no, we're not doing it. Does anybody look? We're 24 quarter into it. Anyone think we're doing a good job? Look at China. You think they're doing a little bit better job. Look how much rail. Look at the infrastructure that that country's built. Exactly. It's just so much waste. We're being failed. And, um, when we talk about records, record amount of dark money going into, uh, PAC's last election cycle. Meaning, and that just goes up every cycle. It's just exploded. I mean, since he's united, it's like logarithmic. Exactly. So that is the major problem in our country.

And this is just yet another example of Trump being able to exploit the existing cracks in our government for fascistic and authoritarian ends. Folks, we have a word from one of our favorite. sponsors, if not our favorite, Sunset Lake Sebeday. As you know, our friends over at Sunset Lake Sebeday have a new release just in time for Labor Day barbecues and backyard hangouts. And there's a sale. If you use the code Labor Day 25, you can get any three, four packs of lifted tea. So three packs and they come with four in them. And then you would get a fourth pack free. So that's like 14 T's for the price of 12. I think so.

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so on Friday Trump said that Chicago's next up in this performance art by the administration I shouldn't be so flippin about it he's testing the boundaries in his authoritarian takeover

but like there's nothing that these National Guardsmen are doing that is beyond like just the intimidation factor and the aesthetic of fascism. Like that there's nothing to address except for Donald Trump wants to see how far you can go. Yeah, all the justifications are hysterical hyperventilations just for politics. The same thing about the supposed border crisis. And which like to the extent that it is like overwhelming and a huge problem,

It's because we've caused people to be displaced, and also we've decided to stop taking asylum seekers from those countries that we've, you know, distressed. And the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon has been preparing for a military deployment to Chicago for weeks at this point. we mentioned how Trump is targeting black high-profile civil servants, oftentimes the first, like, black woman in one particular role. I know that was the case with the librarian of Congress, but also in his attempted firing or announced firing of Lisa Cook, although as we said, he's prevented from doing that statutorily. We'll see how that legal fight plays out. but Trump reiterated his desire after announcing this to do this yesterday at the White House. This is when he was signing his executive orders on cashless bail and crime. And was this also the flag-burning one?

Yeah. Okay. Just, I mean, for all the, this is. It was like a book signing. Yeah, I know. Hand him over it. Okay, keep him going. We'll play this from the beginning where you see what this process is like for his sycophants.

to hand the dear leader the piece of paper to get his name on it. A lot of these are worthless. But especially, in my view, the flag burning one, which has been, like, there's pretty much no ambiguity with the Supreme Court decisions.

And I think that's distinct from Roe v. Wade because it's such an explicit First Amendment protection. Now, never say never, but... That's the thing is, like, does the Supreme Court want to decide to just completely overrule its credit... Like, the whole... whole what do they call it star decisis or like defer to previous decisions or whatever do they really want to jettison that for something stupid like this just because they're a little bit sensitive to the

fact that uh in certain instances it looks like it's more of a problem to burn the israeli flag in america than the american flag like that's really i think why trump is sensitive to this now roby wade is different because there was decades of like basically legal vetting and like promoting people within the conservative legal apparatus for the explicit purpose of overturning the right to an abortion in this country. And they were successful. We'll see if that happens with flag burning. But that's a bit of an aside because in the midst of the signing spree, he addresses his desired takeover of Chicago. okay let's go could i uh ask you to say exactly what this is of course so okay okay so that was

just my favorite part he has no idea what's being put in front of him we're he when they're all they're all the right wing media is obsessed with biden and the auto pen Biden and the auto pen trump may not have like an auto pen software that signs for him but he's basically auto sharpie because there's nothing going on up there and he puts no thought thought into anything he does all projection projection projection and also uh he is deteriorating mentally very quickly uh pritzker points this out in his response but here we go it's going to be very funny to see all the people um say how could you cover for biden cover for trump for the next three years also why is the world cup trophy there dementia done get that gold world trophy oh my god he needs

needs another gold accessory that's what the room needs so as you've consistently identified so cashless bail policies are a key driver of the disorder we see on city streets all over America. Catch and release system allows criminals to keep going back out onto the street and reoffending. Crime is down. Crime is down. Crime is down. What this executive order does, it charges your attorney general with identifying jurisdictions all over the country that have cashless bail policies, and then it withholds or revokes federal funds and grants that are flowing to those jurisdictions to ensure that we're only supporting the people who have reasonable common sense policies around crime. So what area does it cover? Potentially anywhere that has a cashless bail

policy. So some of the largest cities, some of the most left-wing states in America have adopted. Illinois would be a great example of that, sir. Oh, they have a great cashless bail. You don't even have to go to court sometimes. No, Illinois, I love that state. It's a great state, but it's run so badly by Prisker. They threw him out of the family business and he becomes governor. Now he wants to run for president. I don't think that's going to happen. Okay, we'll sign right here, huh? Sir. So important.

Okay, that's it. Just the sick of the sycophants. Yes, sir. You have no idea what's being put in front of you and you're about to sign it, but yes, sir. Oh, your infinite wisdom, which is in some ways no wisdom at all. No, stupidity is wisdom in this White House. So that's just kind of his gratuitous jab.

Pritzker. He also made fun of his weight. I mean, God, glass houses here. But Jamie Pritzker stood up with Brandon Johnson, other Chicago leaders, uh, were there. And you can see that's Durbin in the background and Tammy Duckworth was there too. They all did this joint press conference in Chicago. And the whole thing is, is worth a listen. Um, but there are a bunch of really great parts here, uh, that Pritzker just nails Trump on. Obviously, he's auditioning for president in 2028. So is Newsome. But I find Pritzker to be a much more compelling option with more teeth behind him.

Oh, he's got to distance himself from APEC. He's got to prove that he's a billionaire that wants to tax the hell out of other billionaires. There's a long way to go. He's already taking shots at municipal grocery stores, so I'm out. You're out? I hear you. I hear you. But I'm enthusiastic about partisanship that isn't. from, you know,

Newsom who was making, doing photo ops of ripping up homeless encampments. Like his level of sociopathy, I think, is a, is a, I agree. I think this is a much better government. Yes. And, um, also just like the messaging here

is great. He kicks off the speech fairly early on. Debunking some statistics about crime. Here we go. So in case there was any doubt as to the motivation behind Trump's military occupations, take note, 13 of the top 20 cities in homicide rate have Republican governors. None of these cities

is Chicago. Eight of the top 10 states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois. Memphis, Tennessee, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. have higher crime rates than Chicago. And yet Donald Trump is sending troops here and not there? Ask yourself why. If Donald Trump was actually serious about fighting crime in cities like Chicago, he, along with his congressional Republicans,

would not be cutting over $800 million in public safety and crime prevention grants nationally, including cutting $158 million in funding to Illinois for violence prevention programs that deploy trained outreach workers to de-escalate conflict on our streets. He's right about that. Let's just take a look at crime rates in major cities put together here by Jeff Olytics. Scroll down all the way to the bottom, where it shows the percent change in murders. Now, this is, we've shown this chart.

We'll show that for a sec. Go up a little bit. no go up back just to give people like this is national data and I think this also bears repeating um murder fatal shootings homicides nationally this is all like different data sets using that you'll hear accusations from the folks who are lying about it scared of their own either lying or so hysterical and scared of their own shadow that they become you know know, bloggers or something. Top representatives. Yep. They will claim that the data's incomplete. The data is incomplete.

On all this other, well, it's really not. There are some cities with incomplete data. It's never some, there's some lags in reporting, but the overall trend is so significant that it would take like major, major spikes in some of those cities to change the trend. And that does not, that kind of stretches. credulity. This is overall from 2018 to 2024. You see huge spikes in 2020, as we know. And ever since then, 2022. Because why? I think some people need to spell out. George Floyd effect. Yeah, some people say it's because of the George Floyd effect. Others have maybe the

sort of once in a century disruption caused by a pandemic to an entire function of society. But, you know, Right. People like also increased desperation, uh, paranoia losing their jobs, massive disruptions to our society. I guess the George Floyd effect wears off pretty quickly. Right. Um, 2023, huge declines. And then 24 across the board, double digit, 14.3% 12.6% 12.2% nationally. That's the data we have for the first half of the year. Now let's go to the cities. What about all the murders in Chicago that Trump is preventing people from by sending the, here we go, the National Guard there. Chicago, when you compare 2025 to 2024, which was also a year where there was a significant decline, 30.6% decline for Chicago. New York City, the other city that's being targeted?

Murders. 23.2% decrease for the first half of the year. It's, I mean, the places where you're seeing increases, Kansas City, Milwaukee. Like per capita, these are more cities with worse problems. But when you look, right, look at the difference in Milwaukee, it's, that's a percentage change that can be misleading because it's literally. increase by seven murders. Right, right.

And it, it, the, the, the data is. That are sending the National Guard. Right. It's just, it makes absolutely no sense. And that's not where Trump is sending the National Guard. So Pritzker pointing that out was pretty great. Now, uh, this part, what is part two here, um, Brian? Okay.

Okay. No, it's all right. This is another part of the speech. Go ahead. Trump is defunding the police. Inaction measures in Illinois that protect our kids against abuse and neglect. Trump is defunding the police. To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story.

This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see where the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored, in favor of some horse-raced peace on who will be helped politically by the president's actions. Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy. a U.S. city, punish his dissidents, and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is, a dangerous power grab. Look at the people assembled before you today, behind me. This is a full cross-section of Chicago's leaders from the business world, the faith community, law enforcement, education, community organizations and more. We sometimes disagree on how to effectively solve the many challenges

that our state and our city face on a daily basis. But today we are standing here united, in public, in front of the cameras, unafraid to tell the president that his proposed actions will make our jobs harder and the lives of our residents worse. Earlier today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked, asked for me personally to say, Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city? Instead, I say, Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. A little more. You are neither wanted here nor needed here.

Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy. Most alarming, you seem to lack any appropriate concern as our commander-in-chief for the members of the military that you would so callously deploy as pawns in your ever-more alarming grabs for power. As a governor, I've had to make the decision. I liked his kind of mention, first of all, the trolling of Trump there and his declining mental faculties is fun. But at one point in the speech, he also mentions how many of the National Guardsmen are there unwillingly and could be basically prosecuted if they refuse to comply with some of these orders.

I think it's easy for folks to forget that Trump is, while he calls himself the top law enforcement officer in the country falsely, that's Pam Bondi, although she acts as his proxy, he is the head of the military. And his command is supposed to be respected here. And this is a part of the dance that he's doing. I think Democrats need to start to be making some friends in the military. I'm not joking here with the authoritarian crackdown continuing, starting to talking to people behind the scenes in case the worst case scenario happens. I mean, I feel like they've been doing that for the last 10 years. Well, yes, but like a strategy specific for this with Donald Trump. And here's the final clip of this.

This is when, I guess, Pritzker kind of wraps here. This is about his response, how they're going to peacefully use every possible way to respond. Great. Illinois is ready to stand against this military deployment with every peaceful tool we have. We will see the Trump administration in court. We will use every lever at our disposal to protect the people of Illinois and their rights. Finally, to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution, to serve the petty whims

of an arrogant little man. To any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous, we are watching and we are taking names. This country has survived

darker periods than the one that we're going through right now. And eventually, the pendulum will swing back. Maybe even next year. Donald Trump has shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf. You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually. If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political

circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law. as Dr. King once said. That's good. For me, that is Pritzker basically saying, if I become president in 2028, I'm prosecuting you guys. And I like that. I really do like that. I think that that should be the basically baseline position of Democrats going forward.

Because the reason that we are at a point right now where Republicans like this feel like they can act with impunity is because Democrats have continuously rolled over regardless of what Republicans have done. whether it be the egregious, unimaginable, unspeakable crime of the Iraq War, which killed up to a million people and hurt so many of our service members, PTSD, in a needless war that was manufactured by the Bush administration, torture, war crimes, cover-ups, corruption, the Democratic Party let that go. Obama comes into office.

Let's time to turn the page. How about also in the financial crisis with Wall Street? Time to turn the page. No accountability here. Well, what happens when the guy like Donald Trump gets into office? He commits crimes. There were efforts of impeachment in Trump 1.0. But after he tried to stage a coup, shouldn't Biden have tried to prosecute the guy immediately in the way that other functioning countries,

like Brazil are doing now lula the it's his administration is independent from the efforts to go after bolsonaro um but that's the kind of thing that trump that bideon should have done appointing uh basically a special prosecutor to specifically prosecute trump for a coup attempt in january six he should have been prevented from running again in the functioning democracy Cory Bush issues legislation to boot out the representatives who supported the Jan 6 coup. Where is she at now? Right, exactly. And so I like that.

That's a cocky move, saying basically, if I become president, justice won't escape you. And I didn't even read the president thing. And I viewed that as like rich guy thing, which is like I have resources, which is this is what you would want. I mean, I don't trust Pritzker. I don't trust him as a billionaire. But to the extent that you want to make yourself understandable to voters as a super rich guy, it is like, oh, I have, this is why Trump actually had some success. It's just like, I have the sort of wherewithal materially to stand up for you in a fight. And that's exactly what Pritzker should be doing right now, because it is, you know, how this is all going to shake out down the line for the different people in things.

you know, that's sort of secondary. Like right now there is an absolute emergency where Trump is using powers that like, sure, I think the National Guard can be imposed on states when they're, say, not allowing black little girls to go into a public school. This sort of thing where you create an entire fever dream about crime for campaign reasons, frankly.

And now you have cities being occupied by the National Guard like that that that needs to be everything needs to be thrown against that you can't half measure that and it can't even be about like well he doesn't have the right to do this because like i said like there are situations where like yeah i think abe lincoln had he lived should have occupied this out for a long ass time um this has to be about like what this is which is a lie about the state of our society and a use of the military to address it. Yeah, well, the jury is still out, but this is how you throw your weight around as a billionaire.

And I am not polyanish about what it's going to take to take on this billionaire class, where we're at gilded age levels of incoming wealth inequality. We have to break their backs with taxation. The question is, is what's the best mechanism to do it? If Pritzker chooses to, he can make a case saying, I'm the billionaire that will tax other billionaires out of existence. I shouldn't exist.

My wealth shouldn't be this high. And I'll reject my PACs, A-PAC connections. But he has to do that first. However, in terms of just like explicit partisanship, it's good to see versus Nancy Pelosi, you know, like when she took over as leader for the Democrats in the House at the end of the Bush administration, this was not the position because there were other Democrats that

complicit in the war crimes of the Iraq war, namely the woman that was supposed to be the frontrunner in that upcoming primary in Hillary Clinton, and Obama beat her, in part because of his opposition to the Iraq war. And that's going to be the litmus test for Democrats. So yes, jury's still out on Pritzker, but he's at least providing, in my view, a baseline of how Democrats should approach these criminals in the White House. This is not just, you know, Republicans win sometimes, Democrats win sometimes. These are incredible unspeakable crimes. And it's not just against brown people in the Middle East. I mean, every administration seems to get away with that crap. But this is against American citizens. And it's against American citizens

in their deportation regime. And I don't even care if they're citizens. It's against our neighbors who are Americans, regardless of their status, in my view, being thrown into concentration camps in Seacott, in Florida, tortured and abuse. This authoritarian crackdown is unconstitutional by every metric, and they should be met with justice in a way that meets their crimes. And I like to see it. And, I mean, just to the point about the National Guardsmen,

this is a from Texas Public Radio, December 6th, 2024, at least 17 National Guardsmen died patrolling the southern border, including several suicides. Like, this is just senseless. And you see this sort of thing with going on in California, like they're sitting around just on backpacks. It's disgusting what we're doing as a government and as a country, like just marching kids around to occupy,

the national mall in D.C. because like record representatives from South Carolina I think it's scary to be there. It's ludicrous. Yep. We'll wrap

here with a more kind of uplifting story, at least in my estimation. So these town halls across the country have been very few and far between in part due to the fact that the Republican Party nationally is telling its members not to do it.

Don't deal with your constituents. Our whole, whole agenda is the anti-democracy agenda. That would be too much democracy, too much accountability for you, for stripping health care away from tens of millions of people, and voting for the largest transfer of wealth to the top earners in this country ever in one bill, basically, in our modern history, don't be held accountable for that let's escape by

we pass the big ass ugly bill don't give people the image of others being angry about it yeah don't don't show how furious the public is with you even though you're supposed to be a representative of your constituents right

well every now and again we get a Republican that feels a little bit of guilt or is getting a little bit too much heat back home and they acquies and they host a town hall now Mark Alfred's not actually maybe one of the guys

that's done this a few times if I'm not mistaken right Brian he's I think we've covered some of his town halls before yeah he's he's done some other ones so I mean

not so much credit but or perhaps I'm confusing him with a different Missouri Republican. Yeah, I don't remember this guy. The other Missouri guy, I can't remember his name right now. But it's a different Missouri Republican. That one was rowdy.

Okay, well, the people in Missouri know what's up, basically. Alfred now hosting a town hall, and this guy just reams him out. This is apparently a man named Fred Higginbotham. He's a farmer

according to how he identified himself to the press, and he just rips into Alfred here. A great-great-grandfather helped open this university. I am pissed, and I'm pissed at you because I have emailed you because it's easier for me. Can't make eye contact. To try to talk on the phone without profanity.

I would appreciate you taking your father's U.S. Constitution book, read it. it, study it. I just want to say Fred, shut out for holding the GoPro up as you say this question there. True content creator, if you want to be on the show get French. I didn't even, I thought that might have been like a

part of his chair or something like that. No, he's got the GoPro up. Oh, he's set. Make your own lines underneath it and get, read it, study it, make your own lines underneath it and get to Trump

out of office. The man is a dictator. He knows nothing about what he talks about. I listened to him for about a half hour today, and I got sick and all the lies he brought up. Now, I'm about ready to lose my farm. Do you know why? I'm sure you don't know why. Lose your what, sir? Farm. Farm? Yeah. Why is that, sir? Because Missouri, Missouri. does not have wills. They have trust. They have legal zigzags. And a trust most people don't know anything about. So I'm dealing with a state that's a crooked state, doesn't care about what farmers happen. The only reason why we have farmers today is because the federal government funds them. How much money of our tax money goes to farmers? Farmers work very hard,

but they're funded by the federal government, not by selling groceries. That's what Foster Farms and all of those characters. That's where they get their money. The price of steaks, $20 a pound, because of big business. You want to straighten out the budget? start taxing corporations and the wealthy, like we've been telling you. Do you think we're idiots? Do you think we don't pay taxes? Do you think that we don't have to make budgets? You talk about half-truths when I listen to you.

You know nothing about taking care of children because you've always had a really good-paying job. You know nothing about what a working-class citizen does. Come down here. Come down here and start trying to pay your medical insurance. Come down here and walk into Costco to try to feed your family, to feed your kid that's moved out, to feed your great-grandchildren. I had a very good job in California and I'm able to feed my family

and it goes all the way to great-grandchildren. You're not helping me. Believe me, you're not helping me. You need to take your head out of Trump's ass and start doing your representation of us. I mean that chills that is

the first part about farming any farmer knows that that it's not the free market it gets massive government support and the basically not taking sides for small farmers versus giant corporations

means giant corporations are going to eat everyone the other thing is he's exactly right about the head and the ass thing because the representatives in government, the Republicans. You're supposed to be

represented by those guys, right? Or Democrats, if you're in a blue district. They're supposed to be the ones doing the oversight. This whole do-shit that is now like some sort of memory they all pretend didn't happen. That was a simulation of what all these

motherfuckers should have been doing. Like in their sort of mind, which is like we're the small government, we're making sure there's no waste, fraud, abuse. You gave it to a parasite. a psycho government contractor who should have been investigated himself. You gave him

the role that you should have been playing so you could what, go fundraise, avoid town halls until now? Like, it is the, we don't have a democracy here because these people are just liaisons to donors. They don't represent the people that they, from districts they supposedly represent. And they're just literally,

the Doge thing is just a microch They're giving it all over to corporations and billionaires. Let them do everything. And I was wondering if this district was, you know, like a gerrymandered Kansas City district or around an urban center in Missouri. But Missouri's fourth congressional district represented there by Alford, predominantly rural, Bush defeated Kerry there, McCain defeated Obama there. it's a largely Republican district

Cook has it at R plus 21 and that's the response that he's getting there and I wrote down that quote just because it was so incredible you want to straighten out the budget start taxing corporations in the wealthy like we've been telling you do you think we're idiots do you think we don't pay taxes do you think we don't have to make budgets Now, we've sometimes had conversations on the show about Stephanie Kelton's great book, The Deficit Myth, and MMT, and how, yes, the budget does not need to be balanced in the way that it's traditionally spoken about where money, the wealthy should be taxed, yes, but it's about taking that money out of their head.

hands and not having that concentration of wealth i understand you can increase the money supply as well that right and increasing the money supply and i understand that argument but from a political strategy point of view talking about balanced budgets democrats can do that again but not in the way that the polosies and the pay goes and the current democratic leadership has traditionally about it, which is austerity focused. How you sell common sense economics to people across the country is you say that you're going to balance the budget by taxing the hell out of the rich. The reason that we haven't been able to make that argument within the Democratic Party is because the Democratic Party doesn't want to make that argument. But it's actually

incredibly salient. As that guy says, do you think we're idiots? Do you think we don't have to make budgets, households understand how to budget and it's increasingly difficult. And if you want to talk about the federal government in that way, about how to sell taxing wealthy people and then providing social services, but also using it as a fiscal responsibility cudgel, I find that to be a basically slam dunk. That's, I mean, that would be the argument that wins that guy over immediately. And I don't know what his politics are, but there are a lot of people who are smaller business owners who would be more sympathetic to that than when you would say it doesn't matter at all. Democrats can win farmers that rely on the government.

And what that is is a larger, it's less budget and actually the political economy. The economy is political. So how are we having these conversations? Like during the last 10 years of like, oh, where's the money? When rich people are richer than ever. we know where the money is it's in their pockets they're breaking records with it

we have greater inequality than the gilded age we're not just in we're not just repeating the gilded age we're topping it we're topping the gilded age right now maybe we're french revolution levels I mean I literally think that we've never seen

levels of extreme wealth inequality in the world history that have been created right now by modern capitalism I don't think it was possible before to have the billions and billions of dollars that they have. There, and Jezell says, like, oh, I don't know what to do, but blast it off in the space. You abuse people at a mass scale.

You, the burnout rate for Amazon workers is crazy. He tears through people's bodies, like he's some sort of warlord, setting them into battle. And he is flying up with Katie Perry, saying, I just have so much money. Like, we know where the money is. There's money. There's money around. Grab it. And you know what?

Like, fine. You want it to be reinvested in the business. Keep business taxes lower. Income taxes need to be through the fucking roof. Yeah. Especially on billionaires. Especially on multi-millionaires. That knock them down.

Break their back. Do it. And all the politics is really like, and including by Democrats, like Hakeem Jeffries or whatever, is a dance or the abundance set that just wants to naturalize that. Oh, no. I'm being practical by accepting this. unprecedented state of

inequality. I'm the practical ones. Why don't you guys try to deal with these really tricky conversations and just accept that Bill Gates is going to own half the land? No, it doesn't work. It's not fucking working for anyone. People are going to be done with it one way or the other. And if it's going to

be Trump like destroying the Federal Reserve, it will be if the Democrats don't do shit. If they keep thinking like, oh, every time we get into office, we just got to maintain it. Look, I credit Biden with the... Enforcement stuff. But there needed to be major tax increases that were, I mean, Mansion killed it. Cinema killed it, sure.

But that should have been a sprint at the beginning of the administration when Mansion and Cinema were on board for much bigger, like when Biden's political capital was greater. You have to really take the stuff out root and branch. And it's, it's, we haven't done it. So that's why we're here now. But it's also a way to sell, like the genocide in Gaza is connected to this. well that's more wealth and more of taxpayer dollars going towards genocide you can make the case about money and allocation and resources and budgeting that isn't one that's austerity focused and the reason that it's only gone in that direction is because the democratic

party is corrupted on a leadership level save for you know 30 40 whatever whatever, 50 members of both the Senate and the House that are really fighting the good fight here and there are members with mixed records, I get it. But the incentive structure is corrupting. And leadership, it's so far gone. They won't approach the idea of tax increases. And it's political malpractice, tax increases on the wealthy. And so, you know, if they, you want to talk about PAYGO, you want to talk about balanced budgets, I'm all for it.

Let's reclaim that conversation. but it's about, but make it about raising revenue and reallocating resources to slaughtering babies to making your life materially better. That is a politically salient, almost infallible argument that can cut across race, gender, geography, class-based politics, ones that are about taking all of this billionaire money

and giving it to you for universal child care, universal health care. That is the argument, and it's staring Democrats in the face, and many of them are refusing to take it. But listen to that guy. I'm reading that quote one more time. You want to straighten out the budget, start taxing corporations in the wealthy like we've been telling you. Do you think we're idiots? Do you think we don't pay taxes?

Do you think we don't have to make budgets? That's the other thing that's what's been so great about the Zorong campaign. And now, Graham Platner is incorporating a lot of this. He has, you know, some carryover from Zoron's campaign. It's very encouraging. You go to their website and they explain exactly what they're going to do. No more how are you going to pay for it. It's on the platform, you dummy.

The free breath thing, we know how he wants to pay for it. He wants to increase the corporate tax rate to match across the river in New Jersey. It's about four-ish percentage points, right? It's on the site. Just don't talk to people like idiots. And make the math make sense to people. And that's my critique sometimes of just like how Democrats have approached the budgetary conversation is it sounds irresponsible to people. It sounds like irresponsible leadership.

It's it's not tangible. When you make those points, I think it's a lot easier to get your agenda across. I mean, the real thing, the rub is it has to be a sort of class war. Right. But that, but, but well, yeah. Yeah, the rub is like everything we've ever talked about. And so, like, I mean, that's why the abundance thing, it is so funny to me. It is like, it is this attempt to say, well, look, there might be a problem, how unequal everything is.

We just got to accept it and try to do deals. And, yeah, no, that, the concentration of wealth isn't going to work. Like, it's not, and everyone sees it, even that guy. Yeah. Well, he may be more sensitive to it because his farms. going to get bought up by, you know, some giant agriculture conglomerate. All right. With that, we'll wrap up

the first hour of the show, heading to the fun half, where we will take your calls, read your IMs, and do some more fun clips. Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning? Left Reckoning, big show tonight, talking, we had two guests, one on Nordic

socialism and one with a book called War Body, on the health impact. of being a veteran so check that out patreon.com just left reckoning also got a fun have for folks where texas is still trying to ban THC um so they're living in a weird weird place down there in freedom land uh love all the freedom going on down there patron dot coms has left reckoning tonight seven o'clock eastern didn't trump a few days ago say that he's going to uh reconsider um moving can oh i guess it was he's considering moving cannabis from schedule one to schedule

three that would be a good thing right um i keep forgetting it something biden didn't do yeah something biden did too i doubt he will but um i mean he starts doing some high profile obvious shit that democrats should have been doing maybe when they were in office and the midterms could get scary again for democrats we haven't played the thing about their lower registration. It's a broken party right now. And I don't, people keep saying like the leadership should step down. Don't ask the leadership to ask other Democrats to figure out how to get no confidence and remove them because they're doing the job that they want to be doing as far as I'm concerned. I don't think Chuck Schumer thinks he's doing a bad job. I don't think Hakeem Jeffries thinks

he's doing a bad job. I don't think they're fighting the same fight that we are. Yeah, that's why it's encouraging to see Graham Platner basically explicitly say that he will not support Chuck Schumer for leader if he gets elected. We'll play that probably first thing in the fun half. So we'll see you on the other side, guys. But

if you can, please support the show. Join the Majority Report.com. You can I am the show. And even if you don't even want to do that, even if you just want to listen normally. Although if you become a member, you get the show in podcast form ad-free. It's just a nice thing to

to keep us afloat. I know wallets are tight right now, but if you have a little bit of extra cash to throw our way, becoming a member is a great way to support the show. Make up for the members whose jobs are going away because Trump used a random number generator

to determine tariff policy. Exactly. All right, guys. See you on the other side. Okay, Emma, please. Well, I just, I feel that my voice is sorely lacking in the majority report. Wait, whoa. Look, Sam was unpopular. I do deserve a vacation at Disney World. So, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show.

It is Thursday. Yeah, I think you need to do it for Sam, but... Yes, please, sir, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pause you right there. Wait, what? You can't encourage Emma to live like this. And I'll tell you why. So it was offered a twerk, sushi, and poker with the boys. Twerk?

Sushi and poker with the boys. Who was offered a twer? Yeah. Sushi and poker with the boys. What? Twerk? Sushi and poker Tim's upset

Dwerp Sushi and poker with the boys It's offered a Dwerp Sushi and That's what we call Bids

Dwerp Sushi and poker with the boys Right Dwerp We're gonna get demonetized I just think that What you did to Tim Poole

Was mean Free speech That's not what we're about here Look at how sad he's become now You shouldn't even talk about it I think you're responsible I probably am in a certain way But let's get to the meltdown here.

Twirp. Ugh. Sushi and poker with the boys. Oh my God. Wow. Sushi. I'm sorry. I'm losing my fucking mind.

Someone's offered a twir? Yeah. Sushi and poker with the boys. Logic. Twerk. Sushi and poker with the voice. Boy, boy, boy. I think I'm like a little kid.

A little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Add this debate seven thousand times. A little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. A little kid. I'm losing my fucking noise. Some people just don't understand.

So I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but, like, I absolutely think the U.S. should be combining me with a wife and kids. That's not what we're talking about here. It's not a fun job. Twere? That's a real thing. That's a real thing. Willie Walker. That's a real thing.

That's a real thing. Offered a twirl. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. A real thing. That's a real thing. Offered a twirl. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan has done it again.

That's a real thing. That's a poker with the boy. I think he might be blowing out of proportion. Real fit. That's the poker with the boys. Offered a twer. That's a real thing. That's a poker.

Let's go, Joe. Twir. Sushi and poker with the boys. Take it easy to them. Twer. Sushi and poker. Things have really gotten out of hands. Sushi and poker with the boys.

Outs. You don't have a clue as to what's going on. Live YouTube. Sam has switched the weight of the world on the shoulders. Haugers. Sam just don't want to do this show. no anymore. It was so much easier. One of the majority

report was just you. You were happy. Let's change the subject. Rangers and Nick's going great. Now, shut up. Don't want people saying reckless things on your program. That's one of the most difficult parts about this show. This is a pro-killing podcast. I'm thinking maybe it's kind of we bury the hatchet.

Left is best. Trump. Violet twerk? Don't be foolish. And don't fucking tweet at me and don't get changed. The way that I just cucked all these people. Love it. That's where my heart is. So I wrote my honor's thesis about it.

Oh, she wrote an anesthesia. I guess I should hand the main mic to you now. You are to the right of the answer to the policy. We already fund Israel, dude. Are you against us? That's a tougher question. I have an answer to you. Incredible theme song.

I bumbler. Emma Viglin, absolutely one of my favorite people. Actually, not just in the game, like, period. Thank you.