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Member FDIC terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891 so Donald Trump has had six major court losses in eight days. And there's a bunch of other losses out there. I'm talking about real big, humiliating losses. And then you had a federal magistrate judge in Washington D.C. just rip into the Trump DOJ and say, do you think this is cops and robbers? We're past a constitutional crisis. Like, do you think you're cosplaying as lawyers? Do you think this is just some fun exercise? You're destroying people's lives. You've had to dismiss multiple cases before they're even can be prosecuted because you have no evidence. And the stain of what you will do will remain on these people's lives. How dare you. And like literally yelling at the Trump lawyers at the Trump doj. I want to talk about all of that. I want to talk about the case with Harvard Posse Comitatus, aea, due process tariffs, ftc. There's so much Popox going to break it all down rapid fire. So you are up to date and all of that. I want to talk about the Epstein survivors who courageously going to Capitol Hill. It was an honor here on the Midas Touch network to be able to stream that entire press conference live. About a million views. And we made sure that other networks covered it because they knew we were going to get the views so they had to cover it. But what was important was that the survivors got their word out. And then Donald Trump was saying, oh, they're all a hoax. It's a, it's one big hoax. While he did a jet flyover to intimidate the Epstein survivors and said, oh, the reason I did the flyover was to impress the new president of Poland. You want me to believe that you've had a lot of other presidents and prime ministers at the White House, but that's the one time you do a flyover of fighter jets while the Epstein survivors are speaking. It's just bush league stuff, Michael Popak, that makes us look weaker. In the broader context of the parade that took place in Tiananmen Square in China, the big meeting at Tianjin between Xi Jinping Prime Minister Modi, who's no longer allied with the United States because Trump demanded that Modi nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. And Modi's like, you didn't stop the India Pakistan war. I'm not going to do that. So Trump imposes 50% tariffs, destroys an American relationship. And then we have Modi, we have Xi Jinping, we have Kim Jong Un, we have Putin there in China laughing at us. While all of this is taken, while Donald Trump's doing freaking flyovers over the Epstein survivors and sending four ships and one nuclear submarine off the coast of Venezuela to murder people on a fishing boat who he claims were trend Aragua with cocaine on it. And the story gets more suspicious each day. First they said this boat was going to Trinidad and They said, nope, it's going to the United States. None of that, none of it. Doesn't look like there's 11 people. Looks like a 16 to 24 foot boat. It doesn't even have the fuel to get to the United States. What are we doing there? So we'll talk about all of that and more in Legal Aim. Michael Popak, how are you?
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That's a good. I like that wrap up. That was good. Yeah. What are we watching? But we are watching and we'll piece it together as you and I go through today's podcast is that Donald Trump is a promoter of the Wag the Dog theory where he creates a war, kills 11 people without due process, drops the Maxwell or Epstein files at at politically timed moments in order to steal the thunder and step on the news story. He's willing to start a war with Venezuela in order to cover up for a loss in court over his use of the Alien Enemies act, which at its core is about whether Trend Aragua is a proxy for a war, predatory invasion or not. The day he gets the bad order in the Alien Enemies act or any of the other six things we're going to talk about, you can do it on a graph and we will do it on Midas Touch and Legal af. I will do it. When I have time to doodle, I will do this where every time there is a bad news story, sometimes two and three a day, either related to Epstein, his failing health, the failing health of America, RFK Jr being grilled maybe out of existence during a Senate hearing. The, the, or any of the, any of the things you've talked about or touched on, like magistrate judges, having had enough along with federal judges, appellate court judges, specialty appellate court judges, every time one of those things happen, he does something, he pushes a button and something bad happens. Unrelated but to distract and you and I and the Midas Touch network and Legal af, we spent a considerable amount of time holding him accountable and calling that out. And we can almost track minute by minute, bad ruling comes out in the morning and in the afternoon in courts. Donald Trump by the evening does something. But, but what we're watching is the reveal, the ripping the mask off of all of this, which we've done so beautifully and your brothers and you have done so beautifully on the Midas Dutch network where now our audience is like oh, we know why he did that. He did that because. Right. It has nothing to do with. He politicizes everything, including child sex trafficking in order to prove some sort of ultimate political point. But at the Bottom line, let's just take the plane up 5,000ft for one second before we kick this off. America is not buying what he's selling. Not the economy, not the big beautiful bill, not anything. 30% of America approves of the big beautiful bill and it's attack on their social, social safety net, mainly in red states. 30%, which means he's lost 20% of Maga in order for that to happen. 38% is his approval rating. I believe it'll crash below 30% in the next round or two. Okay, that's the two things. Three we've got. He's finally woken up, I guess to figure out that chasing human beings through farms, factories, churches and fields is not, and deporting a million people is not great for the economy, neither on the consumer side where consumer spending has ground to a halt and gone into the negative region since Donald Trump took over the economy. And from the manufacturing, agriculture, goods and services side where they're not building, they're not creating, they're not crops are rotting in the field, construction projects have a shortage of Labor. We're down 1 million people in the amount of people necessary to run this economy. Social Security Administration estimates that we are down 35 million people, Ben, for the2030s to run the American economy because the reality is native born Americans and people who were naturalized here are not enough to run the American economy. We've always relied on immigration to help fill those jobs and now we're seeing what's happening with the economy. When his only his one trick pony was tariffs and that's now been taken away from him and that was the foundation of his national security policy, his economic policy, his, his world security policy, all tariffs. And now that's been challenged and threatened to be taken away. There's nothing else left. You pull the screen away and there's nothing else left. I'll leave it on this. He inherited, he inherited from Joe Biden the strongest economy in the world and in eight months has reversed it to one of the worst performing, if not worst performing economies of a major economy in the world in eight months.
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Michael Popak if Donald Trump just went out and golfed all day, nothing, he could have taken credit for it all. He could have golfed, he could have like literally done nothing. And the thing is, is that almost anybody in the United States would have done a better job than him because he's just affirmatively inflicting the most damage everywhere. You know, we're going to talk about the court losses, the fights, but whether it's in the education sector, attacking education institutions at all levels from the the best universities to school lunches, right to children's health at schools to attacking our overall health and well being and gutting vaccination advisory boards and preventing others from being safe. If kids can now contract polio and measles and mumps based on the new anti guidance I think I call it from the cdc. What happens when a pandemic strikes from fema? What happens when there's a massive emergency like we've seen before, you have FEMA that's going to be unable to act Energy Donald Trump's weird views about windmills and solar Because Donald Trump didn't like the windmills that were outside of his golf course in Scotland at Aberdeen. So he's brought in this view of his hatred of windmills to Trump's personal ego fueling the end of decade long relationships that we've been trying to cultivate with countries like India. Even when Donald Trump brings oh, as I said at the outset, because India wouldn't nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize the way Pakistan did. And then when Pakistan invested in Trump's crypto fund and then said he can go to Nobel Peace Prize, the chief of staff of the Pakistani army, Munir, got a direct visit to the White House, which further pissed Prime Minister Modi off. The Trump family is getting rich. They made $5 billion this week or added $5 billion to their net worth this week off of a pretty fouled launch. I in my opinion of something called World Liberty Financial, which I think a lot of people were left holding the bag, but I think it was lots of people who wanted to hold the bag because they were under SEC investigations or had other personal reasons to want quid pro quos with Donald Trump to try to prop it up a little so the Trump family could make their can make their money. I mean you look around at just all of these areas and all of these sectors and it's just one thing after the other. And then even where he invites someone over, like the new president of South Korea who shows up at the White House, Trump then, then says certain things that would piss off Japan. He's got the head of South Korea there, he starts bragging about his relationship with Kim Jong Un. And then in a factory that Hyundai is building here in the United States and other South Korean companies are building these factories, Donald Trump's ICE is doing immigration raids of South Koreans and arresting them and putting them in detention centers when they were here to work at the factories that Trump said he wants in the United States, which, by the way, he didn't bring those factories. It was Biden and his Biden's policies. But, but now they're being attacked. So right now in South Korea, the news, I follow the news on purpose and all other countries, South Korea right now is livid at Donald Trump for attacking its people and throwing them into detention centers when they try to invest money into the United States. So just think about every aspect is not helpful. So when you see, you know, then our state regime media here in the United States, like Fox and others, which by the way, most won't even cover what was happening with the Epstein survivors. We're strong, we're powerful. It's like we're not. We're getting crushed right now. We're getting laughed at. Internationally, we're weaker than ever. That jobs report that came out on Friday was one of the worst jobs reports in generations. And guess what? It's not a fluke. It's the start. It's going to get worse and worse and worse. And while we were here on Midas Touch Network, Legal af, all of our programming for months now saying, actually the tariffs are hurting. Look at what's happening with the ships, look at what's happening with cargo. Look at what's starting to happen with price. Look at the fact that bankruptcies are surging as companies were doing all they could not to pass on costs to consumers and they would have to go bk, go bankrupt. And now the other companies are like, we can't go bankrupt. We got to pass it on to consumers. So in July, they were gaslighting us. Right? All the economists are wrong. There's no inflation. By the way, there was inflation in July and June and it was rising. And so. But they were saying, oh, everyone's got it wrong. We're the only ones. No, it's very basic because tariffs are attacks. And when we talked about the case from the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, the first reasoning that they ruled against the Trump regime in imposing emergency tariffs against the world is that they wrote, tariffs are taxes. Taxation is the power of Congress. Article one, not Article two. So when you have people like Treasury Secretary Scott Lutnick and Treasury Scott Besant and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and all these people, they go up and they go, it's not a tax. It's not a tax at all. It's not getting passed.
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It does.
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It is. That's what it is. Now, if you acknowledge what it is, we can then have educated conversations about should we use it here Strategically, structurally. But that's not what they're doing. They're lying about what it is. Donald Trump wakes up one day and he's pissed at the president of Brazil because the insurrectionist former president's getting prosecuted. And Trump gets, you know, he watches something on TV. 50% tariffs on Brazil, 50% tariffs on India. You're just, you're just going about it. Even if you wanted to do tariffs, which would not be helpful in the, in a certain way, you're going about it in the wrong way anyway. Long intro. Let's get into it very quickly, though, Popo, because I want to show two things. One, I want to show Donald Trump in the Oval Office saying two things. I got two clips of him this week. Then I want to show what MAGA Mike Johnson was saying. So Donald Trump says it's a Democratic hoax. Everything relating to Epstein as the Epstein survivors are there in Capitol Hill. Trump saying it's all a hoax, one big Democratic hoax. Let's play that clip first.
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Nobody's going to talk about. Because they're going to talk about the Epstein.
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Whatever. I understand that we were subpoenaed to.
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Give files, and I understand we've given thousands of pages of files. And I know that no matter what you do, it's going to keep going. And I think it's, I think, really, I think it's enough because I think we should talk about the greatness of our country and the success that we're having.
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I think we're probably having, according to.
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What I read, read even from two people in this room, we're having the most successful eight months of any president ever. And that's what I want to talk about. That's what we should be talking about, not the Epstein hoax.
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Again. The 33,000 files that were turned over were all old files that had previously been released. 97% of them were old files. The 3% of new files essentially all redacted where you couldn't read anything that was even in what was released. There are three gigabytes of other files that are out there, you and I. Terabytes, sorry, three terabytes of data that's out there that needs that, that needs to be, you know, released. It'd be easy for it to be released. But then you have Trump saying it's a hoax. But then MAGA Mike Johnson, Michael Popak says that actually Donald Trump was the informant and the good guy here play this clip. And he's not saying that what Epstein did is a hoax.
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It's a terrible unspeakable evil.
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He believes that himself.
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When he first heard the rumor, he.
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Kicked him out of his a lago. He was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down. The President knows and has great sympathy for the women who have suffered these unspeakable harms.
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It's detestable to him. He and I have spoken about this.
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As recently as 24 hours ago. He's the informant. He, he, he hung out. He was hanging out at all the Epstein events and best friends with that because he was the informant. Michael Popak, that he, he didn't say it was a hoax. Play the clip right before where he.
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Says it was a hoax.
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What do you make of it?
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Yeah, well, all right, first of all, if he's the informant, then we have him to blame for, for Epstein getting a sweetheart deal through Alex Acosta, who Donald Trump eventually elevated once he took the White House to be his Labor Secretary. Alex Acosta, the U.S. attorney for, for Miami, Southern District of Florida So Trump as the informant who, which suggests that he had criminal liability was giving allowed, paved the way for a non prosecution agreement to keep Epstein on the street to abuse girls and rape them. That's what in the hallway of the hallway of Congress, that's what our speaker of the House. That's his new position. All right, let's back up a little bit. All the things that the Trump administration is trying to kill. The Epstein story is backfiring and not working because the American people and MAGA in particular are understandably interested to find out who is in the files. And, and the more that Donald Trump tries to make it go away, the worse it is for him. He called it a hoax. The fact that Mike Johnson says no, that's not what he meant was the hoax. It's the other thing is the no stop. Johnson meets with the victims, the survivors for two and a half hours, allegedly in his office before the press conference. But you know who didn't meet with them and has not only not embraced them the way they've requested, but has actually trolled them and attack them moments after the press conference is Donald Trump. And during the press conference with the flyover, as you said, he's disrespectful of the survivors. He doesn't believe them. He can't acknowledge what is in the files. What is in the files? This three terabytes we've talked about, we know from reporting includes references to Donald Trump, that Donald Trump has told people, including those on Fox News that he's very concerned about how things could quote unquote, be misconstrued in the Epstein files. This is the only. We don't have to look for an exotic reason. This is the reason that Trump has not allowed his Attorney general, Pam Bondi, to release the files as she promised back in February. He will not allow it. So what he's been trying to do is try to spoon feed the American people shit, hoping that they'll accept it and then move on from this story. So he had Mike Johnson take a recess for the summer, hoping the story, you know, the oxygen would be taken away from this, from the story. Well, it hasn't been, mainly because news organizations like Midas Touch and Legalif are so trained on it and so are the American people. MAGA also won't let it go. So that didn't work. Then they said, well, we'll blame, we'll blame Joe Biden. Let's, we'll run. J.D. vance is becoming for me. It reminds me of what Ann Richards said about, about Bush. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth. J.D. vance, that they trot him out all the time to try to tamp down stories like, Donald Trump's not dying, but if he is dying, I'm ready for the job. That's not what you say out loud. If you're trying to distract from a is is Donald Trump alive or dead Story. You also don't trot him out to try to kill the Epstein story by trying to blame Biden. So that blew up in their face. Johnson. So then they decided, it's obvious, to use the Oversight Committee, I'm talking about the White House to use the Oversight Committee to spoon feed and cook the books and see if, well, will 30,000 pages satisfy the American people? No. Will the grand jury transcripts from the judges satisfy the American people? No. The only thing. And he has the power in his. He's got the keys to the door in his pocket. Trump. But he refuses to do it, hoping that everything else will make this story go away. And then, and that allows in that vacuum, like undercover reporting by what used to be Project Veritas to go undercover on a, on a dating app with somebody who identified themselves as, and it is identified as the acting Director of Enforcement for the Department of Justice to go on a date and say, oh, yeah, you know what we're doing with the Epstein files to the woman he thought was a date. We're redacting the names of the Republicans so it only harms the Democrats. And we moved and we moved. Maxwell, a convicted sex predator against BOP guidelines to a fed spa environment, effectively to reward her for not talking. Not for talking, but that. To shut her up so that she doesn't point the finger at Donald Trump. And so that came out with a hot mic undercover just in the last couple of days. The way to crush the story, if you're Donald Trump politically, is that you release the files. But you know why he's not releasing the files. So nothing is helping him in this regard, and it won't. And it will hang around his neck like an albatross through the midterms and beyond, because I don't ever see him growing a brain and releasing those files. He'll never meet with the victims. He'll never allow. He'll. He'll bury his head in the sand when all these people are deposed. Hillary Clinton needs to be deposed. Get the victims there, get the details of what happened and how Donald Trump was best friends with convicted child sex traffickers and indicted ones. Get that out into the open, do the public service there, and then let the chips fall where they may well look.
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If he's the hero in this narrative, as MAGA Mike Johnson suggests, you would absolutely want to release that right away. You redact the victims, you show that you were a hero and you saved the day. My gosh, if you were really the person who helped expose all of this, and because of you, you know, Epstein was going to be brought to justice. But that's not what happened. There was a sweetheart non prosecution agreement deal that was entered into as a result of whatever took place during that time period in 2006, 2007, when the local police first and then FBI agents were tipped off about what Epstein was doing in Palm Beach. And this also ties in with the reporting that we got on Michael from Michael Wolf, where Epstein, though, did think that it was possible that Trump informed on Epstein after a real estate deal gone wrong. You know, Epstein and Donald Trump were involved in a lot of things together. They knew each other very well. And oftentimes informants are not good guys. There's a difference between an undercover cop and a confidential informant. Often confidential informants are involved in the underlying act. I can tell you that because I did a lot of civil cases in Bakersfield that dealt with CIS and confidential informants and how they were utilized. Epstein always thought that when Epstein was threatening to potentially bring litigation against Donald Trump, when they had a falling out of their friendship in that 2004-2006 period, that Donald Trump may have told on Epstein secretly in order to get Epstein to not go after Donald Trump. Epstein told Donald Trump about a real estate deal that Epstein was involved in. $36 million purchase of a beachfront property on Palm Beach. Epstein wanted Donald Trump's advice about how to maybe move the pool or what to do with it. And so Epstein asked Donald to come take a look. Then a few days or weeks later, Epstein finds out that the seller sold it to Donald Trump and not Epstein. And Epstein's like, what the hell? I was just asking you for advice. A few years later, Donald Trump resells the same property. All Trump does is paint it. Really? No additions, nothing. Resells it to a Russian fertilizer oligarch for about 2x the value. A $40 million, $41 million property sells for about $90 million. And then the Russian oligarch swiftly destroys the property and claims there was mold all over the property. Doesn't take action against Trump. Epstein thought that one of the things that could have been going on there was that there was shady Russian money entering into the United States. He didn't know one way or another, but I think he suspected that that put him and Trump in a conflict. That's why their relationship ended. And Epstein thought because they knew each other, because they were hanging out and being in all these places together, maybe that's what happened and how, you know, and how the police were tipped off to know when to show up, where to go, and where to look. But if Trump is the hero in that story, then really, then you would want to release the files. It would be. It would show. It would be great. But in the Epstein version, Trump's not the hero. He's potentially an accomplice who then ratted in order to. Or in order to get by on this real estate deal, which, when you think about it, fundamentally has some logic to me that something like that could have happened in any event. Release the freaking files. Let's get done with it. The victims want the files released. Stop using the victims as the reason why you're saying you're not releasing the files and the American people deserve it. It's not a democratic hoax. I can't think of anything more offensive to say. What? What? The Epstein sex trafficking ring and calling it a democratic hoax. What the hell is even going on here anyway? When we come back, I want to talk about more. I want to talk about Trump's massive court losses. Popo, you'll be able to take them all down. I want to remind everybody, Michael Popo, new law firm. It's absolutely crushing it. The Popoc Firm Go to thepopocfirm.com or call 877-popocaf one more time. Go to thepopoc firm.com or call 877- popak af for a free case review today. If you've been injured in a car accident, a trucking accident, you're the victim of sexual harassment, sexual assault. If you know people who were the victims of the negligence of others, wrongful death cases, medical malpractice cases, negligent cases, call the POPOC Firm. Trusted. You know Michael Popak for a very long time. You know the work that he does and he started this firm because you all wanted him to start this firm we're representing right now so many of the viewers of this show. So give him a call if you have a case. We'd love to hear from you and also subscribe to the Legal AF substack and the Legal AF YouTube channel. We will be right back after our first quick break of the show.
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Welcome back to Legal af. Thank you to our sponsors right there that keep this show and this network rolling on. We appreciate them greatly. And thanks for everybody who reached out to the popoc firm.com Appreciate it. You're in great hands and we will keep following up about the numbers. So many cases that the POPOC firm is representing. All right, let's get into it. Popak. Speaking of cases, it's been loss after loss after loss for the Trump regime. Big losses on big issues in the realm of immigration, alien enemies. Why don't you break down the Harvard case? You know, there was a it's always interesting because every what now? Every few weeks a rumor percolates that Harvard's about to settle and they're about to do the deal and sell out the and then sell out. There's definitely something going on behind the scenes. There's definitely a divided board of trustees there at Harvard right now. And it's probably incredibly tense behind the scenes of people who want to tap out a la Colombia and people who want to fight. But the thing is, if you can't even for the people who want to tap out, you can't do deals with a maniac and a sociopath like Trump. Just like the big law firms have discovered. If you think you're doing pro bono, no P now makes you his tariff lawyers and you say you don't want to do it, he comes after you again. The only way you can address it, like even out of your own self interest, assume you don't want to do good. The only way you can deal with him is to stand up to him. I mean, just even take Canada though, for an example. Right now, Canada did not do Any fake trade deal. Unlike other countries that did some fake trade deals with them, Canada didn't do any, any trade deal at all. Not. They didn't give him a fake one. There's only like four or five fake ones out there where there's no binding and then there's that which really aren't deals. But what happened? Nothing. He huffs and he puffs. Nothing different than would have happened with the fake trade deal. And then once he has you in the trade deal like an abuser, he just abuses you more. You're now in his orbit and so you got to get the hell out of his orbit and you've got to fight, even out of your self interest, even out of your survival. If I was their legal advisor on any of these cases, I would say, look, I understand, you know, that you may be being advised by people that your research dollars are important and maybe you even have bad intent. Maybe you don't care about standing up for principles of law, which I disagree with, but maybe you don't want to stand up for principles of law, then stand up just for yourself. Because you do a deal, he's coming back for you. A third or fourth, a fifth. The sixth takes time. That's why you gotta fight. People are fighting. Faux pac. A lot of momentum this week, man. I mean this sincerely. I feel like we came back from summer and right away, whether it was the Epstein survivors, whether it was Democrats punching back on the Hill in these committee hearings, RFK Jr getting excoriated on, on the like, it just felt like Donald Trump and MAGA thought they were going to roll into this thing and be like, we're back and we want to Democrats out of here.
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Democrats got their groove back and, and what's leading the way are the lawsuits. I just did an interview with one of our contributors, one of our partners on legal af, Democracy Forward, who the Atlantic magazine said is the single most troublesome opponent of the Trump administration. Not talking about media now because of the lawsuits that they brought, 100 lawsuits, they're winning at a 93% clip. There are, there are almost 400 lawsuits, 400 lawsuits in eight months against the Trump administration. And whether it's the attorneys general, 23 Democratic attorneys general like the one in California, Rob Fonta, the aclu, Democracy Forward groups led by Norm Ison, you name it, new groups you never heard of, that weren't here in the first administration, naacp, which of course you have heard of. They are filing cases at a rapid rate because we're watching an administration that is devolving before our very eyes tracking the de evolution of Donald Trump's physical and mental health. I mean, the fact that we even have to speculate is he dead or alive? If he's alive, why does he look dead? You know, what's with the makeup? Is that the COVID up? I mean the fact that we have to even do that as Donald Trump single handedly destroys our public health system, which is going to be and is going to be a major issue to run the bastards out at the midterms, you know, but you always have to come back to the lawsuits and to the litigation. And we just had, I keep, I'm coming, I'm losing adjectives for like the worst round of the worst week in Donald Trump's life in court. But I've said that before. But look, we've got in on major issues across six different courts and there's been other rulings as well. These are the, if you had a rank them like the biggest ones of the week going back eight days or so. This is in six different courts from San Francisco to Massachusetts to D.C. appellate courts and trial courts on fundamental constitutional issues, which many of them are on fast track to the United States Supreme Court. But we'll have to see you let off with Harvard. So let's lead off with Harvard. You're right about what's going on in the back room. Donald Trump pounding the table and saying I'm not going to reinstate the $2.3 billion worth of. Now let's remember what this is because I don't want these numbers just to lead to glossy eyes here. $2.3 billion in medical, scientific and technological research, research in America. R and D is done fundamentally at the major university level. Sure, there are major companies that do their own R and D. But if you're looking for things that don't necessarily can't be commercialized immediately but may impact and help people from dying from cancer, from the next pandemic, from all of that. It's at the university level and Harvard first among them as our leading university and leading Research University. The $2.3 billion or so of grants that were canceled by Donald Trump that have been reinst by Judge Burroughs in Massachusetts. The bulk of it was from the National Institute of Health, from the Centers for Disease Control. This was a, these were research grants to make people well and healthy and, and stop them from dying. And I've said this on a hot take and it's, and it is true, it's unfortunate but true. Hundreds of thousands of people are going to die just as they did because of his COVID policies, are going to die because of Donald Trump's depraved, unscientific quackery in public health than any other than that, any other time. I mean, direct correlation to his public health policies led by RFK Jr. The vaccine denier, science denier, medicine denier at the helm. And that's a fact. Just as you can put the bodies of Americans who died from COVID because of Donald Trump's failed policies related to that in containment and the rest. And for just to stay on public health for a minute, because it links back to Harvard. Donald Trump, who bragged to everybody about operation Warp Speed making vaccines, just had his head of public health cancel a $500 billion vaccine program led by some of those same entities that created the vaccine for Covid. We are not ready for the next pandemic. We are not ready for the next epidemic, which doesn't come from America. It comes from overseas. We just withdrew from global public health in research, in funding. That's where it comes from. It comes from China. I'm not about blaming the country, but it comes from Africa, it comes from China. It's not coming from Idaho. It's not coming from Baltimore or Boston or Chicago. So all of that comes to a head in Harvard. The Judge reinstates the $2.3 billion grants, finding that Donald Trump's administration violated the First Amendment rights, among other things, of Harvard University, that the sole reason that they were attacked and their grants were terminated had nothing to do with anti Semitism, which is with a false flag that Donald Trump flew under. It had to do with woke. Donald Trump loves that word. You know, the Department of Defense needs to be changed, the Department of War because it became the Department of Defense during a woke. A woke period when in the 1940s. So he says, well, we got to go after anti Semitism. The research wasn't anti Semitic. The judge was like, that's. There's no link between anti Semitism and the research. Instead, look at what Donald Trump said out of his own mouth and his own fingertips, which is liberal, leftist woke ideology. We need to get rid of the teachers and the students and the this, that, that is the reason the retaliatory First Amendment viewpoint based First Amendment violation and she has reinstated it. The re the Harvard fight that you're so rightly pointing out is that behind the scenes, including with a new trustee that is a right wing respected Republican who joined that board of trustees about five months ago, who I thought when he joined was going to try to find a way to settle. Donald Trump's demanding a $500 million tithe or tribute to be paid to his administration in order to reinstate it. Now the tables have turned because they're winning in court, they're going to likely win at the First Circuit. We'll have to see what happens to the United States Supreme Court about whether they're going to allow the defunding of America's higher education institutions because Donald Trump says so. And it's hard to tell with this court. You know, you and I have always, you know, it's hard to tell where MAGA on the Supreme Court is at any given moment on any given issue like this, and whether they're going to allow it to happen, even though many on the court went to Harvard. But you're right about the fight back. The easiest contrast is Canada versus Mexico. Canada doing an amazing job, elbows up with a central banker as its prime minister, fighting back and winning to protect the Canadian economy and punish, rightly so, the Trump administration, in ways that they can do tourism, for instance, there are loss of 10% in tourism is Canada's gain and the dollars behind it. Hundreds of billions of dollars of tourism has been lost in the last nine months and the jobs behind all of that, much of it back to Canada. Mexico, on the other hand, has been trying to and I like Sheinbaum a lot, and she's been successful at getting many postponements of her tariffs. But because she is bargaining with him constantly. He is Trump is constantly coming back to her for more and more and more and more. So she finds herself in a deadly cycle of having to constantly compromise in order to get Donald Trump off her back, whereas Canada is in the fighting mode. And I think we've seen that that contrast. And the world is watching that contrast of what's happening. So we have the win at Harvard, but that's not the only win. That was Massachusetts. Then you've got the Alien Enemies act, which because of the law, his failures in the lawsuits, and because of the attention we brought to it on Midas and on legal af, he has not used the Alien Enemies act to deport anybody since March. And that's not by coincidence. It's not like he forgot about it. It's because he's losing badly between the Abrego Garcia case and the losses now at the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which leans to the right 2 to 1, ruled that after a remand from the United States Supreme Court, ruled that Donald Trump could not use the Alien Enemies act and improperly used it, unconstitutionally used it in violation of the statute by deporting hundreds of people from Texas or trying to by claiming that there was an enemy invasion, a war, no declared war with Congress, predatory invasion or incursion. They said there were none of those things. You cannot use the Alien Enemies Act. They the only thing they said was okay with a decision within the decision was a two to one that his seven day notice was proper due process. Another one of the judges said 21 days is the but. So they had a little internal fight about that. But as the Alien Enemies act, which was the framework by which Donald Trump started deporting 200 people to the torture prisons of El Salvador and then in other places. That is now the first court up. Now back to the Supreme Court as to whether Donald Trump can call the Alien Enemies act. He could just declare a national crisis. Now, that day when that judgment came out is the day that he bombed out of existence 11 people without due process, without a court of law, without a conviction who he claimed to be Venezuelan drug lords working for Trenda Aragua. That's not a coincidence. He's got to create a war. It's not the first time in American history we ever bombed a ship as a pretext to a war. Look at the Gulf of Tonkin. So he bombed a fishing boat and then claimed. Well, they got, they couldn't get their story straight. Marco Rubio, who's leading the charge here is like, see, we did drug interdiction. When you see the interview with Marco Rubio when they caught him coming off the plane and other places he never talked about. We're at war with the Maduro regime in Venezuela. He said drugs, drug interdiction. We're stopping drugs from spreading through the Caribbean. I'm like, that's our new job to stop drug interdiction in the Caribbean by bombing ships with our military? No, that's what Donald Trump can say, look, we're at war with Venezuela. So we had that, we had that bad ruling. Again, as I said at the top, look for the wag the dog moments when Donald Trump tries to start a war or dump some files on us or sues a city or or federalizes National Guard and creates a federal police force to has an occupying standing army. That's off of a bad news cycle from that particular day, the Posse Comitatus. That was Tuesday coming off a Labor Day. We get the decision by Judge Breyer in San Francisco. Now we're in our third court again. This is all the same week in which he rules, he made a chilling observation and finding on the way to finding that the Posse Comitatus act had been violated by Donald Trump. And the easiest way to explain the PCA for those that are joining late to the story, is that you are not allowed under our system of constitutional Republican federalism, if you're a president, to create a standing army and use the might of the US Military on domestic soil for civilian law enforcement purposes. That's the Posse Comitatus act in a nutshell. Whether you federalize the state National Guard or you create your own boot jacked group of shock troops, which Donald Trump is doing through ICE and Border Patrol and through the U.S. marshal Service, whatever you're doing, and you're creating a standing army, which is the very reason we left England with a declaration of Independence that violates the Posse Comitatus Act. But Breyer went further. In the first page or so of his decision, he said, what we are watching is a president creating a federal police force with him as the chief, all in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. So when you hear that Trump is attacking the Boston mayor or the city of Boston or the city of Chicago, we'll put up a, we'll put up a beam related to that, or going after Cleveland or going after other blue cities or states taking his shock forces on the road. All of that is a violation of our system of federalism about the power of the states and their sovereignty, the role of the militia in those places and is unconstitutional. Now we have our first decision. It'll go up to the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. I just interviewed Rob Bonta, the Attorney General, about this. You can find it on Legal AF substack as well. And ultimately to the Supreme Court, which has sat on the sidelines because they haven't been asked to do anything yet related to the Posse Comitatus Act. And fresh on the heels of that ruling, the District of Columbia filed a new lawsuit in order to get the, the militia, federalized militia and the Marines and others off the streets of D.C. once and for all. And that is a direct consequence of Judge Breyer's ruling in San Francisco. So these things have, these things have consequences. You've, you've got, you want to put up the, his attack on Chicago, a sovereign state.
A
Yeah, let's put up the meme right here that Donald Trump posted this morning, a photo of him saying, I love the smell of deportations in the morning. Chicago, about to find out why it's called the Department of War. And it's a reference to, I guess, the movie Apocalypse Now, Vietnam movie, but he's calling it Chipocalypse Now. And the implication is, is that he's going to send in our military to what, put Agent Orange all over Chicago and to, and to kill the people of Chicago and, and, and, and, and invade it. I want to talk about that popac, but I want to take another quick break. But I want to say one thing before doing that, which is all of this also hinges on the Supreme Court having given Donald Trump absolute immunity last year or two years ago at this point in that horrific ruling. Because the absolute immunity ruling, if it didn't exist and he didn't have immunity, these are willful violations of the law, meaning he should be criminally prosecuted for this behavior. If you go and just start killing people abroad, you know, and, and murdering people and causing people to die, and there are willful violations of the law, that's, that's prison stuff, that's felony stuff, that's treason stuff, that's traitorous stuff. But the Supreme Court's absolute immunities, well, if you say you were doing it in the course and scope of what your executive functions are, just tether it to a war power, which is why Donald Trump always says it's a war power, it's a war power, it's a war power. Then you don't get, then you don't even have the fear of being criminally prosecuted, which every other president in the history of the United States would think, I could be criminally prosecuted for this. Their behavior was such as the President of the United States, other than Nixon, you know, and a few and a bunch of others in the 19th century, act like everything, they're all great. But their behavior was such that modern day presidents wouldn't be like, oh, my God, am I going to be criminally prosecuted? But like literally everything that Donald Trump does in a day, forget it being an impeachable offense, you know, in my opinion, a lot of this stuff is just absolutely criminal and he hides behind immunity. So let's talk about some of more of the Trump court losses. But let's take our last quick break of the day. A reminder, go to the popoc firm.com website if you haven't already, or call 877-POPAK AF 877-POPOC AF or go to the popocfirm.com, get a free case review today. If you've been in a car accident, a truck accident, if you've been the victim of somebody else's negligence in some other way. If you know somebody who's been the victim of wrongful death, or if you know people who may have a case, just tell them to reach out to Popak. Sexual harassment cases, sexual assault cases, employment related cases involving sexual assault and sexual harassment, Medical malpractice. Reach out to the POPOC firm. Get a free case evaluation. And especially it's not some people like, well, I was in a car accident or a trucking accident and I was hit, but I don't want to bother the POPOC firm. You're not bothering the POPOC firm. Reach out to them. That's what they're here for. They're here to help you. There's no it's not like, oh, we're not going to do it as a car. That's exactly the type of cases they do. So reach out. Also check out Popo's YouTube channel, the Legal AF YouTube channel surging on its way to 1 million subscribers. And also check out the Legal AF substack Legal A of Substack Surging as well. Check it out everybody. We will be right back after our last quick break of the show.
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A
Welcome back to Legal af. Thank you to all of our sponsors there. Thank you everybody for reaching out to the popoc firm.com or calling 877 popoc AF and yeah, special shout out to those sponsors. Jordy negotiates those discount codes and we try to make sure we're only finding sponsors who align with the brand and the mission and that would be and stuff that you would like. So, so please check them out if you can. It helps us out as well. All right, Popak, let's chat about the other court losses. I mean, you have what at 1am 2am, right? A memorial Labor Day weekend. You had Trump trying to deport 600 Guatemalan orphans in the middle of the night where they could go back and potentially get killed. And then the court sets an emergency hearing. There you've got Trump rushing to the Supreme Court. Where do you want to start?
B
Yeah, well, let me back up one step, one second. This is so bad that you've got 10 different federal judges who gave an interview to NBC in the last couple of days anonymously, in which they said back to the Supreme Court for a minute that they don't feel properly supported by the United States Supreme Court, that they're doing their job, they're applying the law to the facts, they're applying precedent. They're doing the analysis, they're issuing injunctions and the Supreme Court is sitting up on high and criticizing them and critiquing them and telling them that they did it wrong or they got it wrong. And they're, they're sort of fed up. I mean, I rarely have heard, I mean I've been doing this for 35 years. I've never heard of federal judges, even anonymously, especially in this administration, taking to the airwaves to complain about their bosses. We saw it. However, I'm going to do the. Since we, you let off with the 600 kids, I'll go there. Nothing says I am doing something depraved, underhanded and in violation of the, in violation of the constitution like loading 78 children onto a plane at 1 o' clock in the morning who were part of a refugee resettlement program without adults on board, without due process and hoping to get away with it. Nothing. See that that's the opposite of doing things in the sunshine. That, that literally is doing things in the middle of the night hoping that a federal judge won't find out about it. Well, they did because the children, some of them I assume, had cell phones. Immigration rights advocates sprung into action and been in under an hour because they have these suits ready to go in draft. They filed a law, an emergency lawsuit in federal court in D.C. to stop those planes. It got assigned to the emergency duty judge who happened to be that day. Judge Sparkle Sukhnatan, who is an immigrant herself, came from Trinidad and Tobago. Our honors all the way through her career. Top leader at the Department of Justice, including the Civil Rights Division under Joe Biden, clerk for Justice Sotomayor. I mean just the right judge for this. She gets the, she gets it. IT files at 2:00am Sunday morning, Labor Day weekend. She's it gets assigned to her randomly. Within 45 minutes, she's on the phone trying to find somebody at 3:30 in the morning at the Department of Justice and nobody's home on purpose, I'm sure, to pick up the phone for a federal judge who's trying to find them. To set the hearing, she enters two temporary restraining orders. Almost immediately, she schedules a hearing. She moves the date of the hearing, the time of the hearing up and then has, because of knowing that the planes are about to leave. And then she issues no less than 15 orders in less than 24 hours, what we call these minute order entries to require not only that they get those kids off the plane, she then certifies a class of another 530 Guatemalans who are part of the refugee resettlement program. I'll talk about that in a minute. And who are now part of this putative class, this potential class. She then with a temporary restraining order on top of it and then makes the government every two hours or every hour report in about getting those kids off the plane and getting them back into the Office of Refugee Resettlement. She then sets that finally happens after like 18 hours. They get them all back and accounted for allegedly. She then sets a briefing schedule for that has already begun on the preliminary injunction and the class action to be certified. But the case gets kicked over because she's the emergency judge to a, a permanent judge which happens to be Tim Kelly, who is a Trump appointee. I wouldn't call him maga, but he is conservative, he is right wing. He was the protege of, of the Grassley, Chuck grassley, who's the 80 year old head of the Senate Judiciary Committee. So he and he worked on the Judiciary Committee along with the Department of Justice. I've seen a rule against the Trump administration, I've seen a rule for it. We'll have to see what he's going to do next.
A
I only Fact check is 91 years old.
B
Chuck Grassley, Sorry. It's not even the octogenarians. It's the whatever, the non engineering whatever they are. Yeah. The interesting thing about it or the depraved thing about it is the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is under the Department of Health and Human Services. I just interviewed, it's going up tomorrow. A senior lawyer for the International Refugee Assistance Project Iraq who just argued at the ninth Circuit. She was in the room for this on Wednesday to try to get 100, 125,000 approved refugees who have been blocked by Donald Trump from resettlement back into resettlement, some of them waiting three to four years. She told me something that I didn't know. I'm not sure you knew either. Refugees who are approved by the Department of Homeland Security are the most vigorously vetted and given due diligence about their application than any other group of migrants who try to come to America. That and they passed and Donald Trump still doesn't want those. And this is refugees. This is the foundation of America. This is literally the base of the, of the Statue of Liberty is Emma Lazarus's poem about refugees. My great grandfather was a refugee. I'm sort of sensitive to this issue. Who came to this country on a boat but came through Ellis island, who got naturalized. So this is who we're talking. We're talking about refugees, some people who are worried about being persecuted and murdered in their home countries and have done everything right to come here with dignity to America, to start a new life and to be a contributing member of our society. And Donald Trump blocks them and stops them, including children, and then has the balls to have his lawyers stand up in court in that hearing. True, Ensign. Of all people who has been, who've been accused of lying to federal judges by whistleblowers in this about planes and immigrants, to say to the judge, judge, you got it all wrong. This is a family reunification program, a pilot. This is the Orwellian language they use. We're reuniting families in Guatemala. These are the same families that sent them to America alone because of the life that they were leading in Guatemala. So you've got that, that happened. This is all the same week, just to remind people. Then you've got the Federal Trade Commission case where Rebecca Slaughter got herself reinstated subject to a Supreme Court appeal that Donald Trump has taken when Donald Trump just decided to fire the only Democrats on the Federal Trade Commission. And there's a problem with that. There's a case that you and I have talked about at length called Humphreys executor from 1935. Humphreys was a Federal Trade Commission commissioner just like he was Rebecca Slaughter. And he successfully sued, creating the precedent that's still on the books that says, at least for the Federal Trade Commission, that they are not allowed to be fired without cause. My problem that the Supreme Court has been doing when they've been allowing these commissioners and other agents, board members to be fired, is that my belief? I have a working theory that when Congress, whatever Congress it was, created these agencies and commissions, that part of the material part of their, of them doing that was that they would have a bipartisan, non political, nonpartisan board with long terms that overlapped and no one president being, being able through political whimsical, to change its membership. And that was a fundamental foundational requirement to set up the executive agency, then turned over to the president. But to the, but all the Supreme Court looks at is they just take a blue pencil and go, well, we'll keep, we'll keep the agency, but we'll get rad. We'll get rid of the foundational governance component of it. And I'm like, how do you get to do that? Maybe Congress would not have created that agency that way or that commission had they known that you were going to say it was illegal or unconstitutional for us to require for cause before somebody gets fired now on the ftc, the this is the pushback of the appellate court of the appellate courts and the trial courts against the Supreme Court. Millet Pollard, it was a 2 to 1 decision wrote in their opinion, effectively challenging the Supreme Court. They said, we're not going to do your job for you. You told us as appellate judges that we need to apply the extant precedent, the precedent on the books. This precedent is on all fours. It's exactly the case we're applying the case you told us to apply that only you can change precedent. So we're not going to do your job for you. Literally, they wrote this. You do your job and we're going to apply the precedent as written. And these other cases that you've done where you've let people be fired with just procedural emergency shadow dockets without getting to the substance, we're going to look at the law you've left on the books. Now, let me just explain it quickly this way. The argument is for the Supreme Court on a sliding scale. The more executive power that an agency or commission exercises, the more the Supreme Court wants the President to be able to fire them without cost, cause. If you're on the other end, the least amount of executive power being exercised, then the for cause requirement is okay. So that's the scale and that's the fight. So Trump's arguing, oh, the FTC of today is nothing like the FTC of 1935. It exercises tremendous amount of executive power and we can fire without cause as a result. So that's going to be the push pull we're going to see at the United States Supreme Court. Are there five votes to destroy Humphrey's executor, put it out of its misery or Trump's misery once and for all? That that is the question. But it has been teed up with another loss for the Trump administration related to his ability to fire people at will. While we watch him continue to go after Lisa Cook and others. One note on that because we just did great reporting on this on Midas Dutch network And off of ProPublica's reporting, he's using as his for cause when he needs for cause or going after people. He's using mortgage fraud, claiming that people that have two primary home mortgages, meaning they got a little bit of a rate cut, but they have two properties they claim to be their primary when you can only have one, that is mortgage fraud. To get rid of Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve, to get rid of Adam Schiff as a senator from California, to get rid of the new York Attorney General Letitia James. The only problem with that is 20. According to ProPublica, 20% of his cabinet has the exact same problem. So it's either mortgage fraud and, and Bill Pulte and Donald Trump and the Department of Justice need to go after the Labor Secretary, the Transportation Secretary and the EPA administrator, or it's not mortgage fraud. And the reality is, according to reporting that's gone out there, including from the Federal Reserve in Philadelphia, this is not really mortgage fraud. That banks encourage people to check the box for primary residents more than once to make the loan. They don't really care. Sometimes it's the same bank giving the loan, the two loans to the same person. And then what is a borrower supposed to do? They get a raft of documents electronically, sometimes on an iPad. It's check, check, check, check, check. You know, they're not, they're not real estate law experts. And so they have two mortgages that, that have, maybe they, maybe they would have got a slightly different rate. It's just ironic that a president who got, who has still been a judge to be a fraudster when it comes to mortgages, loans and real estate property is the one that's going after people for mortgage fraud.
A
And it wasn't Trump's case, which is primary residence versus not primary residence, which the fact that Donald Trump lives in a club which he is not supposed to live in as a residence in order to avoid paying state income tax as well and other things is its own area. Trump's mortgage related issues dealt with him claiming a certain value on the property when it came to taking out loans on the property and very different values of the property. This was when it came to insurance and when it came to property taxes and when it came to other things. And so in the case of Trump, he had to, it's an issue of intent. Like the issue with Trump was never, oh, you know, you click this box versus that box. Gotcha. It was, there was a plan over decades of increasing and decreasing valuations on a property in order to extract unlawful benefits for yourself. That's that, that's what the case was about. Not, you know, did you go through a form and did you accidentally check one wrong box or whatever. And in any event, if indeed there was a criminal prosecution of somebody like Elisa Cook, if there was a criminal prosecution or a civil case that went through the process and there was an adjudication after the evidence came out and there was a finding of liability of, of fraud when the evidence comes out, then, you know, Popac, I'M I would think in that case, you know, okay, maybe it was more than just to check the box. Donald Trump's case, when it came to business records, he's a felon. He's a felon. When it comes to valuations, he's found civilly liable. When it comes to sexual assault, he's found civilly liable. There, there are actual findings. And so here we've now learned to your point that, you know, it's 20% of Trump's cabinet does the same thing. Bill Pulte, the Fair Housing Administrator, his family members, you know, were doing the same thing. If you were to prosecute Alisa Cook for doing this, you'd basically have to prosecute a lot of the country in that case. And it would harm the banking industry. It would. While already home sales are tanking right now and the housing industry suffering. So they're not prosecuted. They are, you know, I had on the Show Last night Lamonica McGuire, Congresswoman who was arrested and they're prosecuting her out of New Jersey. So much of what the Trump regime is trying to do is huff and puff and intimidate and get you to submit based on using the full force of the federal government. But there's no, there's no there there. There's no there there at all. And so I think it's important that shows like this continue to shed light on what's really happening, break down the facts. And, and, and the court system is still functioning. It's completely under assault by the regime, but it is still functioning. And you have all these federal judges, Bush appointees to Reagan appointees to Clinton, Obama appointees, and a few Trump appointees as well who are like, what the hell is going on here? This is not law and order under the Trump regime. It's not law and order. And I like to approach this show legal AF from a very nonpartisan lens. I don't think we think that this should be a Democrat or a Republican or an independent issue. I think that an evidence based, fact based system is something that we should all want and we could form our opinions thereafter. But let's go through the evidence, the facts, the documents, the tape and let's see it. You know, I'll close with this. Unless Popak, you wanted at anything else before we go again, this is Governor Pritzker posted in response to Donald Trump's post. I mean, why would you want, even if you're a Republican, if you're just any American, why would you want the president of the United States to post A meme of himself invading an American city and calling it Chi Pocalypse now, like Apocalypse Now. And send imagery of your United States military destroying a major American city and say, I love the smell of deportations. Chicago's about to find out why it's called the Department of War. To which the governor of Illinois has to respond. The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal. Trump isn't a strong man. Here, pull that up one more time. Trump isn't a strong man. He is a scared man. Illinois won't be intimidated by a wannabe dictator. It's. And it just makes us look weak. If you think that that makes us look strong abroad, you are a very weak person. Because I can assure you that everyone, from allies to enemies or former allies at this point watch that and go, oh, they're crazy. These are crazy, weak, weird people over there. Like the laughingstock of the world, as Trump used to say. They're laughing at us. They weren't, and trust me, they were not laughing at us. Right now. There's a combination of laughing at us and horror at what the United States of America has become. But we'll keep on fighting. I feel momentum. You got governors like Pritzker and Newsom and others fighting back. You've got incredible candidates that we're seeing, whether it is, you know, in Maine, whether it is in New York, across the country. And you've got those great Bernie rallies that are taking place also that we're covering here, but that's all for me. Popak, anything else you want to say before we go?
B
No, I think we've got our groove back. I mean, people were wondering what phase we're in after waiting nine months. And I think there was a very short honeymoon phase for Donald Trump. But the crashing economy and public health crisis and Epstein scandal and personal health scandal has dashed any hopes that Donald Trump will have a successful administration. We don't pray, we didn't pray for that. As you said, if he had just golfed and left the Biden economy alone and didn't try to destroy the relationship between the federal government and the states and its people, he would be doing a lot better in every measure of a presidency. But if you wanted to know what a failed presidency looked like, because you've only read about it in history books, you are watching a failed presidency right now. I almost laughed out loud, I think where I had myself on mute when you showed the clip of him in the White House talking about. I think by every measure, including by a couple of people in this room, this is the most successful eight months in history. The most, I mean, I mean, that is just shows you the dementia and the delusional aspect of, of what he's peddling to the American people, and it's just not working. He can go on and have all of his people go on. And they keep floating these. I'll just end it this way. They keep floating these things like Scott Bessette, the Treasury Secretary, who I thought was reasonably normal, coming in saying, we got Federal Reserve. We got to get them out of banking regulation. We go, we don't need the independent Federal Reserve any longer. Howard Lutnick going on television constantly talking about how great the economy is while people are suffering. These are the words from the Federal Reserve Beige Book survey and from other surveys that came out this week. The operative words, the dominant words, vocabulary being used by Americans right now is struggling and suffering. Those are the two adjectives that are being assigned to the Trump administration. And he thinks it's funny. And we could spend an entire show just doing the memes he's using at the Department of Homeland Security to hire people which look like Nazi and white supremacist propaganda. What you just saw there, which is the smell of napalm in the morning with Robert Duvall from Apocalypse Now. Now, this is a war that he's threatening sitting from his pulpit as the commander in chief of the United States against other sovereign states, among with which is part of our federalism. And if it's not Chicago, then it's Boston, then it's Philadelphia, then it's Cleveland, then it's California, and they're all fighting back. You had a great interview with Larry Krasner, the DA for Philadelphia, where he said a version of, I don't know, we might have to start arresting federal officers who come here to try to violate our sovereignty. These are the things that are not just tabletop exercises anymore. This is what the Democrats in the. In the major states, we got 23 states and hundreds of cities that we control are having to sit around and talk about the break the glass moment. What if Donald Trump does the opposite of what or he thinks he's the new Lincoln who's going to go after renegade Democratic cities and states. What do we do in response?
A
Exactly. We fight back. We get out the information, we organize, we bring people together. We talk about the no Kings protests happening in October. We highlight the survivors of Epstein. We interview people like Congresswoman McIver. We give people platforms here in Chicago. Lieutenant Governor Stratton coming on the Midas Touch network, telling us what she's doing there. Governor Pritzker coming on, Governor Newsom coming on. Bernie Sanders coming on Mondami, getting you a wide view of perspectives and getting the information out there in terms of what you can do as well. Look, I would love if Donald Trump really did bring in $17 trillion, we wouldn't have needed to raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion. It would be great if inflation was zero right now, as he claims. But that's a lie. It'd be great if gas was 199 and everything was so affordable. But that's not true. It'd be great if there was peace in Ukraine in 24 hours and the atrocities in Gaza stopped and the hostages were returned and everything was great. Would be fantastic if all of those things happen, which he said he would do. Not happening at all. Instead he says, I brought in 17 trillion. I stopped 7 to 10 wars. The Epstein files are a hoax. And then he posts memes of himself invading Chicago and he finds it funny. It's not funny. It's deeply serious. But this community is deeply serious and it's ready to fight back. Thank you all for watching. A reminder, check out Michael Popox law firm. Please give them a call. Don't be shy. If you were in a car accident, a trucking accident, if you need legal representation, please give a call to The Popoc Firm by 8 by calling 877 Popoc AF 877 Popoc AF. Or go to ThePopoc Firm.com if you've been injured in a car accident, trucking accident, if you know someone who's been injured in that type of accident, any type of catastrophic injury, if you know people who are the victims in a wrongful death case, case, sexual harassment, sexual assault, medical malpractice, please don't be shy, give a call. Don't be like, I don't know. Is Popak one here?
B
Yes.
A
He's got lawyers across the country who want to be helpful. So please give a call if you can or go to the website and fill out the form. A reminder, Michael Popo's YouTube channel on its way to 1 million subscribers. That's the Legal AF YouTube channel. Subscribe there and subscribe to Michael Popo's substack as well. The Legal AF sub stack is absolutely crushing it. Hey, thanks everybody for watching. We appreciate you, we are grateful for you all and we'll see you next time on Legal af. Bundling safe. With Expedia, you were made to follow your favorite band and from the front row we were made to quietly save you. More Expedia Made to travel Save Savings vary and subject to availability. Flight inclusive packages are atoll protected.
B
It's that time of year again. Back to school season, and Instacart knows that the only thing harder than getting back into the swing of things is getting all the back to school supplies, snacks and essentials you need. So here's your reminder to make your life a little easier this season. Shop favorites from Staples, Best Buy and Costco, all delivered through Instacart, so that you can get some time back and do whatever it is that you need to get your life back on track. Instacart we're here.
Podcast: Legal AF by MeidasTouch
Air Date: September 7, 2025
Hosts: Ben Meiselas, Michael Popok
Main Theme:
A hard-hitting legal and political analysis of the week’s top stories—Trump’s disastrous court week, rising challenges to his administration’s legal overreach, the harrowing Epstein files saga, and the tangible impact of Trump-era policies on American institutions, the economy, and global standing.
This episode of Legal AF dissects a barrage of humiliating legal defeats suffered by the Trump administration over the past eight days, including major courtroom rebukes on immigration, the use of presidential power, and interference with independent agencies and higher education funding. Hosts Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok intertwine analysis of these legal developments with political fallout—most notably Trump’s attempts at distraction (e.g., military provocations, inflammatory rhetoric, and the Epstein controversy), all set against a backdrop of mounting domestic discontent and international embarrassment. The show also highlights the courage of Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors coming forward and the broader implications of the administration’s tactics on civil rights, public health, and American democracy.
Timestamps:
Highlights:
Notable Quote:
“If you wanted to know what a failed presidency looked like, because you’ve only read about it in history books, you are watching a failed presidency right now.”
— Michael Popok [73:53]
Timestamps:
Highlights:
Notable Quotes:
“If he’s the hero in this narrative, as MAGA Mike Johnson suggests, you would absolutely want to release [the files] right away… But in the Epstein version, Trump’s not the hero, he’s potentially an accomplice…”
— Ben Meiselas [24:05]
“This is going to hang around [Trump’s] neck like an albatross through the midterms and beyond.”
— Michael Popok [24:05]
Timestamps:
Highlights:
Notable Quote:
“If Donald Trump just went out and golfed all day, nothing, he could have taken credit for [the strong economy]. Instead, he is affirmatively inflicting the most damage everywhere.”
— Ben Meiselas [10:25]
Timestamps:
Insight:
Judge Burroughs reinstated $2.3 billion in medical and scientific research grants rescinded from Harvard, finding Trump’s actions a First Amendment violation motivated by retaliation against “woke” viewpoints, not actual risk.
Timestamps:
Insight:
Fifth Circuit blocked mass deportations under an unsubstantiated “invasion,” ruling Trump violated statutory and constitutional limits. The day Trump lost, he bombed a Venezuelan boat (purportedly full of drug traffickers), showing the “Wag the Dog” pattern.
Timestamps:
Insight:
Judge Breyer’s ruling in San Francisco finds Trump’s use of military forces as a domestic police force unconstitutional—a chilling echo of authoritarianism. Prompted new lawsuits to force feds off city streets.
Timestamps:
Highlights:
Notable Quotes:
“Nothing says I am doing something depraved… like loading 78 children onto a plane at 1 o’clock in the morning who were part of a refugee resettlement program… and hoping to get away with it.”
— Michael Popok [55:41]
Timestamps:
Highlights:
“The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal. Trump isn’t a strong man. He is a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
[Governor Pritzker, paraphrased by Ben Meiselas, 67:39]
On Trump’s Wag-the-Dog tactics:
“Every time there is a bad news story, sometimes two and three a day… he pushes a button and something bad happens. Unrelated, but to distract.” — Michael Popok [05:32]
Federal judges push back:
“I’ve never heard of federal judges, even anonymously, taking to the airwaves to complain about their bosses.”
— Michael Popok [55:41]
On the rule of law:
“I like to approach this show legal AF from a very nonpartisan lens… an evidence-based, fact-based system is something that we should all want.”
— Ben Meiselas [67:39]
The episode paints a vivid portrait of a presidency in legal, political, and moral collapse—chronicling how the courts, local officials, advocacy groups, and everyday Americans are mobilizing to defend the rule of law and democratic norms. The hosts stress the importance of fact-based reporting, transparency, and activism. Despite relentless attacks, American institutions—though battered—remain resilient, and the legal system is showing its ability to check executive overreach.
For further reading or to get involved: