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- [00:05]
A
Today I am joined by my friend and political commentator and political heavyweight, David Rothkoff. David, how are you today?
- [00:13]
B
I am good. How are you, Jim?
- [00:16]
A
Very well. All right, what are your thoughts on the pathological lying State of the Union dementia hour that we all had to endure last night?
- [00:28]
B
Well, I wrote a column for the Daily Beast which began by saying if you took all the truth that he told in the speech and you tattooed it on the genitalia of a flea, it would still leave room for the Gettysburg Address.
- [00:42]
A
Oh, my God, that's so good. It's just, I think what bothers me so much at this stage in the fascist takeover is just how the pro family, pro America, pro national security, pro fiscal conservative Republicans, when he starts pathologically lying, this is a guy who is in the Epstein files covering up child rape. Pam Bondi is doing all this dirty work for him. They stand there and clap like little programmed seals. I mean, the. The death march of the Republican Party that has been so sanctimonious over all of us for so long, I think might be one bit of silver lining that they're all finally exposed as the hypocrites that we all kind of knew that they were.
- [01:31]
B
Yeah, but, you know, I think they deserve more criticism than they actually get because there's a lot of people who say the drift towards fascism or, you know, the actual descent into authoritarianism is all Trump, and it's not all Trump. You actually have to have a room full of people who are hooting and hollering and yawping and doing exactly what you want and cheering everything that you say, even when it's a lie or it's evil. And that's what happened last night. You know, you had this room full of brain dead zombies who were sitting there and, as you say, sort of clapping like circus seals every time that they were queued to do it, even if what was happening was ridiculous or awful or a lie. And I mean, you know, we had the image of the President saying, I'm gonna launch a war on fraud, even though he's a convicted fraudster, the person he's putting in charge of the war, J.D. vance, is the leading fraud of his generation, and the entire effort is based on a fraud. You know, but, you know, cheer, cheer, cheer. Or, you know, here are the Republicans who say, oh, we are the defenders of the sanctity of the military and American national security. And Trump has given out congressional Medals of Honor at this thing like it's a game show, like he's Oprah. You get A Congressional Medal of Honor. And you get a Congressional Medal of Honor. And then he goes, and this was really one of the low points of the speech. Hey, you know, I've always wanted one of those medals. I'm trying to figure out how I could get one. And, you know, he is the most famous draft dodger in America and he's trying to figure out how he can give himself a Congressional Medal of Honor. But do they applaud? Oh, yeah, they applaud. It's disgusting. But when you look at it and you say, well, gee, that looks a little familiar. Where did I see that? Was it at a Nuremberg rally for Hitler or was it at Kim Jong Un's last speech in North Korea? And the answer is yes, because that's how fascism works.
- [03:47]
A
All right, we've seen him now. He's putting up these Kim Jong Un, Hitler esque portraits of himself on DOJ and all these other buildings, which I think you live in D.C. and I hope you don't have to drive by these places. Just as your friend, I hope that you and your lovely wife Carla don't have to see that filth. But it's fascinating to me that here we have the, you know, when I think about The Republican Party 10 years ago, how they were about justice and, you know, the Justice Department, and you have this bozo Pam Bondi, who is actively engaging in one of, I mean, it makes Watergate look quaint. And their NPR just released a story that they have removed, I think, 53 documents where there is a credible claim that the President of the United States committed sexual assault. And she's covering this up. And this is the department that's supposed to have independence and we have the banner of, of Trump. And I just am so fascinated by how far this Epstein thing is going to go. Like, do you think this is going to be his undoing or is, are we so bombarded with the flood the zone stuff that he's going to start a war in Iran to drag the narrative, wag the dog away from this?
- [05:12]
B
Well, I don't think those things are mutually exclusive. I think the worse it gets, the more extreme the measures he'll take to distract from what's going on. Right, so will he attack Iran? Possibly. Yeah, sure, he might. He might attack anywhere else. There was no reason to attack Venezuela. Right. But he did it anyway because he wanted to distract from it. I mean, he had the absurd idea of invading Greenland until he realized what a mess that would be. So he'll do anything to distract from it. But I think the thing that's coming out here is you can't. This Epstein thing is so big on so many levels, right? It's not just that Epstein is a disgusting person or Ghislaine Maxwell's a disgusting person, or Trump, who is by far the biggest figure in this whole thing other than Epstein, is a disgusting person, or that they're criminals. Because you know, what was being hidden by the Justice Department are sworn testimony saying that Trump raped a 13 year old girl and threatened to kill other people. He is well into the middle of it. But it also is about a bigger issue. It's about a culture of impunity enjoyed by the super rich in the United States that makes them think that the laws for little people and that they can get away with anything. And I think because it is now resonating with people not just as a crime story, but as a story of the sort of breakdown of American society of something that's fundamentally wrong with us as a country, I think it just gets bigger and bigger. Now, finally you do. Pam Bondi is not a bozo. Pam Bondi is one of the most evil people who has ever served in the US Government because she has taken the Department of Justice, which is there to defend us, and turned it into the private law firm of Donald Trump. That banner hanging. I don't know who's given the President advice, but he seems to think that that arrest photo communicates some kind of good image of him, even though he looks like Frankenstein in the picture as he's glowering sort of under his overly large brow out at the world. But. But it's appropriate because the Department of Justice has become the Department of Obstruction of Justice. All that they do is they try to hide the crimes of the President and they go after his enemies. And it's gonna take a long time to restore the reputation of these places. And we haven't even gotten to Kash Patel flying around on a jet so that the FBI can't go and actually investigate crimes, right? Because they only have a couple of these kind of jets of this size. But he thinks it's worth taxpayer dollars for him to be guzzling beers with the U.S. men's hockey team in Milan. It is a shit show, but it is also a disaster for the rule of law in the United States. And it's easy to get caught up in this, but we shouldn't lose sight of it. One last point. I am a skeptic. As you know, my father was a scientist. I don't believe in conspiracy theories. Every Bit of evidence that we now have about Epstein suggests that this is bigger than we thought it was. The information around his death is super suspicious. The information about Bill Barr's involvement in this whole thing. The former Attorney General whose dad was the first person to hire Epstein. Epstein, and who is the last person to see Epstein. The involvement of Epstein with foreign intelligence services, including very likely both the Russians and the Mossad. The web of financial crimes that are likely to be covered up here in him laundering money for the Russians and him managing money for Vladimir Putin, and the obvious nexus between that and Trump, who is clearly a Russian tool, because as you and I both know and as we've discussed separately, the reason Trump is so triggered by Russia, Russia, Russia, is because it's true. And I think that's a key part of the Epstein story. So all those conspiracy theories, it's increasingly looking like they're all real. And actually, the failure of the media with regard to Epstein has been underestimating the story, under covering the story, not appreciating how big it is. And I think throughout this year, it's not going away. And that's going to have a huge impact on the election because he's going to try to bury it, but it won't be buried. This is the last scene of the movie Carrie where she goes to the gravesite and the hand comes up through the. The dirt. You know, it won't stay dead.
- [10:42]
A
What do you make of the conversations with Peter Thiel and Jeffrey Epstein where they are celebrating Brexit and when, you know, I know you've read Peter Thiel. You know, this guy has benefited from being an immigrant. He's benefited from capitalism, unregulated capitalism. He's benefited from democracy, but he thinks he's so smart, but he's such a wuss, he won't put his name on the ballot to change government. He is colluding with a pedophile child rapist to do so. What do you make of this? Was something that I thought, oh, my God, it's all connected. You have Israel, you have Russia, and now every oligarchy. Jeffrey Epstein took a picture with all of them and emailed it to himself, and now it's out. And the colluding that you think about what these people have been doing, putting J.D. vance as the heir apparent to this dementia duck president that we have now. What's your take on Peter Thiel and that whole celebrating of Brexit in the new World Order, that was really kind of took my breath away a little bit.
- [11:51]
B
Well, I think the whole thing has taken my breath away. The picture that you're talking about, you know, with Epstein and these, the tech Bros. Is a different kind of dick pic, because they're all dicks, you know. And, you know, we've been looking at, you know, the technological revolution in this country, and we're on the verge of some amazing things in AI. And they've all got a problem, which is people hate them because they are evil people. You know, Elon Musk is evil, Peter Thiel is evil. And like Elon, he's demented. I don't know what was in the water in South Africa when these guys were being brought up there, but, I mean, I'm sure you've seen Peter Thiel talking about, well, you can either do it my way or then there's the Antichrist and you're like, crazy. What are you talking about? And, you know, meanwhile, most of Peter Thiel's money and like Elon's money is coming from contracts not just with the US government, but with the Department of Defense. A lot of the Palantir money is coming from contracts with the intelligence community that are in budgets that we can't even track. And this guy is burrowed deep into the deepest recesses of the US government. And his tools are being used to implement an authoritarian agenda. Because as Peter Thiel has said, he doesn't like democracy. He wants a country that's run by the elites. And let's be honest, that's what we have right now. Since Citizens United, since this Supreme Court has dug in, the amount of money spent by billionaires in political campaigns in the past 10 years has gone up 14,000%. What's going on here is they now control the agenda. They're happy to control the agenda. They pick who the candidates can be. They decide what's going to get money against it and what's not. And meanwhile, you look at the things that are important to you or me or to most Americans, whether it's tax reform or health care or gun control or protecting the environment, all those things. By the way, that's not a progressive agenda. That's supported by 70, 80, 90% of the American people, and yet they're politically untouchable. And that's the sign that our democracy is broken. Because if you have things that 70 or 80% of voters want and you can't advance them, that means that it's not the ballot box that's driving it. It's the check writing that's driving the US government. These are the People that are behind it. So it's, you know, it is a dark day because you have to look, if you want to know where this country is going right now, don't look at the polls. Look at what Elon wants. Look at what Peter Thiel wants. Look at what Mark Andreessen wants. Look at what Mark Zuckerberg wants. Look at what Jeff Bezos wants. Look at what Larry Ellison wants. And that's, you know, they're buying up the media, they're donating to the campaigns, they're spending money. There's now reports of Elon driving voting irregularities in the last election. They're putting their thumb on the scale in a very real sense. And again, I'm not a conspiracy theory guy. It's us against them, which is what drives me. Fat shit about the Democrats who are like, well, let's not be mean to the billionaires.
- [15:40]
A
That's what my next question. I want to talk about the opposition. So like you and I, we, we see all of this clear eyed. My, my listeners and viewers, your listener and viewers, we're all clear eyed. We're all living in reality about what we're seeing. The abusive nature, the shakedowns, the immorality, the illegality, all of it. All right? So we could. They're going to do that every day. So as I look to the opposition, I look at, the way I see it is we have corporate Dems, which I now think are just paid opposition. I think Chuck Schumer, I think Gavin Newsom is appearing more and more to look like this. He recently was talking about, we can't be talking about pronouns. And he did it with his hands like this. And I thought people who talk about pronouns all the time and talk about kids, genitals all the time are Republicans and everybody knows it. And so I'm very frustrated being a Democrat right now because the opposition, it's either you have these maga lite Democrats and we have these fighters like Zoron, like Graham Platner. And then you have the establishment Democrats that are fighting against our biggest winners. I don't know if you saw the polling of Graham Platner. 38 points on Janet Mills, 38 points. He's plus 38 on the establishment Dem. So last question. As we move forward and we are an opposition party, what's your take on where the Democrats are right now?
- [17:07]
B
Well, my take is the same as your take, which is that if you allow the corporate Dems to continue to lead in the party, then you will get the same kind of policies that you would have gotten sort of Trump light or Reagan light that we've been getting for a long time. And they are a problem. And if Chuck Schumer is driving where we're going, we are going to be in a bad place. I think these new voices are important. I think Zoramdani is important. I think there are some emerging voices out there in the world that you can listen to. There are also some older voices. I mean, AOC is, I think, in some respects, the leader of the Democratic Party right now. And I will give you some hope. Okay, let's end on a note of some. I need it, Dave. Okay, well, 2028 will be the first US presidential election cycle in which the majority of voters will be born since 1990. They will be millennials and they will be Gen Z. They don't remember the Cold War. They don't remember 9, 11. They sort of came of age in a political world in which our institutions were dysfunctional, in which the American Dream was dysfunctional, in which inequality was raging at the highest levels in U.S. history, in which Donald Trump was the biggest political figure in our life. And they are saying this does not work for us. And they are the ones that elected Mamdani. And I would add, by the way, they also elected Mikey Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, who are more centrist. But it was the turnout of young voters that decided who gets to win in the most recent elections that we've got. And their agenda is very different. It's different on the environment, it's different on Israel, it's different on the economy. They are the ones driving an affordability agenda, not because it's politically the thing to do, but because they don't think they're going to get to own a house. And somebody's going to have to come along and say, well, yeah, you're going to get to own a house. And by the way, AI is not going to destroy your dreams of having a career or having a family. They have a whole different agenda. I don't think they. I mean, the Mamdani story proves it. You know, they were like, you know, corporate Dems, get out of the way. And the corporate Dems were like, well, we're not going to support him. And they were like, good, that's a plus. Bring it on. And I think that, that, that, you know, their role in politics. And, you know, you may like Graham Platner, I frankly prefer my Senate candidates without Nazi tattoos. But we can debate about individual candidates all we want. The reality is that alternative Voices are gonna emerge between now and the 2026 elections and they're gonna drive the future of American politics. And then Chuck Schumer can go home and be with his grandkids, you know, and Hakeem Jeffries, if he can't grow a spine, he's got to go with him, you know, and we've got to get strong people because the next phase for the United States come 2028 is going to require some heavy lifting because we're going to have to start with structural change, with the Supreme Court, with the number of states we've got, with the way the Senate rules work, with undoing a number of these things like Citizens United before we do anything. Or we will slip right back into fascism and we're gonna have to have accountability. We can't have Joe Biden and Merrick Garland like, well, the institutions will take care of themselves. Cuz these people will then say, well, great, we've got a free pass. We're gonna go back and do it. Donald Trump has stolen $5 billion. There's two clauses in the Constitution that say you can't do that. Two emoluments clauses. That means doing it is illegal. That means there is no immunity for it. If he is not prose for widespread corruption, if the Pam Bondies and the Stephen Millers and the Kristi Noemes are not prosecuted for the crimes they are committing, for obstruction of justice for those kinds of things, we will be right back in the suit. So every time you vote for somebody, you gotta ask, are they gonna have the cojones or the ovaries to do the right thing or not? And I am encouraged because I think a new generation in American politics is going to be able to begin the process of cleaning this up.
- [21:59]
A
I hope you're right and I definitely feel the momentum heading that way. I think a lot of the MAGA support that we see is feigned via bots and exaggerated. And it's such weird over the top news. It consumes more space in our mind. But I've been to no Kings marches and in spaces like this, I know that we're building strong communities here where people care about everybody. David Rothkoff, listener, viewer, is one of my personal friends. This is our first time to collab and so I love it. I hope we can do it many, many more times. David, thank you so much.
- [22:34]
B
Same. Thank you. J.
- [22:46]
C
A KFC tale in the pursuit of flavor the greatest insult the colonel ever suffered was being served a wrap that was just a snack by a friend. So he took two crispy tenders, lettuce, tomatoes and pepper mayo and wrapped them in a soft tortilla. It wasn't a snack, it was a meal. He called it a twister and never called that friend again. The Colonel lived so we could chicken the Twister. Now back at KFC Classic or with bacon. Also try it spicy. It's finger licking good.
- [23:14]
D
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