The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3574 - Trump's War on History; Schumer and Jeffries Start Caving on ICE Reforms w/ Dan Friedman

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

It's an Emmajority Report Thursday on the Majority Report   On today's program:   After the Clintons agree to testify before Congress about their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump says he feels bad that "they're going after Bill Clinton," adding that "Bill Clinton got me, he understood me." The comments stand in contrast to Trump's remarks during the second presidential debate in 2016, when he said there was "no president in history who has been more abusive to women than Bill Clinton."   Trump announces a shift in his mass deportation policy, saying that they no longer want to force themselves into cities where they are not wanted. He wants the mayors and governors to ask for his help and to say "please".   As Trump shows vulnerability around ICE, instead of seizing on this opportunity, Hakeen Jeffries and Chuck Schumer use this moment to soften their demands around ICE reform.   Dan Friedman, senior reporter in Mother Jones' DC Bureau joins the program to discuss his piece in MJ "Trump's War on History".   In the Fun Half:   Brandon Sutton and Matt Binder join the show.   In a released audio recording of a phone conversation between Larry Summers, Ehud Barak and Jeffrey Epstein reveals Barak's anxiety of Israel's decent into a single state with an Arab majority.   In another released audio recording, Jeffrey Epstein is advising Ehud Barak to reach out to Peter Thiel to get a spot on Palantir's board. A year after that phone call, Palantir opened an office in Israel.   An in-depth piece by Jake Lahut on Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) reveals her alleged heavy drinking. Mace says that she has a condition that prevents her from being able to drink alcohol despite there being photos, videos and disputes from former staffers that contradict the claim.   all that and more To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. 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 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: NAKED WINES: To get 6 bottles of wine for $39.99, head to NakedWines.com/MAJORITY and use code MAJORITY for both the code AND PASSWORD.   RITUAL: Get 25% off during your first month. Visit ritual.com/MAJORITY. COZY EARTH: Go to cozyearth.com/MAJORITYREPORTBOGO for an exclusive deal only available Jan 25th - Feb 8th! SUNSET LAKE: Now through February 9th you can use the code VALENTINE26 to save 30% on all of Sunset Lake's gummies, chocolate fudge, and Farmer's Roast infused coffee beans at SunsetLakeCBD.com  Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey 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

You are listening to a free version of The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. To support this show and get another 15 minutes of daily program, go to majority.fm. Please. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Thursday, February 5th, 2026. My name is Emma Vigland and 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, Dan Friedman of Mother Jones will be with us to talk about Trump's war on American history.

Also on the program, remember how Democrats ended the government shutdown over a pinky promise from Republicans that they'd work on. an ACA subsidy extension. Wall Street Journal reports this morning that talks are dead. So that means like a double premium increase for over 20 million, on average, Americans in this country. And then something like 5 to 7 million people will just not have health insurance because they can't afford it, at least. Social murder, I think is what Engels called it.

This comes also as U.S. companies announced the largest number of job cuts for any January since the Great Recession in 2009. In Oregon District Judge rules that ICE must stop arresting people without warrants, unless there's a risk of escape. Holman pulls 700 agents from Minneapolis, but Minnesotans are not satiated by these cosmetic changes. Democratic leadership has their back, though. Just kidding.

They've already started caving on their most meager demands for ice, including masks, which requires nothing. We'll be talking about that in just a second, and by talking, I mean, I will be yelling. Sort of. A Quinnipiac poll finds that 61% of voters think the Trump administration is lying about Preddy's killing. New Virginia Governor Spanberger rolls back to. the state's police ice collaboration. Israel kills at least 21 people, including six children, bombing, tents, and closing the Rafa border crossing just days after reopening it, subjecting Palestinians to humiliating

searches, but closing it again. In better news, the Supreme Court allows California's new gerrymandered maps to move forward. That's good. Elon Musk and the U.S. other Doge Boys will be deposed over their dismantling of USAID. Tulsi Gabbard apparently led an investigation into Puerto Rico's voting machines earlier this year. Or recently, I guess, but the director of national intelligence is not supposed to be conducting domestic investigations. It's against the law.

And lastly, Zoran Mandani will endorse Kathy Hokel. effectively killing Delgado's left-wing challenge, but hopefully it means taxes on the rich to fund Mom Dani's agenda is on its way. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome to the show, everybody. It's an emmajority report Thursday. Hello to Matt. Hello to Brian. Hello to the audience. We'll get right into it here. House Republicans two days ago canceled a planned vote to try to hold Bill and Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress because they were refusing to testify in the Jeffrey Epstein probe. But again, this is being led by Jim Comer. Remember, he was the guy that was cracking the Hunter Biden case, which was non-existent. But they're trying to just focus on people who are relying with Democrats.

Democrats who are in the Epstein files and not the screaming orange elephant in the room of who is currently in the White House and in the Epstein files. Or Elon Musk, who they put in charge of looking at fraud just last year, massively caught lying about saying, they wanted me to come to the island so bad. I denied them as opposed to what he actually was doing was saying, hey, when is your wildest party and not working out? Yeah. Or Peter Thiel, who we give government contracts to all the time, who is actually like helping ICE make these databases of American citizens who have a problem with their occupations of our cities all over the Epstein files, these emails that at a time where everyone knew, everyone knew who Jeffrey Epstein was. In fact, like I knew as a college student in 2008, but, you know. Well, I think it's also, now that you put it that way, like, this is very reminiscent of other Republican tactics of this like aesthetic populism without any real meaningful challenge to power. You'll notice that if Republicans are talking about corporations, they're picking out a specific corporation.

It's usually about how woke they are or something like that. there's nothing systemic about their challenge to the powerful, and that includes especially the Epstein class. It's, I mean, Thomas Massey was calling out his colleagues and saying, you're protecting your donors. And that is why they were reticent to release these files. So they'd rather go after a former president who hasn't been in power in over a quarter century because it's not necessarily. around the quarter century because it's not necessarily going to change anything about the funders of their party or anything systemically right now. Bill Clinton should be held accountable, no doubt.

Yeah, throw him overboard. The Democrats should absolutely throw him into the water as like basically bait. Like, and absolutely nothing should be done to protect these folks. But people have to point out that an investigation that brings Bill and Hillary Clinton should also bring the people who are, like, Bill is less in the emails that I was expecting. Right. I mean, part of that is because his interactions with Epstein goes before email was really that much of a thing. Maybe they had Epstein's faxes from the 90s could be released.

But Peter Thiel is in regular, regular, regular, regular contact with Jeff. Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon. I mean, geez. Right. Who's still calling the shots and basic is the like working with Trump on right now trying to crack down on the, crack down on the process of voting. He's encouraging this kind of authoritarian, yeah, crackdown on voting rights. On ICE and voting.

And yeah, bring Bannon in front of Congress. Of course they're not because they're protecting those feet. Exactly. This is a cover-up masquerading as an act of transparency. 100%. But what's interesting about this is that Trump has now pivoted to buttering up the Clintons. remember that they have been photographed together getting all buddy, buddy wasn't Trump at Chelsea Clinton's wedding, or was that just Galane Maxwell? No, it was actually Bill and Hillary that were at Trump's wedding.

That's what it was. So they go back. And there's a distinct possibility that since they share this mutual friend, Jeffrey Epstein, that the Clintons know something about Donald Trump. So that's why he said this to Tony Lomas, in the United States. an NBC news interview yesterday. NBC News broke the story today. I don't know if you saw it, that the Democrats are already saying, if you bring President Bill Clinton, and he has to testify, we're bringing President

Trump. What do you say to that? I think they might say that, you know, but they've already brought me. See, I've been brought. They had me indicted many, many times, many, many times. And the president had some surprising thoughts about former President Bill Clinton. It bothers me that somebody's going after Bill Clinton. See, I like Bill Clinton.

I still like Bill Clinton. What do you like about him? I like, well, I liked his behavior toward me. I thought he got me, he understood me. You know, he was the one that said very famously that you don't want to run against Trump when there were 18 people. It was 18 people, including me, total. And he kept telling them, you don't want to run against Trump.

Run against anyone, don't run against Trump. and Hillary sort of left at him. Okay, that's a complete revisionist history. The Clinton campaign was elevating Donald Trump with what became infamously known as the Piper strategy because she felt that he was an easier candidate to win against. And we all know how that story was written. This comes after two days ago,

Jake Sherman of Punch Bowl News reported that he was saying these things about the Clintons. I think it's a shame, Trump says, of the House bringing Bill and Hillary Clinton in to testify. I always liked him talking about Bill Clinton. She's a very capable woman, Trump says about Hillary Clinton. I hate to see it in many ways. Now, let's take a little bit of a journey in time to the second debate.

I was at this debate. It was a pretty crazy moment to witness covering it. And in 2016, this was the debate that Trump brought those accusers of Bill Clinton to a press conference beforehand. Which was famously after the government. Grab him by the pussy tape where he basically revealed his true predatory self. We're talking with Billy Bush saying they let you do whatever there. Grab them by the pussy. He was telling a factual thing that he regularly did just into a microphone.

And they called it locker room talk. But actually what it was is the mask slipping on a serial predator. And that's the premise of this question. You'll see here how Trump is just a much more skilled politician at this period. He's speaking in complete sentences. And he's clearly listening to advisors on. deflecting from that exact story, which was a very big deal at the time. And so senators were wobbling on the Republican side.

Exactly. So he almost expresses contrition or falsely in this clip, at least like for political gain. But compare how he just spoke about the Clintons to how he was acting on the debate stage in 2016. But that was something that happened. And if you look at Bill Clinton, far worse, minor words, and his was action. His was what he's done to women. There's never been anybody in the history of politics in this nation that's been so abusive to women. So you can say any way you want to say it, but Bill Clinton was abusive to women.

Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attack them viciously, four of them here tonight. one of the women who is a wonderful woman at 12 years old was raped at 12 her client she represented got him off and she's seen laughing on two separate occasions laughing at the girl who was raped Kathy Shelton that young woman it's not the biggest point but he mentions Hillary laughing twice in both clips then and now and just there's people who are smarter than me they've theorized about the misogynistic imagination and the place of of female laughter in it. Pretty on the nose here. I mean, and the last election cycle, the fixation on Kamala's laugh was the exact same thing. It's their worst sort of nightmare. To cycle, being laughed at by a woman and not eliciting that laughter is something that

really angers a misogynist. And that's why, or being like when he was going after Caitlin Collins being talked down to. So, I mean, It's mostly about just smile and not say much. That's what they want women to do. The story was about he got off a predator and then laughed at it. Like the problem is that isn't the laughing about it. Right, right.

A little bit, yeah. Asians laughing at the girl who was raped. Kathy Shelton, that young woman, is here with us tonight. So don't tell me about words. I am absolutely. I apologize for those words. But it is things that people say. But what President Clinton did, he was impeached, he lost his license to practice law.

He had to pay an $850,000. All right, we got it. But, I mean, he also in this debate said that Hillary Clinton would be in jail if he was in power. It's just, it's really remarkable to see this about face. And it's so obviously him trying to butter up the Clintons ahead of this scandal. Do you remember that earlier in the last year, Hillary Clinton was starting to say some nice things about Trump's foreign policy. And I was theorizing this at the time as the Epstein kind of story was continuing to pick up,

that she was doing the same thing. So we can mock Trump for this and we can show how obviously self-interested he is being right here. But we should also be clear that the Epstein class that the Clintons are a part of are also quite interested in this ass covering here. There was a truce in 2016. it was clear as day because again the Lolita Express trips that Bill Clinton made were a huge problem in 2008.

The amount of time that Trump spent with Epstein both at Marlago and at pageants, rightfully a huge scandal, there was clearly a truce that neither side really wanted to go there. And this sort of moment here where Trump's tape came out so then he starts pulling on that lever and inviting those women,

that was as close as it got to breaking open. But I will say there is an email which I was interested to see where they're reacting to the, the victory of Trump in 2016 and someone says, no one expected this, but you must be happy, Jeffrey, which is an interesting, just like a reaction. But exactly, right. You must be happy, Jeffrey, because we should, the, the, Jeffrey probably prefer Donald Trump because he might have had a little bit more information on him. I would also say that if you believe like I do, that he

was quite embedded with a variety of different, like, uh, intelligence agency. but Israeli intelligence that they were in very much in favor of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government wanted him to win that race. It also would make sense

if you look at some of the emails between Jeffrey Epstein and the founder of 4chan. 4chan is where QAnonon originated before eventually going to 8chan. And Steve Bannon has quite a history, of basically

believing that the lonely online mail on forums like this could be a powerful political force and he is behind galvanizing that energy into the alt-right, which was quite obsessed with the Q&on conspiracy theory. So as I keep repeating on this show, the fact that Epstein had these 4chan connections as well as Steve Bannon regularly corresponding with him

around the time of this election, it clearly feels like a right-wing psychological operation to deflect attention from Epstein's relationship with Donald Trump and putting it on to Bill Clinton. And they were effective in doing that because of the truce that you're talking about here, because they outsourced it to the online right. And let's be clear, like, well, I do believe the accusations that Bill Clinton is a violent predator himself. Trump is not just accused of words about saying things. There are plenty of women who have accused him of forcing himself upon them. They're the same thing.

That's actually what he likes about Bill Clinton. Yeah, exactly right. Now, let's turn to another part of this interview. So right now, the Trump administration is trying to put a fresh coat of paint on their occupation of Minnesota by ICE, by DHS. they want to put a fresh coat of paint on this because they're trying to stave off calls from the public, the anger from the public for major reforms

for the agency. Now, we need to abolish ICE, but we don't have the majority right now, the Democrats, and there's not a Democrat in the White House. So that's not going to happen until those other, until the Democrats can take power. And even then, we don't know. because we're about to play some clips from Jeffries and Schumer.

But this morning, Holman announced basically that they're recalling 700 federal officers from Minnesota. Thousands still remain deployed there, dwarfed the police force in Minnesota. And Trump's keeping their presence there because they're still trying to leverage Tim Walls and the Democratic Party officials in Minnesota to, get local police departments to cooperate with ice. They're still making demands as they're pretending that they're like very solemnly upset about their killings of Renee Good and Preddy and that they're going to change some things. And by God, we'll do body cameras if you ask that of us. They're still engaging in shakedowns trying to make their ice operations more effective.

It should be noted also that the fact that. local police, when local police isn't collaborating with ICE, that they so desperately want that. It shows that that can be a real form of resistance if you have good leadership from the Democrats on the gubernatorial front to direct the police departments in their state not to do so. If they want it so badly, why is that the case? It's because it actually does hamper them. It's appeasement with a fascist occupation of your city. And the idea that ICE and Christy Noem can tell Susan Collins up in Maine that,

okay, we're not going to do an invasion of your state because we don't want to hurt your election chances. It should be everything that Democrats need to repeat over and over again to say that this is a political invasion by armed, like, drunk Nazis. And this is Trump's tone now, quite different than a few weeks ago and quite different from Bovino, from Noam, certainly from Stephen Miller. here he is in that NBC interview. So I want to be clear because it sounds like there is a shift in immigration enforcement here that there's going to be a shift after Minneapolis. What should Americans expect going forward? Well, one thing I say to my people, you know, we do a good job, we don't get credit for it.

I say they have to ask and they have to say please. When a city is going to ask and who has to say please. I don't want to go and force ourselves into a city, even if their numbers are terrible. Like, for instance, I got a call from Jeff Landry, Governor of Louisiana. He said, we have a big problem. Could you go in and help us with, well, let's see, certain sections. I mean, to be honest with you, certain sections of the state. Beyond their famous, beautiful city, certain sections of the state.

We have done, not only in New Orleans, we've done a really great job in Louisiana, but I was called. I want to be called Chicago. We could solve the Chicago crime. Well, on that question, which city is? or are you headed to next? We have five cities that we're looking at very strongly,

but we want to be invited. We will sometimes call the governors and say, are they cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, are these the cities? We could straighten out the crime in Chicago. We've already brought it down, 25% just by being there. We could have Chicago be a safe city

just like D.C. is a safe city, just like all of these places that we've gone to. And I look forward. You know, I didn't campaign on that. I campaigned on law and order, but I didn't think I'd be going into individual cities and making them safe. Anything else you can tell us about the five cities?

The five cities. All right. That's whatever. But that's a shift in tone. If you ask us, we'll come in. He's seen some numbers. He's seen some numbers. And what that should indicate to a competent opposition party is that he's on his back foot.

Also, the body camera like concession, they're on their. back foot. Also, Todd Blanche saying that the Department of Justice is going to investigate the Predi killing and if they violated his rights, they're on the back foot. The fact that they're replacing

Bovino with Holman and drawing down at least, you know, a fraction of the agents that are in Minneapolis, means that they're on their back foot. So this morning, I get into the office,

I'm reading our news packet. And the headline in Huff Post is, Democrats soften their demand to ban masks for ice. Here's Hakeem Jeffries yesterday at a press conference. Should follow. Certainly, I think there's agreement that no masks should be deployed in an arbitrary and capricious fashion, as has been the case.

horrifying the American people. And of course, I think the American people... Arbitrary and capricious, no, it's menacing. It's intentionally menacing because they are like telling you, hey, I'm quoting one now. If you raise your voice,

I'll erase your voice. How do you deploy masks in an arbitrary and capricious fashion? What, like, you know, you just, You say, hey, ice agents, in between you, sniff and Coke and drinking, can you go into this bin and pick out a bunch of masks? That's so arbitrary. And then what's the capricious piece of it?

If I grab a bank and I'm wearing a mask, it's not because for arbitrary or capricious reason. I'm not being capricious. We might get some clarity from this clip of Chuck Schumer, though. He went on Morning Joe this morning to expand upon. this new capitulation. This, you're going to hear him basically engage in some sort of hypothetical.

And it's a hypothetical that is so fanciful and it weakens his position. Oh, perfect. Great. Guess what the doctor ordered. Maybe most important, no secret police. These guys go around, these people go around with me.

masks it makes them more brutal they're never accountable no one even knows who they are there should be no masks except in the most of unusual circumstances you know some guy's picture was put up by a terrorist group or something but there should be no masks there should be no no um there should be cameras everyone should have cameras and there should be rules on how they use them and they have to have regular uniforms not all the stuff they're wearing But we cannot have secret police. And we cannot, you know, Johnson. Can you pause it?

Okay. So those demands are two of them are about their outfits. I'm the fashion police. And then the other ones about body cameras, which we've already trashed. Show how a lot of surveillance technology, a lot of police departments, a lot of national security, actually think they're a net benefit for their ends because they have

the ability to record every interaction and use their facial recognition. The cops who shot Prattie had body cameras on that hasn't been released because it's not good for them. I mean, there have been endless angles of these murders.

They've been endless angles. It has done nothing. I mean, it's good that people film the cops or whatever, but like when they film themselves, there's no, we don't control these people. So like you can't compel release of it. You know what it's going to do is give them Hyrit light reel footage for when they want to put a DHS

Buckelet-El Salvador type highlight reel out and say, look at all the predators that the Democrats that we've captured that the Democrats don't want us. It's it's absurd. So he's literally using, do you remember back in the day when the Republicans were trying to justify their use of torture during the war on terror? And you'd have to have these inane conversations

I was a teenager, but I was having a little bit of these debating people about like if you had a bomb, what if you had a bomb that could go off and you had just had to torture a Muslim person to know where that information was? Sam Harris. Like in 24, right? It was the 24thification of our freaking politics. He's doing that in 2026 about masks and that hypothetical is even weaker. Oh, if a terrorist puts up a picture of an ice agent, maybe they can wear masks. Like a propel. Elstein group, Chuck? Well, so I mean, and I, I, there's honestly more to that insanity than like meets the eye. And of course, it's, you know, Chuck Schumer being a horrible leader that is not able to meet the moment.

I want to give credit to Delia Ramirez, the representative who's, you know, one of our more progressive members, who went on the record as a lot of people are not willing to do to Axios today or yesterday and said, quote, I'm going to continue to tell you that Schumer needs to get the hell out over and over and over until he does. She told Axios. He continues to demonstrate to us that he can't meet the moment. And another, a weaker Democrat who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the main feeling among the members is a lack of trust in his strength and ability to strike a hard bargain. But credit to Ramirez, who said it on record, there needs to be more of that. Well, the things about his, it's not his ability to drive a hard bargain.

He certainly drives a hard bargain when it comes to Iran or something like that. He is not with us. He is against us. It's just like, I can't, what extraordinary circumstance would necessitate the Gestapo being masked? A terror group puts the picture of a guy on. Well, that's where, that's the part that I just want to make sure we touch on as we're looking at the deeper rot here. The idea that ICE is earnestly engaging in anti-terrorism is a lie. It's a farce.

And it tells you everything you really need to know about Schumer's ideology. Schumer backed the invasion of Iraq. DHS and ICE came out of the war on terror. It restructured immigration and put it under the auspices of national security. And that's how it functioned. And since that point, it's been sometimes gradual. it's been sometimes accelerated. But our immigration system has been enveloped

in the infrastructure of counterterrorism. And counterterrorism, as we've seen and how we treat people across the globe and Guantanamo Bay and the mass surveillance of American citizens after the war on terror, it's where civil liberties go to die. It makes it, it puts, like, they act like their law enforcement,

as Sam keeps making this point. They are not under the auspices of the Department of Justice. They are in the terrorism infrastructure. So that means a racially motivated surveillance. We did that to Muslim people. That's the canary in the coal mine after 9-11. And now it's just expanded broadly with contracts of palanteering, what have you, as Peter Thiel's in the Epstein files.

This roving surveillance, the militarization of our police, since 9-11, where you had like, something like over 60% of law enforcement and police departments across the country got all of this free equipment from the war on terror because the Department of Defense did all of these cushy contracts with defense contractors

and all of that. And they took our taxpayer money and handed it over to their buddies. Oh, we have all this excess equipment, let's give it to the police. The fact that it's outside of the judiciary and it's outside of the Department of Justice should ring alarm bells for anybody who's in the opposition party. And Chuck Schumer treats that construction of this agency as something that is legitimate and that should be protected. And it's because he's corrupted. And that's where Zionism and the

Israel lobby have a deep connection to the war on terror, to the militarization of our society, to the mass surveillance, and to the brutalization of people on their streets because Israel is our aircraft carrier in the Middle East. Israel is an outgrowth of American imperialism. And the more connected you are to the Israel lobby, the more connected you are to those systems that I just described. Zionism is a type of fascism. And what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Chuck Schumer can't really object to ICE because he doesn't object to what's going on the West Bank in any serious manner. There's a reason that Netanyahu was on record saying, quote, it's very good after 9-11.

It's because he knew exactly what this would create. America just did the exact same thing that Israel's doing in its region. The iron wall is Avishlam, one of the best books you can read on the subject of Israel, the way it's treated its neighbors, Avi Shlam's Iron Wall. Our political system has been controlled by the people with the exact same mindset that includes you know everyone from Schumer but over to like Peter Thiel to the Christian Nationalists we're just trying to do that now in preparation for not doing anything about climate change plundering letting our billionaires plunder the entire world we're

all we're just creating a big giant fortress this is all to protect those people and we don't have to protect them we can actually throw them to the wolves exactly right quick word from one of our sponsors and then we're going to be speaking to Dan Friedman we all know health issues don't follow a 9 to 5 schedule. With Zock-Doc, having no time to book a doctor's appointment is actually no problem. So when you don't have time for yourself until 11 p.m. Or cut your finger after making a midnight snack or have a late night heart-to-heart with your friend who pushes you to finally see the doctor. You can go to Zoc-Doc any time 24-7 and find a doctor you love to make your health plan happen.

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We are back and we are joined now by Dan Friedman, senior reporter in Mother Jones's D.C. Bureau, whose piece in Mother Jones is called Trump's War on History, co-authored with Amanda Moore. Dan, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Thanks for having me. Of course. So America 250, talk a little bit about this. Like, you know, this was last summer when he had like this military. parade, this kind of display that was, I was getting married that weekend, so I was a little bit out of it actually, but I remember just thinking like, oh my God, what is happening here?

This pageantry that he's obsessed with. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. So supposedly that parade was celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States Army, but as I think everyone knows, it was fell on, happened to fall on Trump's birthday, and it was pretty clearly, you know, he threw himself a parade for his birthday. And so this parade was organized by this organization set up by Congress, America A250, America 250, that is supposed to be bipartisan and organized these semi-sequentennial events. I could be saying that wrong, but events in acknowledging the 250th anniversary. And it was really kind of taken over by Trump people.

And so this, like, for example, event strategies, which organized the January 6th rally in 2021, organized this particular rally and other events for the 250th anniversary. And you had tanks and armored personnel carrier and people, military members, dressed up in a garb of colonialists and stuff like that, marching down whatever it was, Constitution Avenue. And as one thing we noticed, my co-author Amanda Moore and I were there, was that there were U.S. uniform soldiers handing out this, I don't know how to say, form energy drinks, free drinks. I did, I have to admit, I took one for journalism. And there is, so form is a sponsor of this event. And so they're giving away these drinks. And it appears that that's in violation of Pentagon regulations. They're not supposed to endorse products like that.

But they did it. And I think that's illustrative of how these big sponsors are influencing these events or putting their names all over it. And they've become celebrations of not, you know, in this case, the U.S. Army of the 250th anniversary, but Donald Trump and what he wants to have in a big party paid for by these sponsors who get to have stuff like, you know, uniform guys, out their drinks. And, you know, I don't think it was very successful.

But, you know, that's the model for the events we're going to see this year, you know, like this UFC fight on Trump's birthday. Yeah. And I didn't realize, I guess, that at the time, it's quite similar to the ballroom obsession, which has, you know, a lot of corporations that are trying to curry favor with Trump, giving their money to this effort. You had Palantir, Oracle, Coinbase that were a part of this America 250 celebration. I mean, how embedded were some of these corporations in that display?

They are, it's actually a little bit unclear. Trump has set up this organization now, Freedom 250, which is partly, privately funded, and also includes taxpayer money. and they have not really told us anything about how much of our money they're going to spend on all this stuff. But it is a combination of these organizations, and some of them are like Amazon, is they're giving money to the ballroom and they're giving money to this Freedom 250, and they are perhaps doing it the way corporate sponsors do or Walmart, where they don't have a particular ask.

But I think, you know, there are a lot of organizations that have really specific stuff that they want. I think, I think whether it's Oracle or Larry Ellison or his son who's trying to get control of Netflix, you know, you see the corporations that want specific things from Trump. And, you know, they funded the inauguration. They funded the ballroom. They're paying for this, whatever, the next thing he asked them for. And they're trying to get stuff out of the administration. So there's this corruption aspect. And then there's this sort of, you know, disgracing of the American history of

the actual purpose of these events which is to celebrate the ideals of the American Revolution in our country. Well, it's, I didn't realize how many monuments Trump and I guess historical places in Washington, D.C., that

as a part of this effort, he's like trying to really rewrite American history. I mean, you can talk about this in the context of the lost cause. I would not say it's a stretch to say that this administration is quite sympathetic to segregation and to very racist viewpoints. Like in the Eisenhower executive office building now has a Ben Shapiro quote displayed on it, for example. Yeah. They did something they set up what they called the

Founders Museum. It's supposedly a museum, but it's locked in the executive office building. where you and I, where most Americans can't just show up and visit, but some of it's online. And it's these AI-generated versions of the founding fathers. You can watch them. You can go online and find them. And it's a partnership between the White House essentially and Prager University, which puts out like right-wing content for various uses. And Prater University is not a university.

for what it's what. And so there's Ben Shapiro, oh, excuse me, there's John Adams and, you know, his like animatronic mouth moves, and he says stuff about the founding of the country for various founders, but in the case of John Adams, he says, facts are not,

what is the thing? Facts are, don't care about your feelings. You know, yeah. You care about your feelings, and I watch this, and I'm sure other people didn't. Wait, I'm sorry. The AI John Adams says the Ben Shapiro quote. Yeah, the AI John Adams says, you know, facts don't care about your feelings.

Nice. And I looked it up and, you know, I said just to check, I was like, wait, that's a Ben Shapiro. And yeah, it's a, it's, you know, it's not John Locke. It's not Thomas Payne. It's Ben Shapiro. So that's the kind of version of American history we're getting. And I mean, this also pairs with the, them literally tearing down historical kind of displays about things specific to slavery across the country.

Can you speak a little bit about that as well and how that fits into this agenda? Yeah. And I would just say quickly, I mean, I think like a lot of this connects to 2020 and you had Trump and people who work for him, you know, upset about what, you know, what they perceived as the excesses of wolkism. And, you know, these people wanted to, somebody wanted to tear down a statue of Abraham, Lincoln, whatever it may be. And they're reacting against that.

But now they are having, under an executive order that he issued the beginning of his term. you know, taking down exhibits at Independence Hall on slavery in Philadelphia, at Fort Sumter, on climate change. And then, so that's both Smithsonian and the National Park Service, which has been where the parks have been instructed, take down signs that do anything but celebrate the grandeur of the American landscape or which denigrate American historical figures. So if you take that literally, which some parts have, like you have a sign about fossils. Why are there fossils here? Why is what about geology?

About, you know, not even like, you know, what's woke stuff. Oh, geology like, like, like, because it's, it, it bumps up against the creation myth. I know, I don't, you know, it's not even clear. But, you know, they, they took, they're taking down hundreds of signs around the country. They're taking down signs, you know, like native, the suit. lived here at this port in Wyoming, they're taking down signs about that, not like the sewer grade in America's bad, just acknowledgement that Native American people live there, things like that. So this effort that is supposedly upholding American history, protecting

statues originally, they're ripping signs out of the ground. They're literally taking down history or signs about history so that we get this sort of sanded down version of American history everything's great and a bunch of, you know, really white men had a series of achievements and everybody was happy. And it almost feels like, you know, there were some successful efforts by anti-racist activists to take down Confederate monuments across the country and that overlapped a little bit with Trump's first term. But it's not like those were successful in mass.

there was resistance in some instances and there were successes in others. But like this feels like nationalizing that kind of blowback or a blowback to that and using the federal government to support Confederate retellings of history. Yeah. One of the events that was organized under the America 250 rubric last year was at Fort Bragg, what is now once again Fort Bragg. which is named after Confederate General. It's been renamed after supposedly a different guy who's not the Confederate General Bragg.

But, you know, there's a series of forts that were named after Confederate Generals. They took the name off. And then now the Trump administration has put the name back by finding some guy who had the same last name and saying we're actually naming it after him. But these, and Trump bragged about how he was renaming forts after Confederate generals at this speech. And these events are supposed to be bipartisan. Like statutorily, this money is only supposed to be used for bipartisan events celebrating the American Revolution, the history of that. And here Trump, you know, not only bragged about Confederate soldiers, he attacked, you know, residents of Los Angeles. He called Los Angeles a trash heap. He attacked various Democrats, you know, gave his like normal speech in crazy speech.

And, you know, so it's really unfortunate. that, you know, there's not any effort to, you know, pay attention to what these events are actually supposed to be about. And the whole hubbub about both, you know, the Smithsonian and then also the Kennedy Center seems to fit into this as well. Like, I think it's probably easy for us to speak about it as another display of Trump's narcissism, but this still also fits into his war on history. agenda? Yeah, I mean, we frame it as Trump wants to control all presentation of American history and

culture. And, you know, he has his particular obsession with the Kennedy Center. He announced that, you know, the Kennedy Center is going to be a centerpiece of the America 250 celebrations. He said that last year. And then when he closed the Kennedy Center, some people may have missed. He said that the closure of the Kennedy Center would take place on July 4th of this year in honor of the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. So it's a little weird to close a cultural, major cultural institution in the United States to honor the United States. But that's what he pretended he was doing.

And so you mentioned the upcoming festivities for July 4th. Is that UFC fight on the White House lawn really still happening? As far as I know, it's happening, Trump also said that he's going to have construction. constructed a stadium that houses 100,000 people somewhere on the White House grounds. I wouldn't. What? Yeah, he said that. 100,000 people? A hundred thousand people.

I mean, what's the capacity for MetLife Stadium? I'm just trying to think like 80K. I'm just trying to get a sense of like where the Giants and Jets play. That's just given a sense of how large this is. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you're going to be at the Super Bowl. Yeah. But it's like that. I don't think that's really going to happen, but I think they are, they are all going to have an event.

He also said, you know, recently that there's going to be an IndyCar race like around the National Mall in August. I don't want to be in the VC for. I actually think the IndyCar thing, like, putting out of anything else, it would be kind of fun in theory. You know, so it's these series of events. They don't have anything to do with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration. of independence. Increasingly, it's a party that's, you know, what Trump wants to have. And he's using this Freedom 250 joint public-private fundraising thing to do it without any congressional oversight. We don't know, you know, exactly how the money's being spent.

So that's, you know, that stinks. It's not, it's not for most Americans. Some people may like it, but a lot of people are left out of this. You know, there's no attention paid, like, not just to slavery. Like none of these events, they don't talk really about black people in the United States. They don't talk about Native Americans immigration, you know, just anything that they think might be controversial. So it's limited. Right. I mean, there's, there is a concern. It sounds like, you know, this another Trumpism in many ways. But if this didn't fit in with a broader right-wing infrastructure that was already in place to try to rewrite our history. I mean, we've been talking about Prager You on this show since I started here and for many years and how they, like, that has

been a way to rewrite history and it's well funded and it looks professional if you're finding some sort of history video on YouTube, but it's actually misleading people and marginalizing the stories of the struggles of civil rights and non-white people and LGBTQ people, etc. Yeah, I mean, it's it's propaganda. And I think it's just important to point out that this is not, you know, they're doing this on an event that's supposed to celebrate the ideals of behind the founding of this country, the American Revolution, freedom, democracy, pluralism. And this is really, and he's doing it with giant posters with his picture on them, you know, that are hanging like from the labor department. You know, there's a big picture of him that says America's 50. and while they are assaulting the Constitution, while they are marginalizing Congress, and it is not a celebration of the founding, the ideals of the founding of this country, it's really a betrayal of those. And I think that really needs to be emphasized.

I mean, he's attempting to act like a king. The American Revolution was to get rid of monarchy. So there's this awful irony to it. Yeah, that's very true. Lastly, you know, do you see also some of the pageantry around this with the domestic kind of use of the National Guard and also even the troops in the parade and that kind of display as something that fits into his broader agenda of militarism here domestically? Absolutely. It all seems to be kind of mixed up for him. and, you know, he has, at times, explained the presence, the ongoing presence of the National Guard in Washington, D.C. as necessary for the America 250 celebrations. The parade that they had was just seemed like a warm-up for the, you know, invasion of D.C. by the National Guard and Feds.

And we see this ongoing presence of National Guard troops in D.C., which they have said, they're sticking around to help celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States, which, you know, let's bear in mind, one of the reasons for the site in the Declaration for the Revolution was quartering of troops that citizens didn't want in their cities. So, you know, he's really defying that in a, again, an awful way. And it's funny, but it stinks. Yep, absolutely right. Well, really appreciate your time today.

Thanks so much, Dan Friedman. You can read the piece Trump's War on History and Mother Jones, co-authored with Amanda Moore. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Of course. All right. With that, just a few quick notes.

And then we will head into the fun half. I just, in case you're watching this and you're in New Jersey 11, make sure you go out and vote today in the primary. It's very odd to have a primary on a Thursday. I can't believe that. But it's pretty important. And there's a very crowded field in Mikey Sherrill's old district. And Mejia is the candidate that's been endorsed by, what are you guys laughing about? Okay, okay.

I changed the scene so it looks like Hillary's... Look at the screen. Oh, gosh. Because you'd be in jail. God. ask Hillary Clinton in an interview? I know what I'd ask. What?

How do you think Jeffrey Epstein's victims felt when they saw pictures of your husband with Jeffrey all the time and saw that he was continuing going on flights with him and maintaining his relationship? Do you think they felt empowered to come forward about being trafficked? I mean, I, I, that's, I would say that's a leading question. I would love to, I would really love to ask her. about Palestinian history. You know, she's always going on and saying how,

um, how the students and the kids don't know what the hell they're talking about and they have no right. And I want to be like, what's your, do you understand what the knockba is, for example? How would you characterize that?

It'd be interesting. Like, uh, I'll give you seven minutes. Go. Oh, it would be always real Palestine related, basically.

I would love to see how she, no, but I'm saying like give Hillary seven minutes just to see what she emphasizes, yeah, she starts the story. Exactly. Because that would be really instructive because they never acknowledge the knockbo or the ethnic cleansing and if you force them to they can deny it

and then you have your answer but um i i always wish that these liberal zionis could be confronted by an actual piece of history but she's so quartered off from real challenges at this point that that's a pipe dream but um new jersey 11 go out and vote today for the progressive choice in the race uh i think it's annalilia uh mehia so um uh really could that's it's basically basically a primary in that race to fill that seat in the special election since Cheryl's the governor now. Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning? But let's get on to another subject. Let's do it.

And with the Jacovin Show. Yeah, there's going to be a new Jackabin show tomorrow, including independent socialist, Robin Wansley up in Minneapolis, talking about what needs to be done, including an eviction moratorium. and it's great to hear from politicians in Minnesota that aren't, you know. And, yeah, Left Reckoning, there's a Sunday show for Left Reckoning, Patrons, Patreon.com, slash left reckoning. I'll probably get into an interesting Kimball Musk interview that we won't get into here. Check it out, patreon.com slash left reckoning. We don't, we have Brandon shortly.

See? He's watching the show. He knows that we kind of ended on time today. Hey, Brandon. What did you say? I said I was watching the show and I was surprised that you ended on time today. I did. One guest makes it a little bit easier to stay on track.

What's happening on the discourse? Oh, I mean, you know, it's so hard to say because we're always up to so much. We have a real packed schedule on our morning tete-a-tats. So I don't know. I don't know what we're going to do. Actually today, and there will be a clip about this later, we heard the latest spin on the Jeffrey Epstein files coming out, which is that Russia did it. Yeah.

That Jeffrey Epstein was an agent for the Kremlin. That's what they're running with I saw in Morning Joe. I mean, he had some connections to Russians, but like we're, it's like. But I think those connections were also kind of related to connections he had with Israel. Israel. Like it's just like amazing that they're, that, that, that, that, that, that, I. I saw Morning Joe is trying to touch on like foreign connections to Epstein and they're deliberately avoiding the story. The first one I saw was like Poland saying it and it's like look, Poland has some reason.

First of all, like I don't know if I'd necessarily want them to lead to the anti-Israel thing anyway given the history of that country. But also, you know, Russia's a little bit close there. But the New York Post running with that, yeah, Ebson was, yeah, sure, man. It was about Putin. Right. Okay. I mean, that says everything. I don't think it's a good excuse because it doesn't dispute the under.

It just tries to contextualize them for like the, you know, average jingoistic American. That's like, don't think about it anymore because you're working for like the Soviet Union if you like call the president an ounce or whatever. Right. They need. It's like the the Cold War jingoism. It was like it's like a sleeper cell with Republicans right now. I mean, they have to wake it up because they've been saying Russia gate for 10 years. And now it's like we got to avoid the Israel stuff. Let's bring it back, you boomers that. hate Russians. It works so well the first time. Well, I mean, he'll be, he'll be Chinese by the end of the week. And, you know, in the mind of the right wing. He'll, like, he'll be a, uh, he'll be a member of the, the Chinese Communist Party.

Chinese Communist Party, Jeffrey Epstein. Of course. China doesn't, uh, make a class of people like, uh, Jeffrey Epstein. I don't think. I feel like, but it is interesting. I mean, how, who, what countries he was associated with and which countries, he wasn't. And it's very much, if you were to look at. the rules-based international order post-World War II and like the West, that is where

Jeffrey Epstein's connections were and that's what his like he had some involvement I think in dealing arms and other things or in Africa but it was it was always at the behest of like the West. He told Israel to do Palantir and then they started doing Palantir. Oh yeah. We'll play that in the fun half because we still haven't gotten to that for some reason. And it's an incredible clip of audio. Yeah. Yeah. I will say people tell me it's hard to find my show.

So I want to just really emphasize for all of you who are watching that it's both in the description. And I'm going to say it right now. If you're interested in that sort of thing, also whether or not it was all done by robots or AI, you should come over to the discourse with Brandon on YouTube or Twitch, 8 a.m. slash 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. Eastern. So yeah, you know, join up there. We hit 15,000 last week. We're already up to like 15.5,000 as of today. So, you know, the Brandon came keeps, the Brandon train keeps chugging along. All right. We will head into the fun half bender should join us soon. As always, join the majority report.com. Please, if you can become a member, that would be so phenomenal. helps us stay resilient in times where there's rampant censorship by the White House

and other, you know, tech organizations that are associated with them. So join the majority. Oh, yeah, by the way, Jeff Bezos just completely trashed the Washington Post. So he also owns Twitch. So at least for now, we do appreciate the subs on that website. But if you're on anything or join the Majority Report.com, any way you can, figure out how to support us and also journalists like, you know, Quebec prospect.

Yeah. Substack independent journalists, but also these major organizations, Zateo, drop site, of course. The nation, right.

The nation, yeah, like it is, and look, it's not going to be, we're not going to get out of this by individual consumption and donation choices, but it can help because it is really dire out there.

It is not just Elon Musk or the, the CBS stuff. The entirety of our ability to know is owned by capitalists and they don't want us to know shit because actually they're the problem right now. 100%. See you in the fun half.

Okay, Emma, please. Well, I just, I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report. Wait, look, Sam is 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, thank you. You just take a group for sale. That's good. 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 twir? Sushi and poker with the boys. Boys. Who's offered a twerk? Yeah. Sushi and poker with the boys. What? Tour.

Sushi and oh sushi. And that's what we call the biz. 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.

Oh, sushi. I'm sorry, I'm losing my fucking mind. Someone's offered a twerk. Yeah. Susie and I'm trying to be a dick right now, but like, I absolutely think the U.S. should be providing me with a wife and kids. That's not what we're talking about. It's not a fun job. Twirp. That's a real thing.

Willie Walker. That's a real thing. That's a real fit. Sam has like the weight of the world on the shoulders. Sam doesn't want to do this show anymore. It was so much easier. When the majority report was just you, you were happy. Let's change the subject.

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. The Hatchet left his best. Trump. Violet twerk. Emma is a cult.

We are incredible theme song. I bumbler. Emma Viglin, absolutely. one of my favorite people actually not just in the game like period