Sam Stein: Trump Is Trying to Instigate Unrest

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It is Thursday and I'm delighted to be here with my friend, the managing editor of the Bull War, because the man is Steven Miller called Repugnant, the Interrupter-in-Chief at Sam Stein. Thank you. Repugnant Stein. Thank you. I'm not going to interrupt you. I promise. I don't believe you. I'm going to be interrupting you. We have an insane amount of stuff to cover today. I had like a concept of where I was going to do a potpourri of like things that I haven't gotten to that are also in the news, but I don't know. We might not get to those today either because I sent you like five. I know. We'll see. We're going to try to get to it at the end. We'll see how it goes. But we got to start with more news on Minneapolis. Last night around nine o'clock, federal agents shot rubber bullets and released gas canisters in North Minneapolis. The protesters gathered after a federal agent shot a migrant in the leg on a play just a little bit of the audio from the scenes. I got hit in the head really bad. This is going to be a photographer from Status Koo News when we play a couple of things from them today. I guess before we get to the DHS's story about what happened, I guess initial thoughts on the escalations last night. You know, it's getting like, well, past the point of disturbing, but it's getting really like defeating more. You feel defeated watching this stuff because this is a major U.S. city that is under siege by its own government. I mean, there's no other way to really look at it. What they've done is they've sent thousands of ICE agents into a city that doesn't want them, doesn't need them, isn't asking for them, and it's just stirring shit up. And it's so obvious what the goal is here is they're just trying to create chaos to justify more federal authorities going in there. I mean, Trump this morning, as we are recording this, is talking about using the Insurrection Act, which basically would allow for the deployment of the military. So I guess the question, Tim, I don't really understand. It's like, what is the end game for Trump here? They're trying to instigate unrest. I just think that it's extremely obvious. Nothing can be more obvious that that's what they're trying to do. But what's the end game of that? Well, as you mentioned, he wants to invoke the Insurrection Act to control more power. And then I'll tell you, well, it's a combination of things. I'm interrupting that. I think there are a few things happening. There's like a psychodrama play here where Donald Trump and other people involved wish they would have cracked down on protesters harder after George Floyd. And there is a psychological element to this. There is a policy element to this from Stephen Miller. Sure. He is just looking for more and more creative ways to try to figure out how he can deport people as fast as possible and menace people. And that is like he has an ideological project. There are only a couple ideological projects in this administration. Trump loving tariffs and Stephen Miller wanting to deport brown people are like the main two. You know, he was bombing drug boats in Venezuela as like a triple bank shot effort to try to get more rationale for deporting Venezuelans. But I don't see why this is any different than that. And I also think that there's a political element to this. This is the part that I'm more skeptical of. I think they think it's a winner. I mean, Trump in one of his press meetings last two days, he was like chipper. Yeah. You know, like more than we've seen him in the past few days is that he's like, we're feeling good. Things are going well. Da, da, da, da. Maybe it was the Tony de Kupel interview that I'm thinking of. And I think that they thought that things were going badly at the end of last year and the Epstein files and economy and just a wide range of things. And that this has them on offense. Again, I remain a little skeptical that that's going to work, but I think they think that I remain very skeptical. OK, I'm putting aside the morality of it. Let's just like talk about the politics of it. One, and now fairly convincing in Man of Polling data to show that this is not working out. Right. Like people are turning against Trump on immigration and they're turning against ICE. And there's like this you gov economists poll where they saw the majority of the public now wants to abolish ICE. That's just one poll. I'm not thinking it's real or anything like that, but whatever it shows the trends. Sure. And then two, it's like, let's say they take it to the logical conclusion where they've, you know, called in the military. They've decimated a major American city. They've ripped apart communities. All the Somali Americans are gone. Businesses are ravaged. Neighborhoods are upended. People are bruised in the hospital. Some are dead. What are you? Hey, we won. We did it. Look, I mean, how does that work? I don't really see how that works. What are they going to do when it's all said and done? Hey, we cleaned out your city. You should be grateful for us. No one's going to be grateful for that. I saw the tweet you put up about that dude. And maybe we'll get into it later. Who came out and protested. Dude, in one second, I just want to say just really quick about their psychology. Trump's not a long game thinker. No, he's not. He's not a long game thinker. You know what I mean? I don't think Trump was thinking about what his long term plan was for stealing the election in 2020. You just live in a day at a time, like throwing out whatever random thing Sidney Powell told them. And I think we're in a similar situation there. He's winning. He sees himself as winning the news cycle. Anyway, let's play this guy. This guy's great. Yeah. And I just think he's so representative of why I agree with you that I think this is a medium term political loser for them. This is also from status. Can you just shout out to those guys who are on the ground in Minnesota? And this is just a man on the street interview and it really made my morning. There's going to be some cussing if you got some kids on the car. So it's good. So have you ever gone out to these sort of things before? Never, never. I've never protested in my life. My brother, my brother's here. He does it all the time. I've never. I got dude. I like I said, I'm far enough away, but close enough. And I'm sitting in my cushy house and look at shit and get mad. Yeah, they're just trying to fucking scare people and, you know, but but but why shoot people? No, you know, what really pisses me off is the fact that they detain people, cuff them and then still beat the shit out of them. Tell you it's immigrants, only immigrants. It's fucking anybody. I have friends that got detained and all they were doing was fucking driving home from work. What the fuck? Sounds like you don't fit the definition of the not fucking paid to be here. Like everybody fucking says. What the fuck is that? I got to work in the goddamn morning, just like everybody else. I'm just here trying to stand up for community, dude. We're all human beings here. I don't give a shit who you are, where you came from, what color you are. It doesn't fucking matter. This is wrong. I got to work in the goddamn morning, just like everybody else. That's my Rick's in your Rick Santelli, the tea, the very out that supposedly started the tea party. This is my Rick Santelli moment. This guy, we need to track him down. It might be your Rick Santelli moment. And actually, the first thing that it reminded me of was there's like the semi viral clip on January 6th of this guy who lived on Capitol Hill. Do you remember this one? And he was like outside his door and he's like, what the fuck? They're fucking marching on our fucking capital. What the fuck? I was like, yeah, this is it. Sometimes you just got to step back and be like, wait a second. This is not normal. Like what is actually going on here? What are we living through? This is dystopian. This is authoritarian. And I know it seems so silly to focus on this, but he's like, I don't do protests. Yeah. No, that's not. So that's the point. That's what's so powerful. This is not. I've never done protests. I don't I look at things on my computer and get mad. I don't go outside. My brother's a protester. My brother's telling me about protests when he get when I'm drinking a couple beers, OK, at the kids birthday party. I will say, you know, you see them sporadically, but my wife and I were out to go, we're going to go adopt a dog. I don't know why we're doing this again. But we drove out two hours into the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, this small little town like nobody there. We get off the highway and it's, you know, 35 degrees and raining and no one should be outside. There was like, you know, a hundred people just, you know, off the highway, protesting ice in this small, nothing town. It's all anecdotal. I sound like Tom Freeman right now, but whatever. I was in the Shenandoah wine country. I turned to my Uber driver. I'm happy. Yeah. So what sparked all of this? You know, just for folks who are trying to get caught up. And we're going to caveat this, that everything that that Christian will go off on a DHS has said has been a lie, basically. What? You don't trust Trisha McClellan? I really don't. But they sent a post about the shooting that started this. And I do just want to read a little bit from it because it's such a perfect encapsulation of these guys. It's combining like menace and racism and just like silly incompetence. It's like a kind of Yacoby sacks, like racist Fargo episode. So here's what they posted about the shooting that prompted this. We found an illegal alien from Venezuela who was released in the country by Joe Biden in 2022, an attempt to evade, arrest the subject fled from the scene in his vehicle and crashed into a parked car, the subject then fled on foot. The law enforcement officer caught up to the subject on foot, attempted to apprehend him. And while the subject and law enforcement were in a struggle on the ground, two other subjects came out of a nearby apartment and attacked the law enforcement officer with a snow shovel and a broom handle. As the officer was being attacked by two individuals, the subject got loose and began striking the officer, fearing for his life. The officer fired a defensive shot. The initial suspect was hit in the leg. Who knows if that actually happened. Do you think, hold on. Do you think Trisha McGlockin has like a Google doc with like stock answers for things and she's just got to fill in a few details because it always reads the same, right? It's like, ah, Joe Biden released his trend a Raguha member and he evaded police and they had to fire a defensive shot. Oh, just, you know, mix up a few new details to keep it fresh. Right. Well, we need to ask chat GPT though, to like add in a few Minnesota details. You know, it's like we were slipping on the ice. You're caught in an ice flow, you know, and he's skated away. I've done this many times, but it's just like, even if their story is true, it's ridiculous. Like this is not necessary. You do not need car chases through the frigid Minnesota winter to go after a Venezuelan migrant. Like if you know where this guy lives, then fucking go to his house and bring an arrest warrant. Like this is not necessary. It means so much of this is just theater. Like that, you know, little border patrol dude walking through target. Some of this, I think is them trying to please the boss. Some of this, I think is them trying to terrorize people so that just self deport and it's just so unnecessary. So the response is the question now. This is a more challenging question, but we'll start with, I think, the people that have made really honorable decisions. We should just shout out first, which is the prosecutors in Minnesota. They've been six at this point who have resigned because. Oh, you didn't see Pam Bondi yesterday. I did say, go ahead. They didn't resign. I fired them, Sean Hannity. I think they're going to resign. But they're being pressured, I guess, to investigate the widow of Renee Good. And, you know, who knows what other ridiculous kind of immigration investigations you're getting at. And I talked to a friend who's, you know, has somebody in their life that is a prosecutor in one of these random, you know, kind of districts. And they're just like, please don't let there be some immigration thing here, you know, or else I'm going to have to leave my job, right? Like it's just like the reality right now. Like you'd maybe think to me that people in Minnesota were prosecutors are thinking, OK, we could be a little bit separate from this. We can focus on crime. Like we're not exactly close to the border, but here they are. So good on those prosecutors. The next step is the big question. We talked about this a little bit on the next level, but I'm seeing more and more of a groundswell for this among the Democrats, which is that Tim Wall should call in the National Guard himself first before Trump does. I don't know. I don't think that's crazy. Like I would have thought that was crazy a month ago, I think a couple months ago. It doesn't feel crazy now that there's a legitimate reason to do it, given the way that ICE, the federal officials are menacing the community that also just hands them what they want, though, which is pretext for invoking the Instruction Act. And they would do it within two seconds after Tim Walls did, you know, deployed the National Guards. You do have to kind of consider a couple moves down the field. But I'm wondering what you think about it. What if you're if you're seeing the same buzz around that question as I am? It's definitely escalatory. You know, I guess I'm my inclination is you don't want to escalate anymore. You would hate to see a situation where they call in the guard, then they call in the military and then it's a real fucking tinderbox. I can't believe we're actually talking about this again. Step back. What is going on over nothing? I know. I did an interview for tomorrow's show. We do look and look back to civil rights there is stuff. And it's like, OK, well, you know, having a confrontation between local officials and federal officials, you know, about desegregating the schools is like sensible. Like that's a real thing, right? It's worth fighting for on the federal level. This is over nothing. Right. Like we would really have like a confrontation between state and federal law enforcement officials over like imaginary Somali immigrant crime problems. If it were over corruption and the abuse of the social safety meant by these Somali immigrant communities, which there are real instances of this, yeah, then they wouldn't have forced out this attorney who was leading the corruption when he's one of the six attorneys who is leading the corruption cases and had surfaced, you know, incredible amounts of grift and prosecuted it successfully. And this is what I'm missing, I'm kicking out Marine Comey. It's like we care about pedophiles. And so we're going to fire the woman who is like the top prosecutor in the government for going after child sex trafficking. You know, so back to your question of what is like the play here? Look, I could sit here and make the argument. I'm not saying I believe it. I can make the argument, though, that the play here would be for Tim Walls to make a phone call to Donald Trump. I can make that argument because time and again, you see the best way to ramp down things is just a one on one phone call. Like the Columbia president Petro basically calling Trump and be like, hey, you know, let's work together and Trump being like, OK, cool, we got it. I'm not saying that's the way to do it because obviously you can't. And part of me is like, you can't give into this shit. But boy, it's bad. And walls might be a little bit of a category difference, of course. Because Trump gets certain bogeyman's in his head. We'll call him tampon ten or something on the phone. I'll just descend into chaos. But like, OK, maybe Klobuchar, Mexico. I don't know. It's just I just don't know. It's like. I want to see this end. Like I want to see this end. This is heartbreaking to watch a great city and a community that doesn't deserve this have to deal with this shit. And in normal times, a reasonable president and administration would be doing the exact opposite of this. They'd be trying to tamp down the tensions, but we don't live in that. Every president we've had in our lifetimes. So yeah, I don't want to say normal times in any time. It's like would be that case. Yeah. And maybe Nick St. Andrew Johnson, a couple others might have been tempted to do something like this. But I I should say as the former Republicans on the on the show, like adding to the list of all the principles and arguments that were made my entire life that they've abandoned, the state and local government knows best. We don't need the federal government telling us what to do. You know, states rights. Like all the federalism were a republic, not a democracy. This is not a conservative administration, dude. This is nothing to do with the republic. Is anyone making that argument? But like the two libertarians and Rand and Tom Massey are the two. So whatever. Basically, that's a reason. Magazine. One more thing on ice. There was this great Slade article. Two should read about a woman who like tried to volunteer for ice and I loved it. No experience. Or like she's been in the military, but she had like a huge period of time where she's been a journalist, where she shits on Trump. And so it's like she left that off her resume and just kind of lied and said she was a gig worker during that period of time. And they fast track her to become an ice agent. And they give her a formal off to become an ice agent. Meanwhile, there's a story out simultaneous to this, which kind of explains part of this, which is that as ice is trying to add new officers, they used AI to go through the applications. And anyone who had used the word officer in their cover letter or resume was put in the fast track pile because AI just assumed they'd been a police officer. You know, let's say you were a compliance officer for a company. Or you'd written that you aspire to be an officer. You got put in the like, don't need to vet this person fast track line. These are the people we're sending into the American streets. It's remarkable. I have a vision of this that like, so who are these agents? How many of them are just sort of like former edgelords who've been just hanging in their mom's basement, just looking for a job, have dreams of, you know, holding a gun, going after brown people. Can I bring up my boy Harry Phones at this point? Sure. This is Harry Phones, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. This week, PHS law enforcement surged over 2,000 officers and agents to the sanctuary city of Minneapolis to investigate the rampant fraud in the state of Minnesota and conduct targeted immigration enforcement operations. Tragically, on Wednesday, we saw the direct consequences of constant attacks and demonization of our officers by sanctuary politicians. A woman weaponized her vehicle to obstruct law enforcement. When the officers commanded her to get out of the vehicle several times, she ignored them and attempted to run over federal law enforcement officers. An ICE officer fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots at the vehicle, resulting in the death of the driver. He used his training and he saved his own life and that of his fellow officers. Our prayers are with our officers, the deceased and her family. We have been very clear. We stand with our law enforcement as they work tirelessly to make communities across the nation safer. OK, there you go. So this guy, I mean, I don't want to make fun of him because he'll probably sick. I say, I saw him for doing so. But like, we can't even see all of them because he doesn't fit in the screen. That's what I was not trying to do that. But who is this guy? Why is he? Where did he come from? It turns out he was at Hillsdale College or director of communications for the House Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness and Growth. I mean, the Andrew Egger were in the same band, I think, at Hillsdale. He was at the Freedom Caucus. I mean, like this guy just came up through where he graduated college in 2015. He's young. He hasn't done much in his life. And yet here he is instructing, you know, HHS policy on how to do anti-Rice rioting. And like, I don't think they're sending their best and brightest. I just I get a I get a whiff of that. No, if you do any reading about the 1930s, you find that a lot of commissars rose to high ranks just out of loyalty, not out of skill. And it's a pretty common story. All right. I want to do one more thing on the Democrats and the politics of this, because the Tim Walls decision, I think, is is legitimately fraught. Sure. And, you know, it's easy for people on the internet to be like, go in the garden, fuck these guys. Let's acceleration is on. But it's like it is. It's a legitimately fraught decision. Some of the stuff's not that fraught and I'm getting a little annoyed. And I got to tell you if national Democrats keep arguing about whether or not to say abolish ICE and keep giving speeches about whether abundance is a good idea or not, I'm going to light myself on fire. I mean, seriously, I'm looking into self-immolation right now because it's like, what the fuck are these people doing? Like, are you awake? Why? Why is Elizabeth Warren giving a speech engaging in internet fights and like taking sides in Twitter wars? Why are memos being put out about exactly how Democrats should talk about ICE? Like fight ICE. This isn't hard. Fight Stephen Miller. Fight ICE. Fight Kristi Noem. Go after them. Highlight the things that are unpopular. If some Democrats want to say abolish ICE, fine. If other ones want to say reform, ICE, fine. But like talk about how bad ICE is and don't talk about how bad other Democrats are because they're using the wrong word. And that is true across the coalition. This is a non ideological point. This is a strategic point. This is how you reveal that you were a former Republican and have never really been a Democrat because this is so. This is so normal. In the most important moments where that required the most moral clarity, of course, Democrats are kind of bickering about what the best path is. This is what they do. Are Republican senators and House members going on the Ben Shapiro podcast and are writing memos or like, hmm, should we be saying Renee Goodram to the ICE officer or should we be saying she endangered the ICE officer? No, but I'm saying you can have a little bit of focus. I've been basically, you know, ripping my hair out, watching it happen, because it's like the effort to try to find like the perfect manufactured proposal that will not offend the most people, but also show that you care is downright hilarious. The best one was the Richie Torres one. I don't know if you saw this one. Yeah. Put a QR code. We're going to put QR codes on the ICE agents. What the hell is going to happen here? I saw somebody tweet that I was like, this is the most third way coded shit I've ever seen in my life. And I'm like, how would that work? That's fine. How would that work? Yesterday, when the Verizon photo just were happening. Hold on, sir. My internet's not coming. I can't upload the QR code. At least Richie is targeting ICE and not nitpicking a tweet that some other Democrat said. I truly can't imagine what might motivate somebody in this moment to use their energies to try to adjudicate, you know, language arguments. It's not even like a disagreement over, you know, how to do this in this moment. It's a larger disagreement over what the right tactical approaches to Trump. And this has been going on forever, which is, do you fight like every battle? Or do you try to focus on certain battles because it's more friendly turf? Where's a lighter? Get me a lighter. It's very clear to me. It's like, no, you just fucking go, right? Like if they're sending troops into the street or ice officials and then potentially troops now, you don't just say, ah, man, but health care is such a better issue for us. How do you live with yourself at that point? The strategists are at fault. Some of the strategists talking to our friend, Lorne, and like, like, oh, this isn't the point. This ice polling has changed dramatically because people can see things with their eyes. OK, so focus on the bad things people can see with their eyes. Talk about that and like fight your factional internal battles, you know, over which side of the party should be more powerful in like the fall of 2027. Please, because we're in an urgent moment. I try to minimize the media criticism on here. I do think part of this is also driven by, you know, if you're doing a TV interview with the Democrat, like this is the question you can ask them, right? Like you can say, is it this terrible ice is doing? But then you want to seem balanced and so like, are the Democrats mishandling their pushback in this moment? And that like injects things into the conversation a little bit. I will just say this, though, there's not to get into meta media commentary here, but if ever like this, you know, showed the sort of not a relevance, but the diminished power of like program news, it's a story like this. Like everyone is just basically seeing live stream coverage or clip videos and reacting to it. That guy who went on the street, who never protests, he didn't go out there because he was watching in, you know, the morning segments on MSN or MSNOW. He went there because he's probably being fed algorithmic videos showing his own community getting fucked up. And Democratic lawmakers should recognize that, you know, this is where the conversation is right now. And this is how people are consuming the news. OK, deep breath. I will say I am outraged like every night I go to bed and I'm streaming through these videos and they're all horrible. And you just can't really sleep that well. And then you wake up and you're like, oh, Trump's not threatening to use the Insurrection Act. And just to start all over again. And it's exhausting, but it's out raging to it. I find myself just being completely madened by this. It's brutal. That's why I needed that guy, our friend, the protester, the resistance or ex-antelely. We got to find him, get him on the pod. Yeah, we do. The videos of the attack on the protesters came in at like 10 PM last night. And I was just like, really? I'm just trying to watch the end of the nuggets Mavericks. I want to move on. We dinged the MSM. So credit word to real reporters during real journalism out there, including Hannah Nattenson at the Washington Post. She's been gathering sources inside the government, you know, people that are being fired of various other elements. And FBI agents searched her home on Wednesday as part of an investigation into a government contractor's handling of classified material. And this is exceedingly rare. Like even in investigations of classified disclosures for federal agents to go after the reporter's home, it would be one thing to go after the suspects of the leakers home, right? But to go after the reporter's home is very rare. And 1980 law actually bars search warrants for reporters work materials, unless the reporters themselves are suspected of committing a crime. And they did confiscate the reporters work materials in this situation. You know, I think there's just a straight story about the autocracy. And then there's also a media story here. So just go with whichever one you want to take. For people in the industry, it's really chilling. You know, I think the public will say, well, you know, whoever this person was potentially leaked classified information, she's not the subject of the probe. It makes sense to me that they would try to find out and try to get the information back. And maybe so, but it's an incredibly chilling and aggressive move that is directly at odds with my interpretation of the freedom of the press. We have the right to collect information that we then report on. This reporter has been doing incredible work. I've been very jealous of her because when we were doing a lot of the Doge reporting and we were getting a lot of people coming to us talking about what life was like in the federal government, I kept looking up and seeing the post getting great scoop after great scoop after scoop. And what this will do in practical terms is it will send an incredible signal to anyone who's doing this type of reporting that you might get targeted by the government. And it will also send a signal to every source out there, potential source out there that the government's going to come after you. I think that's obviously what the administration wants. Again, that's why I mentioned the 1980 law. It's an attack on the First Amendment, right? Like that the government is doing here is very chilling. This is not unprecedented like some of the other unprecedented stuff. It's not. Other administrations have done this, but still it's a total affront. And it's crazy to confiscate her phone and her computer when she's not a suspect. That is totally wrong. And the type of stuff that you see in countries that have far less speech protections than we do in our country. 100%. Now, it's important to get to the press response because you were right. It's not unprecedented. There have been cases in the past, including during the Obama administration. My recollection is that during the Obama administration, when this did happen, there was a big outcry from throughout the industry, including from conservative publications about what was happening. And so much so that the administration then put in place some standards. Alan Bayer-Colder, the Attorney General at the time, that would more or less police how the Department of Justice could go about doing these things and gave some protections to reporters. Those were, of course, not law. They were standards. And so Pam Bondi undid them. But I'm not seeing that type of reaction now. There's no sympathy for the press, obviously, in the public, but also the people who you would expect from within the industry to say, hey, this is wrong. Some of them have spoken up, but not everybody. And obviously the most conspicuous absence is Jeff Bezos, who is the publisher of The Washington Post, has an incredible amount of business before the government, has sucked up to Trump repeatedly because he needs those government contracts and doesn't want to be targeted by him. But he is the publisher of The Washington Post. His employee had her personal computer confiscated by the government. If he believes in the First Amendment, if he believes in the institution of The Washington Post, he should speak out. But he's too much of a chicken shit right now to do so. And that's obviously disappointing. Yeah. There's already some reporting that The Washington Post employees are like, where is he in a moment like this? Oh, I know they I know they are saying, where is he? Yeah, I know. I've talked to some of them. They have been waiting all day yesterday to see anything. And they were hopeful that he might say something. And now they're hopeful that when he's asked about it at his next press availability, they assume he will be asked about it, that he'll say something. But that's like such a horrendously low bar that at some point in time, then the road, Jeff Bezos might say something. You know, the Salisbury's at the times, I don't know, they're not like the Jerry Joneses of media, right? They're not don't have their hands and everything over there in the day to day. But like in these big moments, they spoke out, you know, and and the leadership at these at these outlets spoke out. And a lot of times show a lot of courage pushing back and against various administrations, including the first Trump administration. And like if Bezos doesn't do that now, like he should sell the paper. He should sell the paper. Yeah, I don't really kind of understand what the point is of owning it anyway. At this point for him, like his initial conceit for it was that he wanted to have influence in democracy and he cared about democracy, Dyson Darkman, and he cares about all this stuff. He obviously doesn't anymore. And like he's not making any money on it. And it's not doing his job of covering Washington that particularly well. And there's some good reporters there for sure. No, they cover Washington. They cover Washington. I mean, they've been they've been totally dominated in the Hill by fishbowl and now we're getting to like media. You call it fishbowl. You call it fishbowl. It's punchbowl. Punchbowl. Sorry. I wouldn't leave that in. We were totally dominated by fishbowl, Jake Sherman, punchbowl. And like they're getting dominated. And it's not like the first term. Again, they're good reporters, though there's not like the first term, the number of scoops and stuff that are coming out of the administration. Like what is he doing? What's the point of having this paper? I don't know. He should sell the paper. If he doesn't want to do the bare minimum of standing up for his own employee being targeted by the government. And remember, he was supposed to revamp the editorial page to be libertarian minded. If you can't get your backup for the government taking your own employees personal computer, I don't think you can call yourself a libertarian at that point. Sorry. I don't think so. Yeah, liberty. Yeah, the editorial page of Los Angeles is going to focus on liberty now. Economic and personal liberty. What about the personal liberty of your own reporter? Just for the sickos, we should just say, back in our day, we're coming up in our 20s, there was an outlet called Fish Bowl DC that did like gossip. I remember that one. It'd be like, it could be like self and so was really drunk at a party. Yeah, it was the worst gas. And Ron Bonjean's house. And when they named it Bunch Bowl, I was like, that's like a little close for me to fish. And so anyway, I love Jake and they're doing great work. But I think they brought it on themselves. They should think about a name change. Yeah. Fish Bowl. I just think that if it millennial DC types, I'm going to sometimes get them confused. The Iran. What did you say? Nice pivot from Fish Bowl DC to Iran. So we talked about this a bit with with Hartley yesterday, and I think we'll leave the military strategy to him. But I want to talk with the politics once happening with Trump. There's a moment yesterday. I mean, like Drudge had 24 hours, you know, on a banner headline. And those were really in disory that had some sources that Trump was going to actually start attacks within 24 hours. Maybe between the time we take this out of post, they do. But, you know, the protests in Iran are ongoing. The crackdown is ongoing, but it seems like protests are somewhat dissipating based on reports in the region. There's obviously some limited ability to do that. The crackdowns are escalating from the regime. Trump said something to the effect of, you know, we're only going to do this. We can it can be a clean hit. You know, I don't want to get into a broader war from the anti-Iran hawks. Our friend David Frum and others on social media, they are sensing that they might be backing down a little bit from engaging. What's your sense of what we're at? And or maybe we don't know. Maybe there's no way to get a sense. This is just all like Trump and stuff. Well, first, a commentary on how sick our society is that we are looking at a couple of metrics to figure out if we're going to go to war. One is pizza orders in and around the Pentagon. And the other is weird poly market wagers. Are people swooping in to take the over on the war in the next 24 hours? And if so, how does the market look right now? I don't know. It's calcium. I'll look at that while you talk. There was some there was some major like money moving on the wars happening soon. And everyone's like, oh, someone's got inside information and they're trying to make a buck. And it's like, we have problems here. We got it. We got to get clean. So that's my commentary on that. On the issue of Trump and what's happening, two stories that stood out. One was the one you referenced, which was I will say, just as some evidence, the will come in to be out as supreme leader is tanking now in the markets. So the market, the prediction markets are thinking Trump's not going to try to get rid of them. So there you go. Look up Tate orders in and around the Pentagon to see how accurate it is. I don't have that. I don't have that handy. So the clean strike story. I thought that was the most important one. Obviously, Trump has the sort of preferred type of action when it comes to military campaigns, which is very narrow, very dramatic, lots of visuals and very little follow up. I mean, in time and again, he likes the act of war, but not the war. And I think that's basically what's happening here. And the story was that he's being presented with options from the military, but none have said, oh, this could be quick tactical and you'll be done. I think he has real reservations about doing anything that would involve a prolonged US operation. That's just that. I have no inside information, but that's just my read on it. And the other one was that the Iranian regime decided to not execute this 26 year old protester that had been planned. They were backing down. It looked to me, reading between lines like a very clear effort to try to give the Trump administration some sort of fig leaf to say, okay, hey, they've responded to our pressure. We can at least pump the brakes a little bit. And now, of course, you've noted the polymarket wagers, which convinced me there. That was an interesting story because Iran was saying that the deal was done. We're going to execute this guy. That is a notable shift. Just one little side element of the story is just I just have to get off my chest. And I feel like I'm a good messenger for this because I share the Iran hawks' hatred for the administration and I share their support for the freedom of the Iranian people. And I even share some of their annoyance with the fact that there were a lot of people that were engaged in the Gaza protests that really only seem to care about bad stuff when Israel happens. I share that annoyance. But the talking point of where are the campus protests of Israel is so stupid. The point of a protest is to protest stuff that you can affect change. And the Israel protests started because they didn't like that their universities were engaging in investment or in shared classes or whatever with Israel. Now, you can think that's a stupid thing to protest. Okay. But we already hate Iran. We're not doing any business with Iran. You can't protest our government. We're not sending weapons to Iran. There's nothing to protest. So the talking point is all over Fox. I'm seeing it everywhere. It doesn't make any sense. The talking point is made by people who don't understand what the point of protest is. So anyway, that's that. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. The only thing I would add is, you know, because the people protesting Biden on Gaza intellectually should have been protesting Trump on Gaza, right? Trump was talking about that. Sure. Yeah. Now that's an apples to apples. However, my point is the reason they didn't is because instinctively they know that Trump doesn't give a shit about them and they know that Biden probably does. And though he was frustratingly slow and changing and... And because they're annoying, you're switching me to the other side now. They should have protested Trump too. This is... Well, they should have. They should have. But I'm just saying they know that Trump doesn't give a shit. We're talking about Jewish material with the Jewish news. Oh, good. The other bad news in anti-Semitism space is this horrible story out of Mississippi. Oh, God. Yeah. Which I haven't mentioned all week. I just wanted to. Like the synagogue gets set on fire, I guess, by a 19-year-old. You don't have to guess. It was set on fire. Yeah. It was arson and it's horrible. And it's the same synagogue that was attacked by the Ku Klux Klan. I don't need to go on a limb, but there's not, I'm assuming, a huge Jewish population in Mississippi. This is a tight community that's probably incredibly scared right now. And I haven't done enough reading on it to speak authoritatively about it, but the guy apparently... I can speak about the guy. He's a 19-year-old suspect who posted an anti-Semitic cartoon on Instagram. He had a scripture-backed fitness persona on Instagram. So that's where his perspective was coming from. And I guess his parents tried to talk him down from his views. Yeah. Well, the father turned him in. Look, this is a real problem. I think there's a real radicalization happening, predominantly in the online discourse, that sees Jews as a real threat to everything. And it's only logical that they take what they see online. I mean, they're being pumped with shit from Candice Owens saying, like, you know, Massad killed Charlie Kirk and all that stuff. And then they run with it. And it's a very tense time for the Jewish community right now. Not great. Not great. The reason I want to keep talking about this is like that pipeline is very real. And it's two-way. You know, people that are conservative, that then are watching Candice and Tucker, and then start getting into Nick Flentes and start getting into more like real anti-Semitic group or shit. And same with the one thing I've talked about with Chris Hayes and others, which is like lefty protestor types who start listening to Tucker and Candice and saying, they're really making sense on Israel. And then people are going down this radicalization pipeline. And this is the result, just this tragic story in Mississippi. I want to do a cabinet update with you. Oh, yeah. We have a running kind of bit people that are not following our YouTube page. We're audio only. Do subscribe to us on YouTube. Sam and I kind of rank the worst cabinet members. And two of the kind of lesser known cabinet members in the last 24 hours have really made a bid to try to get themselves up into that top tier with Scott Besant and Kristi Nome and et cetera. And that's our Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, and previously our highest-ranked Cabinet Secretary, Doug Burgum of the Interior. Why don't we take Brooke Rollins first? This is Brooke Rollins. She has some thoughts about grocery prices and why people should feel good about the trajectory we're on. I think the question you're asking, and it's a really important one, is while we're asking Americans to reconsider what they're eating, are we actually asking Americans, especially those who are living on the margins, are we asking them to spend more on their diet? And the answer to that is no. We've run over a thousand simulations. It can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, you know, corn tortilla, and one other thing. That's like, piece of chicken, piece of broccoli, corn tortilla, and one other thing. We ran a thousand simulations. I've ran one simulation, and I'm still hungry as fuck. I'm trying to do that. Okay, that is a rabbit's meal. What? What did you choose for your one other thing, though? A Snickers bar. I chose a Snickers bar to try to fill my stomach. Hungry, why wait? This morning for my breakfast, I took the tortilla, and I had a broccoli chopped it up and a piece of chicken. My one other thing. My one other thing was also a Snickers bar. I put it in the tortilla microwave bit. I ate it. I was threw it up because it was so disgusting, but I felt full. Yeah, we call that a KGm enchilada, you know, stand here. I felt full because I had the Snickers bar in there, and it was only $3, so I could do it again for lunch. What? Do you think she really ran a thousand simulations? I mean, what are we talking about? What? Do you think there's people back there being like, what if we pair this with this? Yeah, I think it's the same AI that made anybody whose resume said the word officer on it, a fast-tracked for a roll of ice. I'm surprised it was only a thousand simulations. Take the cup of milk, a slice of cheese, a scoop of peanut butter, mix it together. What the hell are we doing? This is communist shit. This is communist. She didn't say much. This is like food rationing. This is communist. We are in 1989, USSR, and the Secretary of Agriculture is like, you know what, guys? I'm tired of these libtards out there talking about how the price of groceries is increasing. If everybody would just have a chicken in their backyard and have a little broccoli garden they could eat for free, all they'd have to do is go to Costco buy one of those super science faculty tortillas and then they'd have one tortilla a morning and then they would go kill the chicken that they have in their backyard. Yeah. Like what? The thing that really made the clip was when she said a piece of broccoli because you just have this image of just like one solitary piece of broccoli. But they got to work on those talking points, I think. If you go back to our rankings from the end of the year, I had brookerellas as a sleeper. I do want to say that. I think that people are missing how bad she is. Bad, sleeper bad. Are you right? Yeah, she was higher on my list than yours. We both have liked Doug Burgum. It's guys that Doug are likeable, just to name Doug. You know, he seems relatively inoffensive. But then he had to go and do this. Yesterday he put up this meme that is a picture of the new interior of America. And it includes Greenland. And the meme shows how in the new interior, actually the flight to Newk, Greenland is shorter than the flight to Alaska. And so we should just seize it, I guess. Just to be clear, when you said the flight to Newk, Greenland, you meant the capital of Greenland, not the flight to go Newk, Greenland. I just think the people who are listening, I want to clarify. Good point. And Doug did not say I want to take a six-hour flight to Newk. Good clarification. Some problems with that. I mean, it's quicker, for example, for me to get to Bogota from New Orleans. And it is to get to Anchorage. I don't think we should seize every piece of land that is a shorter flight than the flight to Anchorage. I think you could get from D.C. to Portugal. You could get onto the European continent quicker than you can get to Alaska. Don't give them ideas. Don't give them ideas. I know the Canadians got mad at me for doing this yesterday, but I was like, I would like to hear somebody like Doug. If Doug would come in the show, you're invited to come in the show, Secretary Bergam. Like, what is the rationale for taking Greenland that doesn't apply to Canada? Because if the rationale is security in the Arctic, Canada has a lot more territory in the Arctic, thought closer to Russia than Greenland. If we're worried about threats from Russia, I can't really think of a rationale for taking Greenland that would not apply to Canada. And there's no rationale based on flight length that would not apply to the European continent and much of Central America. They're serious, but this is a thing. They're very serious. A goof. No. This is not a goof. They're serious about this. Totally serious. I'm going to stick by Doug, first of all. I just, you know, he's a Doug. Sometimes you got to do these things. But the Greenland thing is very serious and I don't really understand it. I want you going full imperialist, I'm off the board on Doug's. Sorry, you're a bad Doug now. There is no such thing. Doug Christie is a horrible coach. This is cute. So I think there are bad dogs out there. Maybe one or two. The journal article about Greenland was like, this is an economic wasteland. There is like, you think there's minerals to mine and, you know, all this great natural resources, they're like, no, it's ice and it will take decades to make it profitable. And the people there basically are welfare recipients because they benefit from the Denmark economy and their social system. I understand, I guess, in theory that Trump looks at a map and he sees a big island. He's like, I want that. But other than that, I have yet to see a really convincing explanation for what the motivation is here because you're right. If it is about Arctic security, if it is about economic vitality, if it is about, you know, pushing back against the Russians, you know, Canada is better. Canada is better. Do you know the I-5 killer was named Douglas Gretzler and the Sunset Strip Killer was named Doug Clark. Did you just look up bad dugs or something? Douglas Flanklin Wright was an Oregon serial killer after the late 1960s, all the way to the 1990s. Thirty years of killing an Oregon from Doug. Fair point. You'll have a few bad apples, but I would just argue, and I wrote an article. People can go look at it. I wrote an article on dugs for Politico. So I'm pretty well steeped in dugs. So you include Douglas Baptista, known as the Salvin Sente Maniac. He's a Brazilian serial killer who drowned at least eight children. I must admit that in my research, but I would argue that per capita there are few bad apples with respect to dugs. France is sending troops to Greenland. Not just France. Denmark. I think Germany is too. Are we going to have open confrontation with the European countries? Are there going to be shots fired here? Wouldn't rule it out. France is doing military exercises on Greenland to deter us. Not Russia. Us. Hurtling was good on this yesterday on the Ukraine thing, by the way, and I just want to let this go because the, as I will continue to repeat, totally on the side of the Iranian protesters. If there are things that we can do to be helpful to the protesters, I think we should do them. But Ukraine is an ally. Avars. They were invaded. Russia is bombing their energy sources right now, so people don't have heating. It's going to be negative degrees in Ukraine this week, and people are freezing to death. And amidst that, Donald Trump when asked like what the holdup is on his day one peace deal, he blames Lensky again this week. He blames Lensky. Back to the beginning here. And so, fuck this guy. And it's just horrific that like right now we're in a confrontation with Denmark and France. We are in a confrontation with people in American cities, with our own citizens, and we're abandoning Ukrainians who are freezing after being attacked by the Russians. And simultaneously, he's like, oh, we're very serious about human rights in Iran. It's kind of hard to take that seriously. I can't believe we're back now to square one again with Trump and Lensky. I mean, it's like, well, I guess I should be able to believe it because this is how it always goes. Right? Starts talking tough on Putin and then out of nowhere. It's like, actually no, it's Lensky's fault. And here we are again. All right, last thing. I didn't get to my potpourri. I have to get to a flight. The end gag of the potpourri was going to be that the other thing I haven't mentioned all week on this podcast is the Epstein files. And I'm not one of those that thinks this is all a potential distraction. I think that floating the zone with shit is Trump's natural state of being always. And so in some ways, it's a bonus that it's a distraction for sure. I just don't think that's a motivating factor. I listed the top of three motivating factors for what he's doing in Minnesota. But it's pretty fucking noteworthy that they haven't released a batch of the Epstein files since December 23rd. Oh, it's crazy. It's crazy. I mean, it's shocking to me. They were required by law to release these things. And they then dribbled it out a little bit, just made sure all the Bill Clinton photos got out there. And then decided that, oh, wait, we discovered a million more in the Southern District of New York. And they were like, we can't get to this. All while saying they've been devoting hundreds of people towards the project and countless hours to scrub these things, we haven't seen a single file in weeks, right? I mean, when's the last drop we had? December 23rd, I think. I think it was December 23rd. It is a flagrant violation of law. And are they going to get away with it? What are the remedies here? I don't think so is the good news because Robert Garcia has been great about this on oversight. And if the Democrats take back the House, which I suspect they will, this could be at the top of the agenda. But who knows what the, I don't know, what kind of other cover up stuff they're doing in the meantime. We don't know. It's crazy. You can't trust them to put out any of these. And you can't trust what they put out to be the full story, right? Good news is Dan Bajino is back in the podcast space. I'm sure he'll be holding the administration accountable on this. Shout out though. You salute people now at the end of news programs. And so I do want to salute the man on the floor of the Ford factory who shouted pedophile protector at Donald Trump. Oh, yeah. He gave him the stumpy little middle finger that he's got the president dead in addition to saluting our friend on the street of Minneapolis. That's was saying this is nuts. We got to get that. What the fuck is going on? We got to find it. We do. We're going to take it out with him one more time. We'll play him for you guys. In lieu of our outro song today, we're going to play our real American hero, the man on the street in Minneapolis. I appreciate you, Sam Stein. We back for a great MLK weekend podcast tomorrow. We'll see everybody else then. My, no, you know what really pisses me off is the fact that they detain people, cuff them and then still beat the shit out of them. They tell you it's immigrants, only immigrants. It's fucking anybody. I have friends that got detained and all they were doing was fucking driving home from work. What the fuck? Sounds like you don't fit the definition of the, uh, I'm not fucking paid to be here like everybody fucking says. What the fuck is that? I got to work in the goddamn morning, just like everybody else. I'm just here trying to stand up for community, dude. The Bullark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.