Trump's Arctic Humiliation

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Are we living in a new world of strength, power and force? That's what Donald Trump's adviser Stephen Miller Sundays. And the US strikes in Venezuela suggests we may be moving into a new era of empire. So every day this week, the Global Story is joining forces with our BBC podcast cousins around the world with unmatched expertise of their regions to explore these new empires. What is a sphere of influence?

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1:38

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

2:10

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

2:12

On today's show, we'll talk about J.D. vance's trip to Minneapolis to stand with the beleaguered Americans who need our support right now. ICE agents. We'll also cover Jack Smith's testimony to Congress where he defended his decision to charge the current president with multiple crimes. Plus, Dan and I have been just itching to dig into the newest New York Times Siena poll, which is full of Bad news for Trump, just plenty of fun cross tabs for us. But first, they're calling it more brilliant than Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase, more monumental than Roosevelt's statecraft at Yalta, more daring than Nixon's trip to China. That's right, Dan. Donald Trump, the President of peace, the darling of Davos, duked it out with Denmark over Greenland and he art of the deal himself into his greatest achievement yet. Let's take a listen.

2:13

It's really hard not to see this through the lens of the art of the deal. The President's doubters were once again proven wrong.

3:10

Europe and America are going to be.

3:19

Rich and safe and Greenland gets McDonald's.

3:21

Congratulations, Mr. President, you've done a great job. Thank you.

3:24

Thank you.

3:27

So have you. He got us again. He got. When will we learn to stop doubting this man? So you may be wondering what's actually in this, John?

3:27

Do we own Greenland? Do we have it?

3:41

Well. Well, let's hear directly about what's in the deal from our secondhand recipient of a slightly used Nobel Peace Prize. Does this ultimately mean that the US Will ultimately acquire Greenland? Well, I don't know if I can.

3:43

Say that, but it could be. I mean, it's possible. Anything's possible.

3:57

Does it still include the United States.

4:01

Having ownership of Greenland like you've said you wanted to?

4:02

It's a long term deal. It's the ultimate long term deal.

4:08

How long, how long would the deal be, Mr. President? Infinite. It's forever.

4:13

The deal has broken the space time continuum. It is just, it's just, it goes forever. As long as the universe exists, there will be a deal. Seems like the details are a bit fuzzy. Here's Fox News. Bret Baier trying to nail down the details with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

4:24

Is it still under the Kingdom of Denmark in this framework deal?

4:46

That issue did not come up anymore.

4:53

In my conversations tonight, Mr. President. He's very much focused on what do we need to do to make sure that that huge Arctic region where change is taking place at the moment, where.

4:55

The Chinese and Russians are more and.

5:05

More active, how we can protect that.

5:07

That was really the focus of our discussions.

5:08

It didn't come up, John. It didn't come up.

5:12

So in the discussions with the NATO Secretary General that led to the concept of a framework of a potential deal that we're all celebrating, what never came up was US Ownership over Greenland, which was the whole reason this entire crisis began, is that right?

5:15

That is correct. It is US Ownership of Greenland, which Donald Trump demanded three hours earlier said anything short of that was insufficient and would put the entire Western world at risk.

5:39

And then he threatened tariffs.

5:51

Threatened tariffs.

5:53

Threatened tariffs on not only Denmark, but multiple other European allies. You know, made more than one insinuation that perhaps we would invade militarily. Posted a couple of memes. One picture of him flanked by his two boys, Marco and JD And a polar bear, I believe, with like a sign that said, like, you know, Greenland, part of America, 2026. I don't fucking remember. There was like a. There's also another picture he posted of most of North America with an American flag on it. Because now we're owning Canada too, I guess.

5:54

Yeah. The one I saw was him planting an American flag on Greenland. I think. Yeah. That might as well. With Mark. I didn't.

6:35

He's like the Neil Armstrong of our time kind of thing.

6:42

Yes. Did that one have a polar bear?

6:44

Maybe I could be imagining the polar bear, but that's going around these days. So there is no deal. We did get a few more details from the New York Times about what has been discussed. Potentially more US Military bases, which we were already allowed to build. I was already part of the treaty, so we could have done that anyway. Shh. Jack. Though maybe the US Would control just the land that the bases are built on now as opposed to just building the bases on other people's lands. Though Prime Minister of Denmark not too happy hearing that. Clearly not part of the negotiations. Denmark was not part of that discussion in any way. So they have, like, rejected that. Maybe there's a larger NATO troop presence in Greenland under American command, which again, the Danes had already been willing to do. They could have done just under any president, any time. And maybe some ban on non NATO countries getting mining rights in Greenland, which again, Danes had already been willing to do. So what is this?

6:47

What is this, John? What an existential question that is.

7:51

What is any of this? It's infinite.

7:55

Why are we here? What is a negotiation that does not include the people who own Greenland? That's a question. How does that work?

7:58

What is Mark Rutte doing, by the way? Fucking freelancing.

8:07

I think all the European leaders got together. One of them drew this short straw and they had to go meet with the delusional man baby who is throwing his weight around. Davos. Like, the whole thing is so embarrassing. It is embarrassing for the world. It's embarrassing the American people. It's embarrassing for all the people who sat in that room who applauded like this was not some insane fucking speech happening. It's Embarrassing for the European leaders who are sending friendly texts to Trump to try to get on his good side that they can try to steer his insanity into a less dangerous place. The only person not embarrassed by this is the person who should be most embarrassed, which is Donald Trump. It's just so. It's like, what a gigantic waste of everyone's time. There are things that Trump wants to do that are crazy, that are the crazy solution to an actual problem, right? Like trying to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. That's an insane, impractical, ineffective solution, but it is trying to solve a problem. It's not how most people would solve it, but it's trying to solve it. There is no problem here. He invented a problem and then created an insane solution, caused the stock market to lose 2%, created all kinds of instability, caused people to sell off American bonds in the dollar and threaten the entire Western world order for what.

8:11

I also noticed, though, that Trump, he wasn't even in those interviews. He might have been a little tired from all of his traveling to Davos and whatnot and football games and football games, and he's fucking old and deteriorating. So it could be any of those. But he didn't seem. He wasn't selling it like he usually sells the fake deals that he's reached. He was kind of like, I don't know, anything could happen. Deal's infinite. Who knows? He had that, like, long pause with Kaitlan Collins. I haven't heard these clips yet, but right before we started recording, he did, like, a gaggle on Air Force One, I guess, on the way back from Davos. So they asked him a few questions about this. One reporter asked, were you worried about the market reaction to your tariffs on Monday and Tuesday? Like, is that why this all happened? And he goes, trump said the market reaction has been good. Reporter well, the market came back only after you backed away from your threats, Trump. The market came up very nicely. And then they asked him about Denmark, you know, being. Being on board with the, I guess, tiny pieces of land to give the United States that the US Military bases were built on.

9:27

The.

10:34

The reporter said, is Denmark on board with this concept? Trump? I'll let you know in about two weeks. There it is, the classic the old.

10:34

Two weeks from now.

10:43

This one has nothing to do with Denmark, but I'm just going to read it because it's kind of fun. I don't know if you see on Twitter, you can all Google this. It's out there. Trump now has, like, a big bruise on his Left hand, he's been bruising on the right hand, he's bruising all over the place. Who knows? Reporter, we saw the bruising on your hand. Are you okay? I'm very good. I clipped it on the table. So I put a little. What do they call it, Cream on it. I clipped it. I would say take aspirin if you like your heart, but don't take aspirin if you want to have a little bruising. I take the big aspirin. When you take the big aspirin, they tell you that you bruise. The doctor said, you don't have to take that, sir. You're very healthy. I said, I'm not taking any chances. That's one of the side effects.

10:44

You know what counts as not taking chances? Taking a massive dose of medication above and beyond what your doctor recommends. That's a chance.

11:26

You take all the aspirin, you whack your hand, it bruises, you put some cream on it. What's it called?

11:33

It is. It is for all the conspiracy theorists. I don't really know what's going on. It is true that if you take lots of aspirin, you do bruise more easily and you cut more easily. It's a blood thinner.

11:39

Yeah. No, the conspiracy here is that the President's a fucking lunatic who's taking too much aspirin.

11:46

Because, you know, if two aspirin are good for you, how great do you think 20 aspirin are?

11:54

Yeah. Well, make sure you take the aspirin, not the Tylenol, or else it's, you know, late onset autism for you, Donald Trump. So it is obviously not surprising that all those Fox goobers would fluff Trump over getting absolutely nothing that he asked for. But some of the other media coverage has been wild. We were angrily texting about it this.

11:59

Morning, as we do.

12:24

As we do. Here's Axios, which. Which listed the first place winner. It had five winners of Trump's Greenland climb down. Guess who the first place winner was?

12:26

Greenland.

12:38

It was Trump. Trump. Trump was the first place winner of Trump's Greenland climb down. And here's the explanation. Even with concessions falling far short of total control. Far short. Yeah, like far short. There was no concessions. There was no concessions. There was nothing to fall. Trump, concessions.

12:38

It is far short, John.

13:02

It is far. It is far short.

13:03

It's quite far, but it is far.

13:04

You know how far it is, Dan?

13:05

Infinite.

13:07

Infinite.

13:08

It's infinite far.

13:09

It's infinite far. Trump can still tout the art of the deal to his base and retreat from an issue that polls even worse than his handling of the Epstein files. Well, isn't that comforting for Trump and the rest of us? What a big winner. Yeah, I would say, like Greenland should have got number one because now the United States doesn't own them. Just like before they. Greenland literally got. And In Denmark got 100% of what they wanted, except, I guess, berated and threatened on the world stage and, and a lot of time wasted trying to figure out how to deal with the fucking madman that has taken over America.

13:10

I did not get past number one on this list because at that point I felt a need to put. Oh, so you're not going to answer my question, which is where did Greenland land on the list?

13:50

That's a good question. Should we look? Let's see.

13:57

Let's do this live.

14:00

Yeah, top five winners, Greenland. Let's see, five winners. Okay, here we go, Here we go.

14:01

Give us the winners in order.

14:09

Okay. Yeah, we'll obviously start with five. Number five. Even Davos itself emerged with its relevance renewed. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Okay, number four, markets. Markets flex their muscle as a meaningful constraint on Trump's behavior. Good job, markets. Thank you, markets. Number three, Europe. Europe avoided a potentially catastrophic trade war. Okay, that's fair. Europe did.

14:10

Europe did win.

14:42

Number two, Denmark and Greenland.

14:44

So they got a few. All right, all right. At least they made the top two.

14:46

Yeah, the Trump. Just to go on, on the Trump winning, the Trump always chickens out. Taco mockery popularized on Wall street may sting, but the President's MAGA machine is already moving to sell the deal as a total victory. Of course they are. And since they are, we must treat it seriously because they are the MAGA base. They are the MAGA machine. Okay, so there's that.

14:50

Can we just say one thing about the Davos coverage in general?

15:14

Yes, please.

15:16

There is just something self referentially gross about all the Davos coverage over the last week. All the media, all the, you know, the insider newsletter types, Axios, Politico, semaphore, they all go to Davos and they throw big parties and they hang out with their, their advertisers and then they talk about how important Davos is.

15:18

Davos is a.

15:37

All of them.

15:38

I wonder if they write any stories while they're there about the Democratic Party being out of touch and two, in bed with the elites.

15:39

Yeah, well, just as do you think.

15:49

They talk to Trump and all the Republicans and all the Trump administration people who went about that, about how they ran against Democrats cozying up with the elites for so long. And then. Do you think that's what they all talked about?

15:51

Yeah, I think also I was surprised that no one that I could see reported from there pointed out that Donald Trump intended to give a speech on affordable housing to a group of moneyed elites in the Swiss Alps, while his.

16:03

Treasury secretary talked about the average mom and pop retiring and buying, what, five, 10, 11, 12 houses? That was another. That was a real thing that happened. That was a real thing that happened.

16:17

With this is a billionaire president with a cabinet full of billionaires going to hang out with billionaires to talk about the economy? It's fucking bananas. And it should be covered as such.

16:27

And instead, they just fucking rampaged around Davos, trying to, like, fucking blow up the world order and threatening to invade Greenland, only to back down and come home with nothing but a huge bruise from taking too much aspirin.

16:36

But also saying that Trump almost upending the entire Western world order at Davos made it relevant is like saying that O.J. simpson made Ford Broncos cool again. Like, what? You're just the scene of the crime. There's nothing cool about that. Jesus Christ.

16:49

Congratulations, Donald Trump.

17:09

And Davos.

17:11

And Davos, of course. You got to hand it to Davos. You got to hand it to Davos, of course. Trump also scored another big Davos win on Thursday for. With the formal launch of his Board of Peace, where countries can pony up $1 billion to join an entity that was originally conceived to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, but has now turned into Trump's own model UN this is like his own little. His own little toy un. Here's CNN's Kaitlan Collins again, who you heard earlier asking a pretty smart question about the whole effort.

17:12

You talked about being concerned, Mr. President, about Russia trying to come and take over Greenland. If you're worried that Putin would do.

17:41

Something like that, we're going to.

17:47

Why invite him to join your Board of Peace?

17:48

Because we want everybody. We want all nations.

17:50

We want all nations where people have.

17:53

Control, people have power.

17:55

Yeah, I have some controversial people on.

17:56

It, but these are people that get the job done.

17:58

These are people that have tremendous influence.

18:00

But all babies on the board, there wouldn't be very much.

18:03

So he was invited. He's accepted.

18:07

Many people have accepted, I think.

18:11

I don't know of anybody that it hasn't accepted.

18:12

No fucking babies on board.

18:15

I mean, a board full of babies would not work.

18:16

It wouldn't.

18:19

He's right about this one, I hate to say it.

18:20

Also from the Air Force One gaggle, President Putin said that he May use frozen Russian assets to pay for his entry to the Board of Peace. Were you inclined to let him do that? I don't know about that. I've heard that little. Who said that? President Putin. He said he was gonna use his money. Reporter Frozen assets. Yeah, it's fine. He's using his money.

18:23

So policy gets made.

18:45

What, like we don't want we gotta invade Greenland because we don't want the Russians getting a foothold in Greenland, but the war criminal that is currently running Russia can use the assets we all froze to pay Trump for a seat on his Board of Peace because you don't want any babies on that board.

18:46

Did you ever get to the bottom of the. Paying Trump personally for this thing?

19:06

So it's going into a fund. Who knows, the bank's probably in Qatar like the rest of the.

19:09

I have to be honest, I did a real deep dive on the Qatari bank thing.

19:15

Yeah. What do you think? It's okay.

19:18

Well, it is not as crazy as it sounds on its face. In part because of our new ownership of Venezuelan oil, we have to invade a bunch of sanctions. So we have to put it in a banking cutter.

19:20

Well, because we always love to follow the law. Letter of the law. That's the Trump administration. No. So they all pay a billion dollars and the billion dollars is supposed to go towards still helping to rebuild Gaza and then other projects around the world, other war torn countries, places. Because we know from experience here in the United States that this administration and this president wants to make sure that money goes to foreign aid and foreign development overseas to people who need it.

19:33

That's one of. It's been one of his priorities since the outset.

20:03

Yeah. So I assume that this is just, it's all going to a good cause.

20:06

I mean, there is alternative plan that doesn't involve Putin. There's an agency within the State Department funded by Congress that could dispense aid to war torn parts of the country to help people rebuild, have food, have clean water, avoid diseases. We could call it USAID as an option.

20:10

That's as dumb as thinking there could be a body made up of countries around the world that could help solve international conflict. And you'd like call it the United Nations. You know, it's just crazy.

20:32

We have to tear things down to then rebuild up a lesser version of.

20:42

Them, which just with Trump's name on them, that is basically the last 10 years. So no one hasn't accepted, everyone, everyone wants to be part of this board, except for any of our actual allies. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, he gave a big speech at Davos that everyone's been talking about. And in that speech he said, quote, we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition, and that now is the time for the middle powers to band together. So big speech from Carney, got all of our allies basically just saying, you know, the entire post World War II international order that America helped build and sustained for the last several decades, seems like Trump broke it and it's gonna be hard to fix and we're gonna have to look elsewhere. What do you think? You feeling proud to be an American?

20:45

That's great. Every once in a while I dare to picture what it would be like if a Democrat wins. You think about all the things that they have to do. And I think about when Obama came in, because if people those old enough to remember would be. The world hated America because of the Iraq war, We were a laughingstock. Always tell stories. My wife went to Ireland when she was in college and she told everyone she was Canadian because people were so mad about the Iraq war while she was there. And then Obama went around, everyone's like, Obama's here.

21:34

Apology tour.

22:04

We did our apology tour. Everyone's really happy. We went back. Trump gets elected in 2016. The world could convince itself that this was a one time accident of history. Black swan event that allowed this fucking lunatic, who represented nothing other than the views of himself to be President, United States. He goes through the whole thing. He leaves. Joe Biden comes back, institutions are back. We're going back. It was just his aberration. We're going to go back to what had been a bipartisan consensus for 80 years about how Republicans and Democrats would disagree on how you implement that world order, about money for this versus money for that, or even conflict here versus conflict there. But the idea that these institutions were absolutely essential to global stability and American security, that was something we all agreed on. It is why absent Trump, there is largely a bipartisan agreement, at least in the Senate, about funding for Ukraine. Right. There was a bipartisan census that's gone. Now that Trump has been reelected, the world is never going to feel confident that the United States is not always four years away from electing an isolationist doofus like that's always gonna be there. And so the world order as we understand it, or at least as we understood it before Trump came back in, I don't think we're going back to that in any way, shape or form because it's, you know, Mark Carney's right. Everyone has to start, these other countries who relied on the United States for security and stability are going to have to look elsewhere. They need a belt suspenders approach. Because even if a president. Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, aoc, Josh, whoever comes in and goes back to the way Reagan, Bush, Obama, Biden did it, they can't assume that that's going to be that way four to eight years later. And so the world is headed to a very, very different place because Trump is just basically shat all over everything.

22:05

And we should be clear that it's not just like we are pining for international rules and institutions.

24:00

Yeah, most of them are broken for.

24:09

The sake of it. Right. But when they weren't broken or when they worked better than they did even before Trump broke them and destroyed them, they kept us safer, they kept the world safer, and they kept Americans safer, and they kept Americans more prosperous. And it's gonna be more difficult to live in a world where countries are turning to places like China for economic development, for security. I think Carney, I'm paraphrasing a line from his speech, but he said something like, in a world where there's just more fortresses because different countries are making different alliances and trying to, like, build up their own security, then like, that's a world that is more brittle, more dangerous, more prone to violence. And that's where he's leading us. And like you said, I believe and hope that Democrat wins, and the next president really does make great strides in repairing some of these relationships. But don't think we're going back for at least a generation at this point, thanks to Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress and everyone who has allowed him to do this and supported him doing this.

24:11

This is not to say that NATO does not need reform, that the United nations does not need massive reform, but it's the basic idea that the United States is more secure if we work together with our allies. We have as many allies as possible. If there is international agreements that are adhered to, that there are security agreements that are adhered to, that we all are, that working together leads to stability. And that what Trump is pushing us back towards is a Pre World War II mentality of might makes right. And that may seem great for the United States in this exact moment right now, but it may not be down the line. And so you have to sort of think ahead and you just like, it's all. So Trump is not replacing it with something else. Right. If you were to come in and say the way the world has worked before is not Working here is a different way. It is just like tear it down, reap the benefits and move on.

25:25

And America got to be a superpower under that order, right? It's not just like we were one of a whole bunch of countries. The rest of the world, much of the rest of the world looked to us and they admired our values, even if we haven't always lived up to them and like our prosperity as a country. We're the richest country in the world based on that. And we're the most powerful military in the world based on that. Right? We didn't get to that just by playing by the Donald Trump might makes right rules. But the good news is in the Board of Peace we got a new crew, we got Turkey, we got the stands, your Kazakhstan, your all the stands. We got the Gulf states in the Middle east, get your Saudi Arabia, your uae, Qatar, Belarus, Hungary. Netanyahu. He's agreed to join the peace board. Good news, tougher news, couldn't attend the signing ceremony as he is wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes. So that's tough. Same thing with Putin, another ICC war criminal fugitive. But you know, he's also busy, you know, invading Ukraine and he signed up allegedly, though we haven't confirmed that. So don't get too excited. But apparently he is going to use some frozen assets to pay for that fee. So. And you know, Jared, Jared Kushner was out there today with a slideshow making making Gaza look like a fucking shopping mall, I guess. I don't know. It was pretty bleak, Dan. Pretty bleak.

26:18

It was not a great couple of days for the world, I will say that.

27:44

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30:12

All right? The war at home isn't going much better for America. Okay. Minnesota is still under siege by thousands of armed federal agents who are terrorizing citizens and noncitizens alike. Police chiefs and law enforcement officials in Minnesota held a press conference Wednesday to say that ICE officers are racially profiling U.S. citizens, including their own off duty police officers in Minnesota, one of whom ICE officers, they boxed in her car. They held her up at gunpoint, demanded to see her papers, and then when she began to film them, they knocked the phone out of her hand. Then she let them know that she is a police officer. And what did the ICE agents do? Do you think they apologized? Do you think they said, oh, sorry, we didn't? No, they ran away because they are cowards and they don't identify themselves. So that's what happened. That was a group of police chiefs, law enforcement officials that held that press conference in Minnesota Wild. There was also an AP story about an internal ICE memo that a whistleblower sent to the Senate that claims federal immigration officers now have the power to enter our homes without a judge's warrant. A memo that has reportedly been used to train the agency's newer agents. No more judicial warrants needed. Only what they're saying is administrative warrants, which are warrants signed by ICE agents to enforce immigration enforcement. And now they can use those to barge into a home where they suspect that an undocumented immigrant may be. There's also the story we heard on Thursday of five year old Liam Conejo Ramos, who ICE detained while arresting his father and then shipped them both to a detention facility in Texas, despite another member of the five year old boy's household pleading, begging with ICE to let the boy stay in Minnesota, which of course they are supposed to do. Naturally, the White House dispatched its most empathetic senior official to Minneapolis, JD Vance, who held an event with ICE agents where he scolded all of us for not believing the government's lies. Let's listen. The local police chiefs have said their own off duty officers. So police officers are being targeted because they are a person of color and asked to show their papers. Is that a concern of the administration? Look, certainly. Is it a concern? Absolutely. The first thing we have to figure out is whether it happened or not. And then if it happened, whether there is a good explanation or a bad explanation. And of course, if somebody violated the law, if somebody racially profiled, if somebody violated the rights of one of our fellow citizens, that is something we will take very seriously. Nobody is talking about doing immigration enforcement without a warrant. We're talking about different types of warrants that exist in our system. But we're never going to enter somebody's house. House without some kind of a warrant. Unless of course, somebody's firing on an officer or they have to do something in order to protect themselves. No, I didn't say and I don't think Any other official within the Trump administration said that officers who engaged in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity. That's absurd. And I'm a father of a five year old, actually a five year old little boy. And I think to myself, oh my God, this is terrible. How did we arrest a five year old? Well, I do a little bit more follow up recently research. So the story is that ICE detained a five year old. Well, what are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five year old child freeze to death? Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the United States of America? If the argument is that you can't arrest people who have violated our laws because they have children, then every single parent is going to be completely given immunity from ever being the subject of law enforcement. And that doesn't make any sense. No one thinks that makes any sense. I mean, why aren't we congratulating the ICE agents from saving that five year old boy from the freezing cold and shipping him to Texas where it's much warmer and he can hang out in detention facility as opposed to his school or his home in Minnesota? Come on, are you people crazy? I was so. So someone clearly told J.D. vance after the performance he put on following the shooting of Renee Goode in the White House press briefing room that he was a little too hot coming out there and immediately calling her a domestic terrorist and yelling at everyone and acting like a maniac. And so they probably told him, you gotta cool it down, take it down, but you can still lie your ass off. No one's going to check any of your stories. So I guess that's what he did. What did you make of the press conference?

30:33

I would like to put a blood pressure monitor on myself while I watch JD Vance speak because maybe it's because I'm just so numb to Trump after all of these years, but I find J.D. vance to be more infuriating to watch. Just the smugness, the high school debate champ energy he gives off when he does it, the lack of charisma, the whole thing is just so infuriating. And I guess what happened here is I don't think this was necessarily about J.D. vance feeling. Not that he would ever feel bad about anything because he seems to be largely soulless in a lot of ways, but just feeling political pressure for his performance in the brief room. I think this is. Remember if you and I talked about it, you guys talked about it on a Tuesday podcast, but there's that Axio story about how the White House political team had reviewed the Rice Numbers. So they were starting to feel that the chaos was hurting them. They might have to take a different approach. And you could sort of sense when Trump did his one year press conference before heading to Davos that he tried to sand the edges down on the rhetoric some. He tried to, I mean, I say try with all the air quotes humanly possible around like a modicum of empathy for what's happened there, for what happened to Renee Goode, all of those things. I think J.D. vance was there to try to lower the temperature, but he just can't. Like he's infuriating in his presence and he's so just dishonest about everything. He could, like his like whole thing is to take something totally unreasonable, totally ridiculous and then just like gaslight it into a place of reasonableness for anyone who does not have the two brain cells required to understand that what he's saying is bullshit. Just creating the false choice between detaining a five year old and shipping him to another state to keep him in a detention center or let him freeze to death. Those were not the two options on the table. This was not like they did not arrest the father in the tundra.

35:11

Right.

37:21

Well, this is also.

37:22

It's just like he did not look into the story. What he did because any of the media outlets that wrote up the story, and I read it in the Washington Post, you can read it anywhere else, will have the family in there and the people at the school that run the school and all the witnesses saying that someone in the boy's household was pleading with ICE to let them keep the boy. And instead what ICE did is they used the boy as bait to knock on the door and try to get other family members to come out to detain. And of course they couldn't find any others to detain except for the father. And so there was no reason for ICE to keep the boy with the father when there were other members of the household that could stay with the boy. And now the boy is. No one knows where the boy, like the boy's just in a detention facility in San Antonio. And we'll talk about this in a second. But the conditions in these detention centers, particularly the ones in Texas, are fucking horrific. And you can't tell me that they're going to be able to take care of a five year. Imagine how scared he is. Imagine how scared this five year old is. And like, do you really think he's with his dad?

37:23

Of course not.

38:30

Who's been arrested and is going to be deported like this? Terrifying.

38:31

First it's just the lack of humanity from the people conducting the arrest. Like all of a sudden you find yourself like, you can see a world where you arrest someone. I'm sure this happens outside of immigration for regular law enforcement. You arrest someone and you now have a minor child and it's like, what do you do with them? And there are plenty of options before you get to send them to a detention facility. Right. And so like this, no one cared enough to try to find a solution or to let him stay with the.

38:35

I'll say, like JD's position. Yeah, the position that, that everyone who doesn't like this position we're all taking is you must not arrest anyone with a child, Particularly, especially in front of the child. That's it. The child is now a shield. Everyone can go commit crimes. And what the libs want is no one can be arrested with their child in their presence. He takes what people are saying everything.

39:05

To its illogical conclusion. Like, that is his rhetorical style.

39:26

Well, and then there's just like straight up lying. So right before that he said, I never said whoever said that there was any. There was immunity for officials, for ICE agents. So here's JD Vance verbatim in the White House briefing room after Renee Goode's murder. Quote, the precedent here is very simple. You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action. That's a federal issue. That guy is protected by absolute immunity.

39:30

He.

39:57

He was doing his job. The unprecedented thing is the idea that a local official can actually prosecute a federal official with absolute immunity. I've never seen anything like that. It would get tossed out by a judge. So that's that. Then let's see the story about the law enforcement official, the off duty police officer who was harassed and assaulted by ICE agents. He was like, yeah, obviously that would be concern. And we didn't play that part of the clip. But right after that he said, we have to figure out if the story's right because most of these stories over the last couple of weeks, these viral stories haven't been right, which is basically saying that all of the police chiefs in Minnesota and the local law enforcement officials who gave the press conference are fucking liars. Just calling the law enforcement officers liars. And we're not going to get the ICE agent side of that story because those ICE agents, we don't know who they are because they ran away like cowards, probably with their faces masked.

39:57

And then there's this broader point about the entire press conference because the whole thing that it is, I Am here today because I think we can lower the chaos if we get more cooperation from state and local officials.

40:54

Right.

41:07

That's the problem, is they are not cooperating. If they cooperate, then there would be less chaos. We go into fewer incorrect homes, etc. So the reporter's like, have you called Tim Walls? I know he's the governor of the state. Like, seems like somebody you'd want to speak to if you wanted to additional cooperation from state officials. Like, no, I haven't called them.

41:08

So he can call me. He can call me.

41:23

Yeah. Oh, and maybe. Maybe one reason why they may be hesitant to cooperate with you is because you've dispatched your Department of Justice to investigate them for fake crimes.

41:27

I do think the biggest piece of news in all this is this ICE memo that the AP reported on that, you know, an internal whistleblower sent it to the Senate and then obviously leaked it to the Associated Press as well. And first of all, J.D. vance's answer there was, what a fucking Yale Law School. What a fucking embarrassment.

41:35

Not great for Yale Law School.

41:56

No, I mean, Jesus Christ, what was he talking about? He got the whole thing wrong. So he.

41:57

I don't know if he got it wrong. He intentionally used words that made it sound more reasonable to avoid getting at the actual crux of the issue, which is who was signing these quote unquote warrants?

42:06

Who's signing the warrants? But also, like, we would never. We would never. We would never go into a home without a warrant. It's like, well, yeah, you would. In fact, the. The elderly man who you dragged out of his home in his underwear, who's a US Citizen, who you thought was some criminal that it turns out has been in jail since 2024, which DHS would have known. A case of mistaken identity. They barged his door down. So they did. So they. I don't know if they had a warrant. It wasn't a judicial warrant. It wasn't signed by a judge. These administrative warrants can be signed by ICE officers.

42:18

Yeah, I mean, that is the crux here. When he says. When J.D. vance says warrant, he's not talking about warrant in the way in which we commonly think of it, which is a prosecutor and the police go to a judge, they present probable cause. The judge then signs a warrant saying, yes, you can go in and find this person, arrest this person, search the premises, whatever. Which is how it is laid out in the Constitution. Right? These are your Fourth Amendment rights. These are warrants, essentially, arrest warrants signed by immigration officers to be enforced by other Immigration department officers. And so the reason why the courts have generally said that these warrants cannot work is that the courts are supposed to be a check on the executive branch. The executive branch cannot give itself authority to execute executive branch functions. Which is really interesting, this memo, because they say, the memo says they can do this everywhere other than one district in central California. Cause there's already been a court decision in central California in a case called Kid v. Mayorkas which said you cannot do that there.

42:58

Also, even these administrative warrants that ICE officers sign do not allow them to go into people's homes. Right.

44:06

It's just simply saying we are asserting this person is in this country illegally, you can go pick them up. And they are then trying to take that one step further to say that you can. Because we signed that, then that is the equivalent of a judicial warrant to go into someone's home, which it is not. No court has ever said that, and presumably no court ever would.

44:15

And here's why. This is dangerous for every single American. So ICE comes to your home, knock on the door, you're like, ICE is outside. I'm a US Citizen, I'm not fucking answering that door. Now ICE raids your home, busts the door down, comes in your home, searches, takes you away, and you're like, well, how can they do that? Well, they have an administrative warrant that they signed themselves that says they thought that an undocumented immigrant who was wanted for a crime happened to be in your home. What's your proof of that? We don't care. We just, we signed our administrative warrant ourself.

44:31

Yeah. Like the point is it can be your home. Is that the government, like all the don't tread on me people is the government is just giving itself the power to go in anyone's home whenever it wants for any reason.

45:08

And again, you might think like, well that's, I mean, they're doing that now cuz they're trying to find undocumented immigrants. Well, yeah, but what is going to stop them from doing this to any American that they want to? And then if they do that, what do you do about it? Can you hold the ICE officer accountable? Well, no, because apparently they have immunity as well.

45:21

Yeah.

45:40

Do we think the Department of Justice is going to hold them accountable? The Department of Justice that decided ahead of any investigation that Renee Goode is a domestic terrorist? I mean, we're just, you know, I don't like to alarm people, but we're in fucking lawless territory here. Just because it's only happening in these cases that we're hearing about in Minnesota doesn't mean it can't expand to the rest of the country until the fucking Supreme Court gets off his ass and actually rules on this, which who knows how long we'll wait for that. Also, I was talking about these conditions in these detention centers in Texas where the 5 year old is being held. Horrifying. I don't know if you saw the story about the Cuban migrant who died in the El Paso facility, which I have seen from reports is even worse. DHS liars had said that he died by suicide. Then the El Paso medical examiner does an autopsy and confirms that it was a homicide, which lines up with what his family heard from witnesses who said that they saw the guards strangle him to death. And then DHS after those witnesses said that DHS tried to deport them. The Washington Post also reported that five other people aside from this Cuban immigrant have already died in immigration detention the first two weeks of the year, including a 36 year old man at the same facility who was swept up in the Minnesota raids. We haven't talked about the detention facilities in a while because I think we've rightly been so focused on like ice rampaging through the communities. Everyone should check out Runaway Country, Alex Wagner's podcast, because she digs into the detention centers this week. It's a really great episode. But they are, it's really, especially the ones in Texas, just fucking like rotten food, rampant disease, very little medical care, very little access to medical care for people. And they're just leaving people there for. You can't get phone calls, you don't know where you're going. They're just leaving people there to rot.

45:41

And at the fundamental belief from the people responsible for these policies is that undocumented immigrants are less than human, which is why their rights don't matter, their dignities don't matter, and their lives don't matter to them.

47:47

Undocumented. And now people who are here legally.

48:01

And frankly, anyone who doesn't look like them. Right.

48:05

Or anyone who doesn't look like them or agree with them. Yeah, that's what happened to Renee Goode, right? It is. You don't look like us, you don't think like us. You dare to question us, you dare to try to protest, you dare to try to criticize us, we will fuck with you. And we can do whatever we want. That's. That is what they're doing. You can call it whatever you want. You can debate the term, you can debate the historical parallels, whatever. This is what's happening. So, you know, the. The other part of the administration's counteroffensive is to now to try to distract people with the story of the anti ICE protesters who interrupted a service at a church in St. Paul where one of the clergy is also the leader of the local ICE field office. So on Thursday morning, all the Trump MAGA media stars inside and outside of the administration took to social media to tout three arrests in the case as if they had, like, just caught bin Laden. Apparently. They also tried to bring charges against independent journalist Don Lemon, who accompanied the protesters into the church and was interviewing them. Also, by the way, don't was interviewing the church officials, but the judge wouldn't sign off on the warrant to charge Don Lemon. That apparently, according to Politico, enraged Pam Bondi that they couldn't grab Don Lemon, sweep him up. In this set of arrests. As they announced the arrest, Kristi Noem called the Protest, quote, the St. Paul church riots. And Bondi called it a coordinated attack and wrote in all caps, we do not tolerate attacks on places of worship. Really? They just really wanted to arrest Don Lemon, huh?

48:08

Well, you know, it's Hamit Dhillon, who's in charge of the civil rights division, went on Benny Johnson's podcast and basically promised to arrest Don Lemon. Or she was kind of goaded into it. And then Benny Johnson, like, sent out the clip, was like, you know, Trump DOJ to charge Don Lemon. And so they had to, as has been true of most of the policy making of this administration is right wing. Is Trump administration official says something on a right wing podcast, it then becomes policy. Then this is how they try to charge Don Lemon.

49:54

I mean, you can argue that the entire occupation of Minneapolis flows from fucking Nick Shirley's YouTube video where he does this ridiculously fake investigation of Somali run daycare centers in Minnesota, pretending that there was fraud there, even though there's no evidence of that in any of the places that Nick Shirley showed. Even though there was, you know, plenty of fraud that had been charged years ago in Minnesota. Big fraud cases. I'm sure then the administration was like, oh, shit, well, this kid's video is going viral about the fraud. We've already charged the fraud. In fact, the Biden administration charged the fraud. So now we gotta come up with new fraud. But until then, why don't we just send a bunch of ICE agents to Minneapolis and see what they find? And here we are.

50:22

This is exactly right. Because it is fair. It's a fair question to ask Warren. All the cities in America where The Trump administration could deploy 3,000 ice strips. They pick Minneapolis. And it's because of the Somali community in Minneapolis. Because in the right wing telling of this story, the focus is entirely on the Somali community. Trump is, I mean, he has been almost explicit that Somali, you know, Somali people are less than human. And so it's basically, it is this. It's like snake eating itself. Starting with the right wing medium. We're right back there again.

51:07

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53:40

All of this is weighing heavily in the debate within the Democratic Party about whether to vote to fund DHS as part of the process of avoiding yet another government shutdown. We've talked about this before. The DHS bill did pass the House on Thursday afternoon with all but seven Democrats voting no. But then of course the real test is in the Senate, where the bill heads now. And it seems like as of this recording this time Democrats, or at least all the Democrats, haven't totally made up their minds. What do you think they should do?

54:38

I don't know how you can in good conscience vote for additional funding for ICE without real restrictions. And that's not to say like we should be very clear that if the Democrats in the Senate were to filibuster this bill, then it was not going to stop what ICE is doing in Minneapolis. They have money in their bank and they will continue to get money in their bank because as we said before, and I think perhaps I did not say clearly enough last time is within the big beautiful bill or whatever you want to call it, was a huge plus up in funding, that is mandatory funding. It is immune from the yearly appropriation cycle. So even if the government is Shut down that money comes. Democrats cannot shut the government down. Most of the governments already been funded. So this would only be dhs. I just don't know how you can do it. We can debate the politics of it, right. And whether they are good or bad or overstated or understated. But if I was a Senate Democrat, if I was in the House, I certainly would have voted no. If I was in the Senate, I would not vote for cloture on this bill. I would not let the Republicans bring it to the floor. Are there probably enough senators, the same ones who opened the government a couple months ago, to do it? That may be the case, but if it was up to me, I would not do it.

55:09

Yeah, it'd be a definite no. I mean, even last time we talked about this, we talked about, okay, say they can't get a DH funding bill done and it's just a continuing resolution. Right. So it's just, you know, no one wanted to give DHS more money and so we're just going to keep funding it at current levels. And do you vote yes or no on that, knowing that it does nothing? Right. Because you shut the government down. ICE has all their money. They keep going. Chris Murphy, who's going to vote against it in the Senate, you know, he was like, he, you know, had a long tweet thread about this. The DHS budget, it gives, it gives them an additional $28 billion, this bill, in addition to all the money ICE got in the big beautiful bill. To me that makes it like a fucking no brainer. And if you shut the government down, I do think it is important we should say you shut the government down. ICE is still gonna do what they're doing. They're not going to. It's not gonna slow them down, which fucking sucks. And then somebody like Democrats are shutting the government down. It's like a whole thing. And like, do you win that fight politically? I don't fucking know. But I think it's a pretty clear message that like, yeah, you know why I voted no? I voted no because I don't think ice, which we're gonna talk about. The New York Times poll has a 35% approval rating. I don't think that fucking ICE should get 28 and Kristi Noem should get 28 billion more dollars when everyone's healthcare premiums are going up and costs are up and, and ICE is rampaging through communities, breaking the law, breaking down doors in violation of the fourth amendment, arresting people. Abso fucking lutely not. No.

56:30

A couple maybe Last week or the week before AOC was walking out of Congress, she was walking down the steps at night and she got asked about what was happening there. And she made the point, which I've not heard any other Democrat make, which is, if you want to know why your healthcare costs are going up, why we don't have money to extend the Affordable Care tax credits or all the other things you want is because all the money is going to what's happening in Minneapolis. That's where their priorities are. And I think that that is a powerful message because it is about priorities. Like, this is where the focus is. This is what they are doing. They are not helping you. They are doing this. They are creating chaos in service of something that is indecent, cruel, and it's not making America any more secure.

58:11

They're using your tax dollars to barge down the doors of your fellow Americans and like dragging them out into the street and sending 5 year olds to detention camps. Like, what we're paying for this, what this is. These people work for us. ICE works for us. Kristi Noem works for us.

58:53

Well, theoretically that's true.

59:13

Right, but that's why you say, like, no, I'm not gonna fucking fund that.

59:15

I mean, they just. If we're being like. Is fair to the argument here of what would actually happen is. So here you're. You can vote for it, right? And it will pass. And most Democrats will certainly vote against it. The overwhelming majority will vote against it. Something like probably 85% of them will vote against it. The question is, right, are we going to get the right numbers? So in that world where they all. Where it gets stopped, there probably is pretty easy to come up with a continuing resolution which just says you want additional money and certainty for the year. We want some guardrails. Chris Murphy listed a bunch. We talked about them last week. Masks, warrants, all these other things, really common sense things in the Constitution. We want those in writing. That's the deal. In the interim, why we negotiate that. Let's just keep it at the exact level it was at last year. Continue resolution. Republicans probably say no to that because they think the fight over a shutdown DHS is good for them. This is actually something they did in the run up to the 2002 midterms when the DHS was unable to be formed because of a dispute over a collective bargaining agreement for TSA agents and other DHS employees. And so you do end up in this situation. So those are the outcomes. It's not strategically, it's not simple. You make the right point, which is the polling says it's very clear. It's particularly clear in the New York Times poll that Democrats should not be afraid of being tough critics on ice or a fight over ice. We can debate whether that is the best issue to be talking about before the midterms, but it's not a bad issue.

59:18

Yeah, and I. Look, the government funding debate and the shutdown stuff, it drives me a little crazy because part of what I think our side sometimes believes is that we have leverage. And we don't have leverage because Republicans aren't gonna change their behavior. And they have proven that. They have proven that, like, this is the most important priority for them and they're gonna find the money anywhere to keep doing it. So I don't think, you know, I think some of us even went into the healthcare shutdown thinking, like, oh, maybe they'll change their mind and pass an extension of Obamacare subsidies. They did not. I don't think they would have if we kept the government shut down. They're not now. They just don't wanna do it. Certainly on. At least they were considering it on aca, at least in the last couple weeks post shutdown. They would never back off on this.

1:00:50

Never.

1:01:37

But the question is, like, you know, this is a bigger issue now, but if we now have paramilitary squads rampaging through the country, and they're in Minneapolis now, they've been in other cities, it's not getting better, it's getting worse. It's not slowing down, it's speeding up. They're gonna spend more of the money. They're gonna hire more of these people. The people that they keep hiring are gonna be worse, less qualified, crazier. They're giving him guns. They don't need warrants now is what they tell us. They can arrest whoever they want. They're shooting people without any kind of accountability whatsoever. They're going to be doing that. Then maybe you, like, you send a message, you say, this is what we're like. The people in Minnesota, they are staging a. Or a lot of people in Minnesota, they're organizing a statewide pause in daily economic activity. So basically, like a, they're trying to do like a strike, one day strike in Minnesota. They're not going to go to school, they're not going to work. At least a whole bunch of people are trying to do this. And, you know, by the way, you can check out on Vote Save America if you want to. If you stand in solidarity with people in Minnesota, you can find a nonviolent event protest event near you. You can call on Congress to reign in ice. You can demand different corporations stand up to ice, maybe have contracts with them. I do wonder if, and this is. It's politics, but it's a bit outside, just, you know, electoral politics and congressional politics inside D.C. that it's time to sort of organize a much more nationwide response to what ICE is doing. That is because it's. The midterms are nine months away and, you know, we have three more years of the Trump administration. And at some point, when do you decide that, like, you know, we gotta step up and get out to the streets and defend our neighbors here, because they could be coming for any of us. So it's sort of like what I thought originally about the first shutdown. But it would be more that than some kind of strategy to assume that our leverage would be used to kind of get the administration to get ICE to back down, just by virtue of a little bit of shutdown you're using.

1:01:38

As an intentional moment is what you're doing. Because we should be. You made this point. I want to say it again. There is almost no chance that they are going to agree to take the masks off because we shut down the agency. Because they don't need the money in the short.

1:03:45

They don't need the money. Yeah. But it's time to maybe, you know, organize nationwide against ICE here. So. The other big focus on Capitol Hill Thursday was former special counsel Jack Smith's appearance in front of the House Judiciary Committee as part of their investigation into Smith's old investigations of Donald Trump. Both the criminal charges brought against the president related to January 6 and the criminal charges he faced over hiding classified documents at Mar A Lago and refusing to give them back. Smith had already agreed to a deposition for the committee, but asked for an open hearing as well, so that the country could hear him defend his actions. Here's some of what it sounded like. President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the law. Rather than accept his Defeat in the 2020 election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity. This is all a show, and Mr. Smith, you're just the latest act that they've brought in.

1:03:58

Fault does not lie with Donald Trump.

1:05:01

It lies with Yogananda Pittman and the.

1:05:05

U.S. capitol leadership team. We know.

1:05:08

We know they had the intelligence that was Michael Fanone off one of the Capitol police officers saying, go fuck yourself. Good for him. What is this? We were like Jack Smith testifying. What's happening? How much does this matter? It's just this is going to go, I guess they're trying to investigate Jack Smith. At least the Congresses. Donald Trump responded by being like, you know, Pambandi should do something. Of course.

1:05:11

So this is a product of the effort to investigate the weaponization of government, the alleged weaponization of government by the Biden administration. They are looking at all sorts of things. I had the mispleasure of, I think that's a word of listening to Jim Jordan's opening remarks this morning, very early in the morning. And it's insanity. It's like he talked about the Steele dossier, Fani Willis and Nathan Way. It's all over the map. It's insane. It is like you have to be so embedded in right wing conspiracy theories to know what's happening here. It is just so like, I guess it's funny that they're having this hearing about the opposition of government at the same time that in Trump's list of accomplishment a day for his first term he includes weaponizing government in there and holding his political opponents accountable. Like they are doing it every single day. And without any self awareness, they're holding these hearings. All the other hearings and depositions have been taken privately. Jack Smith demanded his be done in public because all the people who worked for him have been fired from their jobs, the career prosecutors, FBI agents. So he wants to defend their work and have a moment watching it is just so surreal because it just, it takes you back to.

1:05:42

It's a rerun from a few seasons ago.

1:07:02

It is, but just it takes you back to sitting in our homes during the pandemic on January 6, just watching that horror scene take place takes you back to a couple years later when the January 6th committee hearings happened and all that incredibly compelling evidence and testimony and videos were released and you were brought back that day. These things that felt like moments that would forever change American politics or at least the trajectory of Donald Trump's life. How we felt when. And the reaction when Donald Trump was charged in the classified documents case, which isn't even brought up here, which is like the most obvious crime he committed when he was charged in the January 6th case. And it's all been just sort of whitewashed from. Not from history because I think it'll be in the history books, but from the political conversation we've just. Because Trump won reelection after having done all these things, being indicted, having fomented the riot itself and The Republicans have all decided that it's cool if someone sends Ahmad to murder you as long as they. That person's within your party. It's just. We've just like this sort of. It's just been all pushed to the side as if it doesn't matter anymore. And it's like kind of almost. It's surreal but nice or important maybe to hear talk about that again, to be reminded that this was this giant fucking deal that was this incredibly dark moment in history, and that even if we're not caring about it now, over the course of time, if we are lucky enough to make it into the future, that it will be remembered for what it is, which is this very deeply dangerous, horrific thing that Donald Trump did.

1:07:04

I saw that Hank Johnson, Democrat on the committee, asked at one point, since the charges were dismissed without prejudice after Trump won, they asked Smith could he be charged again after he leaves office. And Smith didn't really take the bait, but did say that they were dismissed without prejudice, which means, yes, they can be charged again. Yeah.

1:08:41

I mean, the problem in this is the President is the immunity ruling.

1:09:03

That's right.

1:09:06

But I mean, it's like, although.

1:09:07

Well, remember, the immunity ruling sort of lopped off a big part of the indictment, but some of it still remained, like, before Trump won. We still thought there was going to. Remember, there was still going to be a. There's still going to be a case.

1:09:08

And the Fulton county case could be brought back because that is a local case and not relevant to this.

1:09:22

My thing is like, you know, good for Jack Smith. There's things he couldn't talk about based on sort of evidence. Like, what I'm interested in someday is, you know, evidence that Jack Smith had, that he was going to bring it to trial that we haven't heard yet. And, you know, same in the, in the documents case. If Eileen Cannon ever. I mean, she won't. But if anyone can ever get that evidence that would interest me, I think.

1:09:26

The Justice Department, that's one thing. It won't be the most important thing, but. But I hope that this is what imagine this Democratic president wins, our attorney general goes out, promises full disclosure of the Jack Smith files, brings in a bunch of content creators, influencers, maybe not.

1:09:50

Us, because we wouldn't get invited.

1:10:07

You don't know who. You don't know who the President's going to be. We might get invited. We might get invited. This time, we get handed a binder and it's filled with all this stuff. It can happen.

1:10:08

It'll be Brian.

1:10:19

You might not be invited.

1:10:22

Yeah, no, I might be invited. Yeah, you might. Yeah, you might get invited. Definitely not. Love it. Yeah, maybe you and Tommy.

1:10:24

This episode is sponsored by Better Help. The new year doesn't require a new you, but maybe just a less burdened you. Therapy can help you more easily identify what is weighing you down, what is holding you back, and by offering you an unbiased perspective to better understand your relationships, motivations and emotions. As you know, it's a horrible, terrifying world out there. You all need therapy. Yeah, you haven't done it yet. Now is the time. 2026 could be better for you, for the people around you, for your loved ones if you get some help. Better Help therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the US BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences in their 12 plus years of experience. An industry leading match fulfillment rate means they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is one of the world's largest online therapy platforms, having served over 5 million people globally. And it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 patients million client reviews. BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist. Sign up and get 10% off@betterhelp.com PSA that's betterhelp.com PSA.

1:10:39

Are you curious about the hidden side of everything?

1:11:57

Then I have a podcast for you.

1:12:01

I'm Stephen Dubner, host of Freakonomics Radio. Each week we hear from some of.

1:12:02

The most fascinating skills, scholars and thinkers.

1:12:07

As we tackle big topics like how whales became the face of environmental activism, how to succeed at failing, and whether.

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Public transportation should be free.

1:12:17

Go ahead, listen to Freakonomics Radio wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get to some good news. A New York Times Sienna poll dropped on Thursday morning. That's it. That's the good news for me and you. It doesn't matter what's in it. It's just exciting. I have to say I've been. I'm having trouble sleeping this week and I had a late meeting last night and I didn't get home till late and so I slept till I saw the clock and it was 4:15am for the first time. And that to me was A win. It wasn't 2:00am or 3:00am and then I, like, grabbed my phone and I looked and I fucking saw the New York Times news alert on my phone, which is the only news alert I get from the Times. And it said, like, times Sienna poll. And I was like, oh, boy. Oh, we got a Time Sienna poll. And so I, of course, texted it to the group.

1:12:19

But then, you know, the sad thing is, when you texted it, I was already reading it. Cause I also Woke up at 5.

1:13:16

Well, because then I opened our office slack, and right before, you had already sent it to the office slack.

1:13:21

Yes, yes.

1:13:27

And all of our east coast employees, like Reid, were like, how did you send that? It's four in the morning.

1:13:28

You gotta wake up earlier, Reid. I tell you that all the time, telling you that for 20 years.

1:13:32

Okay, here are the top lines and then we can dig into the details. Trump's approval rating is 40%, with 56% disapproving. 64% of voters don't like how he's handling the cost of living. 58% don't like how he's handling the economy. 58%, same number don't like how he's handling immigration. 39% don't like how he's handling our relationships with other countries. So. Other countries, Rest of the world. You know, only 39% of us think that all that's going well. So just so you all know. And only 32% of voters think the country is better off than when Trump took office a year ago. 42% of voters say he's on track to be one of the worst presidents in history. Only 19% say he'll be one of the best. And that includes only 45% of Republicans, which is interesting. Meanwhile, in the 2026 midterms, voters would favor a Democratic candidate over a Republican by 5 points, 48% to 43%. Trump himself is not only aware of this poll, he has announced that he'll be adding it to his lawsuit against the New York Times and will demand to learn how the Times quote computed these fake results. Must preserve all records. Nate Cohn. He then added two more posts saying that fake polls are out of control and, quote, dangerous, and that publishing polling he doesn't like should be a crime. Are you worried that he might come for polar coaster with Dan Pfeiffer or the message box, perhaps?

1:13:37

Maybe the message box. I could see that polar coaster. He wouldn't. He wouldn't dare touch Caroline Restin. So it's fine.

1:15:02

He's. He's not behind the paywall anyway. Yes. God, we hope you should be. If you want to listen to Polar Coaster, the the one pod that Trump doesn't want you to hear. Polar Coaster to independent.

1:15:07

He's too scared to sue.

1:15:19

Polar support Independent Progressive media signed up to be a friends of the podcast crooked.com friends. How is that for an organic push?

1:15:20

Elijah is just, he's swelling with pride right now.

1:15:26

Okay, what are your thoughts on the poll? I have not had time to read your message box yet on the poll, so this is just fresh for me.

1:15:30

Let me give you the most important top line from this, which is Donald Trump's 2024 winning coalition that included obviously his MAGA base and core Republican voters, but also Latinos, working class men of color and young voters, particularly young men, has collapsed. And his coalition right now in this poll looks almost exactly like his coalition in 2020 when he lost the election. All the people that he what it looks like right now, and this is one poll, it's the best poll. But it is one poll. But it's also, it is consistent with the narrative of all the other polls we've seen over the last year is the 2024 election was not a realignment. It was more likely to be an aberration born of the lethal combination of inflation plus Joe Biden's age. Those two things led us there. And so what that means for the midterms, which is really interesting, is now the lesser engaged voters who are targets for Democrats. Again, the way this poll looks is higher turnout would benefit Democrats. We are actually winning people on the generic ballot. We are crushing the generic ballot with Latinos, younger voters, non college, non white voters, independent voters. Among people who did not vote in 2024, Democrats are up by 15 points on the generic ball.

1:15:36

Wow.

1:17:08

And so, and this is because the second part of this is like you read this, Trump is underwater on every single issue except border security, where he has a net approval of 3. I think just hugely underwater. Everything, economy, immigration, you went through all these things. But, and I think they all add up. You know, ice, Greenland, all these things add up to this level of sort of chaos and dysfunction and distraction that is driving Trump down. But the poll is pretty clear that the economy is the main reason that his coalition has collapsed. The voters who have left Trump are twice as likely to cite an economic issue as their top issue as the rest of the electorate. And so this is part of the explanation for 2024. You had a bunch of people who did not love Trump. They were very Skeptical of him. They were very cost conscious. They were economically prioritized voters. They will and take a risk on him. He has now not only failed to lower the prices, he has raised their prices and they've started to look elsewhere. Now the challenge for Democrats here is this is not redounded to the Democratic Party's benefit. You know, this poll actually is more Republican than you would expect. Republicans still have a registration advantage. So we have a lot of work to do.

1:17:09

But the opportunity, what do you think that's all about? Because that was my one. I have, I had one other point that I liked and this is from Nate Cohen's analysis of it. One other point I liked and one other point that it was like, which is, yeah, as you said, party identification. Self identified Democrats had outnumbered Republicans for decades before Republicans edged ahead in 2024. And now Republicans continue to lead by three points in today's poll. About for party registration, I think is that like they're pissed about Trump, but they're, they're like, maybe we still want to be Republicans, but we just want.

1:18:18

No, I think it's two things. One, we know from 2025 registration data that Republicans are still continuing to out register Democrats, a trend which is the exact opposite of how it's been for many years up until the Biden years began. But the other thing is that these younger voters, these particularly 1829 year olds, are much more likely to register as independents. And so the independent pool is bigger but looking more Democratic right now than it did in 2024, which allows Republicans to have a registration advantage yet still trail.

1:18:49

That makes sense because for a while the independent pool. Yeah, so in 2024 the independent pool was looking a little more right leaning.

1:19:22

And this often happens after. This is why when you win a first term, you almost always win independents. And even when you win reelection, you lose independence. And it's because who makes up an independent shifts. So a bunch of people who were independents who were like huge Obama supporters in 2008 just became Democrats the next time around. And so the independent pool moved a little more.

1:19:30

Right.

1:19:52

It was not surprising. There was like the natural sort of shift within the pool that happens after the election. And then there was the true trend that Gen Z voters are much less likely to register with a party than previous generations have been.

1:19:53

One other point and then we can stop on your point on the economy and Cohn says. Cohn, who's I'm sure awaiting a subpoena or a knock on the door lawsuit at least. So about half of the Defectors from Trump. So people who voted for Trump in 2024 and then in this poll said, yeah, I voted for Trump in 24, and now I'm gonna vote for a Democrat. Half of them cited the economy as the reason, but the other half cited democracy, Mr. Trump himself, immigration, other things, which I think it sort of argues for the point that I haven't really articulated well, which is like, economy is the number one issue. Cost of living, for sure, but it's not economy. Cost of living at the expense of everything else. It should be prioritized over other things. But the people who go so extreme and say, like, oh, it's just the economy, cost of living. You can't talk about anything else like, that is clearly not right because some of the defections from Trump are coming. At least half the defections from Trump are coming from other issues even.

1:20:08

It's impossible. It's just not a practical solution. You can decide. All of our ads should be on the economy. You can make that decision. I probably wouldn't recommend that, but you could do that. I mean, that's what Zoron did. You can't run it as a party. You cannot exist in a world in which you don't talk about all the other things that are happening. You only wait till there's an affordability moment.

1:21:09

Right, right, right. All right. Well, that's our show for today. And just a reminder, still tickets left for our Australia and New Zealand shows, but they are. They're selling out fast, Dan.

1:21:33

Very fast.

1:21:44

It's the hopefully Just Visiting tour. Who knows if it'll still be a joke? But again, we're in Auckland, New Zealand, on February 11, and then we're in Melbourne in Australia on February 13, Brisbane on the 14th, and Sydney on the 16th, getting some good guests. We'd love to see you there. Head to crooked.com events and you can get your tickets before they're gone. That's our show for today. Dan's gonna be back on Sunday with a conversation with our old friend David Plouff. I mean, you know, I'm gonna tune in.

1:21:46

That's my. It's an audience of one here.

1:22:15

It's just me, for sure.

1:22:17

Maybe we can just.

1:22:19

Call us. I wanna talk to the Plough. Yeah. And so everyone check that out. And then we'll be back with a. With a new episode from. For all of you on Tuesday. Tune in.

1:22:19

Bye, everyone.

1:22:28

If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illich Frank and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Churlin is our executive editor. Adrienne Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Kanter is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt de Groat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Hayley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Kiril Pelaviev, David Toles and Ryan Young, our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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