Loading summary
Transcript221 lines
- [00:00]
A
Pod Save America is brought to you by SimpliSafe. Summer travel season is officially here, which means it's time to pack your bags, double check your itinerary and panic about whether you remember to lock up your house before you left. Or you can arm your SimpliSafe system and head out confidently knowing SimpliSafe has your back. I set up a SimpliSafe, as you know, incredibly easy to do. Customize it to my house, it arrived, set it up. The app incredibly reliable and great. The customer support was always there and really helpful. So highly recommend it gives you peace of mind. With SimpliSafe you can customize your system to fit your needs. Then it ships fast direct to your door. The app guided setup is simple and there's no drilling required, so you can install and arm your system in under an hour. SimpliSafe is more than just a security camera. It's a comprehensive system of sensors, indoor and outdoor cameras, and 247 professional monitoring. Over 5 million people value and trust SimpliSafe with their home security every day. Right now, our listeners will get 50% off a new system when you sign up for professional monitoring and your first month is free. Just visit simplisafe.com crooked that's half off@simplisafe.com crooked there's no safe like SimpliSafe.
- [01:23]
B
Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
- [01:25]
A
I'm Jon Levitt.
- [01:26]
B
Tommy Detour on today's show, the US And Iran have signed a memo to end hostilities, allegedly. For now, we'll talk about it, as well as the implications for Iran's nuclear program, Israel and our own midterm politics. We'll also dig into Trump's 80th birthday celebration, which involved the much anticipated White House UFC fight and lots of opportunities for him and his pals to make more money. Gavin Newsom just announced that Trump's goons at the Justice Department are investigating his wife in a bid to derail his petition potential presidential campaign. We'll get into what we know about that. Then Tommy talks to Senator Mark Warner about the Iran situation and what the Senate can do and why he's pushing his colleagues to confirm Trump's new pick for dni. Before we start, please consider subscribing if you haven't already. You get ad free episodes of Pod Save America and all your other favorite Crooked pods. You also get to know that you're supporting independent pro democracy media. You get full access to our substack newsletters. Our subscriber only shows Like Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer and all kinds of other goodies. So check it out, crooked.com friends Become a friend of the Pod Subscriber today. All right, let's get to the news. The Iran war appears to be over and Donald Trump has lost. U.S. and Iranian officials have signed a memorandum of understanding, shorthanded as an MoU that extends the ceasefire another 60 days, reopens the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for ending the US Naval blockade of Iran, and kicks just about every other issue to the next phase of negotiations, including Iran's nuclear program and economic sanctions relief. Iran has certainly suffered significant casualties and damage in this war, but Trump's war didn't topple the Iranian regime, destroy its military or ballistic missile capabilities, end Iran's support for proxies like Hezbollah, or eliminate its nuclear program. By the way, those were all of the objectives that Trump and Marco Rubio laid out way back in February and March when this whole thing started. Other than that, mission accomplished, which seems to be a face saving agreement that lets Trump pretend he won, which he did shortly after arriving in Europe for the G7 on Monday.
- [03:37]
C
The deal's all signed and the strainers already partially opened. As you know, they're doing a little hunting for a couple of mines. These ships are starting to go out now. On Friday, it'll be completely opened. It's not like the Obama document, which was just a terrible document. I think it's going to be free sailing. We do want to see if we can straighten out the Lebanon thing.
- [04:05]
D
Where were they, by the way? That was the least presidential backdrop I've ever seen.
- [04:09]
B
I don't know. I assume they're somewhere in France if he's with Macron, but looks like they're
- [04:12]
D
on a porch or somewhere.
- [04:13]
A
Yeah, I don't know where they were.
- [04:15]
B
Anyway, the Obama document was terrible and we do want to straighten out Lebanon. Maybe Lebanon. So the administration says the full text of the MoU won't be released for another day or two. But based on the details that have been reported, how does the deal look beyond the headline summary that I gave?
- [04:34]
A
You know, the old Mike Myers thing. Like, you know, the soup nuts are neither soup nor nuts. Like, it's like this is. This is the replacement nuclear deal. It's not nuclear. We know that, but it's not really even a deal because presumably in a deal, both sides would have to concede something. And I can't figure out what Iran has conceded. I know what the US Gave up. Right. I know what we're you know, there's a massive fund that they could get access to sanctions relief. They may get a bunch of cash. They get a ceasefire in Lebanon, which they want to try to constrain. Iran seems to have agreed to the non Proliferation Treaty it already agreed to and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which was open 109 days ago. So this is not a deal. This is the US Surrendering in order to reopen the negotiations. It stopped when it bombed Iran.
- [05:22]
D
This is a deal to temporarily deal with the fallout from the stupid war we started in hopes of maybe getting a full nuclear deal to accomplish our goals. I mean, you laid it out. I mean, the Trump described his goals. He did a video statement right after they started the war. He said, we're going to destroy their missiles and raise their missile industry to the ground. We're going to annihilate their navy. We're to ensure that the region's terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world than attack our forces. And we'll ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. I guess we like the navy. The navy, maybe.
- [05:51]
B
Maybe you get one for four there.
- [05:52]
D
Yeah, we took out your navy, but they saw the Strait of Hormuz closed, so that doesn't seem good. So look, this is hard to message because this was the best deal available to Trump and for the world because it ended the war. And we were seeing economies, Asia collapsing. We could see a, still see a global famine because of what was happening. But Trump accomplished none of his goals. And I think we should. We have to message that. And Iran now knows it can shut down the global economy at any time by closing the straight or Hormuz. And they could get hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief. Like this is a disaster. And the Trump and Netanyahu, like Netanyahu actively tried regime change by killing the Supreme Leader. Trump was for it when it seemed like it might happen. But the net effect is there's now a younger, more hardline Supreme Leader and a more entrenched IRGC running the show. And the United States looks like we're unreliable and weak.
- [06:43]
B
I thought it was very funny that in one of his truths about this, Trump was like, I hereby declare the strait open. And then you look at some of the fine print or at least some of the reported details. And before the war, the strait was controlled by no one. It was an optional body of water. And now it will be controlled by Iran and Oman together apparently. And so you don't really hear Trump talking about that. Although he is saying it's toll free. It's toll free. Like the calls that we used to make back in the 80s and 90s.
- [07:14]
D
Sounds like it might be toll free for 60 days. And then Iran has plans to slap a toll on that shipping.
- [07:19]
B
Yeah, they've said that they can charge fees. So that seems to be, even that seems to be in dispute right now.
- [07:25]
A
Yeah. Also, you know, Trump is saying that it'll be fully open by Friday when the sign. When they sign the agreement. But when they were last talking about what the deal would look like, it was going to take 30 days to potentially remove the mines that are in place. And I don't know if I were, if I were an oil tanker, I would definitely want to go after several.
- [07:42]
D
Yeah, I wouldn't want to be first.
- [07:44]
A
Yeah, a lot of like, no, no, after you. After you. Exxon. No, no, no, after you.
- [07:48]
D
Every restaurant opening gets delayed. You know, like when you do a remodeling, it takes a while to open.
- [07:54]
B
You want to be the third or fourth oil tank for sure. Maybe fifth or sixth.
- [07:57]
D
Can I read you guys one quote? This is from a senior administration official. I'm pretty sure his name rhymes with Haiti. Prance. One of the really cool things and interesting things about this entire process that we actually have a direct relationship with a number of people at the highest levels of the Iranian government. You know, you could have just called them and not killed like their whole family.
- [08:17]
B
So the war, the war was literally the friends we made along the way.
- [08:22]
D
That's what we learned.
- [08:23]
A
It's like, hey man, I know it's hard to make adult friends. J.D.
- [08:27]
B
vance, the male loneliness crisis he saw unbelievable. With the Iran war, where's the. There's some back and forth on the sanctions relief too. So it's like first it was, we heard some reports that there'd be 12 billion in sanctions relief right away with another 24 billion coming later depending on what Iran does. And then Iran's asking for like a pot of $300 billion that they might be able to access down the road. Now it seems like there's no sanctions relief right away, but it's also like, where is the money coming? This is like would be unfrozen assets, right?
- [09:00]
D
Yeah, there's a bunch of unfroze, like there's a bunch of frozen money that is the Iranians money sitting in banks in Qatar, for example. Then there's all this talk of like up to a $300 billion investment fund that will come from Gulf countries. I mean, the truth is, no one knows Iran's real money is going to come from slapping fees on ships that go through the Strait or Hormuz going forward. And sanctions relief is my guess.
- [09:19]
B
Selling all its oil again.
- [09:20]
D
Yeah, yeah.
- [09:20]
A
Well, they've already claimed that the docusign is done or however they did it over email. What is release the text? If the Iranians. If the Iranians have seen it and signed it, and we've seen it and signed it, there's no secrets between us. So to me, like, I. I don't. I can't think of a reason why Iran wouldn't want the text out there. It seems to me that Vance and Trump are trying to spin this thing until we see the text and everybody loses their fucking minds.
- [09:44]
B
Yeah, maybe there's something about Jeffrey Epstein in the text.
- [09:47]
A
Oh, yeah, that could be.
- [09:49]
D
Does he negotiate this thing?
- [09:51]
B
There we go.
- [09:52]
A
Boy, that would be. What a surprise that would be.
- [09:54]
B
Trying to connect the conspiracy. But Trump was always gonna say whatever deal signed was better than Obama's Iran deal. You were saying, Tommy, this morning, that the comparison is apples and oranges. You wanna elaborate?
- [10:07]
D
In the case of the apples, there was a deal that went into force and that worked for a couple years, according to Trump's own top national security aides. In Trump's case, there is no deal. There exists a framework to talk about possibly getting to a deal. And just to remind everybody what the JCPOA said, the preamble of the JCPOA said, quote, iran reopens, affirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop, or acquire nuclear weapons. Right. So whenever Trump says, look, they said they're not going to get nuclear weapon. That was already enshrined in the JCPOA and also enshrined in another treaty called the npt. We don't have to belabor that. But to make sure that Iran could not get a nuclear weapon, the JCPOA said Iran had to reduce its enrichment capacity by 2/3. That meant, like, taking down or shipping out or shuttering out all their centrifuges. They had to cap enrichment at 3.6% purity, 3.67% purity. They had to ship out 97% of their stock stockpile and allow the IAEA to inspect all of their nuclear sites and then agree to not build a new enrichment facility for up to 15 years. Republicans were always mad about the sunset provisions in that agreement, but it was working and it worked. And it sounds like Trump is maybe at best going to get a similar deal after launching this disastrous war that he could have gotten if he just tried to renegotiate.
- [11:18]
A
Yeah, we need a president without sunset provisions. That sounds raised a problem.
- [11:22]
B
Yeah, it does seem like now that the blockade will be over and the strait is open, like, it's not like there's a lot of pressure on Iran to get something out of these negotiations. It's just if they want sanctions relief, which I'm sure they do, then maybe they make a deal. But they've also been going on quite a long time without sanctions relief. So it doesn't seem like there's a forcing mechanism here. So Israeli and US Officials are both saying that Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon is not part of the agreement. Iran and Pakistan are saying an end to all military operations in Lebanon is part of the agreement. Trump has also been publicly attacking Netanyahu over the last few days for launching strikes in Lebanon that nearly tanked the deal. He told Axios that Bibi has, quote, no fucking judgment. So this chapter of the conflict seems unresolved. What do you guys make of the Trump Bibi dust up and. And where this goes from here?
- [12:15]
A
That was in an interview in which Trump said that Israel launching those strikes delayed the deal from going through. And then after the deal goes through in which Iran and Trump are claiming Israel is bound, Netanyahu says he doesn't see eye to eye to Trump and they retain all their prerogatives to defend Israel from attack. And so I don't understand what is supposed to happen over the next 60 days and how you get to the end of 60 days without Trump threatening further military escalation to get to a deal, or Israel threatening military escalation, or there being some kind of a fight in Lebanon. Because in his first comments about this, Netanyahu said plainly, we reserve the right to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. That will continue to be our position regardless of an agreement.
- [13:08]
D
Yeah, every time Netanyahu wants to try to blow up talks or prevent a deal, he just bombs somewhere in Beirut and he tried that move again here, and it seems to have pissed Trump off and actually, I think probably sped up the deal. I mean, I do think it's hard to overstate how negative the reaction to this deal is in Israel right now. I follow this one Israeli political security analyst who was in the IDF for 25 years, and he ran the head of the Iran branch for Israeli military intelligence at one point. So, like, you know, pretty hardline guy. He described the deal as a political and security catastrophe for Israel because The nuclear issue is unresolved. And the fact that Trump lost the war will likely defer future presidents from taking military action against Iran. What you're just saying there about the lack of the stick now for the Iranians. And it also, it seems like Iran will end up stronger because they will have all these financial incentives, and there will never. There won't really be a credible deterrent anymore because no president's going to want to touch this stove. And so this is a huge hit for Netanyahu himself. He was Mr. Iran, he was Mr. Security. He was the guy who could manipulate Washington. Now, he's none of those things. He's got an election coming up. And here's what some of his opponents are saying. Avigdor Lieberman said, a catastrophe from Israel's perspective. That was one quote. Yair Lapid, the moderate. This is one of the most shocking failures of Israel's foreign and security policy, period. So I think I'm also watching whether Netanyahu tries to blow this up. I mean, they're currently occupying the forward operating line for the IDF right now is six miles into Lebanon. They say they're not going to retreat from that, but they're also going to get shot at by Hezbollah. So I just, I'm not sure how this is going to go. But he needs to be careful because he needs Trump's help, both politically and in terms of security support going forward.
- [14:42]
B
But also, you can imagine from Trump's perspective that he's thinking, okay, I got this whole thing done. If the negotiations over the nuclear program don't really go anywhere, no one at home's really going to care or notice, and I can just move on. Bibi, though, for everything you just said, Tommy clearly is not done with Lebanon and Hezbollah and is now feeling all kinds of pressure to continue that. I'm sure Trump thinks, well, Bibi can do whatever he wants now. I'm washing my hands of this. Like, I don't want to deal with it. But Iran knows that the best way to get the US Back into the conflict and to draw them, to draw us back in is to close the strait again. So, like, you can imagine that, like, Bibi goes into Lebanon and then there's another. And then Iran, you know, fires to help Hezbollah and they go back and forth. And Trump wants to stay out of the whole thing. But Iran, of course, knows that it can get us back into the whole thing just by closing the strait again. And so, like Trump's, Trump's dream, I'm sure, is like, let these People fight it out. I don't care anymore. I'm. I want to wash my hands of this. Like, I just don't think it's gonna
- [15:45]
A
be that easy that' Hezbollah can launch missiles at any time to draw Israel back into the conflict and draw criticism from the world because Israel is escalating the conflict in response to Hezbollah. Part of what Iran has been doing is using Hezbollah to make this conflict also about Lebanon, which it successfully did. Right. Because now Israel. Because now, you know, Iran can call off Hezbollah for a short period of time while demanding Israel adhere to a ceasefire in which it's perpetually under threat from Hezbollah in the north. So it's just the stupidity of this war. We will just be living with it for just a very, very long time.
- [16:17]
D
Yeah, I mean, the Iranians have said they've made clear that if the Israelis hit targets in parts of Beirut, they will fire back directly at Tel Aviv. And that's the linkage they created in the two conflicts. And I think it's a very dangerous place for Netanyahu to be because people, especially northern Israel, feel like they're living under constant threat from Hezbollah bombardment. They are. It's totally fair to feel that way. But in terms of a. As a security measure, this has just backfired. Fired spectacularly for Netanyahu.
- [16:45]
B
Let's talk about how the memo is playing in MAGA world, which has been divided over Iran. Bloodthirsty warmonger Lindsey Graham raised some eyebrows when he tweeted that while he was pleased to hear the strait will be reopened, he's, quote, somewhat concerned with what the Iranians are saying about the MOU believes that Congress must have the final say on any nuclear agreement. And, quote, it is imperative that the architect of the deal, Vice President Vance and his negotiating partners, end quote, be part of presenting any final deal to Congress. So what's that all about, you think? And have you guys seen any other noteworthy reactions from either the anti War MAGA faction or the Iran hawks?
- [17:25]
A
Saw John Bolton criticizing it. Lindsey Graham being unable to criticize Trump because Donald Trump cannot fail. He can only be failed. So pathetic. You want to hang this around J.D. vance's neck because he's easier to criticize? You feel like you have a little bit more. You're just not scared of the guy. All sort of the usual pathetic Lindsey Graham.
- [17:46]
D
The anti Iran hawks are losing their minds. I interpreted Graham's comments both as wrapping this thing around J.D. vance's neck, but also maybe suggesting that this would be subject to a 67 vote threshold in the Senate, which means it would be dead or. Yeah, treaties require 2/3 vote. The JCPOA was not treated as a treaty, thus future presidents were not bound by it. So maybe that's the argument here. But like Mark Levin, the Fox News host is losing his mind on an hourly basis. He's getting in fights with like Micropedis, the national security team. Yeah, the neocon think tanks are losing their minds. There's one called fdd, the foundation for the Defense of Democracy, which is just this garbage. Human beings propped up by right wing billionaire money who do nothing but push for wars that they nor their kids will ever fight in. I haven't heard AIPAC weigh in. They've been sort of suspiciously quiet, but the hawkish wing of the Republican Party is furious. They know this is a capitulation. They know Trump lost. They're just trying to figure out how to undo it.
- [18:44]
B
I hate to break it to Lindsey Graham and maybe J.D. vance, but I don't think Congress will be viewing any kind of deal anytime soon because I just can't imagine a deal actually getting done at this point. You can see Graham going after Vance is like you said, because can't criticize Trump. But also it's kind of like a warning shot to JD Vance about 2028. And it did make me think that if this goes as we think it's going to go and the Iran war hawks are all pissed off, someone's going to try to launch some kind of a more pro war campaign in the Republican primary against J.D. vance. That is destined to fail, by the way.
- [19:18]
D
Tom Cotton or something.
- [19:19]
B
Exactly. But you could see Lindsay. Ted Cruz. Yeah, Lindsay. They want to kind of hold JD Vance up as like, beware, beware. We're going to come after. We're going to come after you in a primary with our hawks, which is like, oh, I'd be so scared.
- [19:29]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [19:30]
B
I don't really know that's going to work, but you can see that. You can see that. Maybe like Ted Cruz, who's also I saw Thinking about a presidential campaign again. Amazing, amazing stuff.
- [19:47]
A
This episode is sponsored by Better Help. Not everyone experiences summer as an endless parade of hot dogs, vacations and pool parties. For some people, life's woes don't abate when the temperature climbs and the days get longer. If you've got summertime blues or are Simply feeling overwhelmed, BetterHelp is there when you need it. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, Having served over 6 million people globally and it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. Better Help therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the US. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences. If you aren't happy with your match, switch to different therapists at any time from their tailored recs to Love therapy. It's great. You need it, I need it. Everybody need it. You don't have to say yes to everything this summer. Find support and therapy. Sign up and get 10% off@betterhelp.com P S A that's betterhelp.com PSA Pod Save America is brought to you by Willy's Remedy I love Willy's. Willy's is a premium THC infused social tonic crafted by the legendary Willie Nelson. It is a low calorie, low sugar alcohol alternative that actually works, delivering a fast acting, euphoric social buzz without the regrets that come with alcohol. Willy's social tonics come in 5mg and 10mg doses. I get the 5. I don't want to go crazy with the best in class flavor experience so smooth and balanced you barely realize you're drinking a THC product at all. At my wedding we had Willy's and Tonic, called it Grin and Tonic. You can enjoy the tonics as a shot, sipped over ice or mixed into your favorite mocktail. Like what I just said. Each bottle of Willies is third party lab tested for accurate dosage so you can trust and customize your experience. The unique blend of thc, cbd, CBG and L Theanine delivers a feeling of calm, clarity, euphoria and relaxation. One shot of Willy's helps you relax, unwind and de stress. Perfect for taking the edge off at the end of a long day or socializing with friends, Willy's offers the kind of feeling that makes good company even better. Willys sold out three times in the first six months with over 50,000 happy customers and they just restocked. Willy's ships directly to your door in 40 states. Order now@drinkwillys.com and use code CROOKED for 20% off your first order plus free shipping on orders over $95. I'm a huge fan of Willy's. It's really great. Enjoy life in the high country. Go to drakewillies.com and use code Cricket.
- [21:57]
B
I want to touch on all the political implications of all this for the midterms and beyond. There's a question of how long it will take for high gas prices and other straight related disruptions to end. A question of whether Trump and Republicans will be able to just move on from Iran and pretend like it never happened, even if the next phase of negotiations hasn't led to a deal by November. And then there's the question of what Democrats say about any of this over the next few weeks and months. Tommy, you want to take the. I know you have some thoughts on the last one especially.
- [22:26]
D
Yeah, no, I think being a Democrat in this situation is very hard because we are trying to be responsible. And, you know, if a Democrat was cutting this deal, Barack Obama was making this agreement, Republicans would say, you're weak, you're a coward, you lost. You know, rinse, repeat on Fox News ad nauseum. And it's a simple and powerful message. You know, strength versus weakness. Our job is harder because again, ending the war was the best of a bad set of options. But we need to explain why Trump starting the war has made us worse off as a nation. Because I think we just need to kill in finally this neocon argument that you can bomb your way to peace. We heard this in Iraq. Somehow it wasn't discredited then. Now we're at war with Iran and it's just a nightmare. And so again, it's repeating that we failed on the core objectives and just arguing that we could have gotten the deal. Trump will potentially get after the 60 days of negotiation without ever going to war. The original sin was not in 2018, just trying to renegotiate the JCPOA. And I think Democrats need to be more full throated in support of diplomatic solutions to problems, stop being afraid of their own shadow on this stuff. And more full throated about why regime change, wars in the Middle east are a disaster. I thought we'd all gotten there, but apparently not.
- [23:37]
B
Yeah.
- [23:37]
A
The good news is this war is extremely unpopular. Like shockingly unpopular. 60 days from now is what, like mid August? And so two possibilities. Well, whole range of possibilities. But two possibilities are there is a deal, in which case Trump will do everything he can to make it seem like he did this amazing move to start the war to get us to a position to negotiate the deal. And that'll be about selling. That'll be about us telling just the story of how we got here and how stupid and dangerous and bad it was. And then the other is, God only knows the kind of chaos that could happen in the next 60 days. You know, there's algae in the. He drained the fucking reflecting pool to paint it blue, but the algae's back. He's not, you know, he's. He does not have some magical ability to avoid the realities of the world. And like the. I think we will. It will be so close to the election by the time we either get to a deal or don't, that we will be able to, I think, make it a big part of people's dissatisfaction with the economy, the high cost of living and everything that will carry on for weeks from now, if not months from now.
- [24:42]
D
It's also like the straight of Hormuz is not a valve you turn on and off. It's not a. Gas is not flowing. It's like oil futures prices can go down quickly, but tankers will now have to come out, and future tankers will have to go back in, load up their gas, and then transit it. Like, I think there are already reports that these oil and gas companies are kind of moving cautiously because they don't know, like, this isn't a final deal. There's no agreement. There's no nuclear agreement. Trump is threatening to go back to war. And so I just don't think this is going to be resolved quickly. It'll take months, probably.
- [25:12]
B
I think even under the best case scenario, gas prices come down between now and November, but they don't end up where they were before this conflict started at all, because it's just going to take time. Even the most conservative economic estimates are saying that. I also think for Democrats, you go out there, it's like, Donald Trump just spent the last year embroiling this country in a war that he lost that cost us upwards of maybe $100 billion, and then however many more billion dollars people paid in higher fuel costs. And he hasn't seemed to have learned any lessons, nor have the Republicans in Congress. And if you return a Republican Congress to him, they're just gonna create more war. They're gonna jump into more wars. He's still talking about Cuba. He still has Greenland on his mind. Like, the guy is a bloodthirsty maniac and so are the Republicans in Congress who approved it. And do you want them to spend even more of your money on more war and making the. Like, what did this war get us? Nothing.
- [26:07]
D
Nothing.
- [26:09]
B
It's just cost. It got us nothing, and it cost us a lot.
- [26:11]
A
14 people died. Thousands of people dying in the region. And just like.
- [26:15]
B
And it made us less safe. It didn't make the country any Safer.
- [26:17]
A
The, you know, when we talk about like, you know, the costs being higher, like, and that it's always very abstract, like people's lives are ruined by the fact that suddenly their fuel went up where they suddenly didn't have access to raw materials. Like, this had a huge ramifications for the global economy that we felt for a very long time. And by the way, everyone who's just predicting, oh, this is when, this is when gas prices will go down. This is when oil prices will. The market says what the oil is worth right now. The market says what the gas prices work. If people thought and knew that the prices would go down, they'd already be down. People have no idea what the future holds because we're dealing with fucking maniacs and the complexities of reopening the Strait and all the rest. Nobody knows what gas prices will be in September or October. If they did, that's what the price would be.
- [26:57]
B
Yeah. So one funny footnote on the timing of when the Iran agreement was announced. The Iranians didn't want to do it on Trump's actual birthday, so they waited until it was Monday in Tehran just to be as petty as fuck. Which got to hand it to him, I guess. I guess it was. It was. They literally used the time change to keep both Trump and the Iranians happy. So then Trump could say he announced it on his birthday, but the Iranians can say, no, we didn't because it was Monday, your 80th birthday.
- [27:25]
A
It's adults who care about their birthday. Everything being about Trump's fucking birthday. It is also embarrassing, the Iranians feeling like they can get one over on Trump by kind of holding it. To not sign it technically on the birthday is stupid, but it's in response to dealing with a guy that clearly wanted the fun of signing the thing on his fucking birthday.
- [27:41]
B
What you have, and we have a world run by tyrants. They're all just little petty bitches.
- [27:44]
A
It's unbelievable.
- [27:45]
D
So dumb.
- [27:46]
B
Of course, none of this stopped Trump from celebrating the deal or himself. He threw a Loki party at the White House Sunday night, where the South Lawn was transformed into a Vegas style UFC arena that hosted a cage match attended by 4,000 lucky guests and broadcasted to Paramount plus subscribers. The $60 million event paid for by the UFC and other sponsors. It was truly surreal to watch. Here's some of what it looked like. I'll just sort of narrate this for those of you who are just listening. There's Trump and Dana White walking out of the Oval. There's A flyover.
- [28:20]
D
I love a good flyover.
- [28:22]
B
And here's an actual eagle.
- [28:24]
A
It's cool.
- [28:25]
D
Also pretty sick.
- [28:26]
B
There's the fight. One of the fights. Yeah. There's a couple of this little Evel Knievel action happenings. This is one of the fighters walking out from the Oval.
- [28:39]
D
Obama is a man.
- [28:42]
A
Am I right, America?
- [28:45]
B
Yeah.
- [28:45]
D
Even the crowd is like.
- [28:47]
B
And that was Josh Hokut who won the heavyweight fight. He's apparently said that before. That was. This is like a bit of his. He said it before in a fight. He put it on his Instagram like last year. And so, you know, it's. I don't know if that makes it better or worse.
- [29:01]
D
It's a far right MAGA thing. They've been saying it for a long
- [29:03]
B
time, but for him especially is what I'm saying. So what did you guys think of the. Of the fight?
- [29:08]
A
So I feel like everybody combined a couple, a bunch of things. Like one was the. Just the brazen corruption of the whole thing and having Bud Light sponsorships on the White House lawn and the crypto stuff and all the rest. The fact that Donald Trump made this event about him and not the country, I think that's a big part of it. If this were a Democratic White House that also had poetry slams and readings by Pulitzer Prize winning journalists and other kind of sophisticated events. And then one day Barack Obama was like, guess what? We're going to have motorcycles jumping over each other on the South Lawn. I'd be like, that's great. Having an eagle fly around and land on somebody's arm during the During America celebration. That's great. All these sort of busybodies on social media being like, Thornton Wilder once visited the White House. Like, guys, guys, can you, could you please not be a bunch of prissy, stuck up people? People like fucking motorcycles. I have no problem with that. That is entertaining. And it could be on the White House lot. Zero problem with that. It is the corruption and then making it about him. And it being a right wing MAGA thing like that is the problem.
- [30:08]
D
Yeah. Presidents hold events on the South Lawn. Sometimes it's a concert, sometimes it's a dude in a bunny suit rolling Easter eggs, sometimes it's a cage fight. It's like, it is what it is. That didn't bother me either. The corporate sponsorship stuff that we're going to get into in a minute is where it gets really gross. But just politically, I don't know that it was smart for Trump. I think UFC fans will love it. Trump super fans. Will love it. Regular people that are pissed about inflation are just me, like, what are you doing? How you. How are you spending your time this way? The Reuters did a poll. Just 16 of Americans said it was appropriate for Trump to hold the Ultimate Fighting Championship event for his 80th birthday, while 46 said it was inappropriate. The rest were like, whatever, I don't care anymore. So whatever. It is what it is. But also like, there's a lot better sports to watch this weekend. The Knicks won the NBA championship. There's a million World cup games. The Stanley cup finals were on. Like, I was doing other things. I don't have Paramount plus, so I couldn't even watch it.
- [30:59]
B
We have Paramount plus for some, some kids programs. And it was. So I watched the whole thing and I tried to watch it as someone who was just like, okay, what if I was not really paying attention to politics? What would this look like? And like, first of all, the production value. Outstanding. A plus. It looked great. Like, the whole event looked really cool. There were like. And look, there are some UFC fighters who have commented publicly about how this is like a gross thing to do and cynical for the President to make it all about him. And we're going to talk about the corruption and all that. The parts that made it more about Trump were the parts that you're like, what is this? You know, and first of all, also, the fights weren't that great, which, like, I'm not a UFC person, but it was like all of them were kind
- [31:37]
D
of quick and a first round. Knockouts.
- [31:39]
B
Yeah, and they were like knockouts. But it was, I don't know, it was just. And then you see, like, it's just like that the number of times it panned to Trump and then it talked about Trump and then like, then there's Mark Zuckerberg and then there's the president of crypto.com and all this kind of shit. And so like all of the accoutrements around it were like, could get really annoying. But the fight itself and the way it looked with the White House lit in the background, like, looked pretty cool.
- [32:02]
A
Well, this is where, like, we'll talk about the corruption, but this is where you can't separate the fact that he is so corrupt from the event itself. Because Donald Trump is trying to steal the, like, patriotism and excitement and prestige of America's birthday and kind of put it on himself. But the end result is really just he gets his stink on, like the White House and the event itself. Because if it, if you didn't know that this was so partisan and so corrupt and such a boondoggle and such favoritism and just so much corporate interest, then like, maybe it wouldn't be so terrible to have a flyover or to have Marines standing behind a fighter, whatever. It may not be the kind of thing I would normally want to watch, but it wouldn't be. Be so despicable. But to. To use the military and to use these symbols for such a corrupt practice, I think is why the whole thing becomes so sordid and ugly.
- [32:49]
B
Yeah, I will say the walking the fighters out through the oval and the dip room and having all like the Marines there saluting the. Like it was that. That part was like a little.
- [33:00]
D
Well, you're just.
- [33:01]
B
Because it's a for profit event and because. Yeah, for profit event and the whole America 250 thing too. Because it's like whatever president is, is, is leading the country, when it's America's 250th or 275 or 300, whatever, you get to do your own thing. Right. But they sort of went out of the way to make it feel exclusionary to anyone who wasn't maga and just in the way that they did the event. Right. Like they could. And not just by being a UFC fight. You could have done a UFC fight that, that still seems welcoming and unifying to most of the country.
- [33:35]
A
This is where we're like, it's. We're back to where Trump was in the first term, where he was always taking pictures in front of the desk. They're fuck. Because they know they don't belong. And so they walk through this gold plated room that looks like has a gold fungal infection and kind of they show through these fighters walking through all the rooms like a bit like the kind of. It reminds me of like when like human beings in some apocalyptic future stumble upon a museum and they're walking through, looking around, being like, who built this? How was this even here? Like, that's sort of the feeling of it to me. Pod Save America is brought to you by Tommy John this summer. Don't be that guy. You know the one, the one who has full sweat pools under his arm, sticking to his shirt in the heat. Well, eat Tommy John. That's gonna be me. All right. I like your underwear, but don't. This is what's gonna happen. I can't stop it. Public transport is a sauna. Your walk to work feels medically unsafe. But Tommy John has you covered with breathable underwear and undershirts designed to keep you cool, dry and significantly less swamp like Just know that Tommy John base layers are lightweight moisture wicking and built with breathable stretch fabric that actually moves with you. So you're not spending your morning presentation wondering if people can see the outline of your entire back in sweat. Your first purchase is covered by the risk free guarantee, so if you're not happy, Tommy John will make it right. With over 30 million pairs of underwear sold, there are thousands of guys out there more comfortable than you right now, so don't suffer this summer. I love Tommy John. I wore only Tommy John underwear. It's the best genuinely. So go to tommyjohn.com today and save 25% on your first order with code Crooked Comfort Perfected. Just use Code Crooked at checkout and upgrade your essentials today.
- [35:17]
B
It would have been entirely possible for Trump to throw himself a $60 million UFC birthday party without also turning it into an orgy of corruption. But that would take all the fun out of it. First, the broadcast itself. Dana White originally said that the fight would be free on cbs, now owned by Paramount, but it ended up on the $9.99 per month Paramount plus instead. Paramount is of course owned now by Trump ally David Ellison, who had a front row seat to the fight two days after Trump's DOJ approved his latest acquisition of Warner Brothers Discovery, which includes cnn. I think there was also like a a brunch or a dinner for David Ellison that weekend to a big party for that. So everyone is celebrating the big merger. As for Trump himself, ahead of the fight, the President quietly purchased between 15,000 and 50,000 worth of stock in TKO Holding Group, which owns UFC, which is
- [36:08]
D
nothing for him but like optically so stupid. You know what I mean? Just don't do that.
- [36:12]
A
Just doesn't care anymore.
- [36:13]
B
There were also some tweets that appear to be between Eric Trump and UFC commentator Daniel Cormier. Looking for inside information for betting on the fights. The Cormier is saying publicly that his account was hacked. Not to fear the fight still offered plenty of opportunities to make the Trump family richer. Take a listen.
- [36:29]
A
Tonight's $250,000 performance bonus in USD 1 is presented by World Liberty Financial. Closed captioning for tonight's broadcast is brought to you by TrumpPoints.com the official UFC Freedom 250 special edition medallions. This bout is proudly sponsored by Truth Social, the real voice of President Trump. Download Truth Social today.
- [36:50]
B
Jesus. Well I was watching that film, that's what I was like. This is just. It's too much. If you didn't catch all that. One of the official sponsors of the event was the Trump's family crypto operation, World Liberty Financial. We've talked about this a lot here. For this event, they created a250,000 bonus pool for the fighters, which is to be paid in their stable coin, USD 1. And then you heard there was also a sponsorship plug there for trumpcoins.com which is selling commemorative medallions designed by President Trump at prices up to $12,000 apiece.
- [37:22]
D
Coin heavy event.
- [37:24]
B
Real coin heavy.
- [37:25]
A
Just an idiot tax whoever's buying these fucking coins.
- [37:28]
B
Reacting to a bunch of these stories, the White House said that Donald Trump only acts in the best interest of the American public and that his assets are in a trust managed by his children. So what's the problem, guys?
- [37:38]
D
I mean, politically speaking, Trump should be furious that this thing was on Paramount plus, right? That limits the distribution. That hurts him, right? This is his propaganda event. Why is it not seen by more people? So you're like, okay, I get what Paramount plus got. They got to add subs to get people to buy this. What's the kickback? I'd like to. I'd like to know. The crypto sub is disgraceful. Remember, like, USD1 is their stablecoin. Remember, the Trumps got the Emiratis to use their stablecoin in this transaction when they invested 2 billion into Binance. That, like, made it the seventh biggest stablecoin in the world. And then Reuters did this big investigation of the Trump family crypto assets. They found the Trump family has made 2.3 billion in profit. And then, of course, on the other side of that, you have like a million retail investors who've gotten fleeced and have taken 2.3 billion in losses. So this is just an ongoing, you know, show of the way they're using crypto just to, like, wring money out of their followers. I find the, the Eric Trump, what's his name, Daniel Cormier thing makes no sense. Like, Eric Trump. So Those stories he DM'd, the guy said, hey, is this fight rigged? Because I want to bet on it. And then Cormier is like, no, I got AI hacked. What does that mean? You posted the tweet?
- [38:47]
A
It didn't make sense when Eric said he deleted it because it was fake. But then why would he have posted it? Eric Trump was the. The first time I believed it might be true was when Eric Trump posted about.
- [38:57]
D
Yes, me too.
- [38:58]
B
And then, and then Daniel Cormier, he was asked about it at the fight and was Just like, that's crazy. Why would anyone believe that? And then he, like, tweeted, are you all stupid? Why would you. But, like, you posted it. It's interesting because if you look at the exchanges that they posted or the DMs that they posted, it very. It's not like it's not as obvious as, like, hello, are there any fights rigged? I would like to bet on them.
- [39:19]
D
Like, it's like, are you placing anything?
- [39:20]
B
Hey, how's it going? And he's like, oh, I didn't expect to hear from you, man. How. It's good. Good to see you and your family at the fight. Can't wait. He's like, hey, place any bets? And then he just keeps going. He's like, all right, fine, I'll get to it. Any of the fights rigged? Who knows what's real or what's fake anymore? Anything could have happened, could have been hacked. Someone could have done it. I don't know. But yeah.
- [39:33]
A
Well, this is the problem with these people being.
- [39:34]
B
And they don't tell the truth.
- [39:35]
A
Liars. They're corrupt Liars who. It is completely believable to me that it's fake. It is completely believable to me that it is true.
- [39:42]
B
You have no credibility as surprised in
- [39:44]
D
either direction you are.
- [39:45]
A
You are completely morally vacant operators who are profiting every day off the office. We can't take your word for it. Maybe we'll never know the truth because everyone around you is a liar, but that's the price of being so dishonest, I guess.
- [39:59]
B
Celebrity attendance at the event was mostly limited to the the mega billionaire sector. In addition to David Ellison and the. And the crypto.com CEO, MMA enthusiast and masculinity advocate Mark Zuckerberg was in attendance. Maybe not quite out of Dulles baggage claim yet were executives from Anthropic who apparently flew to the Capitol last minute to meet with the Trump administration on Monday. On Friday, the administration slapped export controls on the company's top AI models, which forced Anthropic to take Fable 5 and Mythos 5 offline. Anyone want to talk about what this is all about with. With Anthropic and whether it has anything to do with their earlier dispute with the Pentagon.
- [40:40]
A
This, to me, actually similar to the Eric Trump thing. It's because we know that they picked this fight with Anthropic a few months ago. It's actually hard to know what's true if you read the details. There does seem to have been a legitimate concern with access to the models that were raised by Amazon and others. But then it appears the administration, which has a vendetta against Anthropic, maybe went too far in its reaction. And now the executives have to fly to D.C. to make nice, because it's not about what's in the interest of the Pentagon or the country, but it's about personal relationships and ego. And so they have to figure out how to smooth things over. And it is just very hard to tell the difference between penalizing Anthropic because it's now an enemy of the administration versus actually stepping in because there may have been an issue or if it's somewhere in between.
- [41:27]
D
Yeah, I mean, so there was a concern about Anthropic's model and the ability for it to find cybersecurity vulnerabilities and exploit them. So they limited the distribution. And then these researchers at Amazon got access to Fable 5, which is like. It's like Mythos with guardrails that they released to the public. They were able to trick it, essentially, into giving them restricted information. And then the Amazon CEO tattled to Scott Besson about what happened. Now, normally, like, that's what he did. And normally I'd be like, actually, that's good. That's, like, how the system should work, because you want, you know, sort of a circuit breaker there in some way to prevent the distribution of these models to bad actors. Like, what the administration did was they cut off access for foreign users. But, yeah, I mean, it just. The thing that was so odd about this is all the little Trump propagandists went to Twitter and they try to dance on Anthropic's grave, and they gave all of us reason to think, oh, actually, this is just part of this ongoing pissing match between Anthropic and the Pentagon. And because Anthropic doesn't want to create autonomous killer drones or be used in bulk mass surveillance attack of American citizens.
- [42:33]
B
Yeah, it was hard to read between the lines. And the Axio story about it, too, which is also. It's like, you know, that the Axio story sort of came mostly from the administration, and there's some administration official on background saying, like, the real problem is they don't know how to. Anthropic doesn't know how to communicate with this administration, and the ideological differences are really getting in the way. And it's like, what does that have to do with a potential security vulnerability that you're saying was the root of the problem here? What is the ideological differences in communication have to do with anything?
- [43:00]
A
Also, if, you know that if you have insight enough to know they're not communicating effectively with you, then it seems you know what they're trying to communicate. Yeah. Hey, like. Like you're not being nice enough in how you're handling me. You have to. If you want me to do what you want, you better. You better be a little bit more sensitive to my issues and my needs.
- [43:16]
D
In anthropics, preparing for an ipo, it seems like a great way to damage them in advance of that.
- [43:20]
B
Yes. Yeah.
- [43:21]
D
But for what it's worth, we should say Dana White and a bunch of other participants at the White House event condemned the comments about Michelle Obama, which was nice to see. Now, the right thing to do would be Donald Trump to Michelle Obama and say, I'm so sorry. That was disgusting. But that will obviously.
- [43:33]
A
But the White House spokesperson wouldn't even make a just sort of brush.
- [43:36]
B
Bastard refused to apologize in the moment. You can actually see Rogan's face as soon as he said it. And Rogan was sort of like. He, like, backed away.
- [43:43]
D
Like, oh, God. Do you think was small as tie was? It was very, like, a half a tie.
- [43:47]
B
Like, what to hear you could tell that, like, the. Yeah. The Dana Whites, the people. And Donald Trump was like, yeah. Like, Donald Trump was probably like. Yeah. I mean, he probably loved.
- [43:56]
A
He's reposted stuff like that in the past.
- [43:58]
B
Well, the guy then gave his, like, like metal to Donald Trump. The guy who made the comment, Donald Trump accepted it. So it's just like Trump posted a
- [44:04]
D
video of the two of them as apes.
- [44:06]
A
Yeah.
- [44:06]
B
Sort of.
- [44:07]
D
Six months ago.
- [44:07]
B
Through the looking glass on that one. One more corrupt date that broke. As we were preparing to record this, Gavin Newsom said in a video Monday morning that he and his wife are being targeted by Trump's doj, saying that federal agents have been knocking on the doors of their family, friends, and former employees. In Newsom's words, he said they're digging through, quote, years and years of documents and, quote, abusing the grand jury process, trying to, quote, look for crime. Then there was this line, Donald Trump isn't just coming after me because of my mean tweets. He's coming after me because I'm considering running for president. He then went on to attack Trump on corruption for several minutes. We didn't get a ton of detail from Newsom statement other than the DOJ seems to be focused on Jen, his wife. I saw some takes about how this will be great for Newsom's potential presidential campaign and fundraising. Sure. But it also seems like A like a fairly chilling preview of what's to come in 2028 for any Democrat who runs for president. I don't know. What do you guys think?
- [45:01]
A
Yeah, look, it's nice to say it's great for fundraising before we know any of the details about what the charges could be, how serious it is, what they're trying to do. But I don't think anybody, even if it does make them get some attention, is excited to find out that they're sort of. There's a grand jury trying to indict you. And, you know, we have gone from Pam Bondi, who was as pliant and willing to do Trump's bidding as you could imagine until we got to Todd Blanche, who's somehow even worse. Trump just put his personal attorney in charge of the Southern District of New York. We have a completely politicized Department of Justice unlike anything we've ever had before in our history. And part of the job will be about not only preventing those things from impacting our politics directly, but also figuring out how to create guardrails and fix it in the future once Trump is gone.
- [45:52]
D
Yeah. As much as I can understand the kind of galaxy brained political takes, like, the human take is Gavin Newsom sits down at dinner and is like, hey, honey, this is going to help me in the early states, like, what are we talking about here? It's like horribly chilling for your wife to be potentially prosecuted by the Department of Justice, even if she did nothing wrong. It's scary. It'll cost them money. It'll cost them time. Yeah. Look, the maximally cynical view is that Trump is doing this because he thinks Gavin's talented and a possible competitor to the Republican Party and wants to take him out of the race preemptively by going after his family. Maybe it's all on the merits. Right. There was a. Gavin Newsom's former aide was just prosecuted. Maybe it. It's coming out of that. What we know is Trump has openly called on his attorney general to go after his enemies. He just tried to install Bill Pulte, a man with no national security experience, as the Director of National Intelligence, solely because that man has shown a creativity in using his access to information to go after Trump's critics. So it seems like part of a pattern.
- [46:46]
B
Yeah, I mean, it is the cynical view. It's also the like, everything we've seen from Trump over the last decade leads you to believe that whoever he thinks is leading in the race for the Democratic nomination, he's going to look to see if There were any kind of possibilities for investigation. Right. Like, that's all it takes, too, is. So. Yeah. So Gavin Newsom's former aide. Right. Who ended up, you know, being convicted or taken a deal or something based on activities that preceded her time working for Gavin Newsom at all. But doesn't matter. You know, like, Jen Newsom has some kind of a nonprofit, and is there. Is there questions about the nonprofit and the payments? Like any. Any thread that. That Trump and the. His administration can pull on any of these potential contenders, they will. And probably knowing that they can't actually investigate all of them at once, when they're all on the primary stage together, they're gonna go after the people who are leading in the polls. And really, I think the only way you're gonna avoid investigation from Donald Trump is if you were last place in the polls and suddenly surprise everyone and then win. Win a race, and then, you know, then they'll get an investigation going pretty fast. Yeah, we know it's gonna go.
- [47:56]
A
We need, like, a junior soprano to be the kind of. To be the face of the operation while Tony's running things behind the scenes.
- [48:03]
B
Ben Jacobs on Twitter was like, this is a good case for Hunter Biden being the nominee, since he was already part of the investigation.
- [48:11]
D
Don't give him any ideas. He's already flooding himself for this.
- [48:14]
B
But that. I mean, it is. It's pretty. To me, it was like a preview of even now where we're like, okay, Democrats could do all in the midterms. Everything's fine. Like, we're heading to 2028, and the idea that this is just going to be some kind of a fair fight, and even if there's a lot between Donald Trump refusing to leave the White House or running for a third term and then everything going swimmingly and nothing happened, there's just a ton of room between them.
- [48:38]
A
We. I think we just can say, whoever is the Democratic nominee, regardless of what investigation, are launched for the primary, there will be an intensive effort to try to paint them as a corrupt criminal. Between sort of, say, sort of June and the election, they will use all the power at their disposal. They will try to muddy the waters. And by the way, like. Like, part of this is, this is why selective prosecution is so dangerous. We live in a free society, and we know that if you start digging into anyone's finances, taxes, history, you can try to drum something up. You can find a discrepancy. You can find something that you can use to bring to a grand jury, like, that is what it is so dangerous to have a DOJ like this. And you know that the pliant right wing media, if they find anything, they will say, well, look, this was a legitimate investigation. They found this IRS discrepancy, this needed to be punished. And without sort of any understanding of how dangerous it is to have people being chosen as targets to look for crimes.
- [49:36]
D
Did Gavin Front run this?
- [49:38]
B
Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say the Times story did.
- [49:40]
D
I wonder if they got a call from the Times saying we're running this and they got ahead of it or how this went, because I do.
- [49:46]
B
The Times story does have some of the. Some Newsom officials background in there. And it also has some officials, I guess, from the Justice Department as well, though the Justice Department won't comment officially. Obvious. They also said that it was like, started by federal officials in California, not in Washington, the investigation. But I do think that it was. We haven't talked about, like, the politics of this, but I thought it was smart that that Newsom got out ahead of it and was able to frame it as Trump coming.
- [50:14]
D
Yeah, I mean, look, it just shows how much communications have changed over the last decade or two, because normally when there's some sort of criminal prosecution or investigation, you don't say anything. You let your lawyer speak or you don't comment, and you don't want to put anything else in the public domain. They view this as a PR battle, which tells you, you know, they probably feel confident about the legal side of things and they just want to get ahead of the political fight.
- [50:36]
B
I also think this is going to be a collective action problem because everyone's interests are obviously not aligned here. But if I were the other Democratic. And no one's announced yet, so it doesn't work right now. But as we get into this, like all the other Democratic candidates, someone gets targeted like this, even if it's your potential rival, you got to go out and say that it's absolutely bullshit and stick up for them and they all get sticked up for each other.
- [50:58]
A
Yeah, I think that's also free, by the way. Like, I don't think there's a lot of equity for Pete Buttigieg saying, like, I think Trump has a point about Newsom. Like, I don't think there's a lot of.
- [51:04]
B
Yeah, but there's a difference between. There's a difference between waiting to get asked about it.
- [51:07]
A
Right.
- [51:08]
B
And saying that and then coming out strongly.
- [51:10]
A
Yeah, that's true.
- [51:10]
B
And saying it's going to be a fucking problem.
- [51:12]
D
What about going down to John Bolton's prison and singing him some sort of song through Overcome.
- [51:19]
B
Yeah.
- [51:19]
A
Is he, where is he right now? Because I saw he's a comment.
- [51:22]
B
He cut a deal, right?
- [51:22]
D
He's cutting a deal. But he could. I don't think it's gone through the process yet, but I think he could get up to five years even with this deal.
- [51:28]
B
I thought it was just money. I thought he was just paying money.
- [51:30]
D
The reporting I read was fine, potentially up to five years. And hopefully for his sake that there'll be some leniency. But like, the dude was like sending emails to himself and to his wife and daughter with classified information. It was like the dumbest thing you could possibly do.
- [51:45]
A
Look, I've said this before, I'll say it again. I hate what Donald Trump is doing done to the doj. I will not be angry if James Comey goes to prison.
- [51:52]
B
Wow.
- [51:53]
D
86, 47 over here.
- [51:55]
A
I'll be. Listen, I'll obviously be upset about the injustice, but I'm just saying he could use a couple nights behind those bars to think about what he's done. I'm just. He's so tall and he's made so many mistakes. I think, I think it's morally reprehensible. I don't think it's a good thing. I'm just saying
- [52:12]
B
about what he does, post everything he does. I think that has been an imprisonment all of its own.
- [52:16]
A
Own, Sure.
- [52:17]
B
I don't think he needs sexual inside of a jail cell.
- [52:20]
A
Just saying. No.
- [52:21]
D
He's a Bulwark exclusive.
- [52:22]
A
Stare up at that ceiling support. Run that tin cup across the bars. James Comey.
- [52:27]
B
MSNBC reports that the Trump administration has been pressuring DOJ officials to come up with a case against Gavin Newsom.
- [52:33]
D
Of course, Yeah. I mean, so there you go.
- [52:36]
B
All right. When we come back, Tommy talks to Senator Mark.
- [52:38]
A
War. Pod Save America is brought to you by Mill. In our polarized climate, there's one thing that unites us all. Dealing with communal household and office trash is terrible. The food waste, the smell, the constant overflowing trash cans. That was until mill took care of it while we weren't even looking. Mill is the odorless, effortless, fully automated food recycler. Potato peels, avocado pits, chicken bones, even dairy. Mill takes almost anything nice while you sleep. Mill quietly transforms food scraps into nutrient rich shelf stable grounds. No mess, no smell, no fruit flies. You can use the grounds in your garden, add them to curbside compost or meal. Can even pick them up and get them to a small farm. For you and meal offers a 90 day risk free trial. So if you don't love it, you can just send it back. We have a mill recycler in the crooked kitchen. Crooked mill stats. We recycle a total of 255lbs of food scrapes. So far that's about 51lbs a month. Crooked staffer Zevi, our great designer takes the food grounds home to use in her garden. Try mill risk free for 90 days and get $75 off@mill.com crooked and use code crooked. That's $75 off@mill. And use the code crooked.
- [53:52]
D
My guest today is vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the senior US Senator from Virginia, Senator Warner. Thanks for doing the show.
- [53:58]
C
Thanks, Tommy.
- [53:59]
D
So we are speaking on Monday afternoon Pacific time. We're still waiting with bated breath to see if we'll ever see the actual text of whatever Donald Trump negotiated with Iran about their, you know, the straight of Hormuzzi. What do you know about this digitally signed memorandum of understanding between the US And Iran? What do you make on sort of the leaks and reporting on it so far?
- [54:19]
C
I know zippo. I know nothing more than you. And I think frankly, even my Republican Senate friends have not seen any of this. We do wonder whether this was time for his birthday or to try to affect the markets today. We do know, I think this is less than what it appears and we knew at some point Trump was gonna declare victory and the sooner we get out of this war of choice, the better. But if, as you know, I hate to kind of like suck up, but if you look at your tweets today, you know, you are absolutely right on all four of the goals that Trump laid out. We're not close to any of them.
- [54:59]
A
Yeah.
- [55:00]
D
And it sounds like we maybe have an agreement to have more talks where they will try to get to an agreement that's about the nuclear program, the ballistic missiles, support for proxies, et cetera. But it's all forward looking as far as I can tell. Right?
- [55:12]
C
Yeah. The things we do know are this, the regime is more hardcore now than it was before the new leader since we killed his dad, his wife, his kid. More hardcore. We do know that the Iranians have been masters for years at trying to hide the ball on their enriched uranium. And the idea that we're somehow going to get this without troops on the ground or by some international agreement, God willing. But I'm not going to hold my breath. The fact that the DoD and Hegsef misrepresented how much we had taken out of the Iranian ballistic missiles. Obviously not the case since they're still shooting them off and that doesn't even count their drones. And then we've taken what was an international open gateway of passage straight up Hormuz and Iran will have something to say on a going forward basis. None of that makes us, none of that makes our Gulf allies. None of it even frankly makes Israel stronger than when we started 107 days ago.
- [56:12]
D
Yeah, I mean Senator, I noticed in the run up to the war the Iran hawks trotted out of the new talking point, which is that Iran could create a ballistic missile arsenal that was so great that it might be able to prevent the US And Israel from taking up their nuclear infrastructure in the future. So I do want to ask you about the state of that ballistic missile inventory and their capacity to manufacture new ballistic missiles. What do we know that you can discuss publicly?
- [56:38]
C
Well, we know that we have degraded some. It's both the missiles and their launchers. We took out some of them. The earlier estimates, and I can say this because it's in the public that we had eliminated 70, 80, 90% are just factually not true. And they have had, many of the launchers as well are still existing. They can, they can obviously reconstitute some of these missiles. We have not been able to blow up how all that started. And these missiles are significant, but again we took down many of them. But as we go into this war of choice, what we have done, and this is the part where the Iranians I think will come back unfortunately and bite us, is they have been dribbling out their missiles. We have been using both with the missiles and the drones, very expensive interceptors that cost, you know, $2.5 million a piece. And they have bled down our supplies, our supplies, Gulf allies, even Israel's supplies, so that if they have anything close to what we presume, they can continue to bleed that down and at some point we won't have the capacity to take them out. One of the reasons why it was so insane that we didn't take the Ukrainians offer in December where they were going to say we will give you our anti drone technology which they have the best in the world, which could have at least taken down the Iranian drones.
- [58:05]
D
Right, right. And you mentioned the new sort of set of leaders. I mean the previous supreme leader of Iran was, was quite well known. He'd been around for a while as were a lot of the senior members of the IRGC and the Iranian military. Then Israel and the US Killed a lot of them. Now, Iran is led by this new crop of leaders. The Supreme Leader's son is apparently really wounded and in hiding, but presumably more hardline than maybe his father, since we killed his dad, we killed his wife, we killed his kids. I think reportedly now there's a new crop of younger IRGC generals who seem to be more firmly entrenched. Trump keeps saying that the new crowd is more pragmatic. What do you know about the new crowd?
- [58:45]
C
There is absolutely zero evidence that anybody in the new crowd is more pragmatic, that is more westward leaning. They may live in fear. I think we have put fear of God in them. But the idea that they're more willing to make a deal, there's been no evidence to date that I've seen any intelligence on that. And matter of fact, the. The structure in Orion was they always had. They have a government and they have a former military that's a little bit separate from the irgc. The one thing that is the case is that the government, which was sometimes more moderate in the more traditional military, they have lost power in this last 108 days. So IRGC, more radical, more in power.
- [59:31]
D
Excellent. A big win for us. What we think is maybe the outlines of a future deal would require Israel to honor a sea ceasefire in Lebanon against Hezbollah as well. Do you have any confidence that Netanyahu or Hezbollah will honor that ceasefire? Because it seems like Netanyahu has a pretty decent political incentive to blow up the deal, given the initial response to it in Israel.
- [59:53]
C
I have no confidence that Bibi, who's got his own political problems and I think in many ways has really hurt Israel's reputation in the region and around the world. And in the. Again, tragedy on top of tragedy. I think there was a moment in the fact that Israel is negotiating with the Lebanese government. If we could have actually put some oomph behind that and helped the Lebanese government, who does have a military, actually disarm Hezbollah, the people of Lebanon might have come out of this better. They are not now. And instead, you've got the Netanyahu government bombing not only the Shia, but unfortunately, Druze, Christian and Sunni villages in the south. And my fear is pushing some of the Lebanese, you know, back into the hands of Hezbollah.
- [60:42]
A
Yeah.
- [60:42]
D
And it sounds like Israel has not agreed to pull its troops out of Lebanon. My understanding is they're occupying, you know, up to sort of six miles over the border. I'm just wondering how an ongoing occupation is not likely to lead to renewed, if not increased conflict.
- [61:00]
C
Was that Called a softball question. Yes. You know, it's like, yeah. And we've seen, you know, Bibi's got his own political problems. He's under indictment. He has to maintain this fart right agenda. And my fear is not only lepidon, but what also is taking place. And one of the reasons why I voted against even giving any more bulldozers to Israel. The other tragedy that's taking place is what's happening on the west bank as the Israeli settlers, frankly, do awful things on just some of the Palestinian villages.
- [61:36]
D
Yeah, Just big picture. I mean, I'm struggling with how to talk about this as a Democrat, because I think the best option available to Donald Trump was ending the war as soon as humanly possible. For a variety of reasons, but especially because I was worried that this was going to lead to a famine in places like Sudan and mass starvation and death because fertilizer and fuel just, just wasn't getting through the straight. At the same time, I don't think we should give Donald Trump a pass for launching this catastrophic, unnecessary war, because all the outcomes he might get through this negotiation process he could have gotten just by talking to them in the first place and not bombing them. So how are you thinking about how to talk about this, Tommy?
- [62:17]
C
It is such a. That is a very fair question. I don't want to. Trump gets no credit for this war of choice and where we are. And that doesn't even count the hundred billion dollars of assets we've lost in the region. It doesn't cost us $60 billion of increased gas prices. It doesn't cost the effect of in Sudan and elsewhere. But I'm not going to. But the question is I'm not going to just blast him for ending it, because ending it was this agreement will not stand the test of any scrutiny. I'm not going to give him credit, but I'm glad he ended it rather than continued what could have led to even a worse circumstance. So I actually think on this one, there is no way even a Trumpian figure can turn this to anything other than what it is, is that we, America and our friends are in worse place than we were at the end of February. Way.
- [63:14]
D
Yeah, agreed with you there. Switching gears a little bit. So Trump tried to install a man named Bill Pulte as the Director of National Intelligence. I'd love to hear your thoughts on why you think he made that selection, whether Pulte even would have met the statutory requirements for the job. I should say he yanked Pulte's nomination after Democrats in The Senate said, hell no, no way. And did that selection make you even more worried about how Trump might have used the intelligence community?
- [63:41]
C
Absolutely. Bill Pulte is a third generation rich kid who literally got thrown out of his own family's company. And then taking what would be a relatively benign oversight of the mortgage, Fannie and Freddie was able to take private information about Lisa Cook at the Federal Reserve, Adam Schiff, one of my colleagues, and weaponize that. That I do think figures in the White House tried to prevent Trump from doing this. But as always the case, Pulte or whoever speaks to the president last, he got him put in. And I am, you know, and this came at a moment in time when we have to reauthorize something called section 702, which is a critical intelligence tool that the Bidens, Obamas, everybody supported. And we've used our leverage to say we're not going to reauthorize 702 if Pulte is there. Now, my concern, frankly, is 702 has got enough bells and whistles and audits that if he misuses that, it will be. I think we'll find it. I'm more concerned about the fact that this guy who doesn't even have national security clearance, suddenly gets the keys to 18 agencies, maliciously or not, gets exposed to things that could be a huge security risk. And our challenge right now, and this goes down the rabbit hole, Trump has finally appointed somebody else, someone who I've worked with at times. I still need to ask him, Jay Clayton, who was the former SEC head and the current U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Manhattan. You know, I want to make sure he's not going to interfere in our elections and, you know, basic constitutional rights. But if we delay getting him in, Pulte could still serve. And there's nothing we can do as an interim for a few days. And, you know, I think the Democrats in the Senate will have to decide, do we wave to get this through. He will get confirmed. I hope the sooner or the later so that we don't have Pulte in this office, hopefully ever.
- [65:51]
D
Oh, so that's why you're trying to fast track Jay Clayton's nomination, to try to shrink the amount of time that that Pulte could be in that job.
- [65:58]
C
Yes, sir. And again, and it's like. And the irony. And here's the thing, you know, I had huge problems with Tulsi Gabbard, the current. She was going to stay until the end of the month. Pulte tried to fire her and they advanced her leaving date till this coming Friday. If she would just. I never say. I wanna say Gabbard, stay. But if she would stay until the beginning of July, we could get it done in two weeks. Whether we get it done in one week will be, frankly, up to my Democratic colleagues, who, you know, they can vote against Clayton, they can vote against 702. But please, let's separate keeping Pulte out of the job and the renewal of section 702.
- [66:42]
D
Yeah, I'm with you on prioritizing, keeping Pulte away from all of that information. I did want to ask you about FISA Section 702, though, because for those who aren't familiar, this is a provision that lets the intelligence community get information from American telecom companies to turn over the electronic communications of foreign persons located outside of the United States without a warrant. And civil liberties advocates have long been concerned about 702 because of the potential for abuse and also because communications to and from American citizens and those foreign persons are often captured in the process without a warrant and could be reviewed in, you know, by. By people investigating them, the information. So in the past, I have mostly felt like, on balance, that section O2 was defensible for a variety of reasons. It is the thing that national security professionals will tell you is the most important tool in their toolkit. But I'll tell you, after the Pulte selection, I no longer have confidence that Trump won't use all of these tools to abuse his authority. So why am I wrong? Like, why am I wrong that Democrats should fight this?
- [67:51]
C
Well, first of all, section 702, which has had prior abuses. We've gone through three rounds of reforms. The FBI used to be very callous about how it used it. They went from only 60% compliance to 98% compliance on making sure that appropriate checks and balances are dealt with, number one. Number two, my concern with Pulte is so great. Not about 702, because there are enough reporting that he will at least be discovered. Now, that may not assuage you, but there will be an audit trail, whereas he could try to get other information that doesn't have near the same audit trail. And then I do think there is a. One of the things that took me a long time to wrap my head around this. So you've got two Russian spies, one in Moscow, one in Paris. They're talking about these. They keep mentioning this guy Tommy, and we don't know from listening whether Tommy is collaborating with the Russians or someone the Russians are going after to See if they can hack into Tommy and actually be a victim.
- [69:01]
A
Right.
- [69:02]
C
And the idea, this is the part that I don't think people fully understand. If we want to look at who else Tommy has called, because we've got Tommy's name, we've got his number, we can only look at the numbers, but not the content. If you want to look at the. And say on an email, Tommy sent something to Mark. If you want to look at the content, you have to get a warrant. But the idea that you could get a warrant because there is the circumstance that this could be an active live terrorist event and you don't know whether Tommy's about to go do a bomb. The idea that you could get a warrant when you only know the name, when 20% of the time, 15 to 20% of the times, Tommy is the victim, not the bad guy. It is. At the end of the day, I've come down. This is such an important security tool. President Obama supported President Biden, Trump. It is 70% of what we was in the Presidential daily Brief. But I understand people feel the other way. And we have added, you know, additional requirements that if it's a politician, if it's a religious figure, if it's a media person, you have more hoops. If it's somebody where information might be about their constitutional rights because you're out protesting ice, you can't use it there. It will never be from friends like Ron Wyden, who is a hardcore civil libertarian. We're never gonna. I will never satisfy him. I do think there will be, at the end of the day, you know, somewhere around 15, 20 Democrats that will still say, absent the problem, because here's my problem, this goes away. God forbid something happens. And Donald Trump then says, we wouldn't have had this incident if we had this tool. And the irony, just one last point on this is I don't think Donald Trump actually even supports the provision that much because it took until like six weeks, seven weeks before the bill expired that he even came out and formally said he supports it.
- [71:08]
B
Right.
- [71:09]
D
Well, wouldn't the actual, like, kind of existing authorities not expire for almost another year if there wasn't a reauthorization?
- [71:15]
C
That is, again, where the rubber hits the road. There is the ability that this authority is certified once a year and it would be maintained until March.
- [71:25]
D
Right.
- [71:26]
C
When this came up under Biden, what we heard from the telcos, and this is mostly telcos and the Googles and the hyperscalers, they said to Biden's security team, if this Expires, we are no longer going to participate because we don't have indemnification. This expired on Friday night. So we're now into an area where who is right? Will they continue to participate or not? One of the telcos today told me, thank goodness that they will participate. The others, we don't have an answer. And what is insane to me is I'm the fricking vice chair or former chair of the intelligence. I should know whether they are participating or not.
- [72:14]
D
Right?
- [72:15]
A
Right.
- [72:15]
C
And in a normal world, the Justice Department, if we still had real lawyers, would have tried to get an injunction to try to force them to continue to participate until it was litigated out so we don't end up with this gap. My understanding, they've not even filed suit yet. So we will. There will be this. This gap. Hopefully not too long, but we will find out whether the concern I had that they won't participate without indemnification is true or not.
- [72:44]
D
Okay, Just as long as I'm treating you like my. My deep state therapist. I mean, is it wrong to focus on the DNI when Kash Patel is just as unqualified and has more authorities to conduct do things that are abusive against Americans via the FBI?
- [72:59]
C
Well, I have gone through a long litany of Kash Patel abuses and mistakes, and he should not be there. The DNI does get keys to all 18 agencies. Frankly, the DNI to go nerdy again. That whole role needs to be slimmed down, probably reexamined. It came out after 9 11, well intentioned, but grew too much. But now, no. Cash Patel scares the hell out of me. And what also scares the hell out of me is we have seen intelligence professionals in other agencies, the nsa, which is our spying organization, in terms of listing in. They fired the guy who, Tim Hawk, who was there, who was a career professional, because Laura Loomer went after him. Or the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency told the truth about the first bombing of Iran a year ago, where he said, yeah, we. We whacked them pretty good, but we didn't obliterate their nuclear program. Obviously the truth, or we wouldn't be back in on this. So you've got plenty of. I got plenty of reasons to keep you up at night in terms of concerns.
- [73:59]
D
Have you ever seen Cash Patel chug a beer? The guy doesn't spill a drop.
- [74:02]
C
Let me tell you, man, just on video. Although I will. I won't even. I'm hesitant to say this, but there's some colorful videos online about Mr. Pulte as well.
- [74:12]
B
Oh.
- [74:12]
D
Oh, I've seen one of those. The gentleman before him seems to be having a good time. Senor, thank you so much for doing the show. Maybe when we learn what's actually in this deal, we could talk again. That'd be nice.
- [74:23]
C
Love to.
- [74:24]
D
Thanks. Appreciate it.
- [74:25]
C
Godspeed. Take care.
- [74:32]
B
That's our show for today. Thanks to Senator Warner for coming on. We'll be back in the feed on Friday with a special episode. The three of us and Dan will be recording in Chicago at the opening opening of the Obama Presidential Center. Fun.
- [74:44]
A
Nice.
- [74:44]
B
Talk to everybody soon. Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farah Safari, with Reed Churlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt de Groat, Ben Hefcote, Jordan Kantor, Charlotte Landis, Kirill Pelaviev, David Towles, Mia Kellman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Singel. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.