Jon Lovett (2:43)

Yeah, we're on the brink of it.

Jon Favreau (2:44)

Funding runs out at 12:01am on Wednesday, and so far, Trump and Republicans have refused to make any concessions to Democrats vote whose votes they need to keep the government open. Democrats want to stop health insurance premiums from going up and Medicaid cuts from taking effect. A White House official told Politico that Trump's response to Democrats health care asks was, quote, go fuck yourself. Cool.

Tommy Vietor (3:06)

Not inaccurate.

Jon Favreau (3:07)

No, no, spot on. And in fact, his actions since then have borne that out. Trump is also threatening mass firings of federal workers who are furloughed during the shutdown. His press secretary said that, quote, food assistance programs for women and children in impoverished communities will come to an end if Democrats don't drop their demands. And one Republican senator suggested Trump would use the shutdown to inflict pain on Democratic areas of the country, saying, quote, I'd be much more worried if I was a blue state. Meanwhile, a new Morning Consult poll of about 2,000 voters shows that 45% would blame Republicans for a shutdown versus 32% who would blame Democrats, with independents blaming Republicans by an even wider margin. Leaders of both parties met at the White House Monday to see if they could reach a last minute agreement. And from what they said after the meeting, doesn't seem promising.

Jon Lovett (3:57)

Laid out to the president some of the consequences of what's happening in health care and by his face and by the way he looked, I think he heard about them for the first time. The closing of rural hospitals, the fact that so many clinics are closing. We are not going to support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the health care of everyday Americans, period. Full stop.

Jon Favreau (4:23)

They have some crazy ideas.

Jon Lovett (4:25)

Giving taxpayer money to illegal aliens for.

Jon Favreau (4:26)

Health care, that's a crazy idea.

Jon Lovett (4:28)

Funding transgender surgeries in Peru, that's a crazy idea. Let's work on it together. But let's do it in the context of an open government that's providing essential services to the American people. That's all that we're proposing to do. And the fact that they refuse to do that shows how unreasonable their position is.

Jon Favreau (4:44)

I think we're headed to a shutdown.

Jon Lovett (4:46)

Because the Democrats won't do the right thing. I hope they change their mind, but we're gonna. You know, Senator Eric Schmidt referred to Guatemalan sex changes, but the ones that J.D. vance is concerned about seem to be taking place in Peru. Right. This is interesting.

Jon Favreau (5:01)

Quite a shift. We're spreading the money around.

Jon Lovett (5:04)

Yeah. Just sort of a. I'm just not aware of Medicaid covering all these Latin American gender affirming surgeries.

Jon Favreau (5:12)

No, I think that's. I think it's us.

Jon Lovett (5:14)

Oh, those are usaid.

Jon Favreau (5:15)

What's left of usaid.

Jon Lovett (5:16)

That's USAID cuts. Yeah. Yeah, I guess. Because he also referred to DEI in Burma. Eric Schmidt did. Just as a note. They really will never acknowledge what they actually passed in the one big beautiful bill. They never will. They never. Like no Democrat. Just the out and out lie of Democrats are trying to use a trillion dollars or 1.5 trillion dol. Trillion dollars for undocumented immigrants. Just brazen and false and makes me actually more receptive. Like, we've all debated whether or not healthcare was the right fight, but the way it plays out when they talk about it after makes it feel like it's more the right fight. Just because the Republicans are so willing to lie about it.

Jon Favreau (5:59)

Yeah. I mean, well, let's get. Let's.

Jon Lovett (6:02)

Let's get. I just. That was just my. No, no, no, no.

Jon Favreau (6:04)

That's good.

Jon Lovett (6:04)

The J.D. vance.

Jon Favreau (6:05)

Clint. So people have strong reactions. I'm glad you raised the many South American countries that transgender surgeries funded by the American taxpayer may be taking place in.

Tommy Vietor (6:13)

Can I raise a reaction?

Jon Favreau (6:14)

Please.

Tommy Vietor (6:15)

Speaker Johnson looked really short there.

Jon Lovett (6:17)

Wow.

Jon Favreau (6:17)

And I thought, it's funny you went to Johnson. Because I was like, what's Lurch doing standing behind JD Vance there?

Jon Lovett (6:23)

Who is behind it? Oh, Thune's talk.

Tommy Vietor (6:25)

No one lets Thune talk. He just stands there. The man hasn't spoken since 2002.

Jon Lovett (6:29)

Honestly, I don't know who his voice sounds like.

Jon Favreau (6:30)

I think he seems happy about it because he's like, how the fuck did I get there?

Jon Lovett (6:33)

I don't know.

Jon Favreau (6:33)

Yeah, I was like. I was like a Tea Party ish guy back in the day and pretty right wing. And now I'm just like, what has these people done?

Jon Lovett (6:41)

Yeah. If you stand still enough in the Republican Party, you will be the reasonable one.

Tommy Vietor (6:45)

Right? That's true.

Jon Lovett (6:46)

It's just a matter of how long you wait.

Tommy Vietor (6:47)

Yeah.

Jon Favreau (6:47)

How are you guys feeling about the Democrats position heading into the shutdown. Tommy, not great. I don't wanna talk more about South American surgery.

Tommy Vietor (6:55)

Honestly. That's more uplifting. I mean, I feel like we're like kind of the New York jets right now. We're not looking good. I think Trump is shown that he can run circles around Democratic leadership when it comes to messaging and communications. I, I believe Russ Vote, the OMB director, when he says that he would use a shutdown to speed up DOGE cuts, the destruction of the government. They also have demonstrated that no matter what we negotiate with the Republicans, the Trump administration will use the rescission process to just claw back money, even if it's illegal. Trump is clearly saying, I will punish Democrats in blue states if this happens. I think the ACA subsidies that we're talking about are really important to a lot of people. Like, if we don't extend these ACA subsidies, tens of millions of people will see their premiums go up as much as 75%, and that's a huge deal and it's really bad. But I think almost no one knows what I'm talking about right now, who's listening to this show, let alone, like, the broader electorate. And so I'm just, I'm worried. Like, I was talking to a smart friend today about government shutdowns, someone who'd been through a few of them, and this person made the point to me.

Jon Favreau (7:56)

That you don't have to talk about our private conversation.

Jon Lovett (7:58)

We're fucking with us. That's us. Yeah. In our office. Yeah. What did we say? This, this person, I thought it was smart, too. Go on.

Tommy Vietor (8:06)

Yes, we. Dan said. No, it wasn't. Dan. This person said to me, a shutdown is never a vehicle for legislative victory. At best, it's a vehicle for messaging. But usually voters just want the government to be open and to function.

Jon Favreau (8:18)

Love it. What do you think?

Jon Lovett (8:19)

So I just want to say that, like, I feel like I. I don't know. I really don't. And I watched your conversation with Faz and Matt Glassman. I thought they were both very smart. I came away more uncertain. The, the. Like I will say, though, I also came away with a better appreciation for why health care might have been the right choice. Because the, you know, there was a debate it. Should it be about democracy or should it be about tariffs? And I do see one argument for why health care is the right fight is it is a place where you could see some concessions. Not feeling like a dramatic identity, ego wound to Trump. Right. Like, there is the possibility of an ACA deal Right. Whether it comes in this debate or this negotiation or the one that would follow the cr. Where I find myself nervous is the way in which the strategy and leverage around the kind of old school, normal political leverage gets muddied with what Tommy's talking about. And so you have.

Jon Favreau (9:18)

What part of what Tommy's talking about?

Jon Lovett (9:19)

So you have Mike Johnson's height, you have just the old school, Mike Johnson's height, Mike Johnson being a short king. So you have the old school sort of negotiation around a shutdown. Who's gonna give in? The party in power is forcing the votes. The party that's out of power, that's making the demands is seen as unreasonable. There's also, I think it still counts as normal politics. Gonna be the question of how long the filibuster holds, which I think is not getting enough attention in this, given that Republicans in just the past, what, two weeks undid part of the filibuster and they've been playing a lot of games when they passed the one big beautiful bill. I don't think that's been getting enough conversation as to what happens in a multi week shutdown as Republicans come up with some way in which they can honor Thune's promise to not get rid of the filibuster on legislation while creating yet another exception and passing whatever the fuck they want, making our negotiation even harder for the longer term spending bill to come. I'm worried about that. But then that gets combined with Donald Trump can start firing people. Donald Trump can target his political enemies. And, and there's two problems with that. One, he's already doing that. Yeah, he's already doing that. And so he will do that regardless. He did not need a shutdown.

Tommy Vietor (10:21)

You can get more authorities is the concern. And make it happen faster in deeper cuts.

Jon Favreau (10:26)

Allegedly, is what. Yeah, Schumer doesn't think that's true.

Tommy Vietor (10:29)

I know this person I was talking to today. Not you guys, not us.

Jon Favreau (10:32)

Had real. Had real. Clearly no one in Schumer's office either.

Jon Lovett (10:35)

But, but the, but I do think the concern goes beyond, oh, he's going to have these added authorities, which he does have. He's going to abuse his office even further during a shutdown to speed up what he's already done when the government is open. And I do think it's a, it's a trap to concede that that's leverage against us because it allows his extralegal powers to make him more powerful in the actual legitimate arena. And I do think it's important to not concede on that front. But even if you don't concede anything on that front, Democrats are just in a really tough position.

Jon Favreau (11:04)

So I have a couple thoughts on this one. I think back to Tony Fabrizio's memo in July. He's Trump's pollster, and this was mid July, I think he came out with this memo and he said the while the 2024 outcome for these districts, these are the most battleground districts in the House, was even the generic Republican is down three points right now among all registered voters. Among those most motivated to vote, Republicans down 7 points. If the Republican candidate lets the premium tax credit expire with the ACA, the Republican trails the Democrat by 15 points in these districts. And if the Republican supports the extension of the tax credit for the aca, they're leading by a couple points. Now, this is mid July. Tony Fabrizio is like working for a coalition that was, like, hired by the insurance companies. Obviously, the insurance companies want the tax subsidies because it helps them in addition to actually helping people not have their premiums grow up. But it made me think, like, okay, what if we win? What if there is some kind of a deal with some kind of extension for ACA subsidies? There's never going to be a deal on reversing the Medicaid cuts, right? That's like a fantasy. That's what they passed. That was their main legislative accomplishment, right? So, but what if there is a deal on ACA because some Republicans, especially Republicans in frontline districts, are nervous? Substantively amazing, right? People's premiums don't go up as much. We've, like probably 20 million people get some help on premiums. Do Democrats in any way benefit politically from doing that a year before the election? Do Republicans benefit from doing that a year before the election and having that off the table? And was the shutdown fight at that point worth it for Democrats in any way?

Tommy Vietor (12:49)

Right. In the near term, I don't want anyone's premiums to go up. I don't want anyone to get hurt. But we are bailing Trump and the Republicans out of their own political problem. And at some point, if we want his approval to go down, he needs to touch the hot stove. Zooming out a little bit like part of the meta conversation. And what activists are telling Schumer is that this government is doing illegal, unconstitutional, terrible stuff and that we should not fund it. We should not be a party to ice raids and rescissions and all the terrible things. Where is the strategy that goes from shut down to an end game? That Gets Donald Trump to change his behavior. No one can articulate one because there isn't one. Look, I just, I sound like I'm super negative on this because I think it's better for us to debate this. I'm genuinely torn. I don't know what the right thing to do is. I know that Chuck Schumer is getting tons of incoming from activists just like us, in part because of rage we all had several months ago about the failure of a strategy the last time there was a funding fight. But I'm just like, I'm not seeing a clear end game in when it comes to policy or communications, especially with the leadership we have.

Jon Favreau (13:49)

So it's funny you said that, because my other points that I was going to make is that I started to think about this in terms of like, go big or go home. And the go big strategy that you referenced that activists are pushing on is to say that, like, we're not voting to fund this government. Illegal tariffs, illegal, like detention of American citizens, illegal troop deployments, all kinds of ways that he's abusing his power. And until you meet with us so that you know you can have the policies you want, you won the election, but what you are doing is illegal. And if you don't meet with us and you don't wanna help us on that, then you figure out a way to fund the government because we're not voting for it. And guess what? You are free to change the Senate rules. You've abused power in a bunch of other ways. If you wanna change the Senate rules to get rid of the filibuster, to pass the budget, you're free to do that as well. But you cannot count on our votes for this. And we're gonna make sure that American people know how illegal this is and we don't want our names on it. Like, I think that. And then to answer your question, then there is no way out, right? Like, their way out is that Republicans decide to reopen the government on their own, but at least Democrats then take a stand and make a big fight. Then my next most favorite option here is maybe just like not doing it at all. Cause I do think that I'm worried about what you say, Tommy, which is like you start getting in this negotiation about healthcare and there's a couple outcomes. I see. One is we do it for a couple of weeks, they don't give in on health care at all, and then we just fold.

Tommy Vietor (15:13)

The most likely outcome is like a five day shutdown and then we cave and look even weaker.

Jon Favreau (15:17)

Right? And then maybe we get a fig leaf, right? Which is we cave. But they say, oh, we'll give a vote on ACA at some point, and then who knows, Then it passes maybe. And then again, we've, we've saved their asses.

Jon Lovett (15:28)

Or.

Jon Favreau (15:28)

Or what? Or they negotiate an ACA thing and I guess we get a short term win, but again, we take it off the table. So I don't, I think that the small ball, which is what they're doing now, I think that is the least chance of any kind of either substantive or like, political victory. And again, I'm doing this for the sake of argument too, because I've gone back and forth so hard.

Jon Lovett (15:49)

But yeah, I don't know, I also just like, Is that right? Right. Like, let's say Democrats fight on healthcare, they get some kind of a concession, it reverses some chunk of the ACA clawbacks on the subsidies, they declare a victory. We're still hammering Republicans next year on healthcare. We can claim we forced them to do this. And to the point that Faz made in your conversation, like, people don't like Donald Trump, they don't know what Democrats stand for. They haven't seen Democrats stand up and fight. And here's a moment where Democrats are standing up and fighting for something, then you say, well, that's not the real central galvanizing concern. Like, our democracy is under threat, so we should fight across everything. But fighting across everything, I do think all but guarantees, right, that Republicans justify getting rid of the filibuster by saying Democrats will never give us their votes, we want to reopen the government, then we've lost any leverage we have to do some good in a negotiation over health care. And you're right, in some sense, helping Republicans out of the ACA subsidy shortfall does kind of get rid of a political disaster for them. Absolutely true. But like, man, I just, I do. That's a hard. That's not, that's like, that's a tough position for us to take. That like, we wanna teach the controversy. I don't know, I don't know.

Jon Favreau (17:05)

I don't think it's teaching. I mean, I think to Faz's point, I think instead of just being like, this is bad, this is bad. It'd be like, we want to end an illegal tax on Americans that's tanking the economy. We wanna make sure their premiums don't go up. We wanna make sure that we can walk on our streets without being detained even though we're citizens of the United States or that we don't see troops in our streets, and our tax dollars aren't going to. You know, there's a couple things. I know what you're saying. Like, it is definitely broader, but, you know, have the fight. I mean, Chris Murphy was on Colbert, and, you know, he was like, why would we fund a bill that literally destroys our democracy? And I was like, good line. I liked it. And then I saw this guy, Con Carroll, who was like a Republican Senate communications director, and now he's like a Washington examiner opinion guy. And he said, quote, we can't vote for a spending bill that literally destroys democracy, but if you extend one existing health insurance subsidy, then everything is fine. And I was like, honestly.

Jon Lovett (17:57)

Yeah, I know, I know, I know, I know. When I talked to Warren about this, I asked her a version of this question, and her point was just like, we have to prove we can win a fight. We can win something here. This is the one. This is the issue. There is a place where there is a path to some kind of a genuine victory for Democrats, and it would be nice to use what limited power we have before Republicans decide to take it away, to use it to prove that we can actually do something. And, like, I worry the same way Faz is worried about the fact that our leaders in this feel as though they're being pushed towards it. That is a problem. Like, there's all kinds of reasons this is not ideal. I don't like any of the options. But I. I am coming around to why, if we can get a victory here, it's the one place we could. Now, then the question is, was this the right time? Because a ticking clock around these subsidies is going to fall in November, December. The subsidies end on January 1st. Right. The next. This bill is just to carry you through to the bigger negotiation to come. Was this CR the right moment? I don't know.

Tommy Vietor (18:49)

Well, it's like a seven week. Yeah, we'll do this again in seven weeks or something, right?

Jon Favreau (18:53)

Yeah. And we should also say that to your point earlier, Tommy, that no one knows what the fuck we're talking about, one reason that they're doing it now and not later is the insurance companies will be sending out the notices soon to people that premiums will go up. And by the way, those notices aren't just for people who use subsidies to help afford insurance on the exchanges. Everyone's premiums are going up because if there's less money for people for subsidies, then that means that insurance companies in general, that means some people will lose their healthcare coverage, which means everyone's premiums goes up because the pool of people are sicker. Right. So it's like, this is a. People are gonna get these notices and that's gonna be a thing. So, you know, it's good to fight. But I am. I am, like, noticing J.D. vance there when he was like. And we sat down and they did have some good ideas. I'm like, oh, he's thinking the good ideas are extending the aca.

Tommy Vietor (19:42)

Yeah. Look, this is a maximally cynical perspective, and I. Again, I don't want anyone hurt. But just, like, in pure political terms, I think people are far more likely to notice and be angry that their premiums went up than they are ever to hear a Democratic Party argument about why we have shut down the government. Because the election comes, our side sucks at communicating and their side lies about everything.

Jon Favreau (20:03)

Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (20:03)

They're saying it's about sex changes in Peru.

Jon Favreau (20:05)

It's like, what? What? Right. And if the election was next week and we saved it, maybe. But a year from now, we'll see what happens.

Jon Lovett (20:21)

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Tommy Vietor (20:55)

It's nice to have the option.

Jon Lovett (20:56)

It's great.

Tommy Vietor (20:56)

Sometimes you've been sitting all day long and you think to yourself, my posture is bad and I feel gross and I just want to stand up and stretch my legs.

Jon Lovett (21:04)

Yeah, sometimes you can do. You gotta just change your. Like your. You just change.

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Gotta get it up.

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Jon Favreau (22:44)

Okay, right after we finished recording on Thursday, Trump finally got the indictment of Jim Comey that he personally ordered, though it took a former insurance lawyer who had never prosecuted a case before and couldn't find the courtroom to actually get it done, which she had to do alone because not a single lawyer in the office of 300 people that she now runs would agree to help her because of lack of evidence that a crime was actually committed. Even then, the grand jury rejected one count and only 14 of the 23 jurors approved the other two. None of that mattered to Trump, of course, who told reporters on Friday that he thinks there will be other indictments in addition to the investigations he's ordered of Adam Schiff, Tish James, John Brennan and others. Trump told NBC over the weekend that he, quote, would imagine the DOJ is also investigating former FBI Director Chris Wray over a completely false conspiracy that the FBI staged, the January 6 riots, which even Cash Patel had to partially debunk. The DOJ has also subpoenaed Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis travel records, and Trump is personally pressuring Microsoft to fire Biden's former deputy attorney general, our friend Lisa Monaco So Trump said his success would be his retribution, but I guess he's ultimately decided that his retribution would be his retribution. Three of us haven't had a chance to talk about Comey yet. What do you make of that indictment, Lovett?

Jon Lovett (24:04)

I think, you know, broken clock. No, it's so brazen, right?

Jon Favreau (24:10)

Like, he, he, he, he just 86 Comey here.

Tommy Vietor (24:15)

It's spelled out in shells, buddy.

Jon Lovett (24:19)

I was saying this to the guys beforehand, but if ultimately I do end up sharing a cell with James Comey, just know I did kill myself. But this, like, the brazenness of it, right? He posts over the weekend, we're not going quickly enough after my enemies. He gets this guy Siebert out of there. He appoints this unqualified person who's a loyalist into this job. The looming deadline of the statute of limitations. This person comes in, gets the indictment together, despite the fact that the declination memo from the Department of Justice said there's not enough evidence to charge and rams this thing through. Couldn't even get all the indictments done in front of a grand jury. And that anyone, Anyone who considers, look, all the fucking Trump loyalists love it. They think it's great he's going after his enemies. So I think that anyone is trying to do any kind of defense of this is so fucking embarrassing. It is so obvious and brazen. It's the most brazen thing any of us ever seen, I've ever seen at the Department of Justice. There's no even pretense that this is anything other than a political prosecution. It's happening right in front of our eyes. It's fucking nothing. Nuts.

Tommy Vietor (25:17)

Yeah. So it's just clearly about revenge, and Trump told us as much, and Comey is going first only because the statute of limitations is about to run out. But there is a long list that we were just going to tick through. And the goal is not just to punish Comey, although that's part of it. I mean, I think there's a very good chance that this case gets tossed. You could imagine a scenario where the judge scolds the prosecutor for bringing something this ridiculous. Like, to only get 14 out of 23 grand jurors to support this indictment is incredibly weak case. It's embarrassing.

Jon Lovett (25:44)

And then Haugen is like, I object. Did I do that right?

Tommy Vietor (25:47)

But it's about, you know, scaring the shit out of Democrats and political opponents and, you know, making sure that big Democratic donors no longer want to support Democratic organizations and, you know, putting fear in the heart of his enemies and like the. The exchange with Ted Cruz that this case is ostensibly built off of is confusing at best.

Jon Favreau (26:06)

At best. But like, in reality, I don't think.

Tommy Vietor (26:09)

Any reasonable person would read that given the facts that we know and assume a crime was committed.

Jon Favreau (26:16)

No, like, for it to. It has to be like willful, intentional, corrupt. Right. Like, those are the. Some of the words used for. To make false statements or obstruction of Congress, like a real crime. And it's like Comey answering a question over Zoom in 2020 about testimony that he gave in 2017. And Cruz kind of confuses the question that Grassley had asked before him. So Cruz confuses the question, and then no one even knows if Comey was talking about Andrew McCabe or his other friend. And I don't. Like, we could go through the details of the whole thing, but I don't even. I don't think it's worth it. It's a. It's a very. It's an incredibly weak case, which is. And you know that because the 300 people in the Eastern District of Virginia who declined to bring any charges until Lindsey Halligan showed up thought the same thing.

Jon Lovett (27:11)

Yeah. It's absurd on its face. James Comey, not a perfect person. The guy is fucking by the book. And he was gonna testify honestly. Maybe he's parsing his words, maybe he's being careful. But the guy was being honest, too.

Jon Favreau (27:22)

By the book, some would say.

Jon Lovett (27:23)

And then also occasionally extremely not by the book, like announcing investigations days before an election. But. But the thing that, like, I coming back to is, you know, the. The Bill Pulte, the. The Trump housing aide starts drumming up mortgage fraud. Mortgage frauds are mortgage fraud czar. He's drumming up mortgage fraud allegations against everywhere from Adam Schiff to Lisa Cook. And then people go through and like, actually, look, see, Lisa Cook maybe didn't do this, and maybe this person didn't do this. And. And like, people should do that. They should dig into whether that these allegations are fair or not. But it is beside the point.

Tommy Vietor (27:54)

So.

Jon Lovett (27:54)

Ruth Marcus posted an excerpt from this speech by Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. It was about being a prosecutor, and I thought it was really well said. It said, we know that no local police force can strictly enforce the traffic laws or it would arrest half the driving population on any given morning. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. It is in this realm in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass or select some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecutorial power lies like that is the threat. You can dig into anyone, you can find a technical violation on the part of anyone. That's why this is dangerous. Whether or not people want to parse and say, well, maybe Comey did lie, even though that's bullshit, it is giving in to what is so obviously dangerous about what the Trump administration is doing. They are finding the people and then looking for the crime, not the other way around.

Tommy Vietor (28:49)

One, like bitter irony or frustrating piece of context around all this is, I'm pretty sure we are talking about conversations about leaks to a reporter who was writing something about investigations into the Clinton foundation, and those investigations went nowhere because there was no illegal activity or wrongdoing. But the FBI and DOJ seem to have been working overtime to blame each other in the press because the other side didn't want to get called up to Congress to get berated by someone like Ted Cruz to say, why aren't you prosecuting the Clinton Foundation? And I think that's why there was all this talk via intermediaries or whatnot with this reporter about these articles that led to this stupid outcome.

Jon Favreau (29:29)

That, so that's, that's one of the fact patterns in this. And again, it's, it's confusion over which one they're talking about. The other is that when Comey had those meetings with Trump where Trump declared demanded his loyalty.

Tommy Vietor (29:43)

Yeah.

Jon Favreau (29:43)

And then, and then Comey took notes. He, like he had said before publicly that he gave those memos and notes to his friend Daniel Richard, Daniel Richman, who is a professor who like worked for a time at the FBI. And then the question is, oh, did he authorize Richman to leak those memos? And Richmond has previously said, no, he didn't. He just talked to me about how the press was getting on him and I decided to do it myself. And also, Richman apparently didn't work at the FBI at the time that he got the memos.

Tommy Vietor (30:11)

He was like a special government employee about like some random thing like surveillance technology or something. Yeah, it does seem like Daniel Richmond was a bit of a carve out for Jim Comey when he wanted to work the media on a certain thing. But, like, that doesn't mean it's a crime.

Jon Favreau (30:25)

Nothing about that is crimey. You'll be surprised to know Republican politicians and pundits are mostly all on board, except Andrew McCarthy's written a couple nice strongly worded pieces in National Review saying, this is preposterous. So good for him. But the rest of them are on board. Some say Comey was indicted by a jury of his peers. That's the John Thune sort of explanation. It's like, hey, you say it was political, but there was a grand jury and they gave the indictment. Others have just been more open that this is just revenge for Trump being indicted. And they don't seem all that worried that this, in the words of the New York Times, quote, risks ushering in a cycle of retaliation in which each new administration takes aim at the last one. What do you think?

Jon Lovett (31:06)

Yeah, it's the trick they all have to pull here is that Trump wasn't indicted because he's unusual. Trump was indicted because Democrats went too far. Trump was indicted because he broke the law. Joe Biden's Department of Justice did not behave like Trump's Department of Justice. There is no post by Joe Biden saying, go after my enemies. It's more aukus, aukus, aukus. And so you end up like, they're trying to claim somehow that, well, we saw them target people like Donald Trump. But Joe Biden's DOJ also prosecuted Hunter Biden.

Jon Favreau (31:40)

I was just a smokescreen because he.

Jon Lovett (31:42)

Was always going to pardon him.

Jon Favreau (31:43)

So I just also, some of the, like, you know, Joe Biden isn't the state of New York and the state of Georgia, and it's, like, different. I mean, come on, it's just fun. So their position is Donald Trump is allowed to break the law. If you hold him accountable for breaking the law, then you're going to get prosecuted as well.

Tommy Vietor (32:05)

Look, also, Kash Patel clearly lied to Congress in his confirmation hearings. If they want to set a precedent where people like Cash Patel are going to get prosecuted after the fact for that behavior, that's a road you can go down, but it's not a great one for anybody.

Jon Favreau (32:21)

Well, the New York Times piece I know, I was reading, and Peter Baker, I think, wrote it, and at the beginning, it says there will presumably come a time when the Republican Party is no longer in control. Like, presumably. Yes. The way that they're acting and the reason that they don't seem worried that it'll come back around to Cash Patel or anything else. One reason could be that they don't plan to relinquish power. Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (32:45)

But also, look, I think that the people working for Trump view it themselves as having no choice. They have to do his bidding or they get pushed out.

Jon Lovett (32:53)

So, yeah, yeah, I think, like, there's.

Tommy Vietor (32:56)

A predict the future. You know, we don't want to be like fatalistic.

Jon Favreau (32:58)

Yeah, I think they're one, but they could also just.

Tommy Vietor (32:59)

They can try to steal the. For sure.

Jon Lovett (33:01)

Well, they cannot do. Yeah, but he's. The people that won't do it are now all being fired and the people that will do it are being put in place. I look, I think it's somewhere in between. I think there are people that aren't are open to the idea that Donald Trump has no choice but to stay in office. And it's a sad state of affairs that we have a republic, a Democratic party that has become an agent of terrorists and we have no choice. I think there are people that are, are working their way towards that for sure.

Jon Favreau (33:22)

A lot of these people are just one day ahead and my might not have been there at the beginning that like Trump's gonna stay in power forever, but like, well, these Democrats are now threatening us for these prosecutions. So what are we to do?

Jon Lovett (33:35)

Yes, well, the other part of this is, you know, the other side of for my enemies, the laws, for my friends, everything. And so it's also the pardons and all this that feeds into this. But the pardon power remains. And we do not need to concede that there will never be a Democratic president again. And a Democratic president will have it, nor should we. And so Democrats will be able to reverse any political prosecutions that happen under a public administration. And I don't know how open we'll have to be about that or should be about that. But as we get closer, I think, like, the more brazen Trump is, the more honest we have to be about the fact that part of our job is to kind of clear out the brazen politicization of these prosecutions, including people convicted for them.

Jon Favreau (34:11)

The chant at Democratic rallies in fall of 2028, win this one for Comey.

Tommy Vietor (34:17)

Yeah.

Jon Lovett (34:18)

Free Garland.

Jon Favreau (34:22)

Trump's government's also moving full speed ahead on his broader war against immigrants, Democratic voters and Americans who live in cities. On Saturday, Trump said, quote, I am directing Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to provide all necessary troops to protect war ravaged Portland and any of our ICE facilities under siege from attack by antifa and other domestic terrorists. I am also authorizing full force if necessary. I mean, what. Imagine hearing years ago that like that would be a statement from the president, like how everything about that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth war ravaged Portland.

Tommy Vietor (35:01)

Scary stuff.

Jon Favreau (35:02)

The war he's referring to, of course, is a long running protest outside a single ICE facility that will now be protected by 200 troops for the next 60 days. Though Oregon officials are already suing to stop the deployment, there were also dozens of armed masked ICE agents patrolling downtown Chicago in a show of force this weekend. And at this point, too many stories to count of ICE detaining and assaulting American citizens or legal residents, including a Chicago journalist, American citizen, who was just sitting in her car outside an ICE facility with her window down when a masked ICE agent shot a pepper ball that burned her face and made her. There were no protests in the area. There were nothing else. It wasn't like they meant the pepper ball for someone else or a crowd. She was just sitting there with a window down and got shot.

Tommy Vietor (35:48)

And do you see the video of the ICE agent? This woman was begging him to just tell her where her husband had been taken wherever, and all of a sudden he just throws her to the ground. It's like physically assaulting this woman in the hallway in front of all these reporters. Now, this man was actually suspended, which is like the first time.

Jon Favreau (36:04)

But bad news, bad news. Right before we recorded the ICE officer from cbs, the ICE officer relieved of his duties after being captured on video pushing a woman outside an immigration court in New York City, has been returned to duty. Two U.S. officials tell CBS News DHS had called his conduct unacceptable.

Tommy Vietor (36:20)

Three days ago, Trisha McLaughlin was on the record. I think the man just beat this woman up for no reason.

Jon Favreau (36:26)

I'm sure someone internally did something right to suspend him. And then fucking Stephen Miller probably found out, got on the phone and was like, get that fucking person back on.

Jon Lovett (36:34)

Well, there's blowback online about it from the right. There's blowback online saying, well, look, I thought Trump was going to go hard and they're going to. They're going to use all the full force. Then all of a sudden, there's one little incident of somebody finally standing up for ice, and then we're off to the races.

Jon Favreau (36:46)

You can't admit any, any wrongdoing on Portland. This is a much smaller deployment than we saw in LA or dc and, you know, so they're suing the Oregon AG in the city of Portland. Think that it's different than the lawsuit in la. Of course, you know, they have to say that either way they think they have a better legal case here. Why do you guys think Trump's doing it? And what does he want to get out of it?

Tommy Vietor (37:08)

What's the message? I mean, There's a recent AP poll that had Trump at 53% approval on crime. It's better Than immigration, the economy, other big issues. Portland's been caricatured for years on Fox is like a crazy lefty bastion of antifa violence and it's a liberal, you know, soft target with the Democratic governor. So I just think this one is exactly the message they want to be portraying.

Jon Lovett (37:29)

Yeah, I think that's right. And I think it'll feed into what we're about to talk, to talk about, which is, I do think they, they want the conflicts a little bit between Democratic governors saying, get out of our cities and Trump saying, I'm just here to protect our. You know, you're giving your cities over to these violent antifa protesters and we're going to stand up to it. And then these places become flashpoints where they can use the images to forward the debate about the left and the broader sort of claim that this is a mass that smear half that country as being part of some vast violent movement.

Jon Favreau (38:02)

Yeah, I think you could argue that Portland is. Because politically, Louisiana and D.C. did not go as well for them as they thought. I don't think it was a massive loss for them. But all the polling shows that people are against the deployments in dc, against the deployments in la. The polling got worse for him over time. And when you ask people now, do you want it in your city, would you be against in your city? It's even worse for them. So I think it's a win, win for him in Portland because either nothing happens and then he can say, oh, we did liberate Portland, it was wonderful. Or you get the reaction that he probably hoped he got in either DC or la. When there is a violent, a more violent destructive reaction to ICE and the National Guard and the troops being there.

Jon Lovett (38:47)

Yeah.

Jon Favreau (38:47)

Which, you know, you probably think, Portland, come on, give it to me. Portland, this is you almost burned down a couple summers ago.

Jon Lovett (38:53)

Yeah. Without us even being there. The federal deployments becoming a flashpoint for protest, which then are used to justify why the federal deployments were there in the first place. This sort of vicious circle is exactly what they want. It's what they got in it. It's what they got in la. Even as much as it may have blown back on them. That's it. Oh, sorry, that did sound like my sentence was not continuing.

Jon Favreau (39:18)

Foreign.

Jon Lovett (39:25)

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Tommy Vietor (39:54)

I sure do. Charlie Favreau has been crushing Haya for a long time and I went over to their house the other day and he was working on girdles incompleteness theorems.

Jon Lovett (40:03)

Oh, was he? Was he trying to figure out that's interesting.

Jon Favreau (40:05)

Apparently Gerd was wrong.

Tommy Vietor (40:06)

Charlie told me.

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Jon Favreau (41:27)

One other thing to keep an eye on here is Trump's latest executive order on what he's calling domestic extremism. Over the weekend, Stephen Miller tweeted, quote, we are witnessing domestic terrorist sedition against the federal government. The JTTF has been dispatched by the Attorney General pursuant to NSPM Dash 7 all necessary resources will be utilized. For those of you who don't speak fascist, the JTTF refers to the Joint Terrorism task forces and NSPM Dash 7 stands for National Security Presidential Memorandum 7. For those of you who still don't know what the fuck that means, the order calls for, quote, a comprehensive national strategy to investigate, prosecute and disrupt entities and individuals engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation, including quote, the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources and predicate actions behind them. Ken Klippenstein has been reporting on this and says that sources tell him that this will likely cause the FBI's Domestic Terrorism Watch List, which is currently at 5,000, to double within weeks or months. He also reports that a number of big law firms are taking it seriously enough that they've issued guidance for left leaning nonprofits and other organizations. Have you guys looked into this and what's your level of concern here?

Tommy Vietor (42:41)

I think it's a piece of a larger puzzle that will let the administration essentially designate certain liberal or leftist organizations and frankly like policy views as terrorism. And then this will give them the pretext to use federal agencies to investigate, prosecute, otherwise harass organizations that are funding these alleged domestic terrorist groups. Because the memorandum mentions quote, institutional and individual funders and officers and employees of organizations that are responsible or otherwise aid and abet the principal actors engaging in the criminal conduct. So my guess is this is just another way to go after like the Soros folks or other, you know, big kind of democratic progressive funders.

Jon Lovett (43:21)

Yeah, so first of all, the kind of branding it as NSPM7 and declaring it. Look, I am loathe to use a Star wars reference, but the really does feel like a reference to order 66. And I'm sorry to be a person doing that, I know you don't and that's okay, I'm a speak nerd. But you should learn, you should learn Maybe that new AirPods that translate can help you. But he's always situating his conduct in this sort of a grand nationalist history. You know, you always feel that like this is NSPM 7, a great historic moment in the history of our fight against the leftists.

Jon Favreau (44:00)

That's what he's gotta say to his wife to get her going.

Tommy Vietor (44:02)

Dirty talk in the morning. Yeah, that's what she says.

Jon Lovett (44:05)

A little pillow talk.

Jon Favreau (44:06)

That's what she says.

Jon Lovett (44:07)

Yeah.

Jon Favreau (44:07)

No, no, what do we say? That's not our character.

Tommy Vietor (44:09)

He's a matador.

Jon Lovett (44:11)

Yeah. Which is an ironic term. Right? Because it's like isn't he trying, you know, it's like, that sounds like ducking. Ducking just sounds like. Are you welcoming that kind of culture?

Tommy Vietor (44:21)

I can't tell. Who are we goring?

Jon Lovett (44:23)

Who's getting gore here Anyway? What I was going to say. So the sounds like us right now. Yeah, throw me out in the clown suit. Yeah, throw me out in the clown suit. I'll run distract for you guys. All right, but the part of this is that like, you read this order and it has this grandiose language and then you get into the specifics, some of it is extremely vague and hard to understand what it could mean. I do think that's on purpose. Tommy pointed to the ways in which it goes after funding. You get to this moment where you get to this. There's a part where it describes what they're characterizing as domestic terrorism and it says the Attorney General shall issue specific guidance that ensures domestic terrorism priorities include politically motivated terrorist acts, such as organized doxing campaigns, which, by the way, they've included desiring the unmasking. They've described unmasking ICE agents as doxxing.

Jon Favreau (45:15)

Right.

Jon Lovett (45:16)

Swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence and civil disorder.

Jon Favreau (45:22)

Trespass and civil disorder are the two that stuck out at me there. I'm like, those are pretty broad. I'm just like, oop, you walked onto federal property.

Jon Lovett (45:31)

I'm sorry. But like, look, destruction of property can mean a lot of different things. It can mean. It can mean burning something. It could be burning Portland to the ground. It could be whatever.

Jon Favreau (45:41)

Just lighting a simple waymo on fire.

Jon Lovett (45:43)

Yeah. Could be any. Yeah, but all of this is meant to be vague, right? Like, it's meant to be like, applicable to a wide range of activities. And just the intimidation that people will feel, not knowing what this will apply to, I think is part of what will make it dangerous. And then you look at this and you say like, well, this. They could go after anybody with this.

Tommy Vietor (46:00)

It's just such clearly a. Such a clear suppression of speech. They're talking about anti capitalist, anti American views. Like you can famously be anti American in this country. It's called freedom of speech. I mean, I don't know how this is not a pretty drastic First Amendment violation.

Jon Favreau (46:14)

Huge, huge First Amendment problem. I think the point is to get the investigations going and make people's lives miserable and make them lawyer up, which is probably why all those big law firms.

Tommy Vietor (46:24)

Yeah. The point is to read Hoffman. To be too scared to donate to progressive causes.

Jon Favreau (46:28)

That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Jon Lovett (46:30)

And by the Way to hope that if they start digging in based on these, these kind of specious reasons, you again, as we talked about earlier, you get into somebody's books, you get into somebody's finances or emails, whatever, and all of a sudden you've uncovered something that you can use.

Jon Favreau (46:43)

Ken Klippenstein in his piece on this, his first piece was talking about. It's like they're going after pre crime, like in Minority Report because it says the strategy is to disrupt any individual groups, quote, that political violence, including, quote, before they result in violent political acts. So part of this too is if you, they want to let people know that if you're in some organization that donates to someone else and then like months later that person, someone in the place that you donated to, commit some act or whatever, it could come back to you because you made the. I mean, it's fucking insane.

Jon Lovett (47:16)

Well, by the way, he's saying that Gavin Newsom describing something as authoritarian is terrorist. Is a terrorist threat.

Jon Favreau (47:23)

Yeah. It says they can be identified by any of the following indicators of violence. Anti Americanism, anti capitalism, anti Christianity, extremism on migration, race, gender. Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family. That's a good one. Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality. The fuck?

Tommy Vietor (47:43)

It's nonsensical.

Jon Favreau (47:46)

Bad, bad people. Of course, we had another horrific shooting over the weekend where a deranged man who appears to be a Trump supporter shot up a Mormon church and set it on fire, killing four people. J.D. vance called the situation just awful and called for prayers. I assume they'll be getting to the bottom of who funded this domestic terrorist and calling for everyone who didn't say the right thing to lose their job about it. Is that what's gonna happen now?

Tommy Vietor (48:06)

Is that part of the anti doxxing under NPSM 7 or whatever?

Jon Favreau (48:11)

Notice that hasn't been a big. The fact that the guy's wearing like a Trump, Trump 2020 T shirt and he's got a big Trump Pence flag.

Tommy Vietor (48:18)

I saw Benny Johnson from TPOSA was fast out of the gate saying this is an attack on Christianity itself. And then quickly there was an inconvenient set of facts.

Jon Lovett (48:26)

Yeah, look, this is exactly what we were talking about when we were in the last round of the politicization of these shootings and accusing the entire left of being complicit in a murder, which is. So now if a person has a Trump yard sign, they're deranged. But if they have some evidence of having left views, they are part of a vast left conspiracy. They will make the motive important and central to a collective punishment if they don't agree with the person, but if it's on their side, it's of course a deranged person. When really what we see over and over is how people are getting radicalized online, whatever the underlying kind of political views that are part of the justification. And like, we will never figure out how to get out of a cycle like this unless we collectively view these as a shared threat around people becoming taking these sort of violent acts based on radicalization on these forums and wherever else.

Jon Favreau (49:18)

And you of course saw all those Democratic politicians saying, this is right wing violence. The right did this. One of yours did this. Donald Trump. You saw that, right? Oh, yeah, that's right. No one did that. No one said that on the left. Left, not one democratic politician, but like.

Jon Lovett (49:35)

You know, Zainab Tufety, we've talked to like, talks about like, like, there's just no. The, the putting this in politics means there's no talk about the contagion of it. Right? We saw like people riding on bullets, right? That's clearly from one event to the next. There's a surge of these things. Like violence is contagious. We know that, like, we've learned about this on suicides, on mass shootings, on political violence like this. We like, there is clearly something happening and we can't fucking figure it out because everything is polluted by this. Like the way in which they're using this for political purposes.

Jon Favreau (50:05)

Only somewhat related here, but did you guys see the Daily Caller column last Friday explicitly calling for violence against the left?

Tommy Vietor (50:12)

Yeah, good stuff.

Jon Favreau (50:13)

The Jeffrey Ingersoll there. It was published as, quote, an editorial in the Daily Caller, longish op ed. It says, here's some quotes from it. Quote, today I choose violence literally. And then another quote, I know calls for violence are generally frowned upon. The issue is I simply don't care. Then again, just in case you weren't sure, is this a call for violence? Yes, explicitly it is. And then finally, quote, choose violence. So is someone going to. Now, I remember J.D. vance gave a big speech when he was on Charlie Kirk's podcast complaining about a Nation editorial, I think we talked about it, that condemned violence and simply said that they didn't agree with Charlie Kirk and didn't say nice things about him. And he threatened to, you know, investigate everyone who's ever funded the nation, including made it up the Soros foundation, which didn't even fund the nation. And should we, Are they going to now Investigate who funds the Daily Caller.

Tommy Vietor (51:06)

Hold on, I'm googling. Who funds the Daily Caller?

Jon Favreau (51:08)

It was Foster Fries.

Tommy Vietor (51:09)

I'll figure it out for you guys.

Jon Favreau (51:10)

Foster Fries did. And also the Kochs are connected.

Tommy Vietor (51:13)

I'm just sending a stern letter.

Jon Favreau (51:15)

Yeah, Foster Freeze is dead now, but there's a couple of.

Tommy Vietor (51:17)

There's a whole Charles Koch foundation, the Bradley foundation, who they're called Crazy Scathe Foundation. Okay.

Jon Favreau (51:22)

Yeah. So everyone, new lines. I assume everyone's gonna look into that.

Tommy Vietor (51:26)

They should.

Jon Favreau (51:27)

It's like, it's a good one for the NPS. NSPM 7, whatever the fuck. Nipsum.

Jon Lovett (51:32)

Nip.

Tommy Vietor (51:32)

Nispum.

Jon Lovett (51:32)

Nipsum. Nipsum.

Tommy Vietor (51:34)

Nispum in the bud.

Jon Lovett (51:35)

It's, it's, it's also just like all these people. It's brain rot. Everyone has brain rot. They are watching things online. They're getting very angry and they're writing it up because they're seeing so much shit online. It's making them kind of crazy. And they're like, I have to try look at what they're doing. And they're getting away with it.

Jon Favreau (51:50)

The Daily Caller also just conducted a one hour interview with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Imagine, imagine an outlet that just conducted a full interview in the Oval Office with a Democratic president and then leaves and then has an editorial that says, I call for violence.

Tommy Vietor (52:09)

Yeah, the hypocrisy stuff's real annoying.

Jon Favreau (52:12)

It's just unfucking believable.

Jon Lovett (52:14)

I know, I know.

Jon Favreau (52:15)

It's unfucking believable. Believable. It's not even the hypocrisy. It's just like that. It's their, their bullshit is just like they should not be taken seriously.

Jon Lovett (52:25)

Yeah, I mean, I just, it's more to that, like I am more. I, I, like, I, maybe it's too sociological, but I'm like just looking at people. I'm watching people. I'm watching people that were once. I don't include this person who's, I never knew. I'm watching people that they were, you know, maybe Trump, curious, maybe somewhere in the middle between being anti Trump, like, like, I think I'm watching people that used to be a bit more reasonable, radicalized in real time. Like you're watching that happen online. And I do think it's from people kind of exposing their brain to like the sewer of the Internet and getting a warped view of their own side and a warped view of the other side and only seeing, I mean, like the same problems with polarization. They're not just for people that are voters. It's for the actual producers of content and influencers and everybody else on these platforms, like they're not immune to it and you see it every day. And like the fact that it's not just one guy that thought this has made it through a whole editing process and onto the website by a bunch of people who said, yeah, let's get that out there.

Jon Favreau (53:14)

The brain rot comes for content creators.

Tommy Vietor (53:16)

Clicks, clicks, clicks. I mean, look, the only thing we say is it's a very fringe view to support violence. This guy is one of a tiny swath of the country that believes this is an appropriate response. Most people don't. Everyone should condemn it. It's all we can do.

Jon Favreau (53:28)

Yeah.

Jon Lovett (53:38)

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Jon Favreau (55:23)

Okay, we had some other breaking news on Monday. President of Peace Donald Trump has solved the Middle East. Trump called September 29, quote, potentially one of the great days ever in civilization.

Tommy Vietor (55:32)

Yeah.

Jon Favreau (55:33)

As he stood next to another great product of civilization, Bibi Netanyahu at the White House and rambled through the points of a peace plan that we have no idea as of this recording whether Hamas will accept. While the plan includes some promising aspects, including an end to the act of fighting and the return of all the hostages, its crown jewelry is definitely this. My plan calls for the creation of.

Jon Lovett (55:56)

A new international oversight body, the Board of Peace. We call it the Board of Peace. Sort of a beautiful name. The board, the leaders of the Arab world and Israel and everybody involved asked me to do this. So it beheaded by a gentleman known.

Jon Favreau (56:13)

As President Donald J. Trump of the United States.

Jon Lovett (56:16)

That's what I want, is some extra work to do, but it's so important that I'm willing to do it.

Jon Favreau (56:23)

Tommy, do you think you're going to be asked to be on the Board of Peace as well?

Tommy Vietor (56:26)

Oh, that'd be cool. I'm not on any boards. I wonder if it's paid or unpaid.

Jon Lovett (56:30)

Do you think Trump is going to spend more time on the Board of Peace or the Kennedy Center Board?

Tommy Vietor (56:33)

Good question on both.

Jon Favreau (56:36)

What do you make of this plan, this 20 point plan that they released and its prospects?

Tommy Vietor (56:40)

It's kind of been floating around for a while. I mean like the event today was exactly what I expected, which is Netanyahu and Trump talking about agreeing to something vague that they can call a peace deal that Yahoo knows he will never have to implement. Because it's basically designed to be to look and sound maximally reasonable, but be rejected by Hamas. And that's what I expect will happen. I did like this typically understated self calling it the greatest days ever in civilization. This isn't a two state solution plan, it's a ceasefire plan. Just to be clear. But I like again, I think that Netanyahu, like, he tried, he like tried to sound like he was on board with the big picture. While reserving the right to renegotiate or delay every actual detail. I think, I think it's probably a non starter for Hamas.

Jon Favreau (57:23)

Like, why do you think it's a. Just. I have no idea. Why do you think it's a non starter for Hamas?

Tommy Vietor (57:27)

Because they have to trust Netanyahu generally to implement it. Because they don't think Trump can control him. Because they watched, you know, the last year. The plan calls on Hamas to release all the hostages within 72 hours, which means they give up all their leverage immediately and then have to trust that the rest of the plan gets executed. The plan basically calls on Hamas to disband as an organization and they'll have no role in Gaza going forward. Which is, of course, a totally understandable position for the Israelis to want to take. But from the Hamas perspective, you could imagine that'd be hard to agree to. And then finally, like, this is an organization, their DNA is resistant to occupation and trying to get land back, and they're going to be cool with Gaza being governed by Donald Trump and Tony Blair. That's the best you guys could do?

Jon Favreau (58:15)

Trump and Tony Blair, unfortunately, it's the best we could do.

Jon Lovett (58:19)

Do you think Tony Blair knew is on that? Tony Blair was on that list? He's like, what?

Tommy Vietor (58:23)

Yeah, what is Tony Blair doing? And also, America first now means Donald Trump is going to chair an organization governing the Gaza Strip. We're giving Argentina a $20 billion bank bailout. There's Trump is now talking about retaking Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. So I guess we're going to reinvade Afghanistan and we're blowing up every ship off the boat to Venezuela and talking about airstrikes both within Venezuela and Mexico. This is now America First, I guess.

Jon Lovett (58:50)

Yeah, I just was. There was a story in the Times in the last couple days about the IDF moving back into parts of Gaza City, parts that it had already been in, and then left back and forth like three times. And now as they're moving through, they're kind of razing whole parts of the city and holding territory and not letting it go. And the beleaguered people that have been there, some of whom are leaving as they're being told, others have no place to go and have left and come back and are now kind of giving up on having anywhere to go or seeing any purpose in kind of leaving. It's horrible. It is so ugly and evil what is happening. And then you have the president and. And Bibi standing in the Oval, kind of patting each other on the back Declaring the greatest day in the history of civilization while. While kind of inflicting this collective punishment on Gaza, even as they say that Hamas is responsible and doesn't care what happens to the people of Gaza because they use the people of Gaza like human shield. And so, like, the whole thing is disgusting. And that's all I got.

Jon Favreau (59:57)

Were you excited to learn, though, that Jared was involved?

Tommy Vietor (59:59)

I'm so mad about this. Thank you for prompting this.

Jon Favreau (60:02)

Thank you.

Tommy Vietor (60:02)

Jared Kushner is not a government employee. He has no role in this administration. He did the Abraham Accords back in the day. Those are holding on by a thread.

Jon Favreau (60:10)

Abraham, Abraham, Abraham.

Jon Lovett (60:12)

Because he mispronounced it and then owned them.

Tommy Vietor (60:14)

Well, apparently it's close to the Israeli. The Hebrew pronunciation, I guess.

Jon Favreau (60:17)

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Jon Lovett (60:17)

But he just.

Jon Favreau (60:18)

Just.

Jon Lovett (60:18)

He couldn't read it.

Tommy Vietor (60:19)

He's a goober. But Jared Kushner, he's sitting on, I think, $5.4 billion in almost exclusively foreign money.

Jon Lovett (60:26)

But is he happy?

Tommy Vietor (60:27)

Saudi linked, Emirati linked. Cuttery linked money in his investment fund that they're using to buy EA Sports. It's in the game. It's like one of my favorite video game companies as a kid. Like that. It's just, like, insane conflict of interest that is never mentioned in any of the coverage. What is Jared Kushner doing there?

Jon Favreau (60:43)

He doesn't work there.

Jon Lovett (60:44)

He just sort of popped back into it, by the way, like, a couple weeks ago. Yeah, he was not even part of it. And all of a sudden he was thanking Jared on social media. And you're like, wait, Jared's back walking.

Tommy Vietor (60:51)

In with Tony Blair, slapping him on the ass, saying, good job.

Jon Favreau (60:55)

He's probably pretty bored. Maybe he wasn't happy.

Jon Lovett (60:57)

You know, I was on vacation once in Hawaii, and who walks into the restaurant but Benjamin Netanyahu, Tony Blair, and a bunch of other people sitting around the table at that restaurant.

Jon Favreau (61:12)

Next thing you know, you wake up.

Tommy Vietor (61:15)

That's a polycule for you.

Jon Lovett (61:18)

I. Look, one thing. It was a. One thing led to another.

Tommy Vietor (61:22)

I feel like the Kusher part of it made me so mad, I felt.

Jon Lovett (61:25)

A pre emptive attack.

Tommy Vietor (61:26)

A thousand tweets that got no engagement. I'm so mad about Jared Kushner. Just $2 billion from the Saudis.

Jon Favreau (61:32)

It's crazy.

Tommy Vietor (61:33)

At least he's doing Gaza. Whatever.

Jon Favreau (61:36)

The corruption is just.

Tommy Vietor (61:37)

No one cares what we think.

Jon Favreau (61:38)

I know.

Tommy Vietor (61:38)

It's like. But to your point, this, like, this war is about to have gone on for two years. Like, most scholars think it is a genocide. Like, thousands of kids have been killed. And it's like there is no serious effort to get the Israelis to stop.

Jon Lovett (61:57)

Right?

Tommy Vietor (61:57)

Like everyone, like all the people were like, Hamas could end this war today if they release hostages. I actually do not think that that would get the IDF out of the Gaza Strip. I think if, if Hamas released the hostages, it's not clear at all to me that the, that given what the ministers around Netanyahu say about their desire to ethnically cleanse and occupy Gaza in perpetuity, would actually get the idea. So I think it's gonna have to be a deal where both sides do some really hard things and there's just no serious effort to get there. And it's so demoralizing.

Jon Favreau (62:26)

All right, last thing. President of the United States posted his first ever AI generated video of an AI generated Fox News segment featuring his AI generated daughter in law, Larry Trump throwing to an AI generated Donald Trump in the Oval Office promising every American access to a non existent medical technology known as med beds that have become an obsession in QAnon circles. I can't even believe I said that whole sentence. Let's take a listen.

Sponsor/Advertisement Voice (62:54)

Breaking now, President Donald J. Trump has announced a historic new health care system. The launch of America's first med bed hospitals and a national medbed card for every citizen.

Jon Lovett (63:05)

Every American will soon receive their own med bed card. With it, you'll have guaranteed access to.

Jon Favreau (63:11)

Our new hospitals led by the top.

Jon Lovett (63:13)

Doctors in the nation. Equipped with the most advanced technology in the world, these facilities are safe, modern and designed to restore every citizen to full health. And this is the beginning of a new era in American healthcare.

Tommy Vietor (63:29)

They don't even get the lips right.

Jon Favreau (63:31)

Holy shit. Can we like this?

Tommy Vietor (63:33)

I love AI. It's great.

Jon Lovett (63:36)

The politics of the like the far right where like it's cool as long as Donald Trump is for universal fake healthcare, but real healthcare we're gonna cut dramatically. But fake healthcare, everybody gets it. It's gonna be amazing when you get in your fake med bed and you'll have your fake card. It's for everybody in our beautiful new hospitals. I can't wait.

Jon Favreau (63:57)

Let's share with our audience what a medbed is. Tell me, I know you've.

Tommy Vietor (64:01)

Tell us more.

Jon Favreau (64:02)

I know you've become an expert today, right?

Tommy Vietor (64:04)

Yeah. I did a call with a Medved CEO.

Jon Favreau (64:06)

Yeah. A friend of you talked to a.

Tommy Vietor (64:08)

Friend who knows Dmitry Medvedev.

Jon Lovett (64:09)

Yeah, he's doing reporting. Medvedev. That was good. That was good. Medvedev, huh? Okay. That was nice.

Tommy Vietor (64:16)

I don't want to bring the conversation so apparently a medved is a mythical thing made with, like, alien technology that will cure every ailment.

Jon Favreau (64:23)

When.

Tommy Vietor (64:24)

When this was first pitched to us by someone whose name rhymes with Beli Jamon, I was like, what's the big deal? Who cares if they do, like, AI fanfic stupid med bed garbage on the Donald Trump Twitter feed.

Jon Favreau (64:36)

Now you're looking for your card.

Tommy Vietor (64:37)

But then I listened to the QAnon Anonymous podcast episode about med beds. Great show, by the way. And the reality is so much darker because what's happened is there's QAnon grifters sell people, like, future access to med beds, and they charge them, like, hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. And in some cases, it's not just that people are getting fleas for their money, but they're delaying treatments in real life because they're waiting for a med bed. So it's really bleak. There's also. There's a couple funny versions. There's one organization that's selling, I think, what they call, like, a 5D med bed, which is they promise to get you access to a med bed that is quantum entangled with your current bed. So you, like, upload a picture of your bed and you imagine it, and then you're quantum entangled with this technology. So basically, you pay, like, three grand at this company to imagine things.

Jon Favreau (65:25)

So the promise of the med bed, and there are many promises because, of course, it's not real. Right. Reverse aging. Right. You can wake up 30 years younger. Some believe they can actually resurrect the dead. Some believe.

Tommy Vietor (65:38)

Oh, I hadn't heard that.

Jon Favreau (65:39)

Some believe that JFK Jr. And Princess Diana are alive somewhere and that the med beds have brought them back to life. And the reason this is a QAnon thing is because they believe that, of course, the elite have been using the med beds, Right, to resurrect themselves. Oh, you can regrow amputated limbs, missing organs in minutes.

Tommy Vietor (65:59)

Well, the big one is reversing vax damage.

Jon Favreau (66:01)

Vax, of course.

Jon Lovett (66:02)

Oh, yeah. Hell, yeah.

Jon Favreau (66:03)

You can reprogram your DNA and you can cure all diseases, including cancer, obviously. And what they do is they eliminate the need for vaccines. Vaccines, right. Or anything like that. So you.

Tommy Vietor (66:13)

Well, there is no need for vaccines, of course.

Jon Favreau (66:15)

Well, you wait for the med bed. You don't need the vaccine. And what happened is the elite cabal has these med beds and had for a while, but once Donald Trump became. They believe that once Donald Trump became president, that they. That he's storing them now in an underground military base and he will give the green light any moment, which it seems like Cat's out of the bag. Oh, maybe that's Cat's out of the med bed. You know, Hegseth, man, some people think that Trump's already using med beds.

Jon Lovett (66:40)

Not long enough.

Jon Favreau (66:41)

Because of his youthful energy and his weird hands.

Jon Lovett (66:44)

Get in that med bed a little bit longer, my friend. First of all, med beds are also in the film Elysium. And I do think that Prometheus. Oh, yeah, Prometheus.

Tommy Vietor (66:54)

Passengers too.

Jon Lovett (66:55)

I would just say there was a time when conspiracy theorists used to go to the library, pull out the microfiche, put something really interesting together, and that was a simpler and better time. Conspiracy theories took some fucking work. They pieced it together. You had to actually have the strength. And now people see Elysium, they take a quote from Hunter S. Thompson, and next thing you know, we got fucking AI Medbets.

Tommy Vietor (67:13)

Tough.

Jon Favreau (67:14)

Here's something I'm interested in learning the answer to. I hope someone does some reporting on this. How do you think this got from, like, QAnon conspiracy to Donald Trump to him thinking, I'm gonna post this thing? He has since taken it down. He's deleted it. Someone must have been like, hey, the med beds, that's too far. I don't know how that happened either. I love that story. Like, what do you think happened?

Tommy Vietor (67:36)

I bet someone sends it to him.

Jon Lovett (67:38)

Yeah. Or he's literally scrolling and he's seeing it online. Like, I'm sure he has a feed and he's seeing stuff and he thinks, oh, this is people saying I'm good at healthcare. People like me on healthcare. Yeah. It was a quick retruth.

Jon Favreau (67:48)

And all of a sudden, sorry, I said retruth.

Jon Lovett (67:51)

I told myself I wouldn't say that.

Tommy Vietor (67:52)

I don't know.

Jon Favreau (67:52)

I just did it.

Jon Lovett (67:53)

I know he posted it, but. Yeah.

Jon Favreau (67:56)

He also posted about medical marijuana for seniors this weekend. He also posted about how is he getting high? His gold trim, the Oval Office decked out in 24 karat gold. It's like every foreign leader who comes now is just telling him, this is fucking amazing. You're the best.

Tommy Vietor (68:11)

Now, hadn't we determined that he in fact was buying most of these little accent pieces from like, Home Depot and spray painting them?

Jon Lovett (68:17)

We don't. We don't know.

Jon Favreau (68:18)

But then if you put them in the med bed, it becomes real.

Jon Lovett (68:20)

Yeah. Remember like that episode of Captain Kangaroo where somebody could remember that when everything could turn into gold, but actually they didn't seem to have. They had a silver one and Then a gold one and the gold one was a different shape and it really bothered me as a little kid. But that's because my mother took Tylenol. So the. That. But she actually didn't. I texted and asked. She didn't. And she's. She's on vacation. I won't hear this.

Jon Favreau (68:41)

So double check that one.

Jon Lovett (68:42)

I did. I texted her, are you sure you didn't take Tylenol? And she said nothing, just prenatal vitamins for you and your sister. I was like, I don't know.

Jon Favreau (68:47)

I'm going to ask your dad. Tell the truth.

Jon Lovett (68:49)

Maybe he crushed it and put her in mashed potatoes cuz she was complaining.

Jon Favreau (68:52)

The.

Jon Lovett (68:52)

But the point being, what were you talking about?

Jon Favreau (68:54)

Oh yeah.

Jon Lovett (68:56)

So people did find that some of the. The things attached to the wall are from Home Depot and it was assumed that they were spray painted gold. It is possible that there's someone doing gold leaf.

Tommy Vietor (69:05)

Could be leaf.

Jon Lovett (69:06)

It could be leaf. It could be leaf. But it could be spray paint.

Tommy Vietor (69:08)

We just don't know.

Jon Lovett (69:09)

We just don't know.

Jon Favreau (69:10)

I think that at the next press conference, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffrey should stand up and say they have added another demand. They want med bed cards for all like Trump promised in his truth social post as part of the government funding deal.

Jon Lovett (69:23)

That's great.

Jon Favreau (69:24)

You know, just. That would be fun.

Jon Lovett (69:26)

It is so sad how conspiracy. Yeah, that would be fun. I would love to have. Yeah. Get in there with the med beds. It is just so. I'm just so sad. Like you think about the people that are falling for this and it's like so conspiratorial and so sad and so isolate. You have to be so isolated from the world to believe that this is real. And there's.

Tommy Vietor (69:42)

And like it's like alien technology. They think.

Jon Favreau (69:45)

Did you see the. Did you see that. That footage though where they were. Someone was carrying the med bed into Jeffrey Epstein cell.

Jon Lovett (69:51)

No.

Jon Favreau (69:52)

Yeah.

Jon Lovett (69:54)

Is that how he died? I don't understand what it. If the bed beds are real, why do these billion. Why did. What happened to Leona Helmsley? Like, where are all the rich billionaires that were famous and who died?

Tommy Vietor (70:05)

That's the thing. It's like they never explain why they haven't been deployed yet. I mean, this is stupid.

Jon Favreau (70:11)

Anyway. Something to look forward to. Med beds.

Tommy Vietor (70:14)

There's a woman in Canada who claims to be the queen of Canada who says she's gonna make them free for everybody.

Jon Favreau (70:20)

This is gonna be a great segue. Two quick announcements before we go first, we've got some new merch up in the store. It's Medbeds. Congratulations.

Tommy Vietor (70:29)

I buy that.

Jon Favreau (70:30)

No, there's some fun anti. Anti vax items that we're selling, so that's good. Check them out@cricket.com store. It's a great way to help support what we do here. Also, Vote Save America as you may know, running a first of its kind pilot program to recruit candidates from Arizona, North Carolina and Texas. School board, city council, state legislature, all up and down the ballot. We love that. Even if you're not from those states, if you're interested in running, they'll connect you with our incredible national partners at the National Democratic Training Committee and run for something to get you set up and ready to run anywhere in the country. We've already had thousands of people sign up over the past couple months. Vote Save America is hosting a live call on Tuesday, October 7th at 5pm Pacific, 8pm Eastern Time to welcome new folks to the program. Our own Tommy will be there with Vote Save America's partners and they'll, they'll talk about how we're, what this work's all about and how we're gonna support you every step of the way. If you've even thought about running, this is where to start. Sign up for the call and learn more@votesaveamerica.com Run paid for by votesave america. Learn more@votesaveamerica.Com this ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidates committee.

Jon Lovett (71:29)

Guys, breaking news. Just before that was a lot.

Tommy Vietor (71:32)

What do we got?

Jon Lovett (71:32)

Breaking news. Google owned video site YouTube will pay 24.5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump over the company decision to spend his account in the wake of January 6th. The agreement says that Trump has directed YouTube to contribute $22 million to help construct the new White House ballroom.

Jon Favreau (71:48)

Oh my God.

Tommy Vietor (71:49)

Steal at twice the price.

Jon Lovett (71:50)

The rest of the money will go to a handful of other plaintiffs who accuse YouTube of censoring them. I'm sure that's a sundry list of wonderful fucking people getting money from Alphabet. Terrific. Terrific.

Jon Favreau (72:00)

Don't have any money left for med beds.

Tommy Vietor (72:02)

No.

Jon Lovett (72:04)

I hope that ballroom's nice when it's ready for Trump's third term.

Jon Favreau (72:09)

Anyway, that's our show for today. Thanks to no one for coming on. Yeah, thanks all the time.

Jon Lovett (72:18)

Yeah, some really big people did not make time for this today.

Jon Favreau (72:22)

It was really.

Jon Lovett (72:22)

We want to say how grateful we are. They're so busy. We get it. Hey, guys, we get it. We get it. Look, we know on the list it goes Brian, Tyler, Cohen. Are the gals in Nebraska a couple Midas Touch guys? Maybe somebody who was at the DOJ for Biden 5. You know, there's a long list of people that you gotta get to. There's a historian or two on the list after that. I don't know. I don't know what's happening with that trio, but maybe they're still around Fire Dog Lake. And then you get to us. Pod Save America.

Jon Favreau (72:54)

Fire Dog.

Jon Lovett (72:55)

Remember Fire Dong Lake?

Jon Favreau (72:57)

Yes, of course.

Jon Lovett (72:58)

Fire Dog Lake. What happened to Eshaton?

Jon Favreau (73:00)

Good pull.

Jon Lovett (73:00)

Are they doing Eschaton before they're doing us? What happened to Eshaton?

Jon Favreau (73:05)

I feel like in 2005 Tommy probably had to yell at Fire Dog Lake on behalf of Senator then Senator Obama for some posting Daily Coast Obama probably.

Tommy Vietor (73:13)

Posted like a 5,000 word rebuttal on Daily Coast.

Jon Lovett (73:17)

Joy Reid has a YouTube now we're after Joy. Put us wherever you find it. We'll be here. They know it. What happened to the Ozzy guy? He's doing content. Cause if he's ahead of us, perhaps.

Tommy Vietor (73:31)

Unbelievable.

Jon Lovett (73:33)

See you when we see. I guess. Hope you stop by Crooked Con.

Jon Favreau (73:35)

Perhaps all these people who are interviewing the politicians, after they interview them, they can come on and talk about their interviews with the politicians.

Jon Lovett (73:42)

What do they like? Politicians?

Jon Favreau (73:44)

What do they like? Anyway, I'm out for the later part of this week, but Dan and Alex Wagner will be back with a new show on Friday. I will be looking for a new medved. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Ilic Franklin and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Churlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Kanter is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt de Groat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Hayley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Kirill Pelavica, David Toles and Ryan Young, our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

Jon Lovett (74:59)

These days, you've got two choices.

Jon Favreau (75:01)

Buying a new car or making the.

Tommy Vietor (75:03)

One you've got run like new.

Jon Favreau (75:05)

That's why we have thousands of ASE certified technicians to help you get more out of your car.

Tommy Vietor (75:10)

Firestone Complete Auto Care book now@firestone auto.com what's Poppin listeners?

Jon Lovett (75:17)

I'm Laci Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week I talk with very special.

Sponsor/Advertisement Voice (75:25)

Guests about the scammiest scammers of all time.

Jon Lovett (75:28)

Wanna know about the fake errors? We got em. What about a career con man? We've got them too, guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins. Oh, you know they are represented. Cause matters. I'm joined by guests like Nicole Byer, Ira Madison iii, Conan o', Brien, and more. Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess. Wherever you get your podcasts.