The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3662 - California Election Conspiracy Idiocy; Trump's Crony Judges w/ David Dayen, Josh Orton
Episode Date: June 9, 2026It's News Day Tuesday on The Majority Report. On today's program: David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect and co-host of the Organized Money podcast, joins us in the studio for the free... half. MS NOW reporter Jacob Soboroff takes a tour of the L.A. County Ballot Processing Center in the City of Industry to try and dispel the conspiracy theories of voter fraud pushed by Trump, Spencer Pratt and others. On CNN, Harry Enten explains why it makes no sense for Democrats to rig the election for Nithya Raman. Karen Bass' polling numbers show her leading Pratt by 18 points and losing to Raman by four points. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson says he cannot provide evidence of election tampering in California, but he knows it "stinks to high heaven". As the screwworm infestation spreads among American livestock, it has become clear that this is the result of DOGE and cuts made by the Trump administration. This assessment is backed by the Texas Republican Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller and former first-term Trump staffer and rancher Catharine O'Neill Gillihan. Gilihan's ranch Meriwether Farms posts on X advice for managing screwworm while outright blaming Trump for not moving fast enough in the last 15 months to address this crisis. Josh Orton, President of Demand Justice and former senior adviser to Bernie Sanders, joins the show to discuss his work for court reformation. All that and more. To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is (202) 224-3121. 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 AM Quickie 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: COZY EARTH: Go to cozyearth.com/MAJORITYREPORT for an exclusive 20% off. LEESA: Go to Leesa.com for the Early Access July 4th Sale 25% off PLUS get an extra $50 off with promo code MAJORITY SUNSET LAKE CBD: Use coupon code "Left Is Best" (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order 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.
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Majority Report with Sam Cedar.
It is Tuesday, June 9th, 2006.
My name is Sam Cedar.
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,
executive editor of the American prospect,
co-host of the Organized Money Podcast in studio,
David Dan will be joining us.
Then later, probably in the fun half,
but maybe, I don't know, we'll see how we're going to organize that.
Josh Orton,
president of demand justice,
former senior advisor to Bernie Sanders
and majority report
Producer Emeritus
will be joining us to talk about
the courts
meanwhile
Nathia Rahman
to run off against
Karen Bass for the L.A. mayor
as Republicans
conspiracize
vote counting. It's also
primary day today,
Maine, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina.
Meanwhile, new report, 82nd Airborne was deployed to Israel in preparation for a potential ground invasion.
Donald Trump nominates his former defense attorney, Todd Blanche, to be Attorney General or his future defense attorney.
Tom Homan planning the largest ice deployment in
New York City.
Democrats make FISA
Section 702 reauthorization
contingent on
Bill Pultes getting the axe.
West Virginia
Oh, Trump regime quietly quashed
investigation into West Virginia's
Jim Justice's
Coal Empire.
Meanwhile, they have
launched the largest effort
ever to denaturalize
U.S. citizens
accused of a crime. Jim Justice will not be denaturalized.
Pentagon Folds will recognize Mormonism as a qualified religion in the military.
Report majority of new water-sucking AI data centers are to be built on drought-hit land.
After shutting down a chunk of Manhattan, Trump curses the nation. Trump curses the
Knicks and Naps
through game three leaving
with the score tied
and seven minutes left.
Lastly,
congratulations,
America. It's the sixth consecutive
month of the United States
only accepting
white refugees into the country.
All this
and more. And they're not really refugees.
Exactly. On today's
majority report, welcome
ladies and gentlemen,
it is
Emma
yes hello
Emma Vickley
oh newsday Tuesday Tuesday
yeah you got distracted
because also in studio
from the beginning of the show
David Dayn
ladies and gentlemen
there he is
thanks so much for joining us
today
we anticipated this news from L.A.
about the
got that for me in there
yes and we want to bring somebody in
who is actually from L.A.
right to establish
that there isn't some
grand conspiracy going on. You brought the jet. You let me come in on the majority report branded
jet. Right. The the hyperloop that we had built directly under the studio directly. Well, that's how
we were able to pay you for burning all those ballots for Spencer Pratt. Right. You know,
we can't give you a check. In the Glendale Post Office, just burning ballots away. There you go.
Got all the sit off you. This is, let's just start with
this is the way that elections go in California.
Right?
I mean, just, why is that?
Because there's so many people?
Well, I mean, we should say that because you're seeing this, this conspiracizing, there actually is a pretty good reason to speed up.
I mean, I think it is getting to be a little bit ridiculous.
It is ridiculous, but why is it so slow?
I mean, the main...
Just because people in California are very laid back.
two main reasons. One is in California, all you have to do is postmark your ballot by
election day. And if you turn it in, then if it arrives as much as seven days after election
day. So ballots that arrive today at the various folk counting stations will be counted. So the election's
not over, really. If it's a close election, you can't really say you don't know how many of
going to show up today. So there aren't, so that's number one. And number two, which I actually think is
more important, is an actual fraud protection measure. So in California, unlike some other states
that do all vote by mail, they do signature matching. So you sign the envelope that you turn in with
your ballot in it, and that is checked against a signature. Each ballot is checked? Checked against a signature that's on file.
in the county elections. Why wouldn't Republicans be over the moon about this? That's what I think
is so funny about it because like there's literally the reason it's low is a fraud protection measure.
And it's a way to protect against that stuff without disenfranchising so many people. That's what
the Republicans don't like about it. They prefer things like voter ID when say you don't have a
driver's license or using your passport when half the country doesn't have one so that they could narrow
the pool of voters. And what is the typical, do you know, what is the typical percentage of an
elections ballots that come in and are legit in terms of a postmark seven days out? Not enough
to necessitate, in my view, how late the count is. I mean, it's probably about 0.5% of all
ballots coming in. There used to be a three-day limit, so they'd have to come in three-day.
after election day, and they moved it to seven, and the difference between those two was about
half a percentage point of the vote, which could matter in a very close race, but not in most races.
And you've got to make a choice. I mean, you could make it 14 days out, I guess, and the,
you know, but, yeah, and that seems reasonable to me, although then you get into that realm of like,
then the post office, maybe you have a postmaster general,
is like, let's slow things down.
Right.
Well, I mean, actually, all of this is likely to change because the Supreme Court is, you know,
going to imminently rule that an election actually ends on election day.
And so those ballots can't just be postmarked by election day,
but they have to arrive at the various vote counting centers on election day.
And that's likely to go into, to be implemented very soon because the Supreme Court is-
federal law.
I mean, I don't understand necessarily how that-
How that affects state law.
These are federal elections.
Yes, but states are responsible for running them.
True.
But has that stopped the Supreme Court before?
Right.
That is exactly the Trump card that you play.
Right.
Time for another religious edicts.
It's an interesting argument you have, but the Supreme Court is just going to do whatever
benefits Republicans and so. Indeed. So, so we could actually see this shrink. There would still be the
signature matching issue and, and I think that is actually a legitimate protection measure against,
you know, when you have an all-mail election. We, we don't. I mean, obviously it's the biggest
state and everybody gets a ballot, so there do need to be some standards in place for that.
And so, but it probably could be quicker because it's, it's, it's,
facilitating, I think, these questions, which don't really need to be there.
I mean, you know, we can talk about the actual issue that they're saying, you know,
which election they're saying.
Yeah, well, let's talk about that.
I mean, here's first here is Jacob Sabrov from MS now, just taking us through
what is, I guess, so-called L.A. ballot processing center, which, of course, we know is really
just some type of like fake vote mill, right?
On the Warner Brothers Studios.
Yeah, this is, right, this is where, this is the same place where the moon landing.
That exactly.
The actually same studio.
Beat me to it.
Check this out.
What you are looking at is workers inside the ballot processing center of Los Angeles County,
the largest election jurisdiction in the United States of America.
And I came here really to show my respect, honestly, to these workers who are allowing us to do our civic
duty. Donald Trump is sowing the seeds of misinformation and disinformation about the ballot counting process
here. And what you're witnessing, what I'm watching happen transparently and in real time,
is a painstaking, slow, and deliberate process designed, look, right here, to make sure
the ballots that have been cast in this election here in Los Angeles and throughout California
are counted fairly and accurately, and that every single one of them is verified so that the
results are correct. Look who I ran into. But, D.E.
Logan, the registrar recorder of Los Angeles.
Curious what you think about what the President of United States is saying about what the
workers in this ballot processing center are doing.
Well, I think unfortunately the message that's coming from the president is one that's
about the outcome of the election rather than the process of the election.
And I think people who come here to our ballot processing center and see the process
leave with a better understanding of how that process works.
There are cameras recording everything.
Is that right?
Yep, there are cameras recording.
It's live streamed.
Where we're standing right now is an open observer loop.
Anybody can come and walk through here and watch the process, and people do on a day-to-day basis.
And what about bipartisan election observers?
Republicans and Democrats are both just allowed to come and observe, right?
And anyone is allowed to come and observe.
So it's not partisan.
It's open.
It's publicly available.
If any of the candidates, no matter who they are, have a question or a problem or an accusation about how the votes are being counted,
they can walk in here and watch this process themselves, right?
Absolutely.
And several of them have.
I mean, that's why we're here.
They can come and watch the process, and we can explain exactly what's happening here.
So out of curiosity, has Pratt been in here?
I don't believe he has been here yet.
There have been people representing his campaign.
You've got to come and check it out.
It's worth it.
Why do you think that?
All right, I think I mean, now, so there's the transparency.
Now, of course, that guy in the sport jacket is a changeling from Mount Shasta,
and so we can barely trust him.
But here is Harry Empton, Emton, weighing in with the most obvious explanation as to why
the idea of Rahman being elevated by presumably the Democrats, right?
I mean, she's a Democrat, is just one of the dumbest conspiracy theories ever.
This is the dumbest conspiracy theory I have ever heard of it,
because the Democratic establishment and Karen Bass wanted Spencer Pratt and the runoff.
They don't want any part of do it, Nithia Rahman.
Why is that?
Because just take a look here.
Okay, Mayor Randolph polls, Bass versus opponent versus
is Pratt. Bass would have crushed Pratt by 18 points. That's what the polling showed. Look at how she does
against Nithia Rahman on the other hand. Ramen is ahead by four points. Bass has a real race on her hand.
If in fact, Raman is the one who advances. And of course, the Democratic establishment is backing
Karen Bass, but versus Spencer Pratt, she was crushing him. She wanted to face Pratt. She wanted
nothing to do with Roman. That's why these conspiracy theories simply put, make no sense, people.
When we talk about favorability, you have more evidence here.
Yeah, this is more evidence.
You know, why is it that Nithia Rahman's doing so much better than Spencer Pratt would against Karen Bass?
It's simply put, Raman is actually decently liked by L.A. city voters.
Look at this.
Okay, Nithia Raman, plus five on the net favorability rating.
Karen Bass, way under water at minus 22 points.
You basically just need someone who's half decently well-liked to be favored or at least have a real shot against the incoming Karen Bass.
Spencer Pratt, on the other hand, look at that.
He's even less like than Carabas.
He's 32 points underwater.
Carabas doesn't want to face Nithiaram.
She would love to face Spencer Pratt
because, simply put,
she's managed to find someone
who's more unpopular than she is
and she's quite unpopular.
This is really interesting.
You look at these numbers,
one of these things is not like the other here.
No.
She is definitely more like than the other two.
Now, the president here.
Obviously, the president is looking at this race.
He's all kinds of upset about it.
He presumably wanted Pratt here.
Yes, Republican wants a Republican.
Angelinos, what do they think about the president?
Yeah, okay, this is the other thing.
The President of the United States is such a drain on Spencer.
I mean, hello.
Okay, Los Angeles city voters.
Trump's net approval rating in the city of Los Angeles is about 55 points underwater.
I mean, the idea that a Republican could be the mayor of New York
when the President of the United States has a net approval rating 50.
L.A.
It's so difficult.
55 points underwater.
And then registered as Republican, just 15 percent.
of the voters in the city of Los Angeles are registered as Republican.
55% of Democrats, Spencer Pratt, was facing a mountain in order to win.
And so Karen Bass and the Democratic establishment knew that there's basically no chance
a Republican could be the next mayor of New York.
The only way she could lose is that she goes up against another Democrat.
And you see it right here, very simply put, up by four, no wonder.
And that is where the results right now are moving.
Okay, you keep saying New York, but he means L.A.
But that guy, I only ever hear him when I'm in this studio, Harry Anton.
And he sounds like he's in the original touring company of Newsies.
Yes, exactly.
What is going on with that?
He has an elderly father, we determined.
And we think that that may play into the fact that he has such like an old school speaking style.
Too much, too much Bowery boys as a kid.
He watched.
But like, we saw what happened with Trump at the Knicks game last night.
He's accidentally saying New York when he means L.A., like, yeah, we're
Republicans are not liked in big cities and anybody could have foreseen this.
But the national media was focused on the fact that Pratt is this rabble rouser,
that he was getting a lot of attention, another former reality TV star.
But let's be pretty clear here.
That was 100% an online phenomenon.
Right.
I live in Los Angeles.
There is no indication that there was any groundswell.
But wait a second.
In the city where he was.
suggesting that there's nothing sort of nefarious or weird going on because the Speaker of the House,
the arguably the second or third most powerful Republican in the country had this to say.
I'm not saying it's rigged. I'm saying it stinks to high heaven and everybody knows that.
Let's remove the appearance of impropriety.
Let's have, what a concept, let's have votes on an election the day of the election.
That's what many states are able to do.
I think California is playing around with this.
But what evidence is there to prove that there was this rate?
Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream that is impossible to prove.
But I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here.
And that's a concern.
We need people to believe in the integrity of our election system.
Instinctively.
I mean, the fascinating thing.
is we go through this
with Pennsylvania as well
it seems to me like the vote
counting is always late in Pennsylvania as well
they don't allow
and it's Republicans who
would not allow the counting of ballots
before if I remember
correctly from a legislation in the past
if you have a political party that
apparently these days is
in large part based
on denying
the veracity of the electoral process
then you're going to engage
in measures that facilitate denying the veracity of the electoral process.
The worst thing that could ever happen to Mike Johnson is that California comes in with
their results on the day of the election.
Right.
But, yeah, Donald Trump, I think, got 26.7% of the vote in Los Angeles County.
And Spencer Pratt is right now at 26.7% of the vote in Los Angeles County.
What exactly is the conspiracy here?
Rick Caruso obviously overperformed him, right?
Is that going to be what?
But Peruso is actually a Democrat.
Well, he ran as a Democrat.
And he doesn't have the same baggage.
Yes.
Yeah.
But I will say this.
Most of the things I read,
occasionally I'll read the American prospect,
but I read the free press on a daily basis.
Sure.
I think everybody knows this is where I get all of my news from.
And I've been reading the free press.
And I was convinced that Spencer Pratt was going to win.
here is just a
sampling of the headlines
for the past couple days
from the free press
revenge of the California Republicans
now I know
Heidi Montag is already
LA's first lady is that Spencer Pratt
yes of course yes Heidi Montag is
famously his wife I did have no idea
look up her surgery revenge of the California Republicans
oh here's a Michael Schellenberger
is unpacking the California
election results.
Yeah. Noted California political experts.
Yes, I can only imagine what he unpacked for us.
Inside Spencer Pratt's viral video machine.
They're talking about this guy.
Yeah.
They're talking about this guy like he was Mom Dani.
That's not the craziest thing.
The craziest one that I saw is not in the free press.
It was in Politico.
And it actually claimed that the biggest threat to J.D. Vance is Spencer Pratt.
go find that this was like three days before the election okay i gotta say spencer pride i guess
this doesn't i mean this might be less i'm crazy than well i don't know i mean spencer pratt is on
tv as a reality tv villain i was going to say there's already precedent for somebody taking
power with that with that happening but uh i don't know i think this is going to flame out a bit do you
think that Spencer Pratt
purposely
only got 27%
of the vote to keep him
from the runoff
so that he could challenge J.D. Vance
for the presidency. It's wheels within
wheel. I'm just curious. He just
forgot to rinse his crystals.
So he lost the election. But there was
the Caitlin Platt. Pratt Daddy's revenge.
There's a lot of revenge. What was
what like
what was the revenge about?
I mean, I think a lot of voters in L.A. did pretty much exactly what I did and said there are three people who are viable for this election.
And Spencer Pratt is the one I don't want to see being mayor.
And I'm not even going to think very far beyond that.
And I'm just going to vote for Nithia because Bass was going to make the runoff.
Like it was pretty clear Bass would make the runoff.
So we're going to vote for Nithia so that Pratt doesn't make the runoff.
And I talked to many people who said exactly that, exactly that thought process, which took about 30 seconds.
And ultimately, that's end up.
But this is so frustrating.
Who do you think wins that?
I think Nethia has a good shot.
I think Bass is kind of damaged goods.
You obviously see the approval ratings that we saw there.
I think most of that is kind of.
fair. I think that though homelessness has actually been down in the time that Bass has been mayor,
the palisades fire and the response to it has kind of been emblematic of her mayor,
Alty. And I think voters are definitely looking for something new. The one problem is, of course,
that the L.A. mayor's seat is very, it's not very powerful.
There's, the city council has much more power to shape events in the city than the mayor does.
But the mayor gets blamed for everything that doesn't happen.
So it's kind of a no-win situation and Bass is caught up in it right now.
It's just crazy to me that you guys have this jungle primary system with no rank choice voting.
It makes no sense.
You're talking to the number one opponent of this system.
Perhaps that's in my brain.
I mean, we should say the L.A. race is a little bit different than the state races because the L.A. race is officially nonpartisan. That's why it's a top two. Because it's officially a nonpartisan race. And that's also true of the city council races. But when you get to the state level, yes, in 2010, we made this insane decision that now has to be dismantled at the ballot.
because we made the decision at the ballot,
to go with this top two, which...
Who, like, what was the story behind that?
I mean, 2010, the politics were a little bit different at that time.
That was like just after Gray had been...
Yeah.
Had been...
The backstory was that Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted this legacy,
and he wanted a guy named Abel Maldonado to be his successor.
He was a Republican, but there was no way he could get.
get elected in a Republican primary because he was a moderate Republican.
And there was a budget fight.
And Abel Maldonado said, I'm not voting for the budget unless you change the primary system,
thereby making it easier for me to get elected governor.
And there was an impasse.
And that's exactly what they did.
They put on the legislature, put on the ballot, this changed.
the voting system. Democratic Party opposed it. Republican Party opposed it, but it passed on the
strength of the voters, and Schwarzenegger put a lot of money into it. And Abel Monado never ended up
running for governor. He ended up, he was the lieutenant governor at the time, but he ended up losing,
you know, never even got to a general election for governor. But he is essentially, the
man responsible and ultimately of a Schwartznaker.
Great.
Well, there he has his legacy.
In a moment, we're going to get into some of the stuff with the, what's going on with
the worm that is going to, or not, we've decided not, it's really a fly.
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FM. Back to David Dayan, who is in studio with Emma Vigland and I. Always a pleasure.
Thank you.
So back in the run-up to Doge and in the middle of it, I found myself on Pierce Morgan having a debate with one of the coaches from the biggest loser who was telling me,
as one does, that all the USAID think, like, we're hearing about, you know, crazy ass, you know, USAID is putting on trans, you know, musicals in Ghana or something they tell me.
And they're doing stuff like checking the mating habits of like some type of fly.
Like, you know, like what are we doing here?
And now finally the American public finds out about all of the ridiculousness of screening, you know, flies for their mating habits.
Well, it turns out there's a reason for that, isn't that, Dave?
Right.
I mean, this whole debate reminds me of, you know, John McCain would come out and go on the floor of the Senate and he'd come up with some funny sounding names of federal programs and then chuckle with his.
is like, isn't this ridiculous that we spend all this money on, you know,
shrimps in the desert or, or as you say, the mating habits of flies?
But it turns out there's this incredible program that has kept the U.S. food supply safe for 60 years.
And it does indeed involve the mating habits of flies, a particular fly known as the New World Screw Worm.
Huh.
Yes.
So these flies are incredibly invasive when they drop their eggs.
They usually bury them into the tissue of livestock or even humans.
It's not very painful or harmful in humans.
But when it goes into livestock like cows, they literally screw down the larvae of these eggs,
screw down into the animal and eat the flesh of the animal.
and if untreated, it kills the animal.
And if you have an outbreak of these, where they're in an entire herd, it can become extremely
invasive and a huge problem.
And we had this in this country for many, many years.
And in the 60s, we figured out a way to stop it.
And that was we sterilized hundreds of millions of these flies.
And then we airdrop them in Panama.
in the rainforest to almost create a firebreak.
So when these sterile flies mate with female screw worm flies,
they create eggs that don't hatch.
And therefore, it doesn't propagate the species.
And to this day, we have a facility in Panama that continues to do this.
So this idea that, oh, why are you sterilizing flies?
What does that do for you?
Well, for 60 years, we never had a case of New World screw worm in a cattle in Texas until last week.
And the reason that it happened last week is that there was a firebreak.
And it was about two years ago that this firebreak happened.
It broke through.
And immediately...
A firebreak.
What I'm saying is there was a screw worm case, a bug.
above the area that they were trying to segregate.
Okay, so above Panama.
Above Panama.
So it started moving through Central America and then moving into Mexico.
And when it hit Mexico, the Biden administration actually closed the border to live cattle trading imports.
I don't see how that's possible.
The border was open.
Right.
Indeed.
Indeed.
Indeed.
So they did close this in November.
and then they came up with a testing protocol so that every cattle that would go through would be, you know,
scrutinized and monitored and tracked and tested.
And in February 2025, when the Trump administration came into power, they opened the border.
They opened the border to these cattle auctions in February of 2025.
Shortly thereafter, USAID is decimated, and a monitoring program for screw worm is among the things that are cut.
This is a global program.
And in addition to that, the animal and plant health inspection service, or AFIS, which is a part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the staff is massively cut.
And predictably, as a result, the screw worm continues to go north and north and north.
And then belatedly, Brooke Rollins, the Secretary of Agriculture, closes the border again last May and then starts up these new facilities to sterilize the screw worm flies.
But they take a long, long time to get these facilities together and to get ramped up the speed.
And in that time, predictably, the screw worm case of a cattle in Texas happens.
The first one was last week, and then a couple days later, there was a second.
And now there's one, a dog in New Mexico.
You know, when there's two, there's a thousand.
And the Texas Agriculture Secretary, who is a Republican, says, we're going to have a complete infestation in six months.
Do we have that clip from that Texas?
Or don't we have that clip?
As you find it, when you said 70 as the last time there was one of these cases, or 66, well, I was, I wanted to, I double check the numbers because I was like, there's a 70 number that's also relevant to this, that it isn't exactly the same number.
And it's 75 because when we're looking at cattle herds, it is before this screw worm crisis, the lowest or smallest cattle herald.
herd in 75 years, in part due to drought, and also monopolies in that particular industry,
and the climate change has exacerbated the drought. And it's just going to get worse with this El Nino.
And the screwborn.
And the screw run.
By the way, because the feeder cattle that are used to build up herds, a lot of them come from Mexico.
And so if you close the border, you're not going to be able to build back up the herds in the same amount of time.
And all of this is leading to the fact that ground beef is at its highest rate since, you know, highest price since the Korean War, I believe.
And sirloin is even higher.
Yeah.
And beef prices are highly elevated.
And this outbreak, if it gets as bad as we think it will, will only increase that exponentially.
Here's the Texas AG AG, Ag Commissioner, who apparently is getting attacked now by the administration, surprise.
But he's being fairly straightforward about this because they're panicking.
Like, we'll talk about what the implications that will be maybe for the Tal RICO race, because...
He's running on this and hitting them over U.S.A. or U.S.A.
Let's hear this Ag commissioner.
Seconds left, but the USDA says the food supply is safe.
They say screw rooms don't infest meat, fruits, vegetables.
Do you share in that confidence?
And does this mean anything for beef prices moving forward?
Well, the two days that the market was open, we hadn't opened yet today,
but Thursday and Friday, the beef market was up the limit.
So you can look for higher beef prices because of the failure of the USDA to control this pest.
Seconds left.
Oh, and when he said USDA,
Do you think he meant the Biden administration?
Let's put this up, number one.
This is the X handle is Merriweather Farms.
Maryweather Farms is owned by a Trump, a former Trump, a big Trump supporter,
but somebody who worked in the administration,
then I think they went to start a farm.
If you think beef prices are high now, imagine what they will be after flesh-eating maggots
wipe out a significant portion of remaining cattle.
We need a national emergency declaration.
they write let's go to the next one we are tired of waiting for competent action people who continue
to blame the new world scream screw worm crisis on the bide administration need to stop this is a
trump supporter i mean like literally somebody worked in the administration the secretary her name is
katherine o'neillian uh she's on the board of the american conservative and um she clearly a liberal
She worked at the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development during the entirety.
So she's woke.
She's super woke.
There you go.
She was there the whole time during the Trump's first term.
And then she, you know, and her husband moved to Wyoming and started a farm.
The harsh reality is you're going to be seeing more of these new world screw worm confirmations every 24 to 72 hours.
For the next few months, it's really tragic.
What's more tragic is that the USDA.
had plenty of time to act in the last 15 months to minimize and even prevent the crisis from unfolding.
However, we stand by the assertion.
There are certain actions the U.S. government could take right now that would minimize impact.
We pray the administration takes them as soon as possible.
So they're going to stress a few points.
The beef that you eat is safe, period.
Well, and that's the case because...
It varies in live animals.
It's only in live animals.
So if it actually does it, if it lives to be slaughtered, then you get okay meat.
But there's a very good chance you're not going to have access to that meat at one point.
Right. If you're a pet owner, practice vigilant wound care.
That's, you know, presumably if you're round cattle, if you're a producer, you already know this, etc., etc., and...
And this is not the only food crisis we're facing.
There's a fertilizer crisis due to the Iran war.
So food prices overall are going up.
Go ahead, David.
I think the larger point, I'll say two things.
Number one, you know, this person talks about the 15 months where we knew that this was a problem that was emerging, moving up from Mexico.
And when I talked to this guy, Joe Maxwell, who is a rancher and he's with Family Farm Action, what he said is, you know, what is the, what is USDA?
been focused on in this 15 months? What are they focused on, you know, like a full spectrum
going after this threat to the beef supply? No, they were dismantling USDA. They were shutting
buildings in D.C. They were closing programs, engaging in many staff cuts. And what he says is
that it's not that the outbreak wouldn't have happened necessarily in this 15 month period,
but it's, you know, the purpose of USDA. You've been 15 months ahead of where we
They'd be ahead. They'd be monitoring. They'd be tracking. They'd be knowing. And you actually need manpower to do all this. You need boots on the ground to know, okay, if there's one here and we find another case over here, then, you know, we know the migration pattern. We know where these flies are headed. And we can head it off and we can quarantine and we can do these kinds of things. This is the problem is that you just have a lack of focus at the top. So that's number one. Number two, to your point,
you know, this is just an indication that the supply chain has gotten more and more dangerous
over the last several years.
We are now in the midst of the third major supply chain disruption in the last six years.
The first was COVID.
The second was the Ukraine War.
The Iran War.
And this is just some other thing that goes into the mix.
And you can see, you know, natural disasters as part of the war.
as part of this as well when they get really bad.
They're just simply more dangers to a long,
intermediateed supply chain that we didn't have before.
And I think that it's all the more reason.
If we didn't already figure out this lesson,
that we have to do something about better resiliency
in terms of our industrial production.
And the Biden administration understood that with the Chips Act, right?
I mean, yeah, go ahead.
Chips Act was a good example of that.
And also...
But it's across the board, right?
Across the board.
And Monopoly plays into this, too, when you talk about the beef processing plants in this instance.
But also, when you are reliant, all your eggs are in one basket.
I mean, just to keep this in the ag world, you've got a problem.
But I will say there's also a lot, there's a lot that's instructive in this,
both, I mean, aside from the material implications that we're going to feel in the short term.
one is is that much of government is like an insurance policy right like you know the the return on
investment that you get from from studying the mating habits of a fly are seemingly frivolous until
they're not i can i can monetize that for you because we had a report put out by the animal implant
health inspection service that was put out last year
There was, you know, it took some time.
We eradicated screw worm in the U.S. in 1966, but it took some time to get it out of Mexico,
and there were still, you know, measures that were taken in the U.S.
They looked at how much money was spent in 1976, which was 10 years after the eradication,
but while it was still going on in Mexico.
And if you make that equivalent to today's dollars,
$732 million for livestock producers and another $1.8 billion to the broader economy.
And that's with no screw worm flies in the United States.
So imagine what a major infestation is going to cost to get rid of it to the cost of the lost commerce that you're going to have,
the cost to inflation for, you know, higher prices for beef.
it's it's it's astronomically more than that that aspect and in so much of this is about sort of like a
philosophy of government and and and and this sticks in my craw i know it probably will trigger you
too but i know that you probably although i don't know maybe you didn't uh read the abundance book
um but if you'll recall you have a flight once and so i read it on you do you you will recall that
It went back and forth, almost like Daddy's Boy with Chris Elliott and his father, Bob Elliott,
where both Ezra Klein wrote a piece and then Derek Thompson wrote a piece.
And they tried to stitch it together for an ideology.
Derek Thompson's piece, which gets very little attention, was about the government not funding
being too bureaucratic
in its funding of research
which of course
he mentions
as if it was a problem
of the groups and whatnot
but of course the reason why that is the case
is because there was a very big
anti-tax movement
a couple of decades ago
and
and then
government would get
bureaucrats would get in trouble because they gave money
to a
to a university that was studying something that, you know, why are we studying the eggs of a hoot and owl?
Like, who cares about a hoot and owl?
And it's all this anti-tax sentiment that comes from, you know, at that time it was conservative Democrats who would do this,
but also just sort of the libertarian right.
And this is an example.
This is like a perfect example of like how easy it is to demigons.
against
things that have huge
or have the potential
to have huge implications
down the road.
And it emanates out of
this sense of like a
skepticism
that the government bureaucrats
are up to no good
or that there are groups like
all the tree
hugging,
you know,
owl lovers
who didn't want to
who want to study
the sex habits of a fly.
Are you kidding me?
And then here we are.
And then someone that sounds just like that is the ad commissioner of Texas.
Exactly.
Who's saying, where fucked?
Yeah.
And so this is, I mean, this is a huge lesson, I feel like, in the importance of government
and why Doge and the sort of like subsequent or really contemporaneous,
Russell votes, destruction of our government is so.
It's so problematic and like the fact that they could have started 15 months ago.
I feel like there's an analogy with everything that's happening in our government,
whether it's like, you know, we spoke to Jonathan Cohn the other day about this new pancreatic
cancer treatments that are getting all sorts of attention.
But in five or ten years, we're going to have an absence of those type of discoveries
because of all the research pipelines is being shut down now.
It's going to be a gap.
I mean, this is a big problem going forward that I'm really concerned about.
I know you guys at the prospect, you know, are probably already working on your day one agenda.
But this is like, let's just briefly talk about.
I know we're getting ahead of ourselves on some level.
But this is when we think about 2028, because I think the midterm Democrats are going to take at least one of the houses.
It seems quite obvious at this point.
I mean, I don't want to go too far out on a limb, but.
and Emma is
won't
Emick won't hear any of that
she's very superstitious
ever since the Kamala prediction
I'm pretty much out
I've extended it to politics from sports
but go on you
but this is going to be a big
problem like let's talk a little bit
about it because I know like
Nira Tandon has her project
2029
last I heard Larry Summers
as part of that
Cavali Mampin
ejected
but
I'm worried about that because I don't think they quite get it over there.
Well, I mean, I think that ultimately what we've seen so far come out of some of these coalitions that are trying to put together ideas are ultimately a laundry list of issues, right?
whether and and and to say nothing about the utility of those issues whether it's child care
whether it's uh i don't know going after junk fees or whatever it is um it seems to me that the
experience of the bide administration should have taught us that opening with what 17 issues
you're going to cram into a bill uh might not be the the first course of action in a world where
the Supreme Court can basically knock down anything that you really want to do. In a world where
the Senate filibuster is a huge impediment to progress, in a world where the Voting Rights Act was
just essentially nullified, and there are dozens of seats in the South that are going to be,
you know, ancestrally Republican now from now on. It seems like you have to attack those
structures of power before you can figure out what you're going to do because otherwise you're not
going to get anything done.
This has always been like there's always been this sort of like argument that Democrats,
when Republicans get into power, the first half a dozen things they do is to solidify
their power.
And because they're, I mean, just in terms of sheer numbers, broadly speaking across the country,
in the minority, they would end up setting up
minority systems, whether it was like,
I'm thinking Wisconsin was like one of the laboratories
for this in 2010.
They got in there.
They did all sorts of gerrymandering to the point
where Democrats in Wisconsin to take control of the statehouse
needed to win like 58% of the vote
to get 51% of the control of the state house.
Maybe that number was even high.
hire. So they were doing this. Democrats never do this. I mean, if you look at Project
2025 and what it actually was, it was a document to entrench and sustain power within the
executive branch. So like just this week, we saw the president issue an executive order
on something called Schedule F. Now, what is Schedule F? This gives the president the ability to fire a
bunch of career employees and install loyalists in there instead that will do his bidding.
And that is a classic project 2025 initiative that, you know, what we perceived to be the
problem in the first Trump term was that we would issue policy initiatives and people at the
agencies wouldn't follow through on them. So you know what we're going to do? We're going to throw
out everybody at the agencies and put in lap dogs and they're going to do what we say we want
them to do. So, you know, that manner of thinking how to entrench power, I'm not saying that
Democrats now have to reverse that and do the spoil system and put their loyalists in power,
but they need to think about how to structure the situation so that there is actual democracy
happening here. Prioritize these things. When somebody gets elected, that they can
actually achieve the agenda that they want. That seems to me to be the first order of business
to rebuild and sort of refound our democracy. But the problem is that in so many instances,
Democrats are complicit in these anti-democratic measures. I mean, we're talking about the
federal level, but I think in part in in California, the lack of ranked choice, but the jungle
primary, it benefits the fact that there's more split field for the Democrats. In New York,
you had the IDC for so long put in place by Andrew Cuomo to curb democracy and true progress in in blue states, but you bring up the Supreme Court.
That's got to be the number one thing that we have to tackle first here.
And I wonder, like, you have Graham Platiner out there talking about how we should.
It's Election Day and Maine.
Yes, by the way, it's Election Day in Maine.
Go out and vote.
But like, I mean, he's talking about Supreme Court reform in a really aggressive way and saying that we should start impeachment hearings for at least two.
I think he's talking about Alito and Thomas there, if I were to guess.
But what is the kind of reform that could make it so that, say, we get a more progressive Democratic Party and they nuke the filibuster and we're in a situation to pass massive legislation.
The Supreme Court still needs to be dealt with.
Yeah.
So I'll get to that.
But I should say that I was up in Maine like a month ago and I was at an event that Platner was at.
And I went up to him and I introduced myself and I said, hey, I'm David Day.
And he goes, man, I've seen you on the majority report so many times.
You don't have to tell me who you are.
That's awesome.
So what I'm trying to say is that whatever happens, it's your fault.
Right.
He's watching.
We've been making, we've been turning him into the secret Nazi.
That's right.
Yes.
Yes.
So just briefly on that.
So as far as Supreme Court stuff is concerned, there's a really good book coming out very
soon by a guy who's at Harvard, a professor, by the name of Nicholas Bowie. And he just went into
the, I think it was Senate Judiciary Committee, might have been House Judiciary Committee, and gave
some of his views on this. And he has a really interesting, very expansive way of thinking about
court reform that is not only limited to term limits or expanding the court. Those are not the only
things you can do. And one of, I think, the most interesting things you can do is at the congressional
level, law by law, engage in something called jurisdiction. Right. And what that means is that you can
literally write into any law you pass. The only court that can review this legislation is, you know,
the D.C. Circuit. And the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over this. And that sounds like,
how are they going to come up with that? And isn't that going to be over the term? And how is the Supreme Court not going to
How will the Supreme Court not react to this?
Well, that was in the Inflation Reduction Act for a portion of it.
That was in the American Rescue Plan for a portion of it.
It is directly in the Constitution that the Congress can limit or put various regulations on the court's jurisdiction.
And I think, you know, I think we should work on everything else, whether it's, you know,
expansion or those kinds of things. But you can do this on a law by law basis and, you know,
set boundaries and guardrails and contours for what the court can oversee. And the second part of that
is that when the court rules as a statutory interpretation, not something that's in the Constitution
itself, but they say this law, this is how we read this law and we decide this way, Congress can
come back and say, you read that wrong. This is the real interpretation of that. And therefore,
whatever you threw out, we're bringing back. And we can reinterpret these statutes. We actually
did a piece on that, like, I think seven years ago or something like that on statutory interpretations.
And there are dozens of them. The bills are ready to go in every facet of jurisprudence.
So that's another example. And Bowie has a lot.
lot more. Now, it sounds like it's a good sign that Bowie was invited to have that talk on the hill,
right? I mean, because, you know, we're theoretically, I don't know. I mean, it's conceivable.
You can start passing these laws in a year. If the Senate in the House, if the Democrats get the
Senate in the House, now maybe Donald Trump keeps vetoing and vetoing and vetoing. But you set up your
agenda that way. I mean, Josh,
going to be here, I guess, in the second, and demand justice is among the many groups that I think
are taking a very hard look at court reform. And they recognize that it has to be, you know,
primary in the agenda. And to the extent that's rubbing off on Congress, that's a good thing.
Do you think that there is an understanding and where are the fault lines if that's not?
Because I feel like this is, it's too easy to say that it's just an age generational thing.
But I do believe that there is a generational quality,
and maybe it's more like when people entered into politics or whatnot,
largely younger people that understand partisanship in the way that like a Chuck Schumer doesn't
or a Joe Biden didn't or a Barack Obama, frankly, I didn't either.
And therefore appreciate the necessity for setting up the sort of,
of like a superstructure, if you would, to achieve other policy objectives. Like, what you're
talking about is not a policy. It is a mechanism to make sure that if you have policies, they can be
implemented. Right. And I think it fits with where the public is at right now, both as a general
matter and as how they see Democrats. So like the biggest, if you ask people in the country,
what you know what is your impression of the democratic party they'd say weak right that's like the number
one one word that comes forward of course so you know if you constantly are promising policies and then
saying well we can't do it because the parliamentarian or we can't do it because of the filibuster
or we can't do it because the Supreme court said no that's pretty weak right that that that's what that
looks like that's how that manifests and so thinking structurally about how you're going to get
this agenda forward is, I think it speaks to a lot of the concerns that Americans have with
the Democratic Party right now.
This is almost like your version of abundance, right?
Increasing state power, except for instead of doing it by deregulating everything.
Right.
And disempowering the so-called groups who are out there, you know, getting in our way.
The groups being the Supreme Court, the, you know,
U.S. attorneys.
Yes, as opposed to like a Greenpeace or something.
But this is, I mean, this is what the biggest fight.
And I guess it's really just a question of what we're going to start to see,
are we going to see politicians run on this?
Or are they just, is this going to be like just something that you'll ask them when you interview them?
And it'll be the, you know, deep into the peace.
Because it's not necessarily something that I think your average voter is thinking about.
Yeah. I mean, I think the age-old argument is that you can't run on this stuff. That's what sort of democratic operatives in the consultant class believe. You can't run on process. You know, I'd say two things to that. Number one, if you can't run on process, then just do the process because you can't run against it either. Right. Right. So then just do the things that'll make your other promises actually act because it's toxic to your brain.
to keep promising things that you can't deliver.
Do you know how many races were decided by Mitch McConnell's decision to get rid of the filibuster
for nominees?
Zero.
Exactly.
Absolutely zero.
So if it's not important, then then just go ahead and do it.
Exactly.
That's number one.
But number two, I'm not actually certain that it's not important.
I think that the public can be educated on these things, that there's something blocking
progress that we have the ability to impact. And certainly the Supreme Court has become a political
topic. They are very unpopular. And I think you can run against the court. You may not have to say
the specifics of it, but you can run against the court. Yes. And that's the thing I think that like
sort of elides the analysis of these elections, which become clearer and clearer to me, is that
there's also like a subtext that exists in.
any type of election. We've talked about this, Am and I'm sure in terms of the context of Gaza,
it's not just the first order of we're enabling a genocide. Should we enable a genocide?
What weapons should we cut back? How should we cut support? How should we influence this thing?
It's also an acknowledgement of a certain reality that people have. And if you are not acknowledging
that reality. The subtext is like, you can't trust my judgment on anything. And on some level,
like, if we're talking about fighting the Republicans, it almost doesn't matter what is in that bucket,
whether it's like a Supreme Court reform or we're going to change allegedly, you say it.
I mean, it's very simple. It's like these guys are obstructing the progress and we're going to make
sure that they're not going to stand in our way. If we get a majority, we're going to pass,
we're going to push through our agenda. Yeah. And that's it. And that's,
That's the process part. That's what you're running on.
Well, the Gaza stuff, to Sam's point, too, it opens up space for those arguments because there's already an underlying trust factor if you're not the person that's taking A-PAC money.
You know, I'm struck by how McMorrow is sinking in the race in Michigan, in polling, and how you're still seeing that Stevens is maintaining some support as the second option to Abdul Al-Said, who's now clearly the frontrunner at this point.
But, you know, Abdul al-Saya got trust from people in Michigan by standing firm on that issue.
And now he's talking about things like the filibuster.
He's talking about the Supreme Court.
And it makes it so much darker when you contrast it with even McMorro trying to carve out a center between the two because she's just saying, I like your idea, but I can't implement it.
And so then people ask the second order question, well, why can't you?
And so APAC equals political corruption is also helpful in getting these other conversations into the ecosystem.
Because ultimately it's a corruption of democracy.
Yeah.
I mean, if you're talking about I am a political actor, I get the country behind me, I do everything I'm supposed to do, build the coalition, gain the support, and win, and I'm not allowed to implement my agenda, that is that is a corruption of democracy.
And ultimately, we need to reinvigorate democracy by allowing these maturitarian processes to work.
I mean, this has always been the argument for filibuster reform.
And the counter argument is like, well, the filibuster, you're going to need it because what if the Republicans get into power?
But the problem with that argument is that we have seen what the Republican agenda is.
It's just one thing.
It's just tax cuts.
And they can do that anymore.
And they end up doing that every time.
They do it through reconciliation.
where there is no filibuster. The filibuster has been consistently used to thwart the progressives,
and for some, and, and, and, and ostensibly Democrats, but a lot of times are Democrats who hide behind
the filibuster and make it a lot harder to assess, like, what exactly they are for or not.
Yes, and got to say, even without the filibuster, all things equal, we know that 50 Republican
senators versus 50 Democratic senators would still mean that they're representing tens of millions more
people depending on the the makeup of Congress. So it's already so undemocratic without the
filibuster in place. Absolutely. I got to roll up out. Yes, I know. You got to go. Well, it's a
perfect lead in when we talk about court reform because our next guest is the executive director
It's almost like we plan.
Of demand justice.
And maybe we'll just do an extended freebie Tuesday.
That sounds good.
We'll need to do a quick break, though, this set.
We are going to do a quick break.
David Dan, executive editor of the American prospect,
my daily read.
We were just talking, you've been executive editor for it like now.
It was seven years last week.
You have completely like just,
re-reborn, re-birthed that publication.
You got a lot of great stuff.
It's not just me.
We have James Barada right here, writing fellow, right in the audience here.
I'm writing quite a bit about the 702.
Right in a lot about FISA and SETU 7O2.
So check that out at Prospect.
Much of what I know.
And Whitney Wimbish is over there.
We had her on the other day.
And I am looking forward to your day one,
agenda. I know that's a couple years off. But maybe there should be like a mini one for if they
take the House and the Senate. There you go. More work for you. Let's think it over. All right.
We'll work on it. All right, David Day, and always a pleasure. All right, folks, we're going to
take a quick break when we come back. Josh Orton from Demand Justice will be here. We are back,
Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland, on the majority of part, it is a pleasure to welcome back to the program.
the executive director of is that your official title executive director i would say executive director
oh yes of no of demand justice president president of demand justice and um the why i think it like
the first or maybe the second um uh emeritus producer of the majority report
the only executive producer ever even closer the the well i mean yeah i mean brian yeah the only
Emeritus. Take that up with my email signature.
We play pretty loose
with the title.
Also,
former senior advisor to Bernie
Sanders, worked in the
Labor Department, worked at the White House.
You've worked a lot of places.
We just had a
conversation with David Dan
about the notion of
Democrats having to come
in as we start to build
like a project 2029 that is not influenced by Larry Summers and that the primary thing
Dane was arguing and I'm convinced things must be structural and that that involves court
reform in a myriad of ways he was talking about Nicholas Bowie who apparently spoke on the
Hill recently to Democratic lawmakers.
There's a bunch of different types of reforms.
We're not quite there yet in terms of reforms because from here to even just the midterms,
there could be some landmines.
Yeah, I mean, first of all, the Project 2029 stuff is driving me a little nuts because
there's so many sort of Democratic advocates and people who've been in the swamp for so long.
We're talking about Project 2029, not understanding.
understanding the premise of project 20 20 20 25 was so radical that Trump had to distance himself from it.
And my concern is that there's all these people from the establishment who are working on a project 2029.
Like project 2029 can't have a Medicare buy-in as an option, right?
This isn't just an amalgam of all the things that we've introduced before.
If we're going to put together a project 2029, it has to be radical in a, I would say, a just way.
But it has to mirror how radical Project 2025 was because Project 2025 was a radical institutional reimagining or, you know, imagining of its destruction of the government.
And so one of the things that I think is interesting, and this comes up in the court reform conversation is, are we going to have reforms that are actually bold ideas?
They're going to have to start from a place of being slightly uncomfortable to the majority of the Democratic establishment.
That's what court expansion was when demand justice first introduced it around the 2020 presidential primary.
That's what I think this court reform, the reform of the Justice Department, any of the sort of truth of reconciliation process, it's going to have to be as radical.
Otherwise, we're, you know, we're just going to wind up in the same place we were before.
I mean, it feels like a second reconstruction.
Yes, yes.
And I think, you know, what we...
The first of which was done by the so-called radical Republicans.
Right.
And I think, you know, we'll get to the between now and November.
But, you know, it's interesting because I think that the court reform conversation really sped up after the CalA decision in voting rights.
It's interesting because everybody expected the Cali decision.
I mean, Florida passed bad maps assuming the Supreme Court was going to rule the way it did on Calais.
But I think the reaction to it and how it sparked the conversation about court reform.
was in part a reaction to how grotesque these state legislators behaved in the in the aftermath.
And so what's interesting is we have everything from, you know.
Just to be clear, I just want to explain that so that people understand what you're talking about.
The Supreme Court rolled back essentially the Voting Rights Act to the remaining provisions.
Pre-voting rights act.
Yes, that's right.
And under the, with the justification that, like,
racism is over.
We don't need to police these states in the way that we did before because they're not going to be racist in the way that they construct these maps.
And literally within 24 hours, half of the, you know, three or four of these states immediately are like, we got an opportunity to be racist.
Let's do it. Let's do it.
Let's do it. And they did it. And, you know, I think people are, you know, for a long time, I think the problem with this Roberts majority, and Alito wrote this decision.
that rolled back the remaining provisions
the Voting Rights Act.
And he just lied through his teeth about it as he did it.
He's like, oh, well, this doesn't actually change the voting rights.
I could just adjust the test.
It's like, okay, well, if there's a murder statute
and you add a provision that the murderer has to say,
I'm going to murder you and three people have to witness it before it happens,
you're not just tweaking the test.
You're enabling the crime.
And I think that what the Roberts majority,
which includes Alito, includes Thomas,
has done,
I think is really bugging people and not just of one party or the other is that they've been
consolidating power among the already powerful for a couple, for a generation or more now,
and that's even preceding Roberts, you know, the presidency, right, consolidating power in the
executive and Trump himself, consolidating power with the Republican Party, which we saw with the
rollbacks of the voting rights case, and consolidating power among the billionaire class in Wall
street. And, you know, there are these sort of small number of elitists who are lying about how they
constantly rule in favor of power against the less powerful. And it's one thing to sort of, they've tried
to wrap it in this ideology of, you know, originalism. And this is what the Constitution said,
you know, should be, which is obviously bullshit. But the fact that they've done this over and over
again and then lied about it, it just shows not only have they been always ruling on the side of the
powerful, but they have such a condescending view of everyone else.
Right? Like John, the Chief Justice Supreme Court Roberts was, gave an interview recently,
and I'm paraphrasing, but he essentially said that the reason that people don't like the court or might disagree with the court or might not like, you know, is because they don't understand what they do.
Right. It was this like drippingly condescending.
And it's interesting.
And I both like as soon as that we heard that quarter like, oh, oh, well, we're children of lawyers.
We understand.
Right.
The complete condescending.
And he was condescending about.
Yes.
And also about he said something about how it was, you know, inaccurate to describe them as partisan.
I believe in those same remarks, which is hilarious.
Which is hilarious.
And, you know, Demandjust, we've done polling.
And the reality is it's not because people don't understand what they do.
It's actually because people have paid quite close attention to what they do.
And they're not happy with either what they've decided and who they've ruled for or, too, how they've conducted.
at themselves as people. I mean, the fact that Roberts
was saying, well, we're not partisan, we're not
ideological, people are wrong about that.
You know, I think it was Thomas
recently. We went on this
wild screed against
progressivism, which is
a political ideology. Right. It's like,
you know, you're not, you know,
do we have the old majority
of majority of part drop of, don't piss down my back
and tell me it's raining?
Don't push down my back and tell me it's really.
People are not buying it anymore.
And so I think that the conversation about reform is super healthy.
I'm a little nervous about people who are talking about term limits as a solution here, both because I don't think it will be a solution, but also if you think this Roberts card is corrupt and consolidates power, you can't also think that when a case questioning whether term limits are constitutional reaches the Roberts court, they're going to, I mean, they're not going to uphold term limits.
They're just not.
And so, you know, our position has always been expansion.
It's constitutional, facially constitutional.
It's been done before.
And I think there's a way to talk about it that's affirmative and not partisan.
I mean, you know, if you can imagine a presidential candidate, let's say, you know, a dem nominee, you know, Akasio-Cortez or Pritzker, whoever else, saying, you know what, this Supreme Court is in the pockets of the powerful.
We have to do something about it.
We're going to expand the court by four, and I'm going to appoint four anti-corruption experts to sit on the Supreme Court.
And talk about it in a way that is about giving the government back to people.
I don't think that's going to come – it's going to code as radical.
And I don't think it necessarily has to be – and it shouldn't be about process.
I think there's a real path to this.
Also, let's be clear, with all due respect to the American people –
um and i obviously the people on this uh people listening to the show excluded none of these motherfuckers
know how many people are on the court i'm sorry none of them do none of them do like i like i
none of us here even have to go that far outside of our circle of friends to find people who are like
seven eight 10 like nobody knows and the fact of the matter is i mean in terms of like just expansion of
the court
it's supposed to track the number of circuit courts we have, and we stopped at nine,
and it's supposed to be at 13 right now, and that's just the way it is.
It's arbitrary.
We should also, we should expand the Congress as well while we're at it.
Let's add some Housemark.
Why do we still have the same representation?
Why do we stop expanding the House in 1912 or whenever it was when we expanded up to that point?
Yeah.
I mean, the number of presidents is in the Constitution, right? The number of senators in the Constitution.
There is nothing in the Constitution about how many Supreme Court justice there should be. There's just not. And so Congress can make that determination. It does not require constitutional amendment. It does not, it is not really subject to constitutional challenges. I mean, in theory, one could bring one, but it would be laugh. I mean, it's laughable because the Constitutional is silent. And it's changed already. This to me is the only.
real path because the, you know, I think for too long on the left, we really thought about the court
as this sort of sacrosanct institution and present company excluded, but, you know, we sort of left
this to elites, right? Well, we need fair, you know, we need fair justices. Courts should be neutral.
There is no, like, I'm done with it. There's no such thing as a neutral Supreme Court justice.
They all have ideologies. Let's just be transparent about it and decide which ideology we would
like to have injustice. Right. Yeah. I mean, well, it's also.
the whole Supreme Court conversation and the idea that Democrats think they can't run on this is
insane to me because until Roe v. Wade was overturned, they were using that decision to fundraise
and run and run the entire, run all of these elections. And then it seemed to go away
this concern about the Supreme Court once they couldn't use it for fundraising. Yeah. Yeah.
And, you know, I think the other thing is, and I'm tipping my hand a little bit, but, you know,
part of the polling, we, you know, we have this project to prepare for a potential one or two vacancies
this year, you know, Trump realizes that he's going to lose his two most loyal justices on the
court if we win back the Senate and he doesn't replace them soon. People actually have heard of a lot of
this, not the names of the cases, but the things the Supreme Court has done. And they're really
unpopular. I mean, they're really unpopular. And not just the things that you'd expect, everybody
knows Citizens United is unpopular and our finding is it's actually the most unpopular.
across every ideology.
But even the gay conversion therapy case that allowed, you know, this bullshit gay conversion
talk therapy to happen.
Mom.
Mom.
Mom.
Why did you do that to me?
Sorry.
I love that.
I love it.
Even that's unpopular, right?
The taking away of labor rights is unpopular.
The ice targeting people based on the.
basis of races wildly unpopular. You know, I think there, this is going to sound, I mean, this is
barely the aha sort of conclusion. But, you know, there is a universe where if we stand by the
courage of our convictions in what we believe is right or not right, especially when it comes to
what the Supreme Court does, it turns out that a lot of people agree with us. And it's,
how much, how much as you go through the halls of the Senate, as it were, and, you're, and
and try and convince senators of this idea.
How much of it is they're nervous because they don't appreciate what you've just said?
And how much of it is they're nervous because too much democracy does not necessarily,
they're riding some line where it's like, you know, let's not get carried away.
So I think there's two things.
I think there was a lot of that for a long time.
But I think the current Roberts majority has been so condescending and intellectually dishonest
that even what you would consider sort of mainstream normie Democratic senators are just fundamentally insulted,
just because they're just lying to their faces in these decisions.
And so part—
So like Mark Warner, for instance, let's just say, just randomly speaking.
Just randomly speak.
I mean, I have not talked to Mark Warner about this particular court majority.
guy who is all of a sudden is like, you know what? I mean, this is, I can't even pretend anymore.
Yeah, or or Senator Blumenthal or those where, you know, this has been, we've, we've put the Supreme Court on a pedestal.
We've, you know, this is, you know, unlike the U.S. Senator of the House of Representatives, you know, we think of the qualifications of the Supreme Court as being somewhat specialized and specific, right?
That you need some degree of elite training in the law in order to be able to do the job.
And so this, it sort of carried this myth of the meritocracy for two hours.
And I think what's happening now is that they're so, they're so blatant in how political they are and how beholden to power they are that even the sort of normie senators are done with it.
I think the larger sort of community problem is that the whole system of how we, you know, decide who gets nominated to the lower courts, you know, every.
senator has their own nominating, some form of a nominating commission. And the pipeline of people
who wind up on the Supreme Court, even on the left, are elite. They are corporate law partners.
And so everybody who is in the position to weigh in on this or have an opinion about reform
on the sort of democratic legal side, not everybody, but a lot of people, it's there, this is a club that they, an
exclusive club that they are a part of.
Like, this is the membership card in their wallet that makes them feel professionally special.
And if you're just basically, you know, to steal a phrase from 20 years ago, if we're going
to basically propose crashing the gates of the Supreme Court, those people feel like they have a lot
to lose.
Yes.
Well, that class of a Democratic lawyer also, I think, has a fundamental kind of resentment of the
dirtiness of democracy and they feel that they know better.
So there's a, there's a resistance to having the, the American heathens weigh in on what the high priest should be dealing with behind closed.
100%. And they, and I think that they have a, they have a sort of respect for power and I think also for money.
Yes.
Right. For, for financial power, there's a deference there that obviously infects the policymaking and everything else.
it is it is as true too in in our sort of democratic elite legal circles now I think that's
starting to change and I think the it's got to be a generational thing I think it's partially a
generation is a is a step in the sense that like I thought that was a great pick by Biden totally
yeah totally and I think that that her and such a mayor are like the two legitimately good
Supreme court justices we've had in a very long time and I but I think that one of the things that
gave me sort of a lot of hope, even though it was kind of an absurd proposal. In the wake of this
of the Supreme Court striking down the vestiges of the VRA, you remember there was a proposal
because the Virginia, the Democrats passed new maps in Virginia to sort of win back a couple
of these seats that the southern states were stealing. And the Virginia Supreme Court struck
it struck down the maps. And there was a proposal, this, like this particular thing gave me
hope. There is a proposal in the wake of that that the
state legislature in Virginia should pass an age limit for all sitting Virginia Supreme Court
justices that was lower than the age of all of them currently so that they could all be left
they could all leave the court and the Virginia governor Spanberger could replace them all and rule
the right one I mean and the fact that that wasn't like a joke like the people are like is that
should we maybe like Spamberger won't do anything I mean and by the way your point is is that
my people want that but people want that but I'm going to say like
you know, her approval rating is, is collapsing. And there was this effort, I think you made this
point yesterday, Sam, to tie Mom Donnie and her victories together because it happened around the
same time. Like, look, it's just Democrats more broadly. It's not that people are energized by this
Democratic Socialists. And because she's caved to her own state Supreme Court, after getting
voters energized to go out and support this measure for redistricting to fight fascism, she's in
trouble. Yeah. And look, I'm no, like, I'm not here to, I don't, my point is less about Spanberger,
who I think, I agree has significant problems in this regard. It's more that, look, even though it was
the Virginian Supreme Court and not the U.S. Supreme Court, the fact that someone could basically say,
like, other politicians, let's just replace them, like, that they weren't considered, well,
they're state Supreme Court justices. We can't, you know, they're qualified. Like, the fact that
they weren't treated, like, as precious to me was, like, a great.
great sign. Right. The Overton window has expanded where an idea like that is actually taken seriously.
I mean, part of it was also, let's just remind people, the ruling of the court was that you could not, you were not allowed to have, it was a technicality about the referendum being held once before the election and once after the election.
and they're saying that because early balloting had existed on that referendum before there,
that the election actually was already happening or it happened.
By the way, has not stopped any of the other southern states.
Right.
And we should also say within the Virginia state constitution,
there's a reference of election day being a specific day.
Right.
So like there's early voting and then there's the election day.
But let's listen.
So the idea is just like, you're encouraged because the Overton window seems to have expanded
in terms of what people will contemplate as a reform measure.
Here is Richard Blumenthal.
And again, this is something that I think resonates with M&I because I can tell you that, like,
the ongoing argument I've had with my father, at one point your parents get older.
I'm sorry, which?
one of the ongoing arguments I've had with my father
and like I was about to say like at one point
they get you know old enough that you're like
whatever
and has that happened yet
we're close to that
was just like this notion of
okay
the Supreme Court I get you don't like their decision
but they're you know
it's the Supreme Court they're the Supreme Court
they are scholars of the law
and blah blah blah and the fact
is that at one point it becomes
quite obvious. Oh, wait a second. This is just a guy who listens to Fox News and he's somewhat,
you know, erudite. Here is Blumenthal understanding the concept of like these judicial
nominees that are coming up. These guys are just hacks. Just hacks. Just hacks. That's right.
You both know better. You both have records of litigating. And you both would expect more of
nominees in your position because above all, a federal judge must be independent without fear or favor.
And your fear, apparently, of Donald Trump, so much so that you practiced with the White House
before you came here and rehearsed this answer and are repeating by road what you've been
told to say, in my view, is disqualifying. And the answer was, who won? It was the answer to the question,
who won the 2020 election. And you have people who want to be judges who cannot say the words,
Joe Biden won the election. Yeah, and we did a report on this last fall, and we looked at all
their written answers. And then Senator Blumenthal very wisely decided to just start grilling them
in person because he knew that they would dissemble.
none of them will say that Biden won the 2020 election.
They'll give some BS about exact, weird, identical BS about how technically the House certified Joe Biden as the winner.
It's like, well, that's, that happened in January of the following year.
And by the way, the president tried to stop them happening.
And so Blumenthal smartly saying, well, who won the popular vote?
Like, who won the electoral cards?
Ah, they won't say.
And they also won't say that January 6th was an attack on the Capitol.
And, you know, at one point, Blumel said, have you seen the video of,
You know, we've all seen video of the, it's probably the most widely covered insurrection in world history.
Have you seen the video?
Do you see that?
Yes. What did you say?
Well, I'm paraphrasing.
Well, there were instances of trespassing.
There were instances of trespassing on January 6th.
And one of them in writing, who's now, by the way, a sitting federal judge, one of them in writing when asked, was the January 6th an insurrection, said, one of our answers was, well, I wasn't there.
I don't know.
wasn't there. How does one adjudicate anything unless you are in person for the rest of the stuff that might come
possible? This is a big deal. I think it's hard for people who are not lawyers necessarily to appreciate the
like the level in which some of these people think that they're literally priests and a guy like Blumenthal who was a
prosecutor who really strikes me. I have no personal knowledge of him, but strikes me as a guy who thinks
that like lawyers are sacrosanct.
And he's a senator from Connecticut.
Former federal prosecutor.
Totally.
Yeah.
And just sort of like this idea of like, you know, I carry the flame.
Yeah.
He's not a radical.
And when he gets to this point, I think he realizes there's a problem.
I mean, what is striking here is I think, look, the left has been behind caring about the courts.
Like we're like 50 years and, I don't know, $500 million.
behind the right in organizing our base around the courts.
But so some of this stuff isn't immediately obvious.
But what Blumenthal did was essentially expose what we found to be the case in our report, which
was Trump is using these two issues as his political litmus test.
You cannot be nominated for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.
If you don't either earnestly believe this bullshit or two are willing to throw away all
of your professional credibility in order to lie for the president. I mean, it is, it's a test. It's a
test. And the fact that these people bring their families to these hearings and get asked, like,
is the sky blue and they can't, I mean, it's embarrassing. And I think what we found is that this is,
you know, it is, if there is a Supreme Court nomination or two this year, that the fact that they
can answer these two questions essentially proves to people,
that the judges are going to be more loyal to Trump than anything else.
And that is by far we found the biggest liability.
I mean, the biggest liability of any Trump scotis nom this year is that he was the one that nominated them.
Like a majority of voters in the nine Senate swing states, like I'm not saying Democrats.
The majority of all voters in the nine Senate swing states assume that whoever Trump's nominates to the Supreme Court, if he nominate someone this year, will be unqualified.
They just assume whoever Trump is going to nominate is going to be unqualified.
That is shocking.
It is shocking, but it is probably accurate, at least in terms.
Like, I mean, it's also shocking.
It's shocking that they're on top of it in that manner.
I mean, that, to me, is impressive.
Let's play this clip of Chuck Grassley.
Chuck Grassley could be heard in the background.
I think it was, was it Blumenthal or who was it?
No, it was Chris Murphy, I think was.
asking this question. Chris Mer, no, it was, it was, I'm sorry, Coons. Coons was asking a judge,
I think it was the question is, could Trump serve a third term? That was maybe one of them.
And there were other questions about this. And so Grassley could be heard.
You know, maybe it was the Biden, Biden win the election. I think it was one of those three
questions. I feel like it was Chris Murphy. I can't remember, but it doesn't matter because
you can hear Grassley in the background who is aged and often like, like old people don't realize what
their volume is at different times, looks around to his aides and goes, well, what's the problem
with saying that Biden won the election? And like, as if like, dude, have you, where have you been?
And here is Chuck Grassley sort of trying to do cleanup after that exchange with Blumenfall.
When asked about the 2020 election, recent judicial nominees and maybe others have also
given legally correct answers.
Joe Biden was certified as a winner,
but my Democratic colleagues won't accept that.
And they press, and they press again, for a sound bite.
They don't care about the answers.
They just want a clip to go viral.
So my Democratic colleagues attacked.
the nominees.
That's the follow-up.
They go them to weigh into political,
controversial topics.
Political controversial topics,
as in who won the
presidency in 2020?
Also, let's point out a
hearing for a lower
court nominee in the Senate Judiciary
Committee is not
what I would necessarily
think of as like,
spicy internet video.
That's right.
This is not the place where everybody's like,
you know what will really get me exposure?
Asking a question in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about who won the election.
Like the sound bite is because they won't answer the question.
Right.
It's not even like a guarantee that you'll even get talked about on this show.
And if it doesn't happen on this show,
which basically our currency is boring exchanges from...
You know,
as something I actually,
we discovered is that, you know,
First of all, Blumenthal asking these questions is basically the most exciting thing that's happened in the Sen.
Judiciary Committee in years.
And not saying something.
Whoa.
Is that we looked in just on demand justice social, which is not like, we're not like, I don't know, what's the, like, we don't have like this gigantic social.
Just videos of Blumenthal asking these questions, 10 million people have watched, which is, I think says something not just about how undiscovered this part of Trump's attack on.
the justice system is. But also, like, they're just, people are just happy to see it called out.
Like, it's just, people are just relieved that someone's willing to call this out. And,
you know, Blumenthal's anorme on so many things, but he, this is his mission now. He's,
I mean, he's really mad about this. And, you know, we'll see. We saw, um, Fetterman is now
the first, was the first Democrat to. Will you explain the blue slip for people? Because I don't
think they know this. And the history of this is one of the most frustrating things in the world.
because of the way that Republicans and Democrats have come into office and treated the blue slip differently.
So the like the 40,000 foot view is this is a norm in the Senate. It's not even a rule.
It's a norm of courtesy to home state senators for judges nominated from their state.
It's a norm that Republican, that both pretend to uphold, that Republicans have disrespected when it's convenient, but then Democrats have always upheld because
they're worried that the other party might abuse it. I can't remember who was the Republican
chairman of the judiciary before Leahy got back into that chair. I can't remember who was,
probably Grassley. Grassley or Mr. Beauregard Sessions before that. Yes. And they had gotten
rid of the blue slip. In other words, if you were a senator from a specific state and there was a
judge there and you did not return your blue slip, you were basically vetoing that person.
right so if a republican if i'm a senator from a state and a president nominates a judge to sit on
one of the lower court um benches in in my state me and the other senator for for them to get a
hearing in the judiciary committee the two senators need to return what used to be what was called
because it used to be this blue slip basically saying yes i approve this nomination from the president
you could hold a hearing and the norm was if one of the two senators from that state withheld the
blue slip, then that nomination would go nowhere, which was effectively a veto and abused tremendously
under Obama by the Republicans because they were trying everything they could to prevent him from
putting judges in vacant courts. And so, you know, it now no longer really exists for the appeals
courts, for the circuit courts, but it's still. And when Patrick Leahy got into the judiciary,
he said, first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to do is I'm going to.
going to reinstitute the practice of blues lips, basically saying like, they screwed us over
for many years and we're going to show them that we are better people than now.
We can, you know, and this is, and this was, this is sort of the opposite of God bless Harry Reid,
my former Boston and friend, who very smartly in 2013 eliminated the 60-volt threshold for
lower court nominees and everybody said well harry reeds getting rid of this the republicans are going to do it
now it's like no harry we're smart enough to know that republicans will get rid of this rule as soon as it
convenient for them we may as well do it first and actually get some judges on the bench and that smart
political awareness just doesn't exist as much anymore you can still see the implications of that on the
dc circuit today which is the chief uh court dealing with all the administrative
stuff of the U.S. government. And that is what 12, 15 years later, we see that. Totally. That
importance of these lifetime seats. So in the last, so recently was the first time in a second term,
Trump nominated a lower court judge from a state that had a Democratic senator, Michigan and
Pennsylvania. And the hearing for those judges is actually going to be tomorrow. And so the
senators in question who people were watching to see if they would return the blue slip or veto
this nominee, Federman, because there's one Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, and Slotkin and Peters,
the two Democrats from Michigan. Now, we found out at the end of the last week that Federman returned
his blue slip shock to no one. We announced that we were going to run ads against him or anyone
else who returned a blue slip because all these people are cronies. And then we found out
yesterday that both Slotkin and Peters returned their blue slips. However, interestingly,
Slotkin put out a statement that said, look, I return the blue, this is the essence of, look, I return the blue slip.
Do we have that statement?
Let's see.
It's on Peter's website.
They put Slotkin's statement on Peter's website?
Well, we found it first on Peter's website because it's a joint statement from the, it's a statement from the two of them because they both return the blue slip.
And essentially, Slotkin said, look, I return the blue slip, but I've talked to this nominee ahead of time.
and he assured me that he would not duck any of these questions.
Let's, oh, well, let's read it.
We'll put it up here because this is really important because Slotkin is basically, it seems to me, staking her credibility on her capacity to assess this judge.
And she said, according to this press release, I take this responsibility very seriously.
I met with Mr. Martin.
This is the nominee.
A 20-year career prosecutor who has worked through both Democratic and Republican administrations
and asked him direct questions that speak directly to whether he will uphold our Democratic process,
regardless of external pressure, from making clear Joe Biden won the 2020 election to the attack on the Capitol on January 6th,
to being clear that President Trump cannot run for a third term.
These answers were important factors to me, for me, and fundamentally different from President Trump's judicial nominees to date.
I look forward to Mr. Martin conveying the same during his confirmation hearing and to his service on the federal bench, if confirmed.
So in other words, she's saying, I promise you, I've given the blue slip in here.
We're going to put, because once they get to committee, it's over.
It's over.
Because Republicans have a majority.
and the only way you could have stopped this person was if
Senator Slotkin had withhold her blue slip,
but she is saying to the American public,
trust me, I'm a former CIA agent.
I know when someone's lying to my face,
I sat in the room, this person looked to me in the eyes and said,
Joe Biden won the 2020 election,
January 6 was an insurrection,
and what was the,
the third
Trump is not eligible to run for third term. And Trump is not eligible
or a third term. And if that Martin doesn't say the same thing
in the hearings, I mean, presumably
she's going to ask. Well, she's not a judiciary,
but Blumenthal will ask. Okay. And presumably,
so she's, he's going to be asking those questions.
And if this guy dilly dallys, it really speaks
to Slotkin's ability to assess
what's right in front of her face. Yeah, it's
interesting because this is not an ambiguous statement, right? She's basically saying he gave me this
promise. He will be the first, I mean, there's been the first 50 judges of Trump's second term have not
been able to do this. So it will actually be a huge departure if this nominee essentially declares
independence from Trump and it's going to cause problems for every other nominee. I mean,
on one hand, it's, I actually get very positive that she's engaging this because, you know,
before this happened before bloomethal was raised this before we put out this report no one was even
this would no one was even talking about this at all so it's really good that she's raising this
crony problem because frankly this is going to come up with trump's supreme court nominees but
let's be clear if this guy martin does in fact say what she thinks he's going to say yeah
there is a new baseline yes that every other judicial nominee who comes up that's right people are
say, well, I don't understand why you can say, you cannot say this when Mr. Martin said this.
That's right.
Why can't you say this?
That's right.
And look, our theory of the case was that they all said this, gave the same weird, evasive answers
because that's what the White House told them they could say and not anger Trump.
And so it'll be interesting.
So my, I wonder, does the White House counsel know that he's going to answer this question
this way?
because the White House Counsel's Office is responsible for prepping every one of these nominees.
They do mock hearings.
They walk them around to meet with the senators.
They will be in the room.
So presumably the White House Counsel's Office knows how this nominee tomorrow is going to answer this question.
Is it tomorrow?
It is tomorrow at 10 a.m. is the judiciary committee hearing.
I'll tell you something.
If this was at the same time as the Nick Spurs game, I'd be watching the hearing.
Okay.
Did me throw you off?
What's interesting is that, you know, the White House counsel knows about this.
What I'm dying to know, does Donald Trump know about this?
Because if I'm the White House counsel's office, and I know this nominee is going to say this,
I would be damn sure that the president knows this is going to happen before it happens.
He learns about it and then goes on truth social.
Because if he hasn't agreed to tolerate the truth on these two questions, this guy's nomination,
is going to get yanked.
I mean, this is going to be awesome.
I am really looking forward to this.
Yeah.
I am really looking forward to this.
And what's interesting is that this has become...
NAM, Brian.
There's still time to get a train to D.C.
I'm scalping tickets to the Judiciary Committee here.
Is that this has become the standard.
You saw Elizabeth Warren ask the Fed nominee these questions.
You saw a house member ask Marco Ruby this question.
Marco Ruby just sort of steamrolled over it.
But these are the these are a lot like Trump stormed out of that interview on Sunday based on the slush fund in January 6th.
He's obsessed with this stuff.
Yeah.
And so he's, they're still rating ballots to try and prove this BS of the 20.
So.
And to be clear, this is also like, I mean, for him, he's doing it because he's setting up.
He's trying to do something in the midterm elections for everybody else who does this.
it is basically their way of like literally licking the boots it is to it's not that they like the taste
of the leather it is that they want to show i am a good little boy and i will do what you want me to
and this is the way that i i provide that and if one person doesn't do it this is going to be
important because let's just pivot this to the supreme court because this is
because if there is a sense that the Democrats can take the Senate and we should say, too, I mean, there's, well, if there's a sense the Democrats can take the Senate, it's very likely that the people who advise Donald Trump, I don't know if Donald Trump will come up with this necessarily, because he doesn't care.
He's only got two more years as long as he has his justices in there when he's in there.
there. That's what he probably cares about. But I don't know, Leonard Leo or some other Harlan Crow,
somebody else is going to come by and say, hey, Russ Vote is going to come by and say,
we need Supreme Court justices for the next 30 years. I think there's a chance, actually,
that Donald Trump, like he's obsessed with the federal courts now in a way that he wasn't in the
first term. Arguably, it's because of how many judges he sat in front of in between his two terms.
But, you know, no president has ever gone to a Supreme Court oral argument to try and stare down the justices.
You know, he's, unlike the first term, he's announcing every federal judge nominee, like, district court, circuit court, every single one on truth social individually.
Like, he's obsessed with the federal courts now.
And I think there's a part of him that knows that of the three Supreme Court justices that he considers personally loyal, Thomas, Alito and Kavanaugh,
Two of the three are the oldest.
And if he wants the immunity ruling to stand well past he's in office, if he's thinking about
the potential corruption charges, about from the family or anything else, I think he wants
people that are loyal on that court for the rest of his lifetime.
And I also think, frankly, that the Republican movement is not as naive about this stuff
as we were when Ruth, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg essentially stayed in office and died in office because
she did not retire during Obama's presidency. I just think they are much more loyal to their cause than
our people have been. And so I think this is going to, I think there's a, he wants someone
that will answer to him. He wants someone that wouldn't be in the NFL except for him. That's who he
wants on the court. And I think one of the sort of unexplored.
sort of consequences of
Trump throwing Cornyn overboard
Well, I was just going to ask the
The dynamics in the Senate Republican
caucus are fundamentally different now.
He's, you know, he threw Cornyn overboard
and has made the Senate race in Texas competitive.
I do not think he has yet faced
the reality that
those sort of self-inflicted political wounds
that he's caused himself,
I don't think he's yet understood
how they would manifest in a Supreme Court nomination.
So we have 5347 right now.
Correct.
If it's a tie, it's Vance.
That's right.
And let's just play a game where we assume that Cornyn and Cassidy are like, F that guy.
If Martin goes in tomorrow and says Joe Biden won the 2020 election,
January 6th was an insurrection and Donald Trump cannot run for a third turn.
term. But then down the road, they nominate Bill Pulte for a Supreme Court justice or what's his face, that lunatic from Texas.
Sure.
And he gets up there and he says he can't answer those three questions.
And all of the Democrats on that panel can say, Martin could. Are you saying that he was not qualified to be judge or what's going on here?
then Cassidy and Cornyn have a little hook to hang their hat on and say, I'm not voting for this.
That's two.
Who are the other two?
And, well, it could be if she's fighting for her political life.
Susan Collins or Murkowski.
It could even be Dan Sullivan in Alaska.
The other dark horse, Mitch McConnell.
His final F you to Donald Trump.
Dark turtle.
Yeah, but he, everything, everything he did.
Just be a great emoji.
Everything he did was to ensure a Republican court.
I'm a little skeptical.
Especially because his office is running the situation.
Yes, but.
He's barely sent to.
If Trump, we have, we literally were, we have categories of potential shortlisters,
which is much longer because Trump could literally nominate his whatever, it's catty.
So it's much longer.
We have three categories.
I do, Lara.
but she's a girl.
We have three categories.
One is sort of establishment picks that Leonard Leo would approve of.
Federal Senate, like, you know, sitting circuit court judges like Neil Gorsuch, who I think
Trump doesn't trust anymore and thinks they would betray.
He thinks he would be betrayed by it.
Well, that's why he had that falling out supposedly with Leonard Lee.
Correct.
Over the tariffs.
Two, non-judges that would in theory be qualified.
it could be like a Mike Lee or a Ted Cruz.
He won't never nominate Ted Cruz because Ted Cruz would be the first person to stab him in the back once he was on the court.
Well, you can't, and if he nominates a senator, that's one less vote.
Yes.
I mean, the joke is that Ted Cruz, a country's nomination would sail through 99 to zero so that people could get him out of there.
Right.
But the, but Trump would never do it because he know he'd stand him in the back.
The third category, we're literally calling the fuck it category of people that Trump wants on the court.
who shockingly and actually sort of ironically would be the least credentialed by the conservative
movement. And if Trump nominates one of those people, I mean, he's nominated three of his personal
attorneys to the appeals court so far. If he nominates one of these people who, you know,
Republicans can't credibly say, well, they would uphold the Federal Mediation Act or, you know,
that they would be, you know, bona fide corporate conservatives or religious extremists.
That's the type of person who I can see McConnell not necessarily coming out against,
not necessarily saying anything about.
But if Mitch McConnell, if Trump nominate someone and Mitch McConnell for a week says nothing,
that nominee is fucked.
And so, oh, look, I enjoy.
I might. It could also just mean that he's having one of his spells. He can't really talk at all.
I know you're you're looking for people to cleave. I'm just a little, I will say.
But in this instance, so we have three, we need four to survive a tiebreaking vote from J.D. Vance.
What I'm saying is that four months ago, I think I would have said, look, we're going to make this difficult for them.
We think we need to be ready. We think if it's a crony, we can really make this painful for the Republican
Senate candidates in the different states.
Now I'm saying
there is the math that if he chooses
dumbly, if he nominate someone
who he cannot sell to the right-wing legal movement,
they may actually go down.
Interesting.
I'm sure Susie Wiles.
Harriet Myers, right?
I mean, it's like the Harriet Myers thing
when George W. Bush
nominated Harriet Myers,
his like a buddy attorney and then all of a sudden the conservative legal establishment was like no way right
and it really just comes down to like how much time are they going to a lot for someone to retire right like
because it seems to me this is the balancing act that it from the perspective of Donald Trump
I don't want to I don't want to do this too early because Susan Collins is going to have to vote for
this person. And, you know, and McCowski's going to have to vote for this. Even in, you know,
Dan Sullivan and Sherrod Brown is running against the, in Wisconsin, in Ohio, rather.
There could be a problem here. Now, I guess that's not, there's no incumbent, but they're,
they could lose a couple of votes. They could cost. They could. They can,
lose the Senate based upon this.
So you're not going to make that determination until you're close enough to the election
itself where you think the polling is such that we're going to lose.
So we've got to do this, right?
I mean, this is the, but that's a, that's a, you're gaming this out like a rational
political operative, right?
The birthright case is going to come down soon, which is going to create a whole new,
renewed sense of betrayal for Trump that he first experienced when the tariff case.
against him. And I just, I just think that it could be any number of things. He could, he could do
one now and one in October. He could do two right away. He could do two right in October.
I just, like, all I know is that Trump is, his approval is in free fall. And proximity to him is now
radioactive. And if you don't think that the J6 stuff, like, it's not just bits of trivia, right?
It is, if you want evidence that how politically toxic J6 is, look what happened to the weaponization fund.
Like, this is the same thing.
J6 is politically toxic among everybody but the rump of MAGA, right?
Our polling in these swing states show that 71% of all independents disapprove of the J6 pardons.
And the weaponization kerfuffle only made this worse.
And so, I mean, look.
am I sitting here saying we're going to win us, we're going to beat back a, certainly going to
beat back a Supreme Court nomination of Donald Trump. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that right now we
have the calciads are a little better. The calciads. Yes, my insider training racket is, is,
is looking good. What about after, somebody just asked this, and I'm curious about this too,
what about after the election? To the lame duck. Yeah. So I think this could go one of two ways.
my assumption though is it actually makes it it it's a jump ball because on the one hand
it depends i think it depends on how unpopular the pick is and how unpopular trump is at the time of
the nomination because in theory if it is a credentialed pick if it is someone like
you know someone from the fifth circuit that the conservative establishment can get behind
you know, you'd have like a Tom Tellis might feel a need to vote for this person or support this person so that Senate Republican candidates aren't in a weird position of having to say yes or no if there's incumbent senators who are voting no.
So it could be that in a lame deck session, these people are completely liberated.
They feel no obligation to support any of Trump's nominees, especially if it's a crony because, you know, there's no knock on repercussions for Republican Senate candidates who are going to have to.
Like, if I'm Tom Tillis or John Cornyn.
I forgot about Tom Tillis.
Yeah.
Like, he's probably got a little bit of resent, too, I think.
Tillis, Cassidy, Cornyn, Murkowski, Collins,
Selvin, maybe McConnell.
That's like a list of seven maybes.
Right.
So I think that the lame duck could cut either way.
I don't, if I'm anybody with a political sense in the White House,
I'm not risking waiting to the lame duck because I just don't know how the people that I've like,
you know, how.
Plus, if you do it in the lame duck because the Democrats have taken the Senate, you don't do it if they haven't.
Of course.
And in that instance, if I'm John Thune and I'm going to ram this thing through in six weeks, I'm going to be a minority leader.
And well, Chuck Schumer will be like, don't.
Larry.
But I'm going to take him.
But to be clear, even if the Democrats don't win the Senate, even if it's closer, if it's 5149,
Trump has less votes to lose, right?
And so my argument from the beginning is the time that Trump has the most political leverage to confirm a justice that he wants in the Supreme Court or two is between now and the November election and never after.
Well, there it is.
What should people be doing right now, Josh, to prepare for this?
I mean, we have everything up at Demandjustice.org.
In the event of a vacancy, you know, we're going to put up a site that basically has a
whip list right away.
We've partnered with Indivisible.
So that the moment there is a vacancy, you know, we in Indivisible are basically going to
spring into action to start looking at what are the Senate races where that we can play
here.
you know we're going to how do we um basically attack the credibility of a nominee right away um and so
demand justice dot org is where to go to to to be prepared for that if you have a if you're in a
state that has a democratic senator let's say Pennsylvania or Michigan I would be calling and making
sure that they know that that you are watching to see how these nominees perform tomorrow and I would
also if you were it i would also we have on our website 19 senate democrats have voted to confirm
at least one of these trump judges who will not say that january six was attack on the capital or that
biden one in 2020 19 and reuben geigo by the way is one of them so i would say that if you are
constituents of one of those senators one of the problems and one of the reasons that i think
they've been able to can to vote to confirm these trump judges is because they think the democratic
base is not paying attention. So one of the most valuable things you can do is call your Democratic
Senator because Democratic offices very rarely get calls from constituents about judicial noms
that aren't from the right. So if you are a Democratic voter or vote for Democrats in elections,
call your Senate Democratic office and tell them that you are watching whether or not they vote
to confirm these Trump crony judges because they don't think that.
people are paying attention and that's why they think they can horse trade on these things.
And oh, okay. And so for them, um, uh, they're, what they're doing is they're given somebody,
the Republicans a vote ostensibly to get a vote for something else down the road.
Yeah, there's that. The other thing is, where the horse trading?
So yeah, is like, look, I have a, you know, I'm going to vote, you know, will you vote for my
U.S. attorney nominee in two years if I vote for this district court nominee now?
I think there are other things.
There's people like Chris Coons who just,
their egos are such that they see themselves as bipartisan, you know, dealmakers.
They, this is their image of themselves.
Is someone who can work across the aisle.
And maybe just a little bit, we could do a little bit more of our money for Israel.
That's all I'm saying.
By the way, he's not for any of them yet.
One extra missile.
Oh, well, good for Schumer.
Good for Jim.
I waited until you were done with the impression.
You know, I think some of them just see themselves as like, well, voting for a, you know, like, I honestly think if you asked some of these Democratic senators, like, why did you vote for someone who couldn't say that January 6 was an attack on the Capitol?
They would just say, that's just something you have to say.
You know, they're just, you know, and I just think that it's, they treat Trump and all these attacks on our system of justice.
as abnormal everywhere, except in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room because they think
that the base doesn't pay attention to judges.
And so you can't, like, I'll give an example.
The week that Democrats and Senate Judiciary decided to start favorably voting Trump nominees
out of committee this term was literally the week after Comey was indicted by the justice system,
by the Justice Department the first time.
And there were Democratic senators who, I swear to God, at the beginning of that meeting, were denouncing Trump's weaponization of our system of justice and his political prosecution of James Comey.
And then towards the end of the meeting, voting to advance Trump nominees who wouldn't say that he lost in 2020.
I mean, within the course of an hour, those two actions.
Unreal.
That's crazy.
Um, are lastly, the, do you have a sense from talking to, uh, the, the, the, the senators that there is a wide understanding of the possibility or even likelihood of Supreme Court justice hearings?
Do they have lists? Are they preparing for this? Or are we in, um, Diane Feinstein?
Uh, I'm a half.
comatose territory and Blasie Ford, I didn't think it was important and I didn't know we were having a hearing.
I think there are a few who understand that this could be coming.
I think that because there has not been the created incentive structure, because our base has not been activated,
be like it's just not look the right saw essentially corporations basically saw
fiduciary responsibility to corrupt the courts like generations ago right and the republican senators
know that their donors their big corporate donors care more than anything about the courts
and so they have a fire under them to think about every permutation of the federal courts from
the district court up to the supreme court and how they can serve those donors and those
far-right ideologies. We have no such institution. We have no such incentive structure.
So I think there are some senators who I've talked to who are thinking about this deeply.
Are any of them serving in a leadership position in the Democratic Caucus? Probably not.
And beyond that, look, I think indivisible is ready to write to step up to the challenge.
But one of the reasons, this sounds ridiculous to say, that demand justice that we decided to engage in this work is because we looked around and realized that no one else was doing it.
Well, I appreciate you doing it. I mean, you know, Josh, that one of the missions of this show has been over the course of the past 20-some-odd years to encourage people on the left to take the court seriously.
That has been an abject failure, and I am sorry for that. I did my best. Well, let's fail a little less together.
Yes, there we go.
What a lovely sentence.
That is a great slogan.
Josh Orton, do you want to stick around and watch?
Yeah, I'm going to do some fun half stuff.
Yeah, I'll check my messages and I'll hang around.
We may check your messages.
Well, I got a kid in daycare, buddy.
You're on camera.
It's not like we have the ability.
Just hold out for 50 minutes.
Let me fix this for you.
I'm feeling, yeah, yeah.
I mean, you could sit there.
If you want to go to a single, we can put Emma on the single.
No.
me on the single?
Yeah.
We put you on the signal.
Because we just already cut your mic.
You're just now, you're just there.
And I'm good.
You good?
All right, because this is, we got to get to the Dave Rubin and Jillian.
What's her face?
We've got to do this.
Because you work in the judiciary field.
We're being accused of something that is,
maybe this is.
defamation. Are you a, I don't think it is defamation. But this is an interesting dynamic because
Jillian Michaels, do you know who she is? No, who's Julian Michaels? Did you ever watch the greatest
loser? Biggest. Oh, the biggest loser? No, I don't share your. No, I didn't. Well, you're about to.
I didn't know. You're about to see. She was a coach on there and then ended up being a right-wing
talking. This is the show about losing weight? Yeah, but I don't know how she got from there to there.
I don't know how that happened.
But I ran into her on Pierce Morgan about a year and a half ago where she said USAID.
Immediately took a right turn.
Yes.
USAID.
We shouldn't worry about it.
Children starving is a red herring and this and that.
And then, you know, we would mock her from time to time.
Can I just enroll for a second and say when you said, you were about to introduce the subject,
I never in a million years could have predicted that sequence of words and names.
Yep.
There you go.
And, I mean, just even.
Even today.
The biggest loser, Pierce Morgan, USAID.
Yep.
And, yeah, children starving, red herring.
Great.
Or, for that matter, screw worm.
Like, you know, she refused to accept that any of this stuff,
USAID, and did the monitoring of screw warm.
Yep.
And so, you know, we would occasionally mock her, right?
I mean, it was nothing personal.
She just said stupid things.
And that's what our job is in the second half of the show.
Yeah.
And then she put out.
some type of like big notice that she couldn't get left left wing people or the left to debate her
too afraid and to her too afraid and so i said well okay i'll debate you and i can't get people on my
show to debate sam cedar exactly and so uh i went on and it turned out i mean i you know
i think i disassociate in some of these moments um but after we were done like it seemed like
everybody in the internet, on the internet, thought that she had completely embarrassed herself
because she was literally, I would say something, and then she would literally type in something
into AI and answer it by AI. And one point she held up the computer to prove to me that Gemini
had agreed with her or something.
About the speed of enriching uranium. Yeah, or something to that effect.
And, um, sure.
So she's been very, very upset about it.
Yeah.
Since then, she went on to, what's the other show that she went on to?
Matt, Matt, Matt one, Matt when?
She went on with that guy, Madam, Matt one, where, where the guy asked her,
do you like Israel?
He's got an accent.
Oh, Matt.
Maton.
Yeah.
And she got embarrassed there, like right after that.
So she's very sensitive.
And, uh, she's on, uh,
actual friends which is dave rubin's new show and because they're actual friends like the real
yeah yeah and uh so here she is complaining apparently about uh what she regrets um she regrets
ever ever ever going uh like entering the arena yeah talking of ideas i have never in my life
seen it warn you of death threats on social media i did have a run-in with a
a radical leftist recently, which I mentioned to you, Dave.
And I experienced something very similar.
I had a conversation with Sam Cedar.
And literally, they launched a bot campaign on my YouTube,
flagged all of my videos for D.N.
Wait a second. Pause it for one sec.
Now, I want to ask you a question.
I know you're an attorney.
I know you don't know defamation law.
But if she says as a statement of fact that,
we launched a what
literally a bot campaign now I know for a fact
that we did not not only do I not know how to
launch a bot campaign not only have I never paid for any service that would
launch a bot campaign she would be the last person I could ever imagine that
why would I send a bot campaign to her she was doing a bot campaign live in the
debate with you talking to AI
which all these commenters that are supposedly bots pointed out in their chat now should i ask for
an apology like i'm not a litigious person you know this about me uh but should i ask for an apology
from her like this is a i mean i need a public apology she has made an accusation not an opinion
that sam's the type of person who would do this or i think sam's a loser or a jerk or a radical
leftist from my perspective but she you
is accusing me of actually doing something factually, right?
Do you want the real answer or do you want the...
No, I want the real answer.
So I would say, arguably, you are a public figure.
Debatable.
So I'm getting the sort of flattering you on the way to the bad answer.
So because you're a public figure, like she would have to, she would actually have to
know, actively know that this was not true and say it because she was trying to harm you.
would if I was, which is clearly
is just saying it to try and harm me. I mean, I think that's
quite obvious. She's trying to disparage my
reputation. I think
she's trying to save her own reputation.
Well, all right.
Let's reserve that for, now
if I was to email her
and say,
Jillian,
I am telling you right now,
beyond a shadow of a doubt that I did not
send a bot farm to you
or anybody else. I've never had
a bot farm. Never done anything.
with bots.
I demand a retraction.
Does that change the dynamic as to what she knows or no?
Probably not.
I also think that you have not been harmed by this in any way.
Are you kidding?
You're sitting right there thinking I'm the type of person who maybe puts bots out.
I actually think you should ask her what a bot campaign is.
Like I would like her to, like what is that?
Maybe she heard this.
Isn't she actual friends with Anna Kusparian who accused?
us of...
Not since...
No.
No, actual enemies.
Actual enemies.
They fell out.
Let's go back and listen to what I consider.
Well, she said that Kamala Harris
did
paid ads on our campaign. I don't know.
It seems in the similar vein.
With Sam Cedar
and literally
they launched a bot
campaign on my YouTube,
flagged all of my videos for demonetization.
I have something called
LifeLock to protect my credit.
I have never in my life
seen it warn you of death threats on social media. I have
I had as of last week it stopped now finally like 95
death threats on social media. It was they sent bots. I have like on
the one video that we did together there are 9,000 comments
and 100,000 views. So Red Seat had to deal with the back end of
my channel because they thought I was like buying engagement. It was a
nightmare. And what's funny is that before we engaged in that
conversation, I didn't even remember interacting with Sam Cedar. I didn't even know who he was,
only to find out that there were numerous videos of himself and, you know, the Hassan Pikers,
Hassan Piker calls this guy Uncle Sam and this group called Vanguard, and they already said,
hell yeah, death threats to this email I'd set up for the podcast. It is exactly, Dave. They're the same
people cut from the same cloth. It is exactly what you dealt with.
And you get to the point where you're like, all right, you know what, I really want civil discourse.
There is a faction of the left that is truly mentally unwell.
Wow.
And then quick sidebar, back to the original topic at hand.
Wait, wait, wait.
So I just have to say for a second, so is this her basically foreclosing the possibility of debates with other leftists in the future because of such a horrible experience?
It wasn't because you manhandled her in the debate.
saying that in a colloquial way and not in a way that refers to her gender, because I know
she's sensitive to some of these things. But it wasn't the fact that you manhandled her in the
debate. It's the fact that the left has all of these bot farms. And if she were to set up another
debate with a leftist, she could get even worse death threats. I have a suggestion for a remedy.
Really? Yeah. Okay. So I think the remedy here should be that you demand a cut of the revenue from
that live ad for a life block.
Well, that she gave from Lifelock.
Yes.
I mean, fair.
I, you know, I have gotten death threats on social media, but LifeLock has never contacted me.
I'm not sure that's something they do.
I don't know that that's what they do.
That's sort of interesting.
But I guess what I take issue with her is, like, how does she know it's not like the Maton people?
Like, she embarrassed herself in multiple shows.
in a short period of time.
And that is, I think, not best practice.
Because if you're going to embarrass yourself on a show,
you should make sure that there's sufficient time
for you to assess where the criticism is coming from,
rather than going and embarrassing yourself on another show just days later.
You need to spread these out.
So you get a sense of, like, am I getting blowback from embarrassing myself here or over there?
Yeah, look, I don't think anybody should have, should, no one should be subject to death threats.
I just think that, like, oh, I agree.
I find it hard to believe that she is.
I just, that it has not been my experience that losing a rhetorical debate to you make someone the target of violent threats.
Which is why she says it's bots.
Seems unlikely.
I think people would probably go and celebrate.
By criticizing her, but not, I would say, a death threat.
That seems ridiculous.
But it really does seem like she doesn't want to do this again.
Also, can I ask, what is Dr. Drew doing here?
He's an actual friend.
He's an actual.
He's an actual friend.
He's an actual friend.
Is there more of this?
I mean, we can go to the Rubin one.
Oh, yeah.
Let's go to, now here, Dave Rubin is on there, and he, Dave Rubin.
He's on there.
He's on there.
He had a very similar experience to Gillian Michaels, which was.
was he decided to do an internet thing and was completely embarrassed.
In fact, Peers Morgan, well, you know, I'm not like, I'm not a Pierce Morgan head or whatever they, whatever his fans are called.
I'm not a Pierce Morgan Stan.
Pears Morgan actually had a segment that was entitled something like, is this the internet stupidest person?
Yeah, dumbest man on the internet.
Dumbest man on the internet talking about Dave Rubin.
With all the people that dunked on him in the Jubilee.
And so what's going on between these actual friends is like Chris Cross.
I cover for you.
You cover for me.
And then we can try and escape the, like he's the dumbest man on the internet.
She's the dumbest woman on the internet.
But not when they're actual friends and crisscross.
And I honestly believe, I honestly believe several of them would have killed me if given the opportunity, truly.
And you all know my guy, Joey, who works for me.
And he said to me after, he's just note that a Dave clips is who inserted the amusing.
Yes, this is when Dave Rubin is talking about going into the Jubilee and that he thought that they could have actually killed him.
Well, you know, his friend Joey.
His friend Joey, who is a security guy.
I should say, I went to the Jubilee.
I did not have security.
I guess that was a mistake.
He said, Dave, I made a choice halfway through that if one of them was going to attack you, I was going to get involved.
Because that's the level of tension.
Like, I could feel the daggers coming at me.
The ones that mostly they had horrible scowls on their faces, but the ones that smiled at me actually seemed like the most dangerous because they were like Joker smiled.
And the weird Joker smiles, it was so distracting and so unpleasant.
You can't have discourse.
I don't know how you pulled it off.
You know, truly, I, to sit around 20 people that have nothing but hatred for you,
like there wasn't even a, I tried my best.
I kind of didn't want to do it because I just didn't do enough versions of the internet
and dealt with the hate and whatever.
My team really wanted me to do it.
I was like, you know what, I'll give it, I'll do it, whatever.
It's not a big deal.
I tried to say, I'll show you a little respect to start this thing.
They offered nothing for two.
two hours and 55 minutes.
I think I did a very nice job.
I did have one blitz moment.
I kind of blanked on something.
Oh, pause for one second.
Now, you don't work in the intelligence services, but when someone does this, when you say something,
that sort of means like it's a tell, right?
They tell you with the FBI, like, that's a big tell.
Also, has he, did he watch any Jubilee before?
I mean, the- He didn't prepare.
The premise of the show is that there is one person.
willing to debate and be surrounded by people who strongly disagree.
That's the premise of the show.
Yeah, but nobody said anything about scowls.
Nobody said, but not scowls, the smiles, which are even scarier.
I also like how he said his security guy said he made the decision halfway through
that if somebody went after him, he would interject as if that was a threshold call.
Maybe he was just there with a button.
I guess I would have interjected.
I decided halfway through I'd do my job.
Probably.
I probably protect you.
This is the way that they're market,
it's like they're appealing to people who are a little bit unwell and shut in.
Because like the thing about,
it reminds me people talking about demonic possessions.
Like,
oh yeah,
when they smile at you,
I saw some of the demonic in it.
It's also just anti-social rich people behavior.
Like,
this is the only time they've had to interact with anybody who like gets a
paycheck and lives off that paycheck.
Right, right.
And they were disgusted.
Because he goes in to talk about how their breath smelled and shit.
I have to say, I, I think it is just him running as fast and as hard and infuriously as he can from the abject humiliation he suffered.
And this is the way you do it.
Like literally like, they smelled.
Don't pay attention to the words.
Pay attention to their faces.
Then you might think I won the debate.
How many people have done this Jubilee thing?
Like, lots?
Many, many, many.
I mean, like, you know, you had, like, Dr. Mike did one with Vax.
Yeah.
Like, with anti-vaxxers, who I think it's safe to say strongly hold their views.
Really? Okay.
Like, what, like, look, the premise of this thing is that you're going to take on people who disagree with you.
If you fail, if you're not good at it, you're not good at it.
Well, to be fair to Dave, it's possible that he didn't know he was going in to do the Jubilee,
but that he was driving somewhere.
That's right.
And someone kidnapped him and dragged him in there with his buddy.
We'll let you bring your security guy, but that's it.
And took like a mask off and then he's sitting there.
That would be scary.
That would be very scary.
under those circumstances, I think it would explain why he brought up premises that he could not defend.
Under those circumstances, he did great.
He did great under those narrow circumstances.
But let me just say publicly to Gillian Michaels, I think it's appropriate for you to take back the thing you said about the bots, because that's a total lie.
if the rest of the stuff is true, you should show us.
Because I, you know, I never got that complaint before about death threats.
Never.
It's sort of shocking because we've done many debates before.
But I will say this, that any member of this audience who behaved in that manner, commissary privileges, gone.
Gone.
No exceptions.
No exceptions.
Wow.
No dessert for multiple weeks.
Strong statement.
I don't know how many times I told her in our email exchange that I hate mudslinging.
Like there's no way we would do a bot campaign against her.
I also want to read out Brian's emails to her and like for irony.
But also like knowing Sam for a long time, like winning the debate is like the, that's the payoff.
Oh my God.
Doing the debate usually, although I will say with this one I did get a lot.
a little bit exhausted by the end.
I was like, oh, he...
But then afterwards, I have to say,
I do have to say that afterwards,
like I said, I disassociated, I think, during it.
At one point, I was just like,
I can't believe I let myself do this.
How long were you doing?
Your team wanted you to do it.
My team wanted to do it.
My team pressured me to do it.
I didn't really want to do it.
I was doing it.
Like, it was like, it felt like forever.
I think it was 90 minutes.
And, um,
By the end, it looked like you were in a sauna for 90 minutes.
Yes.
I mean, I was just like, okay, I got to go.
And, but it wasn't until after, because I had really forgotten everything we talked about while we were talking.
When people started mocking her, they realized like, oh, that was probably fun for me.
Probably fun.
I probably enjoyed that.
You became aware of the emotions you probably had previously.
Yeah. It takes me a while sometimes. I'm not necessarily in touch with my feelings. No. Do we have anything else that we feel like we should get to today or we had a lot of stuff on that list?
I have like the sound sheet's done for tomorrow.
Yeah.
Yeah, we got a lot of stuff on there. Well, we'll get to that later.
Josh Orton, real pleasure. Folks should go over to Demandjustice.org.
and check it out, support your organization, very, very important.
And, you know, the courts, nothing's going to happen.
We're not going to be able to do anything.
I don't care who gets elected president.
Not going to be able to do anything unless we do something about the courts.
Yeah, like any agenda of a next Democratic president is going to run into the buzzsaw of the Roberts majority unless there is radical change to the court.
Thank you, Josh, for coming on.
International socialists said, have you noticed the Bolivian government is ramping up military reaction to the popular uprising?
We're going to have somebody on tomorrow.
Confirmed.
That's fantastic.
Matt, Brian, Emma, great job today.
Josh, you were also pretty good.
Thank you.
Great job, Josh.
Thank you.
Folks, we will see you tomorrow.
to get to where I want
But I know somehow
I'm going to get there
When I just got caught
Between the truth and a life
