Timcast IRL - Trump Is Now President, Biden Pardons His WHOLE Family, Fauci & Others w/Rep Ro Khanna

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

Tim, Phil, & Josie are joined by Rep. Ro Khanna, James Klug, & Tyler O'Neil to discuss Trump pardoning nearly 1500 J6ers on his first day as president, Joe Biden pardoning Anthony Fauci right before Trump was sworn in, Joe Biden issuing a full & unconditional pardon for his family, & Trump shutting down the immigration app CBP One. Hosts: Tim @Timcast (everywhere) Phil @PhilThatRemains (X) Josie @TRHLofficial (X) Serge @SergeDotCom (everywhere) Guest: Rep. Ro Khanna @RoKhanna (X) Tyler O'Neil @Tyler2ONeil James Klug @realJamesKlug (X) Rep. Ro Khanna is a Democratic congressman from California, known for advocating progressive policies on technology, economic justice, and foreign policy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nope, that's Josie. Say hi, Josie. Hi. Ladies and gentlemen, today was a monumentous day. Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president, solidifying himself as only the second president to serve a non-consecutive term. Of course, that was Grover Cleveland. And then, wow, did a lot happen. As we were preparing for this show, 1,500 J6 defendants roughly have been pardoned.

There have been a series of executive orders already pertaining to the southern border. We've seen riot police lining up at the southern border, shutting down ports of entry. Joe Biden, before leaving the office of the presidency, issued blanket pardons for the J6 committee, Mark Milley, and Dr. Fauci, which we think is kind of strange. And then, with five minutes to go, as Donald Trump was about to be sworn in,

issued blanket pardons for his entire family, going back 11 years for nonviolent offenses. So we have a lot of news to break down. Today is absolutely insane. Elon Musk is under fire for a strange gesture, the media calls it. He says he was throwing his heart out to the crowd, but it looked an awful lot like what they call the Roman salute. So now we've got a million one stories. But I do think going over everything that is happening happening right now with the with the presidency of Donald Trump and as we speak live now, Trump is still signing executive orders. We've got some video of this. It's insane.

There are some some reports say between 100 and 200 executive orders. So before we get into all the news, make sure you head over to cast brew dot com. Pick up some cast brew coffee. We've got two weeks till Christmas. We're three weeks from Christmas, but it's okay. Phil is still dressed like Santa Claus. And I'm assuming we're just out of Ian's graphene dream. What do we have? We have 680 bags left. Ian sells this stuff like hotcakes. If you want to support the show, you can buy our coffee at Cast Brew. Of course, the other news the other day, of course, was that Joe Biden declared the 28th Amendment, the Equal Rights Amendment, which I find offensive. Because if you go to boonieshq.com, you can pick up the real 28th Amendment skateboard. And that is the right to keep, bear, and breed chickens shall not be infringed.

And I just want to give a shout out to that picture of that little chicken right there. It is amazing. And, of course, as always, become a member at timcast.com to support our work directly. We have a Green Room episode. That's right. Before this show went live, we recorded ourselves talking about all of this crazy shenanigans, talked a lot about health, talked about philosophy of authoritarianism and libertarianism and when the government should intervene. So if you want to support the show and watch that uncensored segment, become a member at TimCast.com. But it is an honor and a privilege today. Smash the like button, share the show.

We've got someone whose insights I think will be particularly interesting, considering this is a Republican victory. We are being joined by Congressman Ro Khanna. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to mixing it up. Absolutely. Do you want to just briefly introduce yourself? Sure. I'm Ro Khanna.

I represent Silicon Valley in the United States Congress. And I went to inauguration, didn't boycott it, because I believe that you have to respect the American people. And we can get into what everyone thought. Yeah, this is going to be interesting, of course. We've got a whole bunch of really awesome people, of course. James Klug is here. What's going on, everyone?

James Klug, host of the James Klug YouTube channel, and apparently the only person wearing a tuxedo in this room, but that is all right. You guys, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. I'm wearing a baseball field. What would you expect of me? Josie's here. Hi, I'm Josie. I'm the redheaded libertarian. I do outside media work at timcast.com, and I have a show called Spaces X Josie and where I talk to really cool people, interview really cool people celebrities and congressmen and you know people are important to the culture war and then I have a channel

called 1776 X Josie where I talk about revolutionary history We've got Tyler O'Neill Yeah, managing editor at the Daily Signal like to say I was born in the People's Republic of Boulder but revolted into orthodoxy in early youth. Grew up in Golden, went to Hillsdale College, wrote a book, but we can talk more about that later.

Yeah, we did talk a bit about that on the uncensored Green Room show, which people can find at TimCast.com. Interesting conversation. We are basically talking about whether or not Trump is going to succeed in destroying the tentacles of the beast. We'll see. And Phil is here. Hello, everybody. My name is Phil Labonte. I'm the lead singer of the heavy metal band All That Remains. I'm an anti-communist, counter-revolutionary. Let's jump of the beast. We'll see. And Phil is here. Hello, everybody. My name is Phil Labonte. I'm the lead singer of the heavy metal band All That Remains.

I'm an anti-communist, counter-revolutionary. Let's jump to the first big story. Ladies and gentlemen, Trump pardons roughly 1,500 criminal defendants charged in the January 6th Capitol attack. The sweeping pardons would mark the beginning of the end of one of the largest investigations in FBI history. They say that President Donald Trump said on Monday that he was issuing roughly 1,500 pardons

and commuting the sentences of six of his supporters in connection with the J6 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol when thousands of them stormed the building amid his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him. He made the remarks after returning to the White House Monday evening. An attorney for Enrique Torrio, the Proud Boy leader convicted of seditious conspiracy, told NBC News on Monday that his client was being processed for release from FCI Pollock, a medium security federal prison in Louisiana.

Tarrio is serving 22 years in federal prison after being convicted of seditious conspiracy. He is being processed out. Now, there's a viral tweet that I believe it's from his mom saying that he is out of prison. So we expected this. Trump said he was going to do it. The rumor is that I suppose, as he's saying, some of those who are violent and did go to prison and were convicted have been commuted. And then it's a blanket pardon for some fifteen hundred other people. I'm curious what you guys think. I'm curious what you, Congressman, think about all of this. Well, look, I was there in the Capitol. I was in the Cannon building when that took place. And here's my view of it. If someone was out there caught up in the protest

that just showed up and was swept in and went inside. I have a very different view of it than people who smash down buildings, threaten people with violence, hit law enforcement officers. So I don't know the pardons, but my guess is that some of the people, from what you're saying, who pardoned it, actually engaged in violence and destruction of property. And my view is I thought Trump was going to be against crime. I mean, the law and order president. So why is why is any kind of violence on federal property, not zero tolerance? Do you mean so this I think there's only six commutations you're saying of the 15, you think it's likely that some of those probably did engage in violence?

Yeah. And the person for the seditious conspiracy, I mean, did he if 22 years, you're sent to 22 years, you probably have done something that led to an imminent threat of violence. Maybe not. Wasn't he probably done something is a dangerous way to phrase it. Well, I trust the law. I trust the jury process there. And yeah, I mean, we're probably going to disagree on this issue. But I fundamentally believe that you can't go into the Capitol or plan things to go into the Capitol and engage in violence. That's different. Look, there were school teachers, there are dentists. They show up. They wanted to show their support. They got caught up in a frenzy.

The doors are open. They go in. If they don't threaten anyone, don't have violence. I get that there was some of that that was taking place, and I wouldn't go after that. But the people who were engaged in actually breaking the buildings, hurting law enforcement officers, or planning to do that, those people should be held accountable. I completely agree. I think that's why I've said commutation makes sense only because if someone shoved a cop or pushed him three years, four years is a long time to be in prison for shoving a cop. But for people who didn't know what was going on and walked into a building when the gates were down or open and got trespassed, I agree with. I'm curious. Well, I think the biggest problem here is trusting that process, right? Because it was obviously abused. I have a friend. He's a photojournalist. He's independent.

He was there that day. He's not he wasn't even a registered Republican, but he was in there. He went inside, took photos and walked out. He ended up getting sentenced to four years in prison for doing just that. So when it comes down to the actual process, it was obviously being abused there. They're painting him in court as a hardcore Trump supporter. And this was an insurrection and, you know, painting him that way in court. That's obviously completely a completely abused system right there, because getting walking around, nonviolent, didn't do anything violent, walking around, taking photos, and getting four years from that, that's completely unimaginable.

And there were a lot of enhancements on the sentences that turned out to be all unconstitutional by SCOTUS. They were adding to the sentences where they shouldn't have been. But to add to all of this, George Washington. You can tilt your mic down. Okay. better yeah okay good i feel more comfortable george washington pardoned everybody who participated in the whiskey rebellion and then abraham lincoln and andrew johnson pardoned everybody all the um the confederates so it's kind of a thought that once this is done, once you've made it through, once one side has won and one side has lost, quote unquote, just it's good. It's good for the

country to just move forward and not to hold on to it, just to just to start to heal in that way. What do you think about that? I think, first of all, if it was a Democrat engaged in reconciliation, that's different than your old party. But look, that's why I said if someone was there, if this photojournalist is true, that he just walked in and took pictures. And if those facts are true, then I'd be very sympathetic to that person not being behind jail. And in general, I do think we have to find ways to come together as a country. But there were people who actually smashed the Capitol building, who committed assault against law enforcement officers. And that should just be, forget the politics of it. I view the Capitol as a sacred place. Do you believe in the pardons for the Confederates, who probably did some pretty bad

things too? As much as some of the pundits want us to think we're in a civil war, we're not. So I think that was a different context. Let me ask you this. So I think the challenge that many of us have is on May 29th, 2020, there were several thousand far left activists, I would say many of them extremists, who tore down the barricades of the White House, firebombed the White House grounds, set fire to St. John's Church. We did not see Capitol Police launch an investigation. We did not see FBI raids across the country. The president was forced into the emergency bunker. The corporate press, the media mocked him over it, calling him bunker boy. So that happened well before January 6th. Seeing the photos of the

smoke rising up in D.C. all across the city from the chaos and the rioting, seeing no law enforcement action. For me, I'm kind of like, well, what else is new? I've been covering protests for a decade. Then when January 6th happens to see a nationwide raid that actually resulted in there was a woman in Alaska who was wrongly identified. They stormed her house. And I'm thinking to myself, they're willing to send the feds to Alaska to raid the wrong woman's home. And they won't even do a simple local investigation into who set fire to St. John's Church. More importantly, who firebombed the guard post at the White House? I mean, the White House grounds was on fire.

Yeah, there was about 60 Secret Service agents that were injured that night. Dozens of police officers, dozens of vehicles, obviously St. John's Church as well. There should be accountability for that. I'm not defending left rioters and protesters. And if they are committing damage to the White House, if they're threatening law enforcement officers, absolutely. They should be going to prison for that. I mean, after a trial. I get your point. You're saying that the police, you feel the law enforcement are singling out people because they're conservative in supporting Donald Trump in a way they aren't on the left. Now, I'll tell you, on the left,

they feel the opposite in this country. I mean, it's everyone where is coming from their perspective of bias. The left says, no, the cops target folks on the left more. My view is how do we get to a point in this country where we can agree that we should allow for protests, give people the benefit of the doubt. But when people are engaged in violence, there should be zero tolerance. Honestly, it seems like the Democrat standard right now, just pardoning every single person, even if they were violent, even if they did do crazy things. That's like the Democrat standard right now, just pardoning every single person, even if they were violent, even if they did do crazy things.

That's like the Democrat standard that I've noticed the last four years. So maybe we just do that. Yeah, I really don't. I don't want to. I don't want to engage in whataboutism. And I share your opinion. But it's really hard to say that, you know, we need to hold the J6 rioters accountable and that we do have to worry about the rule of law when, you know, there was there have been multiple times. Not that I'm not going to get specific because, again, I don't want to get into what about ism.

But there have been multiple times where it seems like one political opinion is suppressed and and another political opinion isn't. So it's really so I agree with you and i understand your position but it's really hard to to accept that it's that now it matters when there have been multiple times in the past you know five or so years i mean that that hasn't been the standard the george floyd riots were exactly the worst we've seen in decades the most destructive in u.s history uh i think it's somewhere in the mid-20s of confirmed deaths from the rioting. $30 billion or something like that in damage? There were an additional 10 deaths from ancillary instances. There was the murdering of retired officer Dorn, I believe.

A police department was burned to the ground. A federal building was under siege for 30 days. No, no, it was over 100 days. It was over 100 days. So that was over 100 days. They had the CHAZ and the CHAD where they actually i mean they murdered two people i completely agree with you and i and in that i would love to be able to say you know we should we should stop having these kind of this kind of like ignoring the law and stuff but it's it's really really tough to be like well we're going to be

the people that are going to actually start doing that And we expect the opposing political party to do the same when we don't really see that same kind of that same kind of the incentive, you know, feeling from the left. So when that double standard we see over and over and over again. And I think it's really interesting. We're talking about Enrique Terrio, who is a Proud Boys leader. The Southern Poverty Law Center brands the Proud Boys as a white supremacist group. Enrique Terrio, as you guys should know, is black and Hispanic. So, like, again, this kind of thing. And, of course, the SPLC monitoring hate, unless it's Antifa, unless it's, you know, Jane's Revenge. So, yes, we should have a blind justice system that treats attacks on

police and attacks on federal buildings as serious, no matter which side you're coming from. We should also have a little bit more of an investigation in the pro-abortion vandalism and violence that we saw. Oh, yeah. I mean, I mean, it's like there's case after case after case where we can say and I do say in this book about the weaponization of law enforcement, that there is a clear bias. And I understand, you know, a lot of people on the left feel embattled, too. And it's partially because we have these echo chambers where we say, oh, we're the ones who are in battle. We're the ones who are in the world of victims. But if you look at this issue of crime.

The left has a lot more sway you have a lot more prosecutors who've been funded by george soros and the open society foundations around the country we have more prosecutors i don't know the facts that there's 72 how many are there of funded by george soros yes he he did like 72 elections so how many yeah i don't i don't know how many are still in thousands i think but they're well i think it's i think it's like in cities yeah but the locations that has the main thing is the blue cities where they've taken over it's emboldened crime because they're not prosecuting people 23 2,300. The policy is called restorative justice. The idea that people that have been in oppressed groups or marginalized groups have to be treated differently under the law, which is completely and totally antithetical to what we're talking about.

That's antithetical to the Constitution. That's antithetical to what our country was built on. When it comes to the Declaration of Independence, the grievances 8, 9, 18, and 19 all deal with captured courts, and the grievances 12 and 15 deal with two tiers of justice. I feel like the large shift that we've seen politically, like how Donald Trump ends up winning the popular vote, comes from a lot of moderates. You see Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., even someone like me. We are all liberal. I never consider myself like a Democrat Democrat. But if I wouldn't vote it, it was just like straight Democrat. The one or two times I ever did. And then what ends up happening is I watch the news. And what do I see? I see

far left rioters throwing firebombs, smashing things repeatedly over and over again. I personally end up going down and covering some of these riots and these protests. And I see instances where they get arrested. I was at Trump's inauguration in 2017. And there were hundreds of far left extremists who set fires, smashed windows. A limousine was torched. It was owned by an immigrant. It was a contractor who was doing rides. Numerous fires. And then they mass arrested several hundred people. I ended up getting caught up in what they call a police kettle. And I, as well as a few other journalists, presented our press cards, waited patiently,

and eventually got released. These individuals who got arrested, who were clearly engaged in violence, ended up not only having their charges dropped, but they sued the federal government and won over a million dollars. So here's someone like me where it's like, you know, I grew up Chicago, liberal, punk rock, all that stuff. And then I'm like, oh, that's how it goes. Then I see a bunch of right-wingers go out and protest and it's nationwide manhunt. And to the point where, well, I certainly agree anybody who's violent should go to jail. You hit a cop, you go to jail for that, you know? I met one couple that showed up to the Capitol

several hours after everyone had already left and there were just people standing in the lawn. They walked up an open sidewalk up to a building where the doors were wide open, no broken glass on the other side of the building. And they walked in and looked around and didn't know what was going on, didn't see anything and then just left. And then I think it was a year later, they got their home raided. And this man and this woman were sentenced to 18 months in prison.

And they had no idea why. So when I see something like that, I think that is why you end up with people saying, Trump, pardon everybody. We don't trust the system anymore. We've seen too much violence go. I mean, you had those two individuals in New York who were giving out Molotov cocktails.

Got a slap on the wrist. You talking about the lady that firebombed the car was in Philadelphia, I'm thinking about. Two lawyers were giving out Molotov cocktails in New York City. Yeah. And they ended up getting a slap on the wrist. No federal charges.

Akash Patel talked about it. Right, right, right. So that breaks my confidence in the justice system being fair and reasonable. And then when someone comes to me and says that Donald Trump is guilty of a crime, I say, yeah, I'm reading those documents. Someone comes to me and says,

Enrique Tarrio committed seditious conspiracy. I say, yeah, right. I just don't believe it. I can't believe it. And I think that's the reasonable take, not that it's wrong, but to start from a place of skepticism and then say, show me the actual evidence, because the word of a jury in a 90% Democrat district is not enough for me to believe someone actually did something wrong, at least right now. Well, and that's the real tragedy of all of this, is that the weaponization of the prosecutions is the one thing. And of course, not a majority of the prosecutors across the country

have been supported by George Soros. That wasn't what I was. I think you're saying more liberal. I was saying, yes, they tend to be more liberal. These rogue prosecutors tend to represent the cutting edge and they're seen as the cutting edge among the prosecutor community. And then you see many of these examples over and over again, where there is not equal justice applied. And usually that's because of the prosecutors. Sometimes, unfortunately, it's also because of the juries. And I love our system of justice. I think the jury having the ultimate say is, you know, it's ideal. But the problem is we're almost living in two different worlds where the right and the left can't see eye to eye on almost anything.

Let me ask you this, especially because we're on Martin Luther King Day. If I concede that there were some people who, like your couple went in, shouldn't have been prosecuted for 18 months. And I also will tell you that anyone who engaged in violence, looting, rioting, whether they're doing it in the L.A. fires right now should be locked up, or if they did it in response to George Floyd, which was, in my view, a total case of police gone broke. But if the response to that has to be in the King's tradition of peaceful protest.

Would you, though, concede that historically and still today, if you're black in America, there is still often bias from the police force where you could be pulled over uh in a way that you wouldn't be if you were indian or if you're in a certain neighborhood and can you understand from the other perspective of some of these folks who were protest i'm not justifying it how they see what you see is the law enforcement biased against those who are conservative and they're saying uh no the law enforcement actually has been in certain places biased against us. Or do you think we're, well,

there could be some bias there. The way the media covers it makes it suggest like it's a epidemic and it's not, I absolutely want answers. I will not concede that. Uh, and, and the reason why is from,

from a logic standpoint, it would be impossible for a person or largely impossible for a person to know what the experience of another race is. So we hear stories and we are told that black people in this country experience bias at the hands of police officers. I actually believe some of these stories are probably true, but it's hard to quantify it literally or numerically. And so the issue I run into is from the South Side of Chicago myself, I saw no difference between the Mexican, white, mixed Asian, black people in my community when the cops were giving us, were hassling us. Then I see these stories from the left where they say the talk, something that white people don't understand. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Everybody in my neighborhood

got the talk. When you were a kid in the South Side of Chicago, be it white, black, Mexican, Asian, no matter what you were, your parents told you, if you get pulled over, you turn your car off, you put the keys on the dash,

you turn the dome light on, you turn the radio down, wallet on your dash, hands on the wheels, and don't move because a cop could shoot you. Everyone got that story. So then when I'm told that there are these racial disparities because cops are treating

certain minority groups a certain way, I say, okay, tell me the story. I hear a story from someone who's a minority, be it black, Mexican, or Indian or otherwise. And I say, that's crazy. I can't believe that happened to you. I have stories too. But then people tell me my stories don't count. Or what ends up happening to me is if I say I'm mixed, they say, see, it proves it. If I don't tell them I'm mixed, they say, you're white, you don't understand. There's, for me... You're getting to the heart of the issue, I think. I think, and part of the reason Trump won, is that there are a lot of people in working class neighborhoods, white working class neighborhoods, who have suffered tremendously because jobs were offshored because of the opioid crisis, because they have not had economic opportunity.

And one can say that is true and not deny their experience or look down upon them or make it kind of a pyramid of suffering or victimhood and still acknowledge, in my view, that race also has a factor. And that doesn't take away from the issue of people who are white and working class. And I think that's part of the challenge in this country, is how do we have that conversation? I think humans are tribal, so race plays a factor. Politics can also play a factor. When you are perceiving someone who's different from yourself, and you haven't been trained, as I think many of us rightly were in this room,

to judge someone based on the content of their character, not the color of their skin, it's very easy to see in the other something that you dislike, that you think they're singling you out, that they're're being you know i i think that inherent distrust of tribalism is at the root of a lot of the perceptions of this supposedly widespread we had a video from uh do you guys know king randall personality i think we've had him on the show before yeah he's a black man and he made a video just last last week and he said i can't believe this happened to me. I got pulled over by the police.

And he films himself as he gets pulled over. And the officer basically says, you know, I pulled you over. He's like, no. He's like, what are your speed? He says, okay, license and registration. He hands him his ticket and says, just sign here. It's not an admission of guilt. It's just a knowledge of the receipt.

He signs it and says, slow down for me, buddy. He says, you got it. Thank you, sir. And that's it. End of story. Congressman, I think today, like I think agreeing with your point, maybe back in the day was certainly more easy. It's pretty fair that discrimination was pretty rampant in policing, let's say, in the 50s,

right? Early 90s. I would say, yeah, yeah, sure. 60s, 70s, whatever. But today, I would argue that there's probably more demand for that racism than there actually is supply. Look no further than all the hoaxes we've seen recently uh how much democrat politicians leverage this push this on their audience i mean i genuinely i interview people all around the country and most people are pretty darn good

right you talk to a lot of people they're honestly pretty great people but you do run into people that genuinely are like fearful of of white people walking around because they believe that maybe they're connected to the proud boys or they're they're they're racist and they'll hunt them down in the street or something like that there's like in what reality is this the case or how is this even possible but it's because people politicians and media figures leverage this stuff to a lot of times push fear on the american people i genuinely don't think there there's that much supply for it today as there is demand for it. I will tell you, though, I do think systemic racism exists. And so I'll clarify what that means, because I know a lot of people in the audience are going to say, Tim, you're wrong. There are systems that were built over a long period of time back when this country had overtly

racist laws and policies that remain in effect as barriers. For instance, redlining and blockbusting, which were legal practices in Chicago and in many other places, left behind structural remnants that exist today. So if someone comes to me and says, my family is impoverished largely due to the actions taken in the 1950s, which segregated us, and now we are struggling to get out of this area, that's absolutely 100% factually correct. The issue of individual biases, I think you made a great point about humans being tribal. I do agree with and think exists. But I think, you know, outside of these structures, we have largely passed these

laws to make that all illegal. And now I think the majority of the population is trying to avoid being racist. And they don't like being called racist. And we don't want that to be the principal issue. I do think we've largely dealt with it from a legal point. And now it's going to require, you know, I think we have to be cognizant of these systems, redlining and blockbusting, for instance, for those who don't know, redlining was when real estate companies would only sell property to black people in an area near the red line in Chicago, creating isolated pockets of racial segregation. And that results in, you don't have the same industry, you don't have the same tax base, you don't have the same schools, you don't have the same skill sets as a robust, eclectic,

you know, educated area. Being aware of that, I think is important. But I think blaming cops and calling them racist when, you know, police departments in big cities are even right. They have affirmative action for the past 20 or 30 years. I would say I think we may have swung the pendulum a little bit too far in the other way, which is causing more problems. Well, part of the challenge, I think, is that we've been having these conversations in silos. So if someone says your point that you think that there isn't as much racism, the reaction on the left often could be,

well, that's just a racist thing to say. And that puts you in a position of anger and defensiveness. And on the right, on the flip side, if someone says, no, I actually experienced the world through race and come live in my shoes, on the right, people say, oh, they're just engaging in identity politics and they're just making this about race for advantage as opposed to being authentic. And the reality is those two groups aren't talking to each other. And one of the things we got to do

is have their authentic people in the George Floyd protests, not the ones who rioted, who, you know, my friend Jamal Bowman, I mean, he will tell you what he thinks it's like being a black person in New York. And you should talk to him about where you think being white in a neighborhood was. You had the same experience. And we ought to be able to have these conversations without labeling each other in a derogatory way. I mean, that's what I agree. Let's let's move on to this next

story, because this is a big one. This is from Fox News. Biden pardons Mark Milley, Anthony Fauci and the J6 committee members. Now, I will also add that he pardoned his entire family, which is another story. But I want to start with this one because Mark Milley, I think, is the most damaging to our nation for those who don't know uh and and and maybe josie or phil or whoever james maybe you guys know better than me mark milley subverted the chain of command to communicate with china a codified adversary of the united states that that pardon is shockingly egregious i'm not i'm most interested to find out who accepts the pardons because the accepting of the pardon is an admission of guilt yes you can't you you can't be pardoned if you haven't done something wrong so i'm really excited

to see if the j if the whole j6 committee accepts then it's one thing but if there are members of the j6 committee that accept and some that don't you can subpoena the ones that did accept their they have immunity but they no longer have Fifth Amendment protection. So they could be forced to testify against the other J6 committee members. So that's what I'm interested to see if that happens. Let me clarify one point. If the argument is Donald Trump will target his political opponents on the J6 committee, I understand the argument.

I disagree, but I understand the argument. But Anthony Fauci? And then to make it worse, Mark Milley. Mark Milley engaged in very questionable actions in his communications with China outside the chain of command in defiance of the commander in chief. That terrifies me. I mean, it should absolutely be investigated. And if Mark Milley is guilty of sedition or, dare I say, treason, I mean, there's got to be some action that we take as a nation to prevent that. Milley was essentially saying he would give them a heads up. Is that correct? Just in case Donald

Trump was going to do anything. And he said that he would defy the chain of command if need be. That's communication with a cop. China is listed in the U.S. law as an adversary of this nation. To be fair, Congress does declare war. So I would hope, and if I'm going to be charitable towards Mark Milley, I would hope if Congress were to declare war on China, then Mark Milley would rethink that position. But to say I would defy the commander-in-chief, that's a bad look, man. Let me just say this. One place I have appreciated Trump's speech today

is his commitment not to get us into foreign wars. And he was, I think, bold in criticizing the Iraq war in his own presidential primary. And as a lot of times said, we shouldn't be getting into these endless wars. I feel differently about Milley in the sense that he was trying to prevent the escalation of a conflict than if he was doing something in defiance to start a war. And so if we've got generals out there who are saying, and by the way, I don't think Donald Trump wants to start an actual war with China. I don't.

I agree. And I think it's good that people need to articulate that. And so if we've got generals in the Pentagon, as opposed to a lot of other generals in our history or in our country, who are saying, you know what, I want to make sure that we're doing everything we can not to get into a war, I'm not concerned that this country is going to be too timid about getting into war when we really need to. Well, I think the other aspect here is Fauci. And Fauci repeatedly said in congressional testimony that we were not funding gain of function research over and over and over and over again. And the quantity and just the disruptive nature of these lies during the

COVID-19 pandemic when he presented himself as the figurehead of science. And yet he was telling the American people exactly the opposite of the truth in many cases, often saying, you know, this was a white lie. Like when they said that PPE wasn't helpful, you know, that you shouldn't wear masks during COVID. And then they said, oh, you should wear wear masks and then you wait for the the reason and they said the reason was we lied to the public because we didn't want them to buy all the ppe and then all of the science and all the medical staff wouldn't be able to get ppe so they admitted they lied and then they come out and say that they are the science there has to be accountability for this and this goes beyond that this is news Newsweek, September 9th, 2021.

Fauci was untruthful to Congress about Wuhan lab research. New documents appear to show Senator Rand Paul held up a document that outright said gain of function research was performed and funded through the United States, through ECOF Alliance, through HHS under Fauci. And he said it didn't happen and they didn't do it. Why would this man be pardoned? I mean, here's what I don't understand. Fauci was Donald Trump's advisor. During COVID, Donald Trump brought him on TV every step of the way and defended it, much to the chagrin of his

supporters and many libertarians. After he got out of office, sure, there was a little bit of back and forth, but why would Trump politically retaliate against the guy he chose to be his advisor to make him look bad? I think the reality is Joe Biden is protecting Fauci from willful crimes that Fauci committed. Yeah. So something about that is so the pardon, you admit that you're guilty. It's an admission of guilt, essentially. And that goes back to Burdick, 1915.

And essentially what that says is you cannot be compelled to accept a pardon because if you are, then that violates your right to not self-incriminate yourself. However, this pardon for Fauci says this is not an admission of guilt. So that directly violates Burdick, the Burdick ruling for SCOTUS. Wait, the actual text? The actual text of it says this is not an admission of guilt. You could find it and look it up. Yeah.

It says, no, he's not, it's not saying he's guilty. I don't know if the other ones, I know Fauci said that. I don't know if the other ones did. The lawlessness of this president. As a Democrat on the panel, let me just say this about Dr. Fauci, just so folks have a slightly opposing or differing point of view. Look, he's dedicated his whole life

to public service. The guy could have gotten rich. He helped George W. Bush with PEPFAR, which in my view was one of the great achievements of America under President George Bush, where we saved millions of people in Africa for AIDS. And Fauci, in my view, whether he was right or wrong, largely was acting in the public interest. I don't think we should be. And one of the things I give Trump credit for is Operation Warp Speed, which Fauci was also involved in,

which was giving government procurement guarantees so we could develop the vaccine. It's mind boggling to me that Trump has not bragged about that more. To me, that was his singular best thing that he did in terms of working on the vaccine cures that we we did for the world and for humanity. So my view is whether you agree or disagree with Fauci, do you really want to create a criminal standard for people in public service or coming and doing what they think is the committed crimes? Well, if you lie to Congress, it's lying to Congress. You know how many people come to our committees and can't recall? If Anthony Fauci had said, I can't recall, instead of full stop, we don't fund gain of function research, we would be having a totally different discussion right now.

This is one of the worst ramifications of the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was found to have lied to Congress and he admitted it later and nothing happened. And that was a terrible precedent to set to set the the I believe I have the it's from Justice.gov executive grant of clemency. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a full and unconditional pardon. It does not say it's not admission of guilt. His statement said that on the on the on the White House website saying that accepting this is not an admission of guilt. His statement said that on the White House website, saying that accepting this is not an admission of guilt. But that's his personal statement. That's not the case. You know, I do recognize a lot of people lie to Congress. And that's the point of swearing them in. They shouldn't. And unfortunately, there are a lot

of people commit perjury all the time. And the aggrieved parties will always complain about it. It's very difficult to prove someone lied. So that I recognize. In this instance, Rand Paul held up the document that said gain of function and Fauci lied and said, nope.

And he's like pretty black and white. So Fauci accepted the pardon that is an admission of guilt. And then he said in a personal statement, I'm not guilty. He did say that? Yeah, that's his personal statement. Yeah. Yes. So so how does how does how does that work? Like, I guess legally, he confessed.

Honest question. So these pardons go back to January 1st, 2014. Quick question. What was going on in Ukraine in 2014? Huh? I wonder. Burisma? To your point about moving on, right? Just like the J said, wouldn't we want to move on from Fauci? I mean, isn't that part of Trump? I mean, he said today he doesn't want any retribution. He wants to move on.

He doesn't want to politicize things. Isn't that part of what we need to do as a country? So sometimes we need to resolve. The problem with COVID in general is that it peeled the Band-Aid off of the way that a lot of our elite institutions are abusing their power over people. And so one of the things, you know, be it school closures, and then you had, you know, you have this big focus on looking at education and trying to figure out, you know, having parental rights, trying to balance these different issues, And suddenly you have a governor, a former

governor of Virginia running for governor again, coming out and saying that he doesn't want parents deciding what their kids learn in school. And over and over again, you see, and, you know, I'm glad to be sitting with you, Ro, because I think you have a track record of standing against some of the worst abuses I've seen from your party and the elites who generally agree with it. But I think a lot of the corruption that we've seen in this country was unveiled in COVID. And we have to solve it. And that's why we have a big populist movement. That's why we had a populist movement on the left, too, with Bernie Sanders. But you know what, one of the things I really focus on in my book

is how these big donors are funding these initiatives that are pushing, all these nonprofits are pushing ideas that are being almost forced on the American people through the elite apparatus. There I agree with you sometimes, and I don't want to interrupt you, but I said sometimes my staff, they send me their 200 groups who have come out for something. And I said, there are 200 groups

run by 100 people. You know, this is the biggest myth in terms of all these groups. So I agree with you that sometimes they can make us be out of touch on certain issues. Let's jump to this next set of pardons. We have this tweet from Philip Blackman. He says, breaking with just minutes left in his presidency, Biden issues a full and unconditional pardon of his family, most notably his brother, James B. Biden. And it reads, Executive Grant of Clemency, Joseph R. Biden Jr., President of the United States of America, to all whom these presents shall come greeting, be it known that this day I, Joseph R. Biden Jr., President of the United States, pursuant to my powers under Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution, have granted unto James B. Biden, Sarah Jones Biden, Valerie Biden Owens, John T. Owens,

and Francis W. Biden a full and unconditional pardon for any nonviolent offenses against the United States which they may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1st, 2014, through the date of this pardon. In testimony whereof, I have hereunto signed my name and caused the seal of the Department of Justice to be affixed. I think Joe Biden's family committed a bunch of crimes. Does it go back to 2014? It certainly does. It sure does. Congressman Rowe, what is the takeaway from this?

What is your takeaway? I didn't like it when he did Hunter Biden, because I've been for the curtailment of the presidential power. I mean, we don't live in King George's time. of any party should have this kind of broad power to just wave their wand and say, OK, some family member, some friend is going to be parted. And I think as the Democrats, we if we're going to be the party of reform that says we want to get money out of politics, we want to stop members from trading stock, then we should be for reforming the pardon party. The pardon power. So I I'm not I can't defend defend this. What I will say is that we should have some amendment in this country to at least restrict the pardon power in my in my

view, especially for friends and family. Outside of that, I that's interesting, interesting thought. And I don't completely disagree. But outside of that, there's the more granular of why would Joe Biden pardon all of his family members? We all know. I mean, Frank Biden, Jim Biden, they were trading on his name in Delaware. They got rich just because he was a senator. I don't think it's it's not reasonable to say that Donald Trump is going to go after Valerie Biden. I think the reality is that this this literally five minutes before Trump was sworn in issuing of a pardon, I would be more inclined to believe based on what we know. And I'll cite Politico magazine going back several years to Biden Inc. James Biden was accused in that magazine of peddling influence and taking contracts from

his brother illicitly. I think this is indicative of what we've long known. I don't think it needs to necessarily single out the Biden family. I think the issue may be perhaps this is the first time there's reason for or a president willing to go after the corrupt influences of prominent families in government. So I want to ask Roe something. So Article 2, Section 2 grants the president the power to grant the pardons and the reprieves. So if you were to limit his power, would that be a constitutional amendment?

It would have to be. It would have to be because it's in the Constitution that gives the president broad powers. I think this goes back to Hamilton, who kind of viewed the presidency as almost analogous to a king. And I think we've moved far away from that time. Now, I will say in the only thing and I'm not I don't defend the pardon, but we don't want to criminalize politics. I get that there are people on on the Republican side who blame the Democrats for doing that. But I think at some point it's got to end because people are not perfect. Usually you don't get angels in politics. I will say this, surprisingly, I mean, the Congresses

of the past have been a lot more corrupt. I mean, you had the robber barons actually bought members of Congress and senators. And by criminalizing it, what you're doing is you're telling every young kid in this country, yeah, you don't want to really be in Congress. You don't want to be a senator. You don't want to run for president. You don't want to go be in the cabinet. So how do we somehow figure out how we have accountability without everyone thinking, OK, if I run for office, now everyone in my family, if they've done anything wrong, now there's going to be a big spotlight, you know, and this is Politico from 2019 biden inc over his decades in office middle class joe's family fortunes have closely tracked his

political career going to mention how his brother got lucrative contracts in iraq i think the reality is perhaps it's time to start doing this my whole life i've had almost no faith in government the first time i voted was for obama and then I instantly regretted it because he blew up a village of women and children by executive order. Where was that? I believe it was Pakistan. This is 2009, January. It was immediately reported that a drone strike ordered by Obama killed like 20. It was a village of some sort.

And I remember being an anti-war activist marching against George W. Bush, told by everybody, you got to vote for Obama. For the first time in my life, seeing this just absolute corruption ripping at the soul of this country, it looks like something's being done about it. Now, you can say that Donald Trump's doing it because of revenge. And I can say, well, I don't know his motivations, but I would like to see the Biden family, the Clintons or the Trumps, whoever, anybody peddling influence illicitly, corruptly to enrich themselves. I'm not a fan of Trump's meme coin. I don't view it as a crime.

However, I just think it's crass. When Donald Trump tried to have the G7 at Trump Doral, I called that out immediately. He should not be using his properties. It's a conflict of interest, no matter what he charges. And when there were reports that Trump properties were advertised on military websites or this, I believe it was a State Department website. I said, that's wrong. It shouldn't be. I don't view those as overtly criminal. When I look at the Biden family, you've got a litany of accusations, charges. You've got Tony Bobulinski. You've got Devin Archer all coming out saying that they were

engaged in illicit activities. And then Biden comes and pardons his whole family. So I would agree that we don't want someone to believe that if you get into politics, they're going to target your family because show me the man, show me the crime. But at the same time, I don't know how this country survives if the Biden family's activities, which have been widely documented going back to, again, not even 2019, well before that, if we ignore these things and say that's par for the course, Trump's going to go ham. And then whoever comes after Trump Trump's going to go ham. And then whoever comes after Trump next is going to be like, I'm the president.

How much are you going to pay me to sign an executive order? And no one will be able to do anything about it because of precedent. Well, and this is also part of that elite apparatus. We saw the legacy media, you know, Politico, to their credit, covered this. There were a lot of things that were covered like that. But in the past four years, we've seen the legacy media act as though it was the height of mendacity to suggest there could anything be wrong with Hunter Biden and all and that Joe Biden could be involved. And every single time it was like, how dare you suggest? I mean, we had we had big tech, you know, as you rightly condemned,

censoring a story. And I spoke out against it. It was reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop. That's what we like you. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, that's being on your party and standing for that kind of thing. So, Roe, how would you, in your constitutional amendment, how would you limit the presidential pardon power? Would you say you can't pardon your family?

And would that go against some sort of equal rights protection? I would probably, I mean, I'd have to think it through, but I'd probably say it has to be through some independent board or some independent review, where if a president wants to have that power, there has to be some check to it and some review. Now, look, here's the thing, and I don't want to just take political shots at Donald Trump on the day he was inaugurated. But there there is not like he's been a paragon of virtue. I mean, you know, making billions of dollars on this meme coin. There were there have been allegations that, you know, people would want people to stay at his hotels. There's things about his family. But I wouldn't want there is going to be a new another Democratic president.

I don't know when, hopefully in 28. But maybe it's, you know, the pendulum swings back and forth. I wouldn't want that that president to say, you know what, we're going to go and investigate all of Donald Trump's family and all of his dealings. Now, if there's an independent justice attorneys and people in law enforcement who are doing it. That's one thing. But I don't want the president on either party directing the Justice Department to be going after their political rivals. I would say to your idea about the Independent Commission, a lot of states do this. The governor can issue a pardon, but it has to go through a panel to get approved. And I don't completely disagree with that. I do understand the original arguments that they were making for why the president would have this power. But then there is an interesting point about, show me the man, I'll show you the crime.

If we exist in a society where political retaliation will always be the next president is going to investigate the last. They do that in third world countries. Right. They will find crimes. They will just be like, you jaywalked and that. Oh, and you were carrying too much money. That makes it a federal offense. Yeah. So that we definitely want to avoid. But then there is the problem of the double edged sword of if we don't do it, then people are going to abuse it.

And if we do it, they're going to abuse it. So what do we do? I mean, how do you how do you solve for that? We know powerful individuals have utilized the office for financial gain corruptly, but we also don't want an abuse of the DOJ to go after people for political reasons. Well, that's one of Trump's promises that he made is he's like the law fair's over. And that's why he's really not doesn't seem to be wanting to push any of these investigations on any of his political adversaries.

So maybe that could be the way to reset it. Say, listen, you did all this horrible stuff to me and I almost died. And, you know, I was assassinated and we're almost assassinated. And we don't know how we don't know anything about that, you know, but maybe that's his way of trying to heal. Like, this is our reset. I'm going to I'm not going to retaliate. I give him a lot of credit.

I think people if he if he restrains from that, uh, in my view, that would be a credit to him. But one way to go after this, Tim, as I think podcasts and the media and X and Tik TOK, you know, I, I have the smallest of things that people think may be a conflict of interest and their Tik TO TikTok videos and Instagrams all over the place. Right. And, you know, it can be annoying because everyone now in America has the baseline assumption that every politician must be a lying, corrupt person and that we got to fix because that's not the case. But the fact is that it is much harder to get away with stuff today. And we may not need a criminal fix on it. We may need more

transparency in media so that you don't have independent media, so you don't have a legacy media protecting people. When you say that, because of your stance on the Hunter Biden censorship, I think you really mean it. And I'm very, very glad to hear because I think that more transparency is largely the answer we have systems in place where you know people are held accountable through elections we have checks and balances in our constitution we don't need to reinvent the wheel we have a lot of protections there

we just have to use them and so long as we have more transparency that chance that we will use them, I think, increases. Well, let's jump to this story here from the Postmillennial. El Paso port of entry shuts down as Trump takes office. We also have this from NBC News. Trump shuts down immigration app, dashing migrants' hopes of entering the U.S. One of the viral stories that's been going around is an image of a video of a woman who's breaking down in tears because she will now not be allowed into the United States. There was a journalist who posted this, but it's

always something like that. There's no video of the cartel members with rifles running away, the drug, the drug traffickers or the child traffickers. It's always going to be the humanitarian crisis. And there's a meme where it's a child crying and a person saying, oh no, the child's crying. Quick, burn the Constitution. The joke being when the press comes out with this sad sympathy story or even someone like Ocasio-Cortez says these poor asylum seekers, it's ignoring the other side of that coin, which is the evil we are trying to stop. So I would say I largely know the opinions. I could guess everybody here that their opinions are largely going to be in favor of this.

But Congressman Khan, I'm curious what you think about the shutdown of the border and the and the immigration app. Look, there's no doubt that we needed a more secure border. And I'm not going to defend that that the process was messed up and that people were coming here without the legal way. I mean, my parents came as immigrants. They came legally that my father came to study at University of Michigan and then got a green card. And my mom, then they became citizens. That's the way you come to America. And the Democratic Party does need to be clear about that. And it's factual that a lot of people came in an illegal way under the Biden presidency. That said, I believe that this country is also a humane country and that when people are coming with legitimate cases, either of asylum or in my view, if they

want to come and work here and then and make money here and send it back to their families and they or go back to their families, I think there should be a process for that or if they're fleeing for persecution. And I don't think just shutting it down is the right way. By the way, if you shut it down in a port of entry, they're probably more likely to come in a non port of entry way. So it's it's an issue that we need a secure border, but I still believe that there needs to be a humanity to allowing asylum. So I don't support sort of a blanket, we're just going to shut it down. Tyler, are you basically just ban all immigration? No, no, I mean, so we talk, and I don't want to go too down this road, but we talk a little bit about race. And I like to think,

you know, I came from, I'm descended from two groups that were not considered white until very recently, Irish and Belarusian Jewish. So my own ancestry is complicated. And you talk about redlining, you talk about the history of racism, those things are real. I think today we're being told that racism is something simple, binary, white, bad, black, good. And it's a lot more complicated. But when it comes to the border, I think we need to have a law that applies equally to everyone. And right now, we have illegal aliens who are being told, you can enter the country, you can abuse the system. I grew up in Colorado. Two of my classmates when I was growing up were Mexican legal immigrants who went through the process. And they're the ones I think are most offended, most harmed by this illegal immigration

crisis, besides the people obviously like Lake and Riley, who lost her life. And I mean, I've really enjoyed our conversation, Roe. I see that you voted against the Lake and Riley Act. I'm happy to explain. Yeah, I'd love to hear. So my view is, of of course i have deep sympathy and genuine sympathy for uh the family of lake and raleigh uh and the my my view of it is i have deep sympathy for the family of lake and raleigh my view of it is that uh if there is someone who's convicted of a violent crime or a sex crime uh they should be deported. In fact, I just voted for Mesa's HR 30 that says if you're convicted of a sexual offense, you should be deported. The way the Lake and Raleigh

Act was worded is it said if you're arrested, you should be deported. And I don't, I'm a due process person. I mean, we gave theis trials because we believed in the rule of law i just think people here should have the rule of law now people say okay if they came uh across in an undocumented way they're already illegal but i don't have the view uh and and here i may just disagree i don't have the view that every single person who came here in an undocumented way should be should have mass deportation of 11 million i do have the view that if you're convicted of a violent offense or a sex offense that you should be deported is that ultimately and i don't want to misrepresent your argument here i guess wait until they committed a crime against an american citizen and then deport them after they've committed a violent

crime no you send them to jail why would would you deport them? Well, you would send them to jail and then deport them in terms of the extradition. But wait for them to commit a crime and then do something? Well, I think, first of all, most, the statistics show that immigrants commit statistically less crimes than those of us like me.

Real quick, guys, real quick. I pulled the bill up. It's for unlawfully present in the United States. So this is not just immigrants in general. It's any unlawful, unlawfully present individual in the United States who has been arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting must be detained by the Department of Homeland Security. It says under this bill, DHS must detain the individual who, one, has unlawfully present in the United States or does not possess necessary documents when applying for admission, or two, has been charged with, arrested for, convicted for, or admits to having committed acts that constitute essential elements of burglary,

theft, larceny, and shoplifting. That's interesting. I actually agree with Rep. Connie here because it says if you were to separate sections oneceny, and shoplifting. That's interesting. I actually agree with Rep. Connie here because it says, if you were to separate sections one and two, and this is just a summary, so I'd have to go through it, but under the summary, you could read it as, under this bill,

DHS must detain an individual who has been charged with, arrested for, convicted of, or admits to having committed acts that constitute an essential elements of burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting. That could apply to Americans. I mean, again, it's just a summary. So I don't know what they're, larceny, or shoplifting. That could apply to Americans. Again, it's just a summary. I don't know what their...

I think the spirit of the act... In fairness to the authors, I think they are talking about those who are undocumented who are... Is it illegal or no? That would mean a 100% crime rate. People that are in the country illegal? Their argument is this.

My view is like, okay, you've got a DACA kid, hypothetically, who's someone basically who So my view is like, OK, you got a DACA kid, hypothetically, someone basically is undocumented because their parents came here, grew up here. They go out, they go, they they have a DUI, they commit shoplifting. If they're arrested at the moment of arrest, they could be they could be deported. And my view is it has to be a violent crime or a sex offense that you're convicted of. The response is, well, shouldn't the crime is entering the United States. Shouldn't everyone be deported? And that is Donald Trump's position.

That's Tom Hammond's position. Let's deport 11 million folks. And my view is that the vast majority of those 11 million undocumented are people like someone in my district who is a dental hygienist. She's been here 25 years. Her daughter is studying for med school in Southern California. She drives down every day and once a month and drives back the same day because she can't afford a hotel because she's underpaid as a dental hygienist. And I want a person like that not to be deported. I think there should be a path to citizenship. And I want a person like that not to be deported. I think there should be a path to citizenship. And that's the genuine difference. But how do we make the system fair? You know, you talk about paths to citizenship. And I think a lot of Americans'

heartstrings are pulled by these people and to some degree, rightly so. But what you have is a massive amount of illegal aliens in this country who are not here legally. We have a system that's complicated that allows people to come here legally, which we all, I think most of us support. I mean, there's a growing faction on the right who opposes all immigration, period. I'm not part of that group. I think immigration, when it is rightly tailored and welcomes the right people who actually love this country and want to follow our laws. And the number one way that you know if somebody loves this country and wants to follow our laws or doesn't is if they're following the law when they first enter the country. I do have a correction.

Yeah, I did misread it. It's and not or, meaning they have to be unlawfully present. And so it's both criteria. That was my mistake. But but what I'd love to have. So I think there are two problems we have with the border. Right. First is the open border. The policies that Trump is, you know, rightly reenacting after Biden got rid of them immediately. He was following a lot of these groups where you say 200 organizations, you know, ACLU, Center for American Progress, that wanted to transform

the Department of Homeland Security into a welcome mat for illegal aliens versus actually applying the law fairly and evenly so that we can have legal immigrants and we can... So one of the problems with this issue is that always the issue of, you know,

a path to citizenship is brought up. Amnesty is brought up. And that usually kills debate among Republicans because what we saw in the 1980s was that amnesty was the first thing that got through. And then the rest that was promised in the law didn't get enacted. And what we've seen, the right shoved aside on this and the concerns about illegal immigration

dismissed as if they don't really matter. Well, I hear that. And first, I just want to say on the ACLU and Center for Market Progress, those groups are, in my view, constructive. I'm not saying I agree with all their policy, but I didn't want people to think that I was saying that they're one of the groups that don't matter because I do work with them on civil liberties issues and policy. But your broader point is, I think that if you have my view, that America is going to become the first truly cohesive multiracial democracy in the world, that no other nation has ever done this. And this is something truly remarkable about America. I don't think having an influx of those who are undocumented coming to America is helping

that goal. I think it has created resentment. I think it has created anger. And so if you're telling me that we need to do a better job of securing the border and having a process and ensuring Americans, who I believe, given my own upbringing in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in a 99 percent white community when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, I believe Americans are fundamentally decent. I think it's a kind country. I think it's a country that at its core is one that embraces people today. And so if we want that, I think we have to get a fix on the border. But you're right that that always gets caught up because we Democrats say we want a fix on the border,

but we also want a path to citizenship and a place for asylum. The Republicans say, no, we don't want that part. You guys aren't serious about a border fix. My view is maybe there's going to be, we had Biden, now we're going to have Trump. I think he may overreach the other way, and maybe eventually we're going to get a path forward on this where 80% of Americans are. Yeah, I really feel like a lot of Americans have shifted on this issue just because of how out of control it was the last four years.

I mean, I'll talk to people that are pretty moderate that are just like almost saying, hey, just close down everything. Like we need a five year pause because this is out of control. That was the worst border crisis in American history. You have people that enter the country, they're unvetted, they just cruise on in, you know, and we have no clue who they are. You end up with experience with situations where Americans get murdered. And that's why a lot of people are up in arms when they hear stuff like this, where it's like, Oh,

Hey, the thing is we don't want to enforce the laws, the position. And, but we will enforce the law once somebody is inevitably murdered. And then we'll deport them, even though we should, we're not actually going to deport them.

We're going to put them in jail and then taxpayers have to spend, you know, pay for them to be in prison for the rest of their life. It's fair to say that the past four years have really done a lot to, you know, I guess maybe radicalize the average American. Because before the Biden administration, I don't think that 70% of Americans were okay with deporting.

No, no. And now Biden was winning by 15 points on immigration against Donald Trump in 2020. And we were losing by like 25 points. And they absolutely annihilated the trust the American people have in the Democrats. There's no reason for the American people to say, yes, we believe the Democrats are going to be responsible when it comes to the border. Not just because of the fact that they have rescinded all of Donald Trump's effective executive orders like remain in Mexico and reinstating catch and release. Exactly.

Those kind of things were looked at positively by the American people. And now it's gotten to the point where, like I said, 70% of the American people are okay with things that would have been almost shocking to most people 10 years ago. The idea of rounding up people, you know ago the idea of rounding up people you know the idea of deporting people like that what used to be really really majority of hispanic americans as well yeah it used to be something that would make your average american blanch and now they're like build the wall and just go and round them up i'm down when you welcome 11 million people that's what happens like you don't have a choice. We have to have zero tolerance for illegal immigration because we have people who are good, that we want to come to this country, who want to

raise families and go to school, who are trying desperately to apply the legal way. And then what they end up seeing. So I actually know people who are trying to flee Ukraine, for instance, and they said, we can't get to the United States. They won't let us in. And they were like, should I? I literally said, should I just fly to Mexico? Because they let everybody just walk in. They ended up going to some Baltic countries and they ended up fleeing in some other direction. When you allow people, Chinese nationals, African from African nations, fly to Brazil and then come up to the southern border. And then we as a country say, ah, but we have this person who's here illegally, who's a good worker.

We're telling everybody who's trying to do the right thing that they don't matter. But then we have to create pathways, in my view, for people to be able to do that legally. I mean, what George W. Bush was trying to do, he was saying that, you know, you can come here, you can work, you can get paid a higher wage, not be exploited like some are and abused on an H-1B or abused because of your immigration status. And then many of those folks would go back. I mean, look, there are a lot of people obviously who want to come to America for economic reasons. Some of them are now coming illegally. And there is a way to have folks come legally in a way that's going to benefit our economy,

our community, and also be a legal process. But you have to punish them, otherwise you send the message. Well, let's take a look at the Bay Area specifically, where, and correct me if I'm wrong, because you would know this better than me, but the story was that they were no longer enforcing shoplifting under a certain number nine hundred dollars was and then we saw a wave of closures of stores

walgreens just issued a statement funny how that happened we had to lock up all of our merchandise which resulted in even worse sales and worse shrink so when i think that's changing i mean we've had two new mayors come in Matt Mahan in San Jose, Dan Lurie in San Francisco and they both ran on common sense public safety so the point is, when you say if you break the law, there's a tolerance we have for the crime the crime skyrockets to the point where the city panics

you get new politicians, the corporations start shutting down that's no different for immigration if you say there's a certain degree of illegal immigration we will tolerate and protect, it's going to skyrocket. And then you're going to get the Donald Trump backlash. I imagine it's fair to say that there are probably a significantly fewer amount of people that decided to leave for the southern border today than there were six weeks ago. What an idea.

So it sounded like during his speech today that Donald Trump might have used it, used his emergency powers to declare an invasion. And I think that that's the way that it would have to be to do the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, because that act says that we need to be either in war or in invasion, and then you can apprehend, restrain, secure and remove the. So we do have this the way you said today describes it. Trump to declare border emergency to, quote, repel forms of invasion. Yes.

So I wonder if that's the right. Yes. So so if that's the case, if he did declare an invasion that still needs congressional affirmation. So you guys would have to make a joint resolution or do something just regarding the Constitution, Article four, Section four, that he needs to have Congress to kind of back him up on you guys would have to make a joint resolution or do something just regarding the Constitution, Article 4, Section 4, that he needs to have Congress to kind of back him up on this invasion. He can declare it with his emergency powers, but it still needs the affirmation from Congress to say yes. But then I'm thinking of the AUMF, which is what they declared after 9-11.

Authorization of military force. Exactly. So I don't know if that comes into effect now because that's that's not constitutional but i don't know if it comes into effect now because um because it's an invasion like i'm not sure how does do you know how that works i don't i don't know all the details of the constitutional law i i my view on the secure border and why if you have democrats who aren't going to support declaring it as an invasion, is just that we do have a view that people who have legitimate asylum claims and legitimate claims should have a process. But here's my problem. I will concede that the Democrats did not do a good enough job in the border over the last four years.

It was hard to argue with those facts. But what I dislike about what Trump is doing, and fine, you want to talk about securing the border and having a humane process, yes, we need to do that. Let's find the balance. But the fact that there are so many Americans in this country who have had opioid crisis, jobs leave, economic dislocation, no prosperity, declining wages, in my view, is not because of the southern border. That is not the reason that that's happened. That's happened because we outsourced our jobs to Mexico, because we outsourced our jobs to China, because we got a

$1 trillion trade deficit while China has a $1 trillion trade surplus. And so just blaming the undocumented, it's a separate point. I feel because we printed money here, here to all of that. Yeah, I feel like you're saying that. That's absolutely correct. I feel like you're saying, I feel like I hear you saying,

get rid of the minimum wage and get rid of unions. I don't know how you got that. Wait, but would you not acknowledge that it's a total punch in the face after all of that that you just talked about right there? Would you not acknowledge that unvetted mass migration is just an absolute punch in the face? Look no further than 2020. You're shutting

down businesses, people being out of work, all that stuff. 2021, what did they get rewarded with? Just unvetted mass migration? Free hotel rooms in New York City. Free hotel rooms, food, healthcare. Gen Z can't afford a place to live. And these illegal immigrants are giving are given hotels in New York. Do you see how it would be looked at as a serious punch in the nose? Yeah. I mean, this was the mistake of the left that we thought globalization somehow was going

to lead to this multiracial democracy and the world would all get along and four countries would come up. And the reality is a lot of people got left out. Income equality soared. Towns were hollowed out. Ordinary Americans felt left out and not feeling this. And then you had this what you call a large amount of people coming in undocumented and that and people are saying enough. And it was the wrong strategy. If you have my goal, which is let's have what Frederick Douglass talked about. Martin Luther King talked about a cohesive multiracial democracy. This was the wrong way about going about it. And I think the but the answer to that, I'm not saying there are not serious answers on on crime, on on on gangs. But the answer we can't tell people in Johnstown, Pennsylvania or Paintsville, Kentucky, that if we fix the border,

that their kids are going to have the American dream that's lying to them. You want to fix that area. You got to figure out how are we going to invest but it's a contributing problem it's just like it's just like with the crime like you're right that a lot of prosecutors are taking it seriously now that the american people have woken up to the soft on crime the dangers of being soft on crime george soros though just got the presidential medal of freedom like the left and i mean i love hearing you talk with us because you're part of the left. And I mean, I love hearing you talk with us because you're part of the left that I like and I wish more Democrats thought like you did. But the left in the way that it pushes the elites ag do, they may do some good things. They may have a decent perspective. Their perspective is the only perspective. And then they push it to the nth degree and you get a system that is welcoming. I mean, in this past administration, we had border patrol agents told not to refer to

illegal aliens as he or she until they knew their preferred pronouns. That's what they were being told in the middle of a border crisis that the worst border crisis in american history exactly and so when and with all respect like i talk about the southern poverty law center which i think is is the worst example of this which by the way did really great work when it first started but then it started comparing mainstream conservatives and Christians to the Ku Klux Klan. Well, that's a surprise. There was a supply and demand issue with them. Do you condemn the Southern Poverty Law Center?

I don't know if I condemn comparing Christians to the Ku Klux Klan. I mean, I condemn that. And I think my party has to recognize that we have to respect people who may have different cultural, religious, social views as us, and that too many people in this country view the fact that we look down on them, that there's condescension. And that's a big, big problem in the party that has to be fixed and I think will be fixed. But, you know, one thing that Trump shows and I I think it's such a dumb idea, in my view, to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. But here's what I'll give Donald Trump. He throws out a lot of ideas that some of them are really dumb. And he just keeps on like saying, OK, I'm going to try something new. And one of the things the American people want is just out of the box thinking. One of the things the Democrats have to get out of, which is what Bernie Sanders did. Right.

He said Medicare for all or we're going to get there. And the whole party said, oh, you can't do that. That's it. That's dumb. That doesn't fit within our think tank. Washington Post editorial board opinion. And I think the next generation of politicians have got to be willing to think outside the box, say things that could be a gift, say things that may be dumb. FDR did a lot of things that were really dumb, but he got the New Deal, which I view as an extraordinary achievement. But you've got to have a sense of not being just conventional cardboard cutouts. And I do think that's been a problem in our party.

Do you think he was just poking fun at the president of Mexico, though? And by the way, it is it is the Gulf of America, by the way. He signed that order, didn't he? Yeah. To be fair, AOC says a lot of really stupid out of the box things. OK, there you go. I don't know the stupid part, but out of the box things. Okay, there you go. I don't know the stupid part. But that's the the bureaucratic group think that you're talking about, is really the centerpiece of what I wrote this book about. Because I think when you get that on one side, that tends to have

the media echo chamber tends to have a lot of the elite institutions following it, edging out people who have alternative points of view, you often end up with really horrible policies on the ground. And that's what I think we saw these past four years. We saw the weaponization of law enforcement because the Biden administration brought the Southern Poverty Law Center in to educate people and to domestic terrorism, according to the SPLC president. But you saw, you know, every radical idea that's being championed by people like George Soros was embraced by the bureaucracy. And the bureaucracy still tends to favor those ideas. And I grew up admiring the Southern Poverty Law Center. I'll look into your your your points. But I just you know, from my perspective, they did a lot of work on anti-poverty and

work in the. Oh, yeah. Largely been ideologically captured over the last, what, decade or so? Yes. And they did really great work when they started. They did wonderful work when they started. But then once once they did such good work, they there's less of a need for them to to be there. So they almost had's less of a need for them to be there.

So they almost had to have people create issues for them. So there was like a supply and demand issue when it came to that. Yeah, when it came to the Southern Poverty Law Center. And it's a lot like some politicians who run on problems that they want to fix. But then if they fix them, then they don't have a platform to run on anymore. So the whole deal is getting it out there, getting the word out there, but never truly fixing it all the way. That way they can continue to have their power. And I think Southern Poverty Law Center might have kind of been in that, whether they were ideologically captured or whether they had malicious content. I don't know.

My first book is all about that, called Making Hate Pay the Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. I could send you a copy. Just nonprofits in general, they can't go out of business. They become addicted to their cause and solving the cause would end them. And so what I find is that smaller nonprofits do a great job. There's somebody who actually cares about something, they want to raise money,

and they do their job. And then there are larger ones that claim they have a mission, but the mission never stops. No matter what happens, there's always some reason why the mission can't stop. And I remember reading from, I can't remember the guy's name, was it Patrick Moore?

Or one of the founders of Greenpeace. And said that, you know, they started Greenpeace to target nuclear testing. And then all of a sudden they opposed nuclear energy, which was totally different. And that was actually could help offset carbon emissions. And they became very much just generic environmentalism because that was the brand. And that's what signed up members that made money for the machine. And I don't question that some nonprofits go too far and that there's bureaucracy. But don't you think that there's something about like today's inauguration. And I saw up on the platform, by the way, all these tech

multi billionaires from my district, who were not Trump supporters in 2016, or 2020, or 2024 in the primary. And I'm thinking, what about people who don't go into sort of starting companies and entrepreneurs, but are nonprofits on the left or the right, or all the people who voted for Donald Trump who weren't actually in the room because they couldn't buy the $15,000, $20,000 or didn't contribute a million dollars to the inauguration. Part of me is sort of like the real problem in this country is not the kid who says, okay, I'm going to work for a nonprofit the rest of my life. It's how do we have all this outsized influence of wealth in this country in terms of politics? I think it's because it largely correlates with merit. It doesn't always. And, you know, I look at a lot

of these, there's a lot of people who, I'll be nice and not name industries. They contribute nothing and they extract from the labor of the American worker and become wealthy off of that. They use that influence to maintain that influence and that wealth. And that sucks. But there's a direct correlation between being wealthy and merit. That's why they say wealth lasts only three generations. It's not absolutely true, but it tends to be because the grandkids of a wealthy individual don't know what it takes to build the machine and maintain it. So I want to ask you, without thinking too much, who would you say are the three greatest Americans? Oh, wow.

Currently or in history? My guess is you wouldn't name the three wealthiest, in my point. You know, the people we admire the most are people who, you know, scale the cliffs of Normandy or Martin Luther King. I'm not saying that there's not... Of all time.

I'm not saying that there is not some correlation between wealth and merit. And I'm not one of those is not some correlation between wealth and merit. And I'm not one of those people who says we shouldn't reward excellence or that people who build things aren't incredible. A lot of the entrepreneurs sacrifice. But there's there's a higher thing, higher calling in America to just to wealth. It's there's a there's a sense of our our our allegiance to the Constitution, to these ideals. And those are the Americans we usually admire. And then there's multiple forms of what we refer to as capital. So there could be an individual who's worth billions of dollars, but for the life of them, they can make crackers,

but they don't know how to buy politicians. And then there can be some guy who's got a podcast with millions of followers who doesn't know how to sell ads, but can convince a million people to bombard a senator with emails and letters that changes policy. When I see that room today, I mean, you know, I, I interview thousands. Last year, I probably interviewed like thousands of people. And I interview all different types of people, rich people, people that are in inner city, whatever it may be. And a lot of people, it doesn't matter if they're left or right.

A lot of people look at Donald Trump and they're just like, what do they always say? What's something that they like about him? They like that he's an entrepreneur. They like that he's a businessman. And so I would say that mixed in with his policies and his stances makes people feel as though he's looking after them more. Look no further than the unions having massive support for Donald Trump. A lot of the American, you know, the working class Americans see Donald Trump and his positions as more of looking after them. And so, you know, I guess to Tim's point, yeah, you can have a lot of billionaires in there and perhaps those people

aren't relatable, but the movement is more so than what we're seeing from the left. I think that's just what I hear from a lot of people on the street. It's one of the most common things I hear. We do have some relatively breaking news from the last hour. I want to jump on this one. This is from NPR. Trump signs executive order to pause TikTok ban, provide immunity to tech firms. I will say as of right now, Google Play has still banned the TikTok app, so you can't download it. The app is still available. NPR reports, President Trump signed an executive order Monday seeking to hit pause on the law banning TikTok and provide a liability shield to business partners

on the popular video app. According to the order, the law will be paused for 75 days and companies that work with TikTok will not be liable for doing so. Off, right off the bat, I don't believe that the president has the authority to do that. No, it's illegal the bat, I don't believe that the president has the authority to do that.

Yeah. So, um, simply declaring that there will be no liability for third parties in violation of law. I don't think he can do that. I believe he can instruct law enforcement not to seek restitution, but that liability will be on the books. Aside from that, I'm curious, uh, Congressman, what your thoughts are on the TikTok ban and if you support or oppose it. I oppose the ban. I've actually been going viral on TikTok. It's 1.4 million petition signatures in 48 hours to oppose this ban. I give President Trump credit for this. I mean, the real threat that China poses is a $1 trillion trade surplus they have compared to our trade deficit. They've taken a lot of our

jobs. They're building more steel. They're building more ships. And so there are ways of protecting data without suppressing the speech. We're talking about being groupthink. I mean, TikTok has a lot of unconventional opinions on the left and the right. I was calling for President Biden to do this pause. I'm glad that Trump has. But with 170 million users in the United States, if TikTok decides to push an algorithm that creates a 51% weight towards supporting China taking our jobs, that's going to affect an entire generation where they're going to vote on behalf of Chinese interests. Well, I'm opposed to, we can have a law that says you go to jail

if you're an executive of a company here and there's any evidence, a shred of evidence of algorithmic interference by the CCP or a foreign adversary. Or if you're any company, data brokers or social media, and you sell or transfer any of Americans' data to the CCP. But I think singling out TikTok

with 170 million Americans was a mistake. And I also think I have a lot of confidence. People say, well, China bans the apps. Yeah, I'd rather that they have our apps in there. And Elon just tweeted out about, well, why can't you get X into China? Let's get Facebook into China. Let's not have TikTok banned in China. But you know what? We're better than China in terms of our political system. And I think I have a lot of confidence in the wisdom of the American people. This is why I tell my own party that, you know, let's spend as much time figuring out why people are drawn to Trump is criticizing Trump.

Like there's a wisdom in the American people, even if they don't always get it right. And I trust the free speech of this country to get the right solutions does the ccp not have an influence over the algorithm though and do we have anything to do with that influence at all like how would we figure out if they are influencing it how would we even investigate that it's a foreign well there's a it's a domestic subsidiary we could we could have the subpoena the ceo we could have a law that says you need to ensure that the TikTok operational in the United States is not going to have any connection to the CCP. I will say it's impossible. Well, I mean, that's basically what this bill is, to be honest.

No, but this bill is forcing divestiture. It's forcing forcing divestiture or that. And there's no evidence in the public record because because everyone is saying they can go on the public record. There's no evidence that the CCP has either gotten a significant amount of American data or that the CCP is telling TikTok, hey, let's make sure that there's suppression of Tibet or the Uyghurs. There is evidence of that. No, yeah. of that. The Axios report, which kicked this off, we talked about this the other day, was that shortly after October 7th, with 123,000 posts, stand with Palestine, there were only 11 million views. But within the span of only a few days, it jumped to 285 million views with 87,000 posts.

A lesser amount of posts, some 26 times the amount of views, was indicative of an algorithmic change to promote pro-Palestine content. But there are also a lot of young people who were pro-Palestine. Except when October 7th happened and there were 123,000 posts, nobody cared to watch it. It was only getting 11 million views. So in my experience with social media, having worked in this industry and built a company based around this, I can look at an influencer and I can tell you if they're botting and if it's fake. I, along with many others, saw that data and instantly said, oh, that looks like an algorithm switch intentionally done by TikTok. Now, I'm not saying pro-Palestine, pro-Israel. That's not the point I'm making. I'm just saying that it looks like as it pertains to a major component of U.S.

foreign policy, TikTok made a decision. Well, and TikTok has also been promoting the sorts of causes that divide Americans more and that tend to enrich China. Which, well, and beyond that, just the division is often the point of any of, you know, foreign countries, you know, meddling in the United States. Having the United States being divided and bickering with each other is good for China. It's good for Russia. It's good for our, you know, international rivals. Whereas having the United States generally on the same page is bad for them. Sure.

But I'm not sure TikTok is doing more than X in terms of the division. But we have recourse against X. And American companies, we can sue, we can subpoena, we can FOIA. And we have recourse against TikTok. They were doing the Texas project where they were keeping the data. And my sense is if Trump has a resolution to this, he's going to insist on enough American ownership. It's already 60% American investors. And he's going to insist on some mechanism that if there is evidence or any sense of suspicion that there is algorithmic interference from the Chinese party

that those folks could have criminal China has the ultimate authority over by dance and can claim any data that we don't have the the buck doesn't stop with us. It stops with that. I don't think the storage really has any influence in that, does it? I think keeping it from the algorithm, isn't it? I mean, Oracle doesn't call the shots on the algorithmic changes. No, there are two different issues. One is the concern about data. That, I think, can be managed with tech.

Easier. It seems. And the other is on the algorithmic interference, which is to say that you have to, you can have an affidavit for TikTok's folks to say that their algorithm going forward is not going to have any changes recommended by anyone in the Chinese Communist Party. Now, but then they could just do bad things outside of the Chinese Communist Party.

Yeah, just trust them as far as you can throw them at them. A lot of them are Americans or not, or America. They're not, they're not, it's not like Chinese Communist officials are running TikTok. I mean, the guy's a Singaporean. No, but don't they have complete access to it if they want? So if they want to snap their fingers and say, I have access to this algorithm, they do. And they're required under the law in China to provide the data for their use. That's right. But they don't have the ability to demand a change in the algorithm.

And if they if the U.S. do, if the U the U S made it a conditional that it's a crime here, then TikTok would have to shut down. What's your evidence that they don't have that authority? Or, or, or, or if they, if they do,

we can make it criminal that for a U S executive to, to submit to the, to, to that change. How do you prove that? But, but, but,

but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but,

but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but,

but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but that? But I just don't understand in any capacity why we are saying, yes, China can have a mass media operation to 170 million people in the U.S.

There's no argument for it. But I don't I don't think it's Chinese control. I think you've got 60 percent U.S. investment. China China owns a mass media operation in the United States to 170 million people. The fact that I can owns a mass media operation in the United States to 170 million people. The fact that I can get a congressman or another prominent personality to defend Chinese interests in the United States terrifies me. I feel like any member of Congress should be like, yeah, China shouldn't own a mass media in the United States. There's no argument for it. I imagine when the Soviet Union still existed and if they owned a a broadcast network I mean right now we're RT is banned there's there's I believe there's an Iranian network that's banned so I don't think

that the the TikTok ban is that much of a different um animal than than banning something like RT or whatever I think the difference is it's a U.S. subsidiary. And if there was actually evidence that you pass a law saying if there's criminal liability, if there is interference by the Chinese party. Now, you may put TikTok in a situation that they have to shut down if the Chinese Communist Party is demanding to do something and the executives are facing criminal penalties in the United States. But I think we went to the solution of shutting it down. And I think a lot of people view it as, well, they're shutting it down

because we're saying things on the app, whether it's on Palestine or whether it's anti-vaccine or whether it's a speech that the establishment doesn't like. I mean, Donald Trump is very popular on that app. He was more popular than Kamala Harris. Only recently and only after he said he wanted to ban the app because it was more popular than Kamala Harris. Only recently and only after he said he

wanted to ban the app because it was biased and censorious. And we were on TikTok to tens of thousands of followers, two accounts, my personal one and the show, and we largely agreed. There's no argument for China to own any piece of mass media, no matter how big or small. We have to have mass media in our national interest. They banned us arbitrarily for breaking no rules. This clearly shows, in my opinion, that if you speak out against their interests, they will kick you off the platform. They kicked you off? I didn't know that. They absolutely did. And no recourse. And there's no path by which we can say, hey, we're a fairly moderate show. We don't do anything crazy. You know, we sit down with

people and we have conversations like this. And you shouldn't be on. I mean, I'm happy to push. I mean, you shouldn't be censored from that. Well, the issue is we have researchers pointing out that in the app, for instance, they use Java and they inject Java to key log when you're using a web when you open when you open links through the app, the I should say the reporting states, maybe it's wrong, that they inject a key logger. That means if the evidence that we have of data collection means the only way I can really use that app is if I buy a brand new phone and do nothing with it, which is why we largely don't want to go near it. Now, we do know that American apps have CIA

interest and things like that. But hey, if the CIA stole my info, I could FOIA request these some of these things I could a journalist could go after we could file lawsuits I don't have that recourse with China I think that the issue is never the issue I think that the U.S. government doesn't like competition and collecting Americans data and I think that if it was really about spying Chinese spying you had Eric Swalwell who was sleeping with a spy you had diane feinstein who had a chinese spy driver for 20 years you had janet yelling janet yell i'm just saying they're they're targeting certain people you had janet yellen who just had her her computer hacked by the chinese you know that we have the open border with the chinese nationals coming through there we found there was largely a lot of chinese nationals, but that wasn't a problem. But TikTok, this whole ban stuff was happening under Joe Biden

with the open border. Well, China is coming over the border and God knows who. But I think that the issue is never quite the issue, but it opens up the door for your issue, for your issue, for your issue. The issue is clearly Israel. The Democrats did not want to ban this until after October 7th. And we have this story for Maxios, which we highlight all the time. It appears that there was an intentional change and it maybe it's not, but it appears either because the algorithm does change or because someone changed it. It appears the algorithm changed to massively promote pro-Palestine content. Now, I am not saying one way or the other, pro-Israel, pro-Palestine. I'm saying that as soon as this happened, American foreign policy interests became threatened and Democrats and Republicans got on board to ban it. I actually agree with Mitt Romney and Tony Blinken had a conversation where Romney basically says what you're saying. The fear among both parties was that young people were being indoctrinated through trickery into opposing Israel.

By all means, you're allowed to hate Israel. I'm not saying otherwise. I'm just saying. So you can argue their concern was protecting Israel, not stopping manipulation. But it was this action that triggered it. So you had said the Democrats weren't on board until. They were not. Okay.

So are the Democrats largely pro-Israel? What do you mean? So you said the Democrats weren't on board until we're not. OK, so are the Democrats largely pro-Israel? What do you mean? So you said the Democrats are largely pro-Israel? Yes. OK, yes. I didn't know that. So can I ask something without maybe risking canceling myself? Did Jonathan Greenblatt really say we have a TikTok problem? I don't know if he said that specifically, but I'm pretty sure the ADL very much was posting saying TikTok is a problem. OK. And this was the core reason. And there were pro-Israel groups and pro-Jewish groups that were lobbying TikTok saying there's a lot of anti-Semitic content. So the issue largely comes down in this area with there's a lot of people who just hate Israel and hate Jews.

And of course, they latch on to this. They say they're only banning TikTok to protect Jews or whatever. And I'm like, make any argument you want. The reality is Donald Trump in 2020 signed an executive order to ban TikTok. The concern was that TikTok was heavily biased against conservatives. People were getting banned like crazy. If you had even the slightest moderate opinion, they would delete the content, ban you. What do you think made him change his mind other than he's now popular? Yeah, that's it. I think, well, there's a few things. Kellyanne Conway, I believe it's reported she's been lobbying on behalf of TikTok. They got a powerful right-wing billionaire as an investor. I could be wrong. Is it Jeff Yass? Am I wrong about that? They do have, yeah. Yeah, a lot of prominent conservatives have been hired to lobby on behalf of TikTok. There's a couple of reasons

I see for it. One, obviously getting a paycheck will sway a lot of people's motivations. I do see this masterful manipulative move that was just played where TikTok pretended to shut down and then pretended Trump brought him back. That's not what happened. Right. The ban, as of right now, we checked in the Google Play Store. It says looking for TikTok downloads are paused. It's not back even with Trump's executive order.

What about an Apple? Is it on the app? I believe it's still gone, but I don't have an Apple. Is that a separate? Is that a separate issue, though, whether or not Apple wants to bring it back? Is that is that separate of TikTok coming back? So TikTok was never obligated to shut down their service. They is it is it gone?

They decided they would shut down in protest. And the rumor was they wanted to shock 170 million Americans. And so they shut down with a message saying, due to U.S. law, we're shutting down, but hopefully Trump can save us. And then I think within a matter of hours, by the next day or whatever, they said, yay, Trump saved us. But Trump hadn't actually done anything. So why Trump may be advocating for T for TikTok now is this is that move resulted in people like James Charles with 30 some odd million followers saying begrudgingly, am I MAGA now? Trump just saved TikTok. Oh, heavens me. It was masterful

manipulation beyond what we've seen from the narrative machine. That's a huge motivating factor for Trump to utilize it. I agree with that. Perhaps Trump then later on says, my executive order didn't do anything anyway, and we don't like TikTok. Perhaps he forces some kind of co-American investment, so American interests are monitoring at the same time. But I think the lobbying played a role, the American interest investors played a role,

and I think that they're all largely wrong, though I will acknowledge the masterful PR stunt that TikTok did was masterfully pulled off and hugely beneficial to Donald Trump. I also think that people like Jake Paul and all those other influencers that he was doing shows with, I think that they actually had an impact on Donald Trump as well, to be honest with you. And Donald Trump had come out and he said that he wanted a little bit of government into like maybe the solution is adding a little bit of government. No, that is not the solution. Imagine imagine what happens. We thought it was bad enough

that you had federal feds in the slack. Right. Or the Biden administration reaching out to big tech saying, we don't like this. We want this banned. We want this removed to be at Trump or whoever else you're mad at for doing these things. Imagine if the government owned outright a piece of social media. There's two ways to see it. The first is they will surreptitiously be censoring Americans without them knowing. However, government ownership of any degree does put the First Amendment in play and make guarantee free space on the platform. If Donald Trump successfully gets TikTok with U.S. ownership, like directly under the government. I don't know how I feel about that.

It goes against his executive order that he just signed or is going to sign. That was not his proposition. It says I'm going to take. He's saying U.S. investors would own it. Yeah, right. And I do think it's fair to say that there should be enough U.S. control that you should have some redress if you're getting kicked off the platform like you would on X or Facebook or or or any other social media platform. And so, you know,

hopefully there's a resolution here that gets it in a better place. I think they'd have to open source if if China wants to remain involved. The algorithm must be open source and viewable by anybody. And there has to be direct recourse for censorship. Would you have transparency for American companies, Facebook, Instagram? So I think the companies should be. But I think as the law prescribes a foreign entity operating mass media, there's going to be certain limitations on that.

I think, you know, we can look at Facebook, X, YouTube and say they're heavily biased. And they have been for a long time. They've censored a variety of ideas. And there are problems with government involvement as Trump just signed this executive order. And we've had leaked documents. We've had the Twitter files, et cetera. It should be that Americans are allowed to argue with each other. If an American starts a company and says, this is my view and how I want to moderate so long as they're violating Section 230, I say, OK, fine.

But we will challenge you because we want to make sure you're abiding by the law. If a foreign country, especially an adversary, wants to operate mass media in the United States, I say you got to be completely transparent. We got it. We get to see your code because we don't trust you. Americans trying to sway Americans and playing political games is what Americans do. China doing it to us is an act of war. Yeah. I mean, look, I think that there has to be some safeguard against Chinese manipulation of the algorithm. I mean, look, I think that there has to be some safeguard against Chinese manipulation of the algorithm. I'm not going to argue that China should be allowed to do that on mass media. It's one thing if they would have a newspaper or some, you know, publication,

but on mass media, you can't have that kind of manipulation. The question is, can you structure this in a way that can achieve that without shutting down the app? And I think you can. And I think the law was overbroad. I mean, they rushed to do this. They rushed to do it partly because what you're saying, what was happening with the algorithmic amplification of pro-Palestinian voices. And again, I support the U.S.-Israel relationship. But I think that was part of the motivation. Well, if China has this impact and can push back and, you know, I think the U.S. government had to move quickly if they were going to do this at all, because what we're already seeing, if our discussion is illustrative of anything, is that China is working both

sides and trying to prevent this in any way that they can. And China is usually, I mean, Trump came into office and made waves because he said the United States is not going to be taken advantage of. One of the things we constantly saw under both Republican and Democratic administrations in the past was that the, you know, the globalist consensus often led to America getting screwed and China stealing our stuff. And now if we actually want to take a stance against China, sometimes you have to have a broad instrument that, you know, you want something a little more tweaky and specific, which I appreciate. But sometimes you have to just go full bore.

Otherwise, you're going to be taken advantage. I think Trump got the politics on this right compared to our party. Our party said no to the tariffs. Basically, we're running ads saying no tariffs in Pennsylvania. It's going to raise your taxes. And that was telling all these auto workers and steel workers that we were basically fine with the jobs going to China. That's I'm not saying that there isn't an argument against blanket tariffs, but basically we're against tariffs. And we were for banning this app. Trump was like, most people like this app. I'll be for the app. And most people don't want their jobs going there. I'll be again. I'll be for tariffs. So he got the politics right on it. In my view, let me let me ask you one more. We're gonna go to super chats in a second.

But just one last question to clarify. Do you believe that Trump does have the legal authority to pause this law? I think he believes he does. So he what he is doing, in my view, I have to look at it is there is you can find that tick tock is in compliance with making a good faith effort to resolve the issue on divestiture. And then the way divestiture is defined is very technical, right? It doesn't mean it has to be a U.S. interest. How do you define it? So I think what Trump is going to do is he's going to find basically TikTok in compliance now. But the penalty is not for TikTok. It's for Amazon, Google, Apple, Oracle, etc. Right, but not if there's a pause, then that if TikTok is in compliance,

then the penalties don't apply. Now, you could have a lawsuit saying that Donald Trump has found it in compliance in violation of the law, like Congress has set certain standards and Trump is just finding it in compliance. And my guess is Google and Apple may be cautious. They may think, yeah, Trump's going to find it in compliance, but it's not really in compliance. And then the other small technicality is the ban actually took place and

Trump is there a day later. So it would have had to have happened a day before, but courts may defer to him. I think there's two big things at play with these tech companies. One is the disclosure. They're publicly traded companies. So if they choose to act in violation of the law simply because of an executive order, that's a risk they'll have to disclose. And then there's also their insurance companies, which may not allow them to take any action regardless of executive authority. So that's why I think right now Google has Apple reinstated it. They have not. No, they haven't. And neither has Google. And I think it's largely because they don't want to issue a declaration to their shareholders that we've decided to violate the TikTok ban because Trump said it'll be fine for a couple months.

And I think their insurance companies told them, hey, if you decide to break the law, regardless of what Trump said, we're not going to insure you because that's risk on us. Then you got reinsurers. And I'm willing to bet that Google and Facebook, Apple, they probably got like 300 different insurance companies across the board. But let's go to Super Chats. If you haven't already, my friends, would you kindly smash that like button, share the show with everyone you know, become a member over at TimCast.com.

Becoming a member, we're not going to have the members only show tonight because it's inauguration night and there's too much going on. But we did film a behind the scenes green room episode. So if you want to see us hanging out behind the scenes talking about health, where we think all this stuff is going, it's I think we recorded for about a half an hour of behind-the-scenes conversation on a variety of issues. That'll be available on TimCast.com, so become a member to support our work and check that out. Let's read some of your Super Chats. We have this one from JustCauseI'mFree.

He says, to echo a post of Rose from June 2021, Our legislation is popular because it will help people. That's our job. It's why we were elected in the first place. Now that Trump and MAGA is in power, will you stand in the way of progress the American people voted for? Well, I'm not a oppositionalist just for opposition. I wouldn't have shown up to the inauguration. And as my comments over the last hour and a half have said, there's places i've agreed with trump like on the tiktok ban so i'm going to try to call balls and strikes now i'm a proud progressive

democrat i supported bernie sanders i don't hide where my politics are uh but i if there's a good idea i'm going to be for it or an idea i agree with and i'm also certainly not going to try to demonize people on the other side perfect das r asks, how does Roe justify the pullout of Afghanistan? We own the night was the U.S. motto. Now they have night vision capabilities or they sell them, which they have done to enemies of the U.S. Well, I was opposed to this idea of an endless war in Afghanistan. I think we had to get out.

Could we have gotten out in a way that was better planned and where 13 of our Marines didn't die? Yes. I mean, and that needs to be looked at. But I give President Biden courage for doing something that he knew was going to be politically risky and politically unpopular. That's why presidents don't pull out of these wars, because usually when you pull out of these wars, things sometimes go wrong and you get the blame sorry to interrupt um couldn't he have avoided that disaster by just using bagram airbase which is much much much bigger compared to kabul airport sure but i think the miscalculation what which in the administration was that we thought that that the administration thought that the government uh was going to be stronger and last longer and that they were going to have more time.

It was a miscalculation. But my sense is these things. Look, when you look at how we would rule out of Vietnam under under Gerald Ford, I mean, there were people who were it was a mess. There were Americans who were dying. There were people we left stranded. I'm not defending the process. I'm just saying it's a tough call for a president. The easiest thing to do stranded. I'm not defending the process. I'm just saying it's a tough call for a president. The easiest thing to do as a president is just let it be. I give Trump credit when he called for originally getting out of Afghanistan. I give Biden credit for actually pulling out, though I acknowledge that the actual evacuation had had mistakes, and we've got to learn from it. Do know about the cheney crow amendment i uh don't

remember the details but i remember when it came up what did it say the cheney crow amendment blocked donald trump from pulling out of afghanistan i voted against it yes i voted against that amen yeah so so that was uh he had a plan to pull out he was ready to end the war he'd actually closed a huge base down i think the second biggest one he'd already closed he was plan to pull out. He was ready to end the war. He'd actually closed a huge base down, I think the second biggest one he'd already closed. He was ready to pull out. And Elizabeth Cheney and Jason Crowe blocked him. You can look that up. Glenn Greenwald wrote an article about it.

Nolan Buss says, Trump pulled us out of the World Health Organization. That was breaking news earlier. We didn't quite get to it, but I'm curious what you guys think. We're out of the World Health Organization. Is that bad? That's amazing.

Thank God. That's amazing. I'm going to disagree with that. They were trying to leverage legislation that would essentially abolish, like let them into control our states and that sort of thing. And that was getting really hazy

and kind of violating the 10th Amendment. So what was... Here's my disagreement. There are two countries that are going to be competing for who leads the 21st century, us and China. And given all our imperfections in our democracy, our commitment to freedom, human rights, democracy, free enterprise is is far, far better than China's system. And when we withdraw from international organizations, we basically are saying, China, why don't you take it over

and why don't you build more alliances? And I'd rather America be the leader of the free world than ceding these to China. Now, if we want to push for reform, fine, but withdrawal I don't think is in our interest. Well, the difficulty is the strongest way to push for reform is to withdraw because these agencies want the United States there. They get a lot of United States funding. Most of the global organizations are reliant on us to one degree or another.

So by withdrawing, Trump sends a message that we don't trust you. And I think the WHO is one of the key organizations that really needs to hear that message. After what they did during COVID, after what they're doing, they're pushing. And I mean, I know this may be an issue you and I disagree on, but gender ideology is the biggest scandal in healthcare right now, because we have doctors who are pushing in the name of public health and in the name of setting someone's head right, pushing people to change their bodies physically that can't be reversed. And then when people like Chloe Cole come out and say, oh, I was abused, I was led

down this path, I harmed myself. And now we have to prevent this from happening to other people. They're being brushed aside. I think it's fair to say that the United States membership to any type of organization or any kind of treaty, it has to be that what the organization is doing is something that the American people agrees with and finds at least reasonable. And when you're talking about the type of transition surgeries

that are, of transition surgeries that are or transition surgeries i i say with with air quotes um i think those are extremely unpopular with most americans i think that most americans reject the concept of uh the idea that you can go from being a man to a woman it's one thing to say you want to live your life as something and you ask people to accept that and say, would you please use the these pronouns that I prefer? It's totally different to demand that people believe what you believe. And that's something that the World Health Organization has been has been essentially doing. And so I think that it's perfectly reasonable for the for for the U.S. to pull

out of organizations that we as a nation disagree with, whether it be the World Health Organization or any other international organization out there, even up to and including the UN and NATO. If their policies don't align with what's best for the United States, I think it's reasonable for the American people to say, we want out. Just to be clear, I do believe in basic transgender rights and treating people with dignity, and we just disagree on that. But I also believe that we need to have these conversations, difficult conversations.

I went on Megyn Kelly's podcast for a half hour where she was telling me why my position was wrong, and I was trying to say where I was coming from with people. But I don't think either way that that's, in my opinion, reason to pull out of an organization. I get that if there is something so, so offensive to the United States, and maybe for some people it is, I doubt that I would be surprised if there was a majority of Americans who on just that issue wanted to pull out. How would you define transgender rights? I would say that we need to treat every person with basic dignity and that there are people who identify with a different gender than they are born at in birth and that we should let them and their families make that decision. Right. And that it's a very small. Can I play this clip for you based on what you just said?

Can you listen to this? Yeah. With her. I'm worried about like her mental well-being and her dilation. The minute she leaves my house, we have a dilation problem. That is a concern. We don't have that watchful eye they tend to go back to old patterns i have woken jazz out of a dead sleep and taken the dilator and put the lubrication on it and said here you take this and you put it in your vagina if not i will but jazz is bad even when i'm home once a day i would be so mad if she goes away to college and that thing seals up. I would wring her neck. Can you imagine? So just to just to clarify, this sounds like Jazz Jennings was a child, I think seven years old when it was declared for jazz that jazz was transgender,

put on puberty blockers, given multiple surgeries. And hearing now that an adult human male who has gone through these surgeries is resisting the medical treatments, but the individual's mother on television says, if you don't do it, I will force this into your body and wring your neck. This is mainstream televised gender-affirming care. When we talk about parents getting to decide what they do to their kids, we're talking about that. Can I add some? I just want to give some statistics. 60% of boys who are transgender children, they have mothers with a cluster B personality disorder. So narcissism, bipolar,

manic depressive, Munchausen's by proxy, essentially. And this is a lot of what I was seeing. This is television. This is, I believe, I believe it's TLC. Yes. So this is a lot of what i was this is this is television this is i believe i believe it's tlc yes um so this is from a few years ago congressman wrote how is that not child abuse would you say well i don't know the details of this but certainly no parent should be uh should be you know telling uh someone what their identity is i mean the whole point of recognizing people's dignity and rights is that they get to fulfill who they are. What I will say, though, is that, you know, that means that you respect the person and that there should be a clear respect for that individual. But children? There's more... Let me, I just, but what about children?

I mean, minors? Well, my understanding of the few transgender families that I have talked, kids who are transgender and parents, is they often have such agonizing decisions. I mean, usually if someone's kid is transgender, they think it's a huge challenge in society. And they are the most reluctant to have surgery. I mean, that's – and it's agonizing, and it's painful. And so I'm not saying there are not cases and outlier cases, or I don't know the statistics, but my own experience in terms of talking to kids who are transgender, they often get bullied.

It's a tough life. They often have statistics of suicide. Their parents are often, often worried about their safety. And I just think we're a compassionate nation. Let's have some space for people to- Well, gender dysphoria can be real and the solution can be mental health direction, not chopping body parts off. Desistance rates, the rate at which a child will stop being trans, is upwards of 65 to 90 percent. And suicidality for transgender youth is around, I believe, it's 40 or some odd percent.

That would mean that there is a greater probability of reducing suicidality by doing nothing. Despite this data, we have large industries and television shows advocating that children be put through this process. That is, for these families with agonizing decisions, typically, if the child just goes through puberty, they have a 60 to 90% chance of coming into their body and being happy with it. But if you then affirm them, their suicidality skyrockets to some high 40 percent. That's increasing suicide in children. When big health and the NIH have suppressed the studies showing this everywhere. I have the studies.

I have the studies. OK. 88% of boys who thought they were trans and were not given any intervention outgrew it with puberty. Puberty is the cure. So what is the treatment? Puberty blockers. So they block the cure. 80% of girls who believe that they're a boy were sexually abused. 44% of boys who believe that they're a girl turn out to be gay. So these are,

so what they're doing is, and then it comes down to other horrendous statistics. 30% of children in foster care believe that they're trans 30%. So it comes down to children who are looking for a community, children who are confused about their sexuality, children who don't feel safe in their bodies. And instead of saying, no, you're perfect. we love you just the way that you are. They say, no, you are right. You are actually a boy. And we need to change everything about you. And this doesn't fix what's internally the matter with them. This is why the suicide rate continues to stay so high. We do have very limited time, but I wanted to give the congressman the last word on this. Well, I would just say as we've been talking about family rights, parental rights, individual rights, I think that these decisions are best made by the family with the consent, of course, of the person.

And they should have access to all of the medical opinion. I don't think that there should be censorship in the medical opinion. But the people I know who are transgender, and I do know some in my district, you know, I could tell I know who are transgender, I do know some in my district, you know, I could tell you that they are transgender. They believe that they were born in a different body than their identity. And I just think, I also think one point out of this, I mean, it's, you, I think everyone would concede is less than 1% of Americans still today. And it has torn, this issue is tearing

our country apart in terms of yeah because where are the guardrails it's not the problem isn't the actual person who suffers with gender dysphoria abusing women in women's shelters the problem is the man claiming to be transgender it's the guy who rapes somebody in prison because he was put in a women's prison and my book mean, not to go crazy on this, but like my book lays out how the human rights campaign pushed the federal government to go whole hog on this. No debate, no dissent allowed. And you had people, public health officials like Rachel Levine, who like what I can feel for Rachel Levine, I think he has problems he's dealing with. But he has said he's glad he didn't undergo transition until after he had his children,

because his children wouldn't exist otherwise. And he loves his children to death. Of course he does. We have limited time. Why should children not have the same option that Rachel Levine had? Agreed. He wants to remove that. So we actually do have a hard stop for the space war and everything.

So I just want to thank the congressman for coming. Thank you. I enjoyed it. I appreciate it. And I hope you'll have other progressives, Democrats on board. And I hope more of my party will go on conservative outlets. Of course, you've got a big following, but you've all been very respectful. I think we need more of these kind of conversations in this country.

To be fair, whenever issues come up, we find that you're usually on the better side of things. And like when I was saying preach earlier, talking about the American working class being held on stuff. Your eyes were lighting up. I'm like, that's my big issue. In the Cheadle hearings, you were great there, too, when it came to President Trump's attempted assassination. That was awful. Do you want to shout anything out? Do you have a Twitter account or X account or anything?

Should I shout out my TikTok? No, I'm just kidding. Shout out whatever you want. Shout out whatever you want. Maybe in a couple of days. How about at Ro Khanna across the board? At Ro Khanna. Thank you so much for coming.

Well, thanks for having me, Tim. Appreciate it. Appreciate everybody. Congressman, thanks so much for Khanna. Thank you so much for coming. Well, thanks for having me, Tim. Appreciate it. Appreciate everybody. Congressman, thanks so much for joining us. And then you guys can find me at YouTube.com slash James Kluge. Check it out. Thanks again. You can find me on X at TRHL Official.

And thanks for having me, Tim. And thanks for being here, Ro. Yeah, I'm on X, Tyler, to the number two, O'Neill. New book launches tomorrow so no good luck with that thank you I am Phil the remains on Twix

where you can subscribe to my page Phil the remains official on Instagram the band is all that remains new record drops January 31st it's

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pre-save on Pandora. And don't forget, the left lane is for crime. And of course, head over to TimCast.com. We have an uncensored Green Room. For those that don't know, the Green Room show is when we record behind the scenes before the show starts. So you can watch us hanging out. We talk for about a half an hour about a wide range of issues as we are getting everything

set up. Because like I mentioned, we do have a hard stop for the space that we're in. You can follow me on X and Instagram at TimCast. We are back here once again tomorrow. We've got a bunch of really great guests this week because everybody's in town for the inauguration and we will see you all then.