Trumps Wants You To Stop Talking About Epstein

Summary

Pod Save America - Episode Summary: "Trump Wants You To Stop Talking About Epstein"

Release Date: July 15, 2025

In this episode of Pod Save America, hosts Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vietor delve into the escalating controversy surrounding former President Donald Trump’s remarks about Jeffrey Epstein, the ensuing backlash within the MAGA movement, and broader political ramifications. The discussion is structured around several key themes, each explored in depth with notable quotes and timestamps for reference.

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1. Trump’s Epstein Comments and Initial Backlash (03:05 - 04:05)

The episode opens with the hosts addressing Trump’s recent social media post criticizing those questioning the administration's handling of Epstein’s files. Dan Pfeiffer highlights Trump's disparaging remarks:

“Trump went on to accuse anyone who has questions about his administration's decision not to release the Epstein files, quote, selfish people who are trying to hurt him” (03:18).

Tommy Vietor emphasizes the controversial nature of Trump’s statement by noting his odd phrasing:

“So weird. Phrasing is so weird” (03:21).

2. Accusations Against High-Profile Democrats (04:02 - 04:05)

Trump extends his accusations, implicating prominent Democratic figures in the Epstein saga:

“Trump also said that the real authors of the Epstein files are none other than Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden” (04:02).

Dan Pfeiffer adds:

“He also said that the real authors of the Epstein files are none other than Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden” (04:05).

3. MAGA Movement’s Internal Rift (05:04 - 06:41)

The conversation shifts to the internal turmoil within the MAGA movement following Trump’s statements. Charlie Kirk, Laura Loomer, and Benny Johnson emerge as leading voices of dissent. Jon Favreau underscores the severity:

“It's a baseline question that every U.S. citizen has a right to an answer on. What the hell was this?” (05:06).

Tommy Vietor observes:

“It's definitely the biggest MAGA revolt. Also, I guess credit to Turning Point USA for having all those conversations” (06:05).

4. Trump’s Failure to Deliver on Corruption Claims (07:03 - 09:00)

Dan Pfeiffer critiques Trump’s unfulfilled promises to expose a corrupt establishment, emphasizing the fallout from not releasing Epstein’s files:

“Trump's promise when he ran both times was, you know, you elect me and I will expose and destroy this corrupt establishment” (07:03).

Tommy Vietor adds frustration over Trump’s handling:

“He also said, I alone can fix it. And now he's clearly just refusing to follow through on his promise” (09:29).

5. Conspiracy Theories and Public Perception (11:57 - 17:28)

The hosts discuss the proliferation of conspiracy theories within Trump’s base, fueled by the administration’s inconsistent release of information. They highlight a manipulated interview clip where Trump ambiguously addresses declassifying Epstein’s files:

“I think I would” versus the full statement: “I guess I would. I think that less so because, you know, you don't know. You don't want to affect people's lives if it's phony stuff in there, because there's a lot of phony stuff with that whole world” (12:00).

Tommy Vietor criticizes the strategy:

“The Fox edit is wild... I had noticed that his Epstein answers were always, like, way less enthusiastic” (13:25).

6. MAGA Influencers and Their Influence (20:23 - 22:58)

Laura Loomer and other MAGA influencers are scrutinized for their role in intensifying the movement's internal conflict. Dan Pfeiffer notes:

“Laura Loomer, who incredibly first broke the Bongino news, is also calling for a special counsel now to investigate everything” (20:23).

Tommy Vietor expresses concern over their growing influence:

“She's got some influence. She's, like, got some influence” (21:12).

7. Biden’s Auto Pen Pardons and Media Response (48:43 - 54:02)

Shifting focus, the hosts analyze President Joe Biden’s rare interview with the New York Times regarding his administration’s use of the auto pen for mass pardons. They counter Republican narratives that Biden is disinterested in the pardon process:

“The pardons they care about are Hunter, Liz Cheney, the preemptive pardons for the January 6th people, Millie Fauci” (52:53).

Tommy Vietor defends the use of the auto pen as a standard presidential practice:

“Yes, it’s standard. When you have like a thousand... pardoning. Yeah, of course” (52:53).

8. Immigration Detention Centers and “Alligator Alcatraz” (56:00 - 62:32)

The episode critically examines the new Florida detention center, dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," highlighting inhumane conditions reported by lawmakers. Congressman Maxwell Frost describes overcrowded cages and dire sanitation:

“I saw 32 people per cage and heard people yelling, help me, help me. I heard someone else yell I’m a US Citizen” (56:54).

Tommy Vietor condemns the facility:

“It's this facility... like, people in cages that look like dog kennels... It sounds like hell on earth” (58:14).

Dan Pfeiffer connects these practices to broader systemic issues within ICE:

“Horses out of the barn. She's a mover and shaker” (21:10).

9. JD Vance’s Public Appearance and Republican Strategies (64:17 - 71:51)

JD Vance’s visit to Disneyland, where he was booed over immigration policies, is discussed with derision. The hosts mock his public persona and attire while critiquing his stance on immigration:

“He is such a loser... He's such a hypocritical prick” (65:09).

They highlight Vance’s rhetoric on American identity as an "idea," which they argue supports exclusionary and authoritarian policies.

10. Trump’s Ongoing Tariffs and Trade War (30:30 - 47:52)

Donald Trump’s recent policy shifts on Ukraine and new tariff threats against Europe and Mexico are dissected. The hosts express skepticism over the effectiveness and rationale behind the tariffs, citing Trump's inconsistent messaging:

“The deals are already made. The letters are the deals” (41:39).

Tommy Vietor criticizes the lack of clarity and strategic sense:

“Schrodinger's deal. Such nonsense” (42:15).

Dan Pfeiffer underscores the economic repercussions:

“We're paying these taxes and American companies are either eating the tariffs or passing them on in terms for higher prices for consumers” (46:48).

11. Concluding Remarks and Call to Action (75:09 - 76:36)

The hosts conclude by emphasizing the importance of grassroots political engagement through initiatives like Vote Save America, encouraging listeners to participate in local races to build Democratic power.

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Notable Quotes:

• Dan Pfeiffer (03:05): “Trump went on to accuse anyone who has questions about his administration's decision not to release the Epstein files, quote, selfish people who are trying to hurt him.”

• Tommy Vietor (05:24): “They want Dan. How many of you are satisfied? You can clap.”

• Dan Pfeiffer (07:03): “Trump's promise when he ran both times was, you know, you elect me and I will expose and destroy this corrupt establishment.”

• Tommy Vietor (09:29): “He also said, I alone can fix it. And now he's clearly just refusing to follow through on his promise.”

• Tommy Vietor (42:15): “Schrodinger's deal. Such nonsense.”

• Dan Pfeiffer (46:48): “We're paying these taxes and American companies are either eating the tariffs or passing them on in terms for higher prices for consumers.”

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This episode of Pod Save America provides a critical analysis of Donald Trump's handling of the Epstein scandal and its repercussions within his political base. It also examines broader issues related to immigration enforcement, presidential pardon processes, and ongoing trade disputes. Through insightful commentary and robust discussion, the hosts highlight the complexities and challenges facing American politics in 2025.

Transcript

[Jon Favreau]

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[Tommy Vietor]

Possibility means you have a chance. Passion opens the door to all possibilities. When I feel like anything's possible, I feel kind of giddy.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I want to be an astronau, an.

[Tommy Vietor]

Actress to visit another country. All I need is a backpack and a pair of shoes and I'll find a way I'm able to do anything I set my mind to. I've never felt like more things are.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Possible than right now.

[Tommy Vietor]

In the right shoes, anything is possible.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

Foreign welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm Tommy Guthor.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Jon Lovett is still on vacation.

[Tommy Vietor]

Eat Pray Love 2.0.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

He has missed some some good stuff.

[Tommy Vietor]

He's gonna be so pissed when he realizes I wonder if he's doing a news blackout.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

He's he, you know, that's the kind.

[Tommy Vietor]

Of thing that he would do. Well, Tim Miller did a lot.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I wasn't able to do that news blackout.

[Tommy Vietor]

I know during the Epstein week, which is very funny.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Tim. Dan Love it all on vacation during this breaking news. Anyway, there's some other things we're gonna talk about today. We got a Trump flip flop on Ukraine, more tariff threats, Biden's interview with the New York Times on his auto pen pardons. Some good news and some horrifying news on deportations and JD Vance getting booed at the happiest place on earth. But of course, we will start with Epstein. If you had told me a week ago when you and I first did this on last Tuesday's pod, that we would be leading the show with it today a week later, I would not have believed you.

[Tommy Vietor]

You have been psyched.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But here we are. The president dropped a post on Truth Social over the weekend that has only made his fans angrier. He wrote, quote, what's going on with my boys and in some cases, gals.

[Tommy Vietor]

So weird. Phrasing is so weird.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

They're all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a fantastic job. Trump went on to accuse anyone who has questions about his administration's decision not to release the Epstein files, quote, selfish people who are trying to hurt him, quote, over a guy who never dies. Jeffrey Epstein. He also said that the real authors.

[Tommy Vietor]

Pretty sure he's dead.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. That's kind of the controversy, I think. Well, I actually know. I thought that was a clever line, actually. It's like, yeah, he's dead, but he never dies.

[Tommy Vietor]

He lives on.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. Because we're still talking about him. That's sort of how I took it. Anyway, that's just a small, small thing. Trump also said that the real authors of the Epstein files are none other than Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

[Tommy Vietor]

Incredible.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I think Comey was in there, too. Brennan.

[Tommy Vietor]

Sure.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

All the deep state fates, all the hits. Trump's post broke records for the amount of replies it got. Fortunately for him, just about all of them were negative. Meanwhile, there is wagon circling and finger pointing at the Justice Department. Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino took a mental health day on Friday. They called it a mental health day after getting in a fight at the White House with Pam Bondi. CNN reports that Trump is apparently furious with Bongino and it's still unclear whether he'll resign this week, though CNN also reports that he's in a better headspace this week.

[Tommy Vietor]

Sure.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So I guess the mental health day worked. Laura Loomer, who incredibly first broke the Bongino news, is also calling for a special counsel now to investigate everything. And maga's biggest stars, many of whom spoke at the Turning Point USA summit over the Weekend are very publicly expressing their anger towards the White House in a way I don't think we've ever heard. Let's listen in the most polite way.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm like, give us the Epstein list now.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's a baseline question that every U.S. citizen has a right to an answer on. What the hell was this?

[Tommy Vietor]

I hope that President Trump will fix.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

This by firing Pam. Blondie. Who would you guys pre? Gino or Bonnie? Okay, 7,000 to zero.

[Tommy Vietor]

They want Dan. How many of you are satisfied? You can, you can clap.

[Jon Favreau]

Satisfied with the results of the Epstein investigation.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Clap. So. So there's Laura Ingram, Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson. Who else do we hear in there? I think, I think Benny Johnson was.

[Tommy Vietor]

In there, Benny Bannon was there, the whole crew.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Tucker, would you say this is the biggest MAGA revolt Trump has ever faced? Why do you think this has become such a big deal and it has such staying power?

[Tommy Vietor]

It's definitely the biggest MAGA revolt. Also, I guess credit to Turning Point USA for having all those conversations.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Surprise.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's a little surprising, right? Yeah, I mean, I guess they kind of know where their base is and they can't.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Sort of the theme of the whole conference.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I was trying to think about other things that were as unpopular or if they came close. Like obviously the COVID policies were not popular. Like Fauci generally masks vaccines. Anything he said that was nice about immigrants, like the dreamers, led to a reaction from some quarters of the MAGA movement.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

Like there were some other dust ups. Like remember when he, in 2019, he talked about pulling out of Syria and then that pissed off the neocons and then they said, oh, just kidding, we flip flopped. And then that pissed off like Tucker Carlson. Like there were a few, like moments.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The Iran stuff, briefly.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. The Freedom Caucus doesn't like the spending from time to time. But like nothing has united the entire MAGA coalition like this. It is the traditional Fox News Republicans. It's the right wing kind of media influencer class. It's the TPUSAs, the Tucker Carlson's, the Charlie Kirk, the Steve Bannons, and then it's like the far right loony fringe. It's Alex Jones. They're all furious. They're all equally furious. And I think it's a big deal for a lot of reasons. Like, first of all, I think some of them genuinely believe there's an evil cabal of liberals harming children and that they're being protected by the government and they want Trump to do something about it. There are some that think The Epstein list includes all the people they hate the most, namely Bill Clinton, I think Benny Johnson, who for those who don't know, lucky you, he's a multi time plagiarist who got a job at tpusa. Now he outlined a four part plan for how Trump could fix his political problem that includes, quote, dragging Bill Clinton for questioning is step four. Right. So you can tell what he cares about. And then I think others just smell bullshit and they feel insulted. And Pam Bondi going from saying, oh the files are on my desk, I'm reviewing them to there are no files to Obama wrote them is just absurd. Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Trump's sort of like central belief, or at least the belief he encouraged people to have for the last decade, is that there is like a deeply corrupt establishment in politics that like takes care of itself, screws everyone else. Right. The Epstein case is like a prime example of that. The worst example. And his promise when he ran both times, three times, I guess was, you know, you elect me and I will expose and destroy this corrupt establishment.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. Drain the swamp.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And now not only is he not exposing or releasing more of the Epstein files, but I think what's really pissed them off is he's saying if you have questions about it, fuck you. Yeah, shut up, like you're a selfish asshole. And then like, then he's insulting people's intelligence by saying that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, I guess like Candace Owens today was like, I don't think I'll ever forgive Donald Trump for making me defend Barack Obama.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's pretty good, Candace.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But like, I don't know, I think that's a pretty foundational like because it's the first time where they, they were like, oh, he's, he's lying. Like he's lying to me.

[Tommy Vietor]

He's lying. Jeffrey Epstein died in 2019. Barack Obama was probably golfing somewhere.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. And some of his lies, they don't care about cuz they're like, oh, I know he's sort of lying.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You know, like I think you're right. Like for a good chunk of the MAGA base, maybe they don't think that there's a cabal of pedophile Democrats running the world. Right. But they do think that there's a lot of sleaziness in government and that people are covering a lot of shit up because he led them to believe that. And now he's saying, no, no, no, no, no, it's fine.

[Tommy Vietor]

And he also said, I alone can fix it. And now he's clearly just refusing to Follow through on his promise.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I also think, imagine if he, the way he handled this was, look, obviously there's a lot of files, but we gotta protect these victims. And you know, there's just, there's nothing else there. We thought there was something else there. I looked through it all, Justice Department looked, there's nothing else there. And just like left it at that. People would still be pissed. But I think the way he's handled it is so much worse.

[Tommy Vietor]

The rollout has been baffling. You had Pam Bondi saying she was reviewing the files. The files were on my desk. I think that was in February. She invited all those influencers to the White House. She handed them binders that said Epstein files part one or phase one. And they all looked like fools. They were all humiliated when they held.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Them up and did photos around like fucking idiots.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. And then they had Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the FBI and Cash Patel, the director of the FBI do this kind of slow rollout where they started doing interviews where they said, no, actually Jeffrey Epstein did kill himself. And then all of a sudden there's this exclusive report in Axios on a Sunday after July 4th weekend with this two page memo that's like, basically if you keep asking questions, you're part of the problem. And they released this so called tape proving Epstein killed himself. That's missing a minute. And was exported into like Adobe Premiere or whatever, you know, editing software. And like everything about the rollout and execution has been a disaster.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Also I hadn't like, I looked again at the original statement that the Justice Department put out, which of course was like unsigned by anyone. The words they used is there's no incriminating client list. Which is like three. It's like, okay, that's very specific. Like, maybe there's a client list, but it's not incriminating. Maybe it's not a list, maybe it's files. Like, it's just, it was a little too specific to write that.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. Because I guess you can't say there's no client list because he had a job. Right. And he was like a financial something advisor to these creeps.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. And you know, we both, I think have been has started it. Like, oh, it's funny that all these conspiracy minded people are now, you know, pissed off and everything. But then like, maybe we've gone a little bit down the rabbit hole. So last summer, so this has been floating around. Today, Max Taney at Semafor reported that Fox News edited an interview with Trump to remove part of his answer on whether he declassified the Epstein files. What viewers saw on Fox was Trump saying, yeah, I would. But the full answer, which only appeared later, is now going viral. Here it is.

[Tommy Vietor]

Would you declassify the Epstein files? Yeah.

[Donald Trump]

Yeah, I would.

[Jon Favreau]

All right.

[Donald Trump]

I guess I would. I think that less so because, you know, you don't know. You don't want to affect people's lives if it's phony stuff in there, because there's a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would.

[Tommy Vietor]

Or at least do you think that would restore trust? Help restore trust?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Donald Trump]

I don't know about Epstein so much as I do the others, certainly about the way he died. It would be interesting to find out what happened there, because that was a weird situation and the cameras didn't happen to be working, et cetera, et cetera, but yet go a long way toward that one.

[Tommy Vietor]

It'd be interesting.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Now, first of all, first of all, Donald Trump has assured us that a media outlet editing a candidate's answer in the heat of a campaign constitutes the biggest election hoax in history. Indeed, the biggest media scandal in history. So I imagine a lawsuit against Fox and a settlement is forthcoming. Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm not really kidding. Like, Kamala Harris should sue them just for fun.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's a good idea, right?

[Tommy Vietor]

Why not?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Kamala Harris should sue.

[Tommy Vietor]

There's precedent.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. And of course, the interviewer there was Rachel Campos Duffy, who is married to the Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, NASA administrator, former Real World Road Rules co host, and they met there. So that's what's happening there. But, yeah, like, just Trump answering there. But, like, there's some stuff. There's some stuff. We don't want any fake stuff ruining people's reputations.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yes. The Fox edit is wild. I'd never seen the juxtaposition of the long and the short version until recently. That said, I had noticed that his Epstein answers were always, like, way less enthusiastic. When he's asked about the 911 files, he's like, yeah, of course we'll put them out. The JFK stuff answers, no problem with Epstein. There's always hesitation. Like, I remember this from the Lex Friedman podcast. Podcast. This was during the 2024 campaign. Lex says, quote, there's a moment where you had some hesitation about Epstein releasing some of the documents on Epstein. Why the hesitation? Donald Trump says, I don't think. I'm not involved. I never went to his island, fortunately. But a lot of people did. I think they do a little back and forth. So a little bit Later, Lex Freeman says it's just very strange for a lot of people that the list of clients that went to the island has not been made public. Trump says it's very interesting, isn't it? It probably will be, by the way, probably if you're able to. Lex is like, if you're able to release it, will you? And he says, yeah, I'd certainly take a look at it. Now. Kennedy's interesting because that so many years ago they do that for danger bubble. He like, pivots right to Kennedy.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And then he, and then he was also like, and, oh, at least with, on Fox, he was like, and certainly the January six files, certainly, I'll get those out there. I think Trump is genuinely concerned that his name is in the files somewhere, not necessarily as like a client on a client list. And, you know, he's, he seems more sure that he's, oh, I didn't go to the island. Right. But like, why, why bring up the island? Right? Like, so he knows that he's like, he's not on the client list. He didn't go to the island. But he gets, because now he's been through a criminal trial and a few other charges and he's seen indictments. He gets that sometimes your name is mentioned in an indictment or in court records. And even if you, you know, even if you're not charged, even if you're not a co conspirator or sometimes because of hearsay. And so like, he, I think because he was friends with Jeffrey Epstein for so long, because he hung out with him a lot, because he's been on his plane, he thinks he's in there somewhere.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. And we know this. Also, Bill O'Reilly talked to Trump about Epstein recently. I think this was back in March. Bill O'Reilly's quote was, I talked to Trump, man to man, eye to eye on St. Patrick's Day about very uncomfortable. And he said there are a lot of names associated with Epstein that had nothing to do with Epstein's conduct. And he's concerned that if those names get out, those people will be destroyed. So at a bare minimum, he thinks a bunch of his friends are in those records somewhere, and maybe him. I'm with you. Look, I used to think the conspiracy was hiding in plain sight. Jeffrey Epstein was a rich, powerful scumbag who used his money and his connections to get away with horrific, horrific crimes. I just sort of assumed that was the whole thing. But the way Trump has handled this has metastasized this conspiracy in so many different ways. It's kind of hard to keep track of it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

At first I thought it's either Trump or, like, friends that he's worried about. But then I thought to myself, when has Trump ever been concerned about his friends?

[Tommy Vietor]

No, they weren't.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

What friends does he have? This is why I think he. Well, like, this is why I think it's. He's worried about his name. Yeah, he's never been worried about anyone else. Even if he's like, he doesn't even fucking care about his family.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, they knew each other for, like, 20 years. I mean, they hung out in New York, they hung out in Florida. There's video of them. There's Jeffrey Epstein saying hanging out at Mar a Lago. Mar A Lago, like, ogling women on camera. There's a. There's a 2017 quote of Jeffrey Epstein and Michael Wolf where Epstein says he was his closest friend. There was a report that Trump considered pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell in his first term. Like, there's a lot of smoke here.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

There was a report that Trump said at one point, like, oh, Jeffrey likes, likes girls and he likes them young.

[Tommy Vietor]

Verbatim, quote, you said it's like New York Magazine.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes.

[Tommy Vietor]

Great guy, loves beautiful women. Like some really young. Those, like, really creepy.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. So, you know, I think. I think he's got a legitimate concern.

[Tommy Vietor]

Here we go. I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do. And many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, what more do we need?

[Tommy Vietor]

What more do we need?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, this is what it is. Like, this stuff's all out there. So, like, what else is in the files?

[Tommy Vietor]

Right. Can't be worse than that.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

All right, so we're now at the point of. In a typical Trump scandal where, you know, for a week, everyone freaks out and kind of says what they actually believe. But now, you know, word has gone out to MAGA media and influencers that it is time to shut the fuck up.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yes.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And talk about something else. Charlie Kirk, who Trump reportedly asked to tone it down in a phone call over the weekend, said on Monday, quote, I'm done talking about Epstein for the time being, I'm going to trust my friends in the administration. Fox News didn't have a single mention of Epstein as of noon on Monday. And, you know, the DOJ and FBI are saying that everyone's getting along swimmingly now. There's, you know, the cnn, this New CNN report that maybe Bongino's. He's better now and he's reconsidering, quitting. Do you think this will work?

[Tommy Vietor]

No. Although I think CNN reported that No1 senior DOJ had talked to Dan Bongino since Wednesday. So we're kind of like he's back.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

At work today, apparently.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, like we're like yada, yada, yada, ing the part where the deputy FBI director is just not doing his job.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Quiet, quit.

[Tommy Vietor]

I think Trump can silence parts of like the maga, like professional class, like.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The biggest sycophants, right?

[Tommy Vietor]

Like, Charlie Kirk is the perfect example. Like TP USA needs access to Trump officials. It's this symbiotic relationship. I think Charlie will try to like, calm the storm to preserve his relationship, but I just don't think that that is going to work on the rank and file and on the base. And I think that's actually really dangerous for Trump, for maga, for Charlie Kirk, for the country. Because Charlie Kirk's competition is not like the lame, kind of centrist traditional Republicans. It's Nick Fuentes and guys to the far, far right, Nick Fuentes is out there saying, Trump's a joke. MAGA is dead. It's over. This statement, you know, that he put out the other day is ridiculous. And like, I can't remember if I talked to you about this or if it was Ben on Pod Save the World one night because I'm just a sicko. I watched a 2 hour and 40 minute debate on Infowars hosted by Alex Jones between Dinesh d' Souza and Nick Fuentes.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

We have talked on Iran.

[Tommy Vietor]

And look, I was doing my own research and Nick Font is a bad dude. Like, he, like, he's like genuine like questions of the Holocaust, like real like neo Nazi shit. But my takeaway from it was it was a really substantive debate. It did not get ugly. Alex Jones kept jumping in because he wanted them to like, fight each other. More vision. This just, it was like.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And what I came away thought they were just making some good points.

[Tommy Vietor]

What I came away thinking was Fuentes is dangerous, right? Like, if you can, if you can present as reasonable in that context for that long in a debate with someone who is, you know, like Dinesh d'. Souza, I don't respect him. I don't think he's like an honest person, but he's like a professional debater. I think you could convince a lot of people to follow you and that your other like neo Nazi views are maybe, they seem less fringe.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I had that Concern today, seeing what Laura Loomer's been up to, which is she's. She's using her connections in MAGA world to actually break news. And so then people take her a little more seriously because she's breaking news, which is valuable to media outlets and people like us who talk about the news. Right. And then now that she's taken seriously and, like, people go to her for quotes, she can espouse all of her hateful, crazy views.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. I kind of, like, struggle with sometimes. I'm like, should I be retweeting these people? Because I want to make sure reporters all see that there is this, like, tumult within the MAGA movement.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm like. And it's not like, am I platforming her? It's like, should I just be promoting these people generally? And then I remember Laura Loomer got the head of the NSA fired. So, like, yeah, she.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, Horses out of the barn. She's a mover and shaker.

[Tommy Vietor]

She's, like, got some influence.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I do think, you know, he can get Charlie Kirk back on board. And I think Fox will be, like, the people at Fox will be, like, the first to get back on board. Right, Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

But they'll be like, who are you?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I can see the news cycle moving on, because it just does. And he'll do other things and say other things, but this is one of those things that goes, like, back underground into the swamps of the Internet, and it just keeps circulating, and the Nick Fuentes of the world. And Laura, like, there's people who are still gonna be pissed about this for a long time. And next time Trump pisses his base off with something, this will get brought up.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yes. And conspiracy theories like this that are kind of like blobs with no boundaries and amorphous, they just evolved to, like, envelop current events. Like, I think I mentioned to you how I saw some conservative influencers saying that the DOJ memo that went out about Epstein in the first place was timed for Bibi Netanyahu's visit. Because they all think that Epstein was, like, a Mossad asset. And it's just gonna be like, shit like that, like, over and over and over.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Or Naftali Bennett, like, having to respond today, former Prime Minister of Israel, be like, he's not Mossad.

[Tommy Vietor]

I promise he's no ties to Israeli intelligence. Okay.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Okay. Did you see Lara Trump on Benny Johnson's show? Lara Trump said there needs to be more transparency. I think that will happen. I know this is important to the President. He's Going to wanna set things right. I believe there will be more coming and anything they're able to release, they will try to get out. They hear it and understand it. What did you make? I'm interested in that.

[Tommy Vietor]

Interesting. I mean, like the basic demand that seems like it would satisfy someone like Megyn Kelly is. Let me sit down with Pam Bondi, Cash Patel and Dan Bongino for a two hour interview where I get to ask anything I want. Like putting those three in front of a Trump sort of sycophantic journalist makes a lot of sense. Why wouldn't you do that?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I also think that they are not necessarily above putting out fake information or information that is real, but just not the full story. Like, I was sort of not to give them any ideas, but I've been wondering why they don't just like, if there's stuff they're worried about, you know, not release that and then just give, give some chum to everyone on other issues.

[Tommy Vietor]

I think they could definitely do that. My, my guess for why a smart but evil person involved in these conversations would think that's risky is that I think a lot of people have probably seen these files that are kind of in the professional workforce. Yeah, they're in the FBI, like New York office or, you know, they worked on the 2008 case down in Florida. Right. And there's just like a lot of ways it could leak.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, that's true. Dan Bongino, like, how does he stay in the job? You know, he takes the mental health day. He's been doing these podcasts and now he's just going to be like, no, no, no, I'm okay.

[Tommy Vietor]

Just for people who don't know, like, take a second, Google Dan Bongino. He, his head looks like Minecraft. He looks so jacked. He's like a roided up dude. He was a twin. I think there were two Secret Service agents, remember? I mean he was like on Obama's detail for a long guy.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, that's where they wrote, that's where they wrote the Epstein files together.

[Tommy Vietor]

And then Dan ran for office three different times, unsuccessfully, but pivoted to being a very successful podcaster. But he has a crazy temper and anger management problem. And there's this, this clip of him screaming at this reporter named Mark Caputo who now works at Axios, that Caputo published shortly after it happened, where he's just like losing his mind. But to your question, like, the only way Bongino can stay in the job is because ultimately in the Trump world there is One boss, and his name is Donald Trump. And no one else's opinion matters because, like Trump, like the, the, the deputy director job, it's not Senate confirmed. There's not a lot of accountability. Like, Trump announced the pick of both Patel and Bongino, but there's reporting that Patel actually chose Dan to be his deputy and did so after he told, I think it was like the Retired FBI association that he would pick a career FBI officer to serve in that job.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Because what usually happens.

[Tommy Vietor]

Literally every time.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Literally every time or not happen.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, yeah. So he lied. But, like, technically, Dan Bongino reports to doj, he reports to Pam Bondi, and he apparently screamed at his boss in the White House.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You could also see a situation where Bongino stays in the job for now and then tries to just, like, leave in a couple months because of something else, or at least tries to claim that it was for some other reason.

[Tommy Vietor]

Ambassador Lichtenstein.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

More mental health days.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Democrats in Congress like Ro Khanna and Mark Veazey of Texas want to force a vote on legislation that would require DOJ to release all the files. What do you think?

[Tommy Vietor]

I like it. I mean, Rose trying to attach his amendment to this cryptocurrency bill that's kind of sailing through the House. I think it'll get voted down because they'll claim it's like non germane to the underlying legislation is if that is like, prevented them from doing this in the past. But I think any as many bad votes for Republicans on this issue is good. I support the, the other proposals as well. I think, like the obvious caveats. Right. You don't want to release anything that would put out information about the victims and harm them. You don't want to do anything that would help Ghislaine Maxwell get her case thrown out on appeal. So did you. I didn't realize this until today. Apparently DOJ has until today, July 14, to respond to her appeal because she wants to go up to the Supreme Court and the Trump Solicitor General has delayed their response to her demands twice.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I also saw that she, like, sources say she's willing to offer more testimony.

[Tommy Vietor]

About this to Congress.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

To Congress.

[Tommy Vietor]

Let's fire up the zoom.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

This is why I like the vote thing too, is because either Mike Johnson tries to block the vote and which is gonna just piss off the base even more, or he allows the vote. And I think that thing passes because there's enough Republicans, House Republicans who are pissed about this that you could see it passing. And then you could imagine DOJ Stonewalling and just saying, like, fuck you, we're not releasing it. Like, I don't care what Congress says. But at the very least, I think they get pressure to like have Cash Bongino Bondi come to the Hill and testify like that. That has to be coming.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, those guys, I mean, I think statutorily will have to go to the Hill at some point.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Right, right.

[Tommy Vietor]

There's the yearly threat assessment hearing or there's like general routine committee oversight hearing. So they're going to be up on the Hill at some point anyway. And Democrats in those settings should ask about nothing but this over and over and over again.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And ideally, like a Democrat should reach out to some crazy Republican who's pissed about this and sort of like coordinate questions, no doubt. And just be like, on this issue, let's kind of, you know, work together.

[Tommy Vietor]

No doubt. But like Ghislaine Maxwell, she. She is arguing that the 2008 non prosecution agreement that was given to Jeffrey Epstein included all of her associates and should have prevented her prosecution in this latest case. So that she's trying to get that to go to the Supreme Court. You have to imagine her lawyer is also trying to get some sort of appeal, as politically untenable as that would be. And maybe once it is confirmed that that will not be happening, hence the delays, she decides to speak her truth to some journalist somewhere.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Just wait till Trump hardens her on his way out the door just to just. And also just fucks J.D. vance's campaign.

[Tommy Vietor]

Absolutely. That's an ending couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

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[Tommy Vietor]

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[Tommy Vietor]

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[Tommy Vietor]

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

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[Tommy Vietor]

Does that sound crazy? And it doesn't hurt that you're gorgeous. Okay, that's it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

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[Tommy Vietor]

How far are you willing to go.

[Jon Favreau]

If Putin were to escalate, send more.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Bombs in the coming days?

[Donald Trump]

Don't ask me a question like that. How far? I want to get the war settled. You know, we want to defend our country, but, you know, ultimately, having a strong Europe is a very good thing.

[Tommy Vietor]

How did you tell Putin this was coming?

[Donald Trump]

I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done, and I always hang up and say, well, that was a nice phone call. And then missiles launched into Kiev or some other city. And I said, strange. And after that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn't mean anything. He's. I don't want to say he's an assassin, but he's a tough guy. It's been proven over the years. He's fooled a lot of people. He fooled Bush. He fooled a lot of people. He fooled Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden. He didn't fool me.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Oh, he didn't fool you, huh?

[Tommy Vietor]

Sure.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It seems weird, which is why now you're changing. Now you're changing pretty significant Reversal in Trump's stance on Ukraine. Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. Also, like, he always sounds like he just googled Ukraine for the first time.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

When he talks about this.

[Tommy Vietor]

Or like Googled Putin for the first time. I didn't know. This guy's such a dick. Some people say he was kgb. Yeah. You know, when I first, like, my views on this have been evolving throughout the day. It's obviously a massive tonal shift.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

How many weeks ago was it months ago, where we just had the Oval meeting with Zelensky where Trump and Vance were screaming at him.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. Basically beat him up, punched him in the Oval.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Now it's like, well, I don't know.

[Tommy Vietor]

You said thank you. Yeah. It's not totally clear to me what. How much of a substantive shift it is quite yet. So, like, the messaging has gone from, as you said, gone from like, I'll end the war in 24 hours to I'll dick around for six months and then solve in 50 days. But if you think back to the 2022 messaging, like, remember right after the full scale invasion, he said he wouldn't call it illegal, and he called Putin genius and called it savvy. Remember that?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Oh, my God, I forgot. I know.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's, like, shocking when you think about it. And then the campaign messaging on this was kind of predicated on accusing Biden of starting World War 3, especially when the Biden administration let Ukraine hit targets with our long range missile systems that were inside Russia. But then in February, there's that Oval Office meeting you're talking about. There was that weird moment where he said, putin went through hell with me. Remember that? Talking about the Mueller probe. And so the tone today, it seems like Putin has just humiliated him and humiliated him, and the First Lady's giving him shit about it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, that was part of it. Yeah. I don't think that was in the clip that we just played, but he's like, yeah. And I. I get off the phone with Putin and I go, I go home and I say it was a nice call. And then Melania's like, well, he just bombed another city.

[Tommy Vietor]

Good for Melania. Yeah, good on you, Melania. But, yeah, so, like, so in the last few weeks, there was this weird announcement from the Pentagon where they said weapons shipments to Ukraine were paused, and then Trump reversed the pause. And now he's saying like, okay, we're gonna send more weapons. We're gonna do it through NATO. And also after 50 days, I'll put in 100% secondary sanctions on these other countries that do business with Russia. But none of this has happened yet, so we'll see. Like, one expert I talked to today said he thinks this is basically the Europeans sending Ukraine weapon systems and will agree to backfill them by selling them the stuff back to the Euros. Now that's not nothing because like the Europeans can get Ukraine stuff fast and they probably wouldn't send the high end systems like the Patriot missile defense batteries if they didn't have a guarantee that they would get replaced because it's like very long lead times.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

And the head of NATO, Mark Ruta, who's in the meeting with Biden, said we're talking about air defense missiles in ammunition. So it does sound like it's not just defensive capabilities, but it's just like, I'll believe it when I see it. And also the guy coordinating it is Matt Whitaker, Remember him?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Oh, gosh, yeah. Remember, wasn't he in a. Was he an Attorney general at one point?

[Tommy Vietor]

He was the acting Attorney General.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Right, Yeah, I know.

[Tommy Vietor]

Acting attorney general from November 2018 to February 2019, who was famous because he was on the board of a company that sold the big dick toilet.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The big dick toilet guy.

[Tommy Vietor]

Remember, it was a masculine toilet.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Matt Whitaker, big dick toilet.

[Tommy Vietor]

So if you were a well endowed man and traditional toilets just didn't have the space between seat to water that you needed to stay dry, he had you covered. Although I think the company was.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Who among us has not needed a big dick toilet?

[Tommy Vietor]

Listen. Yeah. I think the company was ultimately shut down by the FTC because it was a scam.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Oh, surprise. That's crazy. That's crazy. Well, hopefully, hopefully we're selling just weapons and not the big dick toilets to.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, maybe they need them. Free policy.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Fuck. I kind of feel like Trump was like reverse polarized against Putin or he was negatively polarized against Putin because of the Mueller probe. Right?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And so it was like, they're coming after me for Putin, so now I'm gonna defend Putin.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Because I like Putin.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And also he's a tough guy and he loves dictators. Right. So like Trump loves strongmen, loves authoritarians, and he's mad at the Democrats because he thinks they invented a Russia hoax. Even though Russia was trying to help him win, he didn't intervene. Yes.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And so, and then over the years, now that he's, now that he's talking about this war, he's like, oh, this guy's kind of a dick.

[Tommy Vietor]

This guy sucks.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. He didn't fool me. He fooled Obama and he fooled Bush and he fooled all the other ones. But he hasn't fooled me. He is kind of a dick.

[Tommy Vietor]

It is weird strategically for Putin because, like, he would get off the phone with Trump, they called, they Talked on like July 3rd, and then July 4th, he launches the most missiles and drones he's ever launched at Ukraine. And they're, they're not hitting military targets, they're just hitting high rise buildings in like, Kiev. And for a long time, you know, if you were in the capital, you were relatively safe compared to the east of the country because of the Patriot systems. But they're just running out of interceptor missiles and, and Russia can also sort of overwhelm them if they fire enough of these shitty Iranian drones in addition to ballistic missiles. So, like, tons of innocent people are getting killed.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, it's, it's possible that they're aging, authoritarian, also acts on impulse and is not necessarily playing 3D chess.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, that's well said. And is a prick. And ultimately his kind of, his mission is not just taking territory in Ukraine. It's kind of like undercutting the entire American system and NATO and our values and the idea that democracy is better.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. And I, and I think that there is part of Trump that doesn't like to see a lot of war. Not necessarily because he believes in peace and he want, he cares about people all over the world, but because he knows that war is messy and that it looks bad. Right. This is like how, I think this is how he feels about Gaza and how he felt about Iran. Like, anything I can do to just get wars over, to just like, get all the mess off the screens because people don't like war. I think he probably thinks like that.

[Tommy Vietor]

I agree with that. I mean, his latest thing is trying to take credit for all these kind of ceasefire deals and peace agreements and say he like, deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Dying for that peace prize.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. Like, there was an agreement between Congo and Rwanda that like, has a ceasefire and a conflict there. But, like, the devil's in the details. And like, when you look at the substance of the deal, it's basically just another mineral extraction deal for the US for these rare earths. And like, the main militant group, the M23, was not a party to it and have not said they would agree to it. So it's like when you, like, dig one inch below the surface, it's all. But I agree with you, like, he doesn't. I do think there's a part of him that is genuinely think, like, knows politically war is bad.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes, exactly.

[Tommy Vietor]

He's Trying to pull US troops back from abroad, whether it's Europe or Syria or whatever.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

He knows it's bad politics. Can you just say when I was listening to you guys on Pod Save the World the other week and I hadn't heard the clip of when Bibi tells Trump that he is nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. And then Trump says, that means so much, especially coming from you. I was listening in public and I laughed so hard, people were looking at me.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's like SMAN just bombed Iran.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Indicted by the.

[Tommy Vietor]

Indicted by ICC indicted war criminal has killed at least 55,000. No. It's just so absurd. Like, you literally can't believe it. Like there's, there's literally. And by the way, the Nobel committee is like five academics.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. Five random Norwegians.

[Tommy Vietor]

They're not like political.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Which by the way, crazy way to decide a Peace Prize anyway. But, like, that's neither here nor there.

[Tommy Vietor]

True.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. Yeah. It's wild.

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[Tommy Vietor]

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

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[Tommy Vietor]

An artist, be an actress to visit another country. All I need is a backpack and a pair of shoes and I'll find a way I'm able to do anything I set my mind to. I've never felt like more things are.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

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[Tommy Vietor]

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

Speaking of Europe, let's talk about Trump's on again, off again trade war. On Saturday, he announced that Europe and Mexico will face 30% tariffs starting August 1st. The Europeans are like, we were negotiating. I don't know what the hell happened. This is after a week where Trump just sent a bunch of letters to different countries informing them of the tax rate we'll be imposing on ourselves when buying their products, including a 50% tariff on Brazil. That's because Trump is mad at them for putting fellow coup attempter Jair Bolsonaro on trial. Whether or not Trump actually goes through with all of this, always a mystery. The tariffs we're currently paying are already higher than they've been in a hundred years. Here's what Trump said in the Oval Office on Monday about all of this.

[Donald Trump]

You know, I watched the show this morning. They were talking about, well, when's he going to make the deal? The deals are already made. The letters are the deals. The deals are made. There are no deals are made. They would like to do a different kind of a deal. And we're always open to talk. We are open to talk. Including Key Europe.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The letters are the deals. But we're also willing to do more deals if they're willing to talk. Unless we're not. Because the letters are deals. But they're not deals, they're letters. Does that make sense to you?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yes. Schrodinger's deal. Such nonsense. It'd be nice if people just followed up like, sir, sir, what the fuck were you talking about just then?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's such a ridiculous fucking thing that we all have to pretend is serious or that just because this is the President, United States. But it's like he's sending these letters that are basically truth social posts on White House letterhead to countries informing them that we will be levying a tax again on ourselves for all of their products.

[Tommy Vietor]

And he's just that way.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And he's just shooting. And then there's no rhyme or reason. What's his face? Kevin Hassett, his economic advisor, was on TV and John Carl of ABC was asking him, he's like, so why is he doing all this? I thought there were gonna be deals. And he's like, well, look, he thinks this is, you know, this is good for the United States and the United States has been ripped off. And this is how he has the authority to do this. It's because of a, it's a national security emergency that we're being ripped off and we need to have these supply chains, the United States. And then John's like, okay, well then what about Brazil? Because he said that was just because of Bolsonaro and the trial. And he's like, like I said, like most countries, most countries, it's overall, it's about fairness. And he's like, but that has nothing to do with anything.

[Tommy Vietor]

Just to hammer home your point about the seriousness of these letters, like the one to the President of Bosnia Herzegovina misgendered the president, so not a good start. But yeah, I think I'm glad you brought up the Brazil example because that one, to me, I think kind of like epitomizes the absurdity of the whole process because the initial Liberation Day tariffs were just based on the US Trade deficit with all these countries.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

Like Trump thinks trade deficits are bad. If we buy more stuff from a country than we sell to them, we're getting ripped off. And we're mad about that and we're angry. But the United States hasn't had a trade deficit with Brazil since 2007. We did the current, the USTR, the United States trade representative website right now today says we did 92 billion in trade with Brazil in 2024, that the US trade surplus with Brazil is $7.4 billion. But like you said, we're going to slap a 50% tariff on Brazil because the former right wing president is being prosecuted for trying to overthrow the current democratically elected government.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

We have a free trade deal passed by Congress in place with South Korea. Free trade, that means no tariffs, no Tax on imports, exports going either way, and he's slapping a tariff on South Korea. Why? We don't know.

[Tommy Vietor]

And just imagine you're them. You're like, what do I do?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

What do we do?

[Tommy Vietor]

What do we do? And again, you justify these tariffs by claiming under this law, aipa, that there is a national security emergency that necessitates this tariff. So the national security emergency in the case of Brazil is that we don't like how Brazilian courts are prosecuting a case.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So here's my question. We are heading towards a situation where we might not have, like, Liberation Day level tariffs, but pretty close in most of these countries now, if we're doing 50% in Brazil and 30% in the EU and all this kind of shit. So, like, the markets are pretty calm. What do you think's going on there?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, they're just like ripping lines at Taco. Like, they just, they don't think, like, I think they think Trump likes the leverage of tariffs. I think he likes getting to announce stuff. I think he likes looking like he's taking action. Yeah, but they don't think he's really going to do it. I think the, I think the economic and political damage is longer term. Like, so just like one more quick thing on, on, on the Brazil piece, like, the thing we all agree on in Washington, right, is that China is the real threat. So one thing China buys from us in huge numbers is soybeans. We're talking like 15, 17 billion dollars per year. But after the 2018 US China trade war, China started looking to Brazil for soybeans. Since then, that relationship has only increased. So in practice, our chair of policy has hurt farmers in the US While driving China closer to the biggest country in South America. What are we doing? What is the point of this?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It really is. He likes having the power. Like when he was saying that line in April and May about like, you know, I can charge what I want. We're the world's store. Like, we set the prices. He likes the idea that he is, at least in his mind, running the world and that United States, because we're the biggest economy in the world, we have leverage over these other countries and can treat them however we want, though he's still not understanding that, again, we are paying these taxes and American companies are either eating the tariffs or passing them on in terms for higher prices for consumers. And because this hasn't hit yet, because the, the tariffs, the cost of the tariffs really haven't factored into the economic numbers that we're getting just yet. But they will.

[Tommy Vietor]

They will eventually.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Especially if he goes through with this August 1st deadline, which who knows? And then what he's gonna be left with is, of course, saying, this has nothing to do with the tariffs. It's Jerome Powell's fault. He should be cutting interest rates.

[Tommy Vietor]

Exactly, exactly. And I think the markets are hoping that'll happen. They don't want Jerome Powell fired, but they do want a rate cut. And the kind of signal to the world is the way you get a deal is you wait until Eric Trump visits and then you announce a $1.5 billion luxury golf and residential development project like Vietnam did. Yes. And then things work out.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, it definitely. I mean, there's. There's the personal corruption, there's the. I want them to change a policy on X, Y or Z. He's, like, pissed at the EU over some of their digital laws that they, you know, like, he's just. It's a total shakedown and he just wants to be in control.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But at some point, if he keeps backing off, the threats, these come. These countries are going to be like, why would I negotiate? Who the fuck cares? This guy just keeps backing off. So it's like, it's not even a good negotiating stance from Donald Trump's perspective. Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

And a lot of these countries are better positioned now to respond than they were in the first Trump term. Like, for example, in 2024, the EU put in place a mechanism that would allow them to respond to, like, coercive economic behavior. And they did this because of Trump's tariffs and because of shit that China was pulling on various countries. Like, if you, like, if you, like, recognize the existence of Taiwan, for example, and you're like, Lithuania, like a tiny little country, they'll just hammer you. So now they have this way of kind of end running the WTO process to leverage their own kind of retaliatory economic policies if we fuck with them. And so, like, it's kind of a ticking time bomb.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, well, we'll see what happens August 1st. So in the midst of Trump's worst news cycle in recent memory, guess who popped his head up to give Fox News something else to talk about?

[Tommy Vietor]

Elmo.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That also is true.

[Tommy Vietor]

Google it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, yeah. Someone hacked Elmo's account. It's really. It's troubling. Wild. No, no, it's Joe Biden, a man who always has the most exquisite timing. The former president decided that now is the perfect time to finally address Republicans investigation into his administration's use of the auto pen. So he granted a Rare interview with the New York Times where he said that he, quote, made every decision, end quote, about his widespread pardons and clemency and that the only reason the auto pen was used to execute them was because, quote, there was a lot of them, which is standard practice at the White House when signing hundreds of documents. The interview was part of a larger Times investigation into Biden's use of the auto pen, which also found that Biden approved clemency actions for groups of people rather than individuals, another common White House practice. What do you think of Biden's decision to do the interview and more importantly, the substance of what he said about the pardons and the auto pen?

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm not ready to not be mad about the timing quite yet. Okay. Reading the story, it seemed like someone leaked the Times a bunch of emails, right, that they somehow got about the decision making process within the Biden White House. And they probably went to the Biden team and was like, we're going to run something on this with or without your comment. And so Joe Biden jumped on the phone with them.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But like, and Neera had testified. Neera Tanden had testified about auto pen. Right? So there was. It was out in. That was like two weeks ago. I can't remember. But anyway, it's been out there, right? Like the auto pen stuff. So the Biden's folks who don't like him to do any interviews with anyone just decided, okay, I guess you can jump in on this.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. Does no one just say, hey, you know what, guys? It seems like Trump's having the worst week or two of his political career since January six at least. Maybe we just punt on this or we tell the Times, we'll take care of you down the road. Like, like the timing was so insanely fucking unhelpful, so frustrating.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's like, do you see in that the Tyler Pager's new book and Josh Dossey about the2024 election? They called Biden for an interview because they got his, like, Tyler got a hold of his cell and then they called him and got him to talk a little bit. And then Biden's staff was so mad that they changed his cell number.

[Tommy Vietor]

They called him, he was like, Biden's like, I'm getting on a plane. He's like, Jill Yell, choo choo do the whistle noise. Yeah, it was crazy. It was so funny that they changed his number and they screamed, these reporters.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So who knows how the decision was made.

[Tommy Vietor]

Okay, sorry, we'll get back to the substance. I Mean, there's a couple different buckets of issues. We've expressed frustration on past episodes about the Biden's pardons of his own family and the messages sent and how it made Democrats look like hypocrites and how they were like kind of some, you know, perceived enemies of Trump who got pardons but not others. And it seemed unfair. But that's kind of like a separate bucket. Right. Like, we don't need to revisit that unless you want to. But the allegation here is the Republicans are making is that he was essentially brain dead and that he doesn't know who he pardoned and his rogue staff was really running the country. And I just think that's ridiculous.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, and let's be clear. The pardons that they care about. Right. The pardons they care about is Hunter, Liz Cheney, the preemptive pardons for the January 6th people, Millie Fauci, they're pissed about those because they want to go after those people.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yes. And so it's clearly an effort to undo, like, clemency decisions about Trump's political enemies. Frankly, the fact that Republicans are doing this kind of validates what Joe Biden did in the first place.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right. But, you know, you're also seeing Republicans, like, try to make a big deal out of this idea that Biden signed off on categories of people to pardon and not every individual. And that is dumb. I've not personally talked to someone who handled the pardon process, but, like, I think it's pretty standard to say I'm reducing the sentences of non violent marijuana offenders through this time period. You're not gonna have Joe Biden read through a list of names of people he's never heard of before and, like, check them off.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. Nor sign every single document for those. That is a perfect case for an auto pen.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yes. Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

When you have like a thousand, let's say low level offenders that you're pardoning. Yeah, of course.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yes. Now, the kicker on the New York Times story was that Hunter's pardon was the only one that Joe Biden signed with his own hand during that kind of period. That, that was not the best detail, I guess would be my take.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I want to make sure that one you do by hand for sure.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Take care of. That's a tough one.

[Tommy Vietor]

I do hope, like, are reporters digging into how often and in, like, kind of what use cases, Trump uses the auto pen.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's been reported that he has used it, like, all the time.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Not like, but like, as every single president does use an auto Pen. It's such a weird scandal to, like, those of us who've been in government, like, forget it. Even about before we got to the White House, like, in the Senate office with Obama, there was an autopen. There was every. Like, they all use auto pens. Yes. There's a ton of shit to sign. There's constituent mail. There's everything. Like, no politician has the time to fucking sit there and sign everything. Especially if you're the President of the United States. Yeah, it's absurd.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's not like 1953. We're not like, banks aren't comparing signature records on your checks. Like, I draw a fucking circle on the. On the receipt thing.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

One squiggly line is Jon Favreau. That's all I got.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's so stupid. And listeners will probably be like, okay, you're belittling. This is the presidency we're talking about again. Like, you're like. You're doing, like, millions of executive orders and all these. Like, Trump. The difference between Trump, I guess, and previous presidents is that he views every executive order or document he signs as a press event. And so he does it in front of the cameras.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

This time around. Yeah, right.

[Tommy Vietor]

This time around. But not last time, right?

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

All right, let's end on the latest news on deportations. On Saturday, Ron DeSantis finally allowed election officials to inspect the new Florida detention center that he and Trump call Alligator Alcatraz. But this was only after the lawmakers sued DeSantis for blocking access. The tour was heavily restricted. They weren't allowed to speak with detainees or examine any occupied cells up close. But the lawmakers described what they saw as, quote, vile, inhumane, gross, and likened it to an internment camp. Democratic Congressman Maxwell Frost said he saw 32 people per cage and heard people yelling, help me, help me. He heard someone else yell, I'm a US Citizen.

[Tommy Vietor]

Jesus.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Sure enough, the Miami Herald reported that over 250 people being held at the facility have no criminal record. There's about 900 people right now, 250 with no criminal record. I think there was another 250 to 300 who have who their criminal record is like traffic violations, lower level crimes, and then a third that are who the Department of Homeland Security and ICE And Florida officials say they're going after the worst of the worst, people with violent crimes. So one lawyer said her client is a dreamer with legal status, could not believe when she heard the news that her client was an alligator Alcatraz. Because she's like, this person is a DACA recipient. They have legal status, been here for years and years and years, shocked that they ended up there. Other lawyers said they can't get access to their clients. And when they call, they get like a runaround. And no one is like telling them how to talk to their clients. Family members say their loved ones report power outages, sweltering, hot conditions, broken toilets, feces all over the place, worms in the food, trouble getting medication, not being able to take showers. Awful. I don't know what has your reaction been to the reports coming out of this place from now? Elected officials, lawyers, journalists, family members.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I mean, it is awful, but it's also not surprising. I mean, I think they built Alligator ALCATRAZ in like eight days.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

And like you said, I mean, 250 people out of 700 have no criminal conviction or charges. Like, these are not the worst of the worst. And like, I. Look, Trump was like kind of goofing around when he talked about how, like, you have to learn to run in a zigzag if you escape from Alligator Alcatraz because alligators are going to eat you. But like, we are talking about like, killing people who did nothing wrong except for like maybe overstay a visa or, you know, at worst, or American citizens who got, got wrongly swept up. I mean, it's just, this is a facility. It's not a. It's not a facility. It's tents and trailers. Yep. It's people in cages that look like dog kennels. You go five days without showering. There's toilets are overflowing. Like it's in the Florida Everglades. Can you imagine what it is like on July 14th? So hot, swampy. Like there's mosquitoes everywhere. It sounds like hell on earth.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I saw that, you know, our pal Jesse Waters and the five, they were like making fun of the complaints about mosquitoes. They're like, oh, no, mosquitoes are biting. Google this. There's reporters, like local reporters, television reporters in Florida who've been just near the facility, Right. Like, not even inside. And they can't even speak in their live hits because the mosquitoes are in their mouth. Jesus Christ. And this reporter's like, torture. He's like, he's wearing this hood and this heavy jacket and he's like, you're probably wondering why I'm wearing this heavy jacket and this hood in 90 degree weather here. It's because I can't walk without getting just eaten alive by mosquitoes. And that's just the mosquitoes. That's not. And then there's the worms and the food and the feces and the toilets that aren't working and the showers that aren't working, the power outages. I mean, it is fucking disgusting. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she was one of the lawmakers who went. She was like, look, there's another immigration detention center in Miami Dade that like, the people being held there can walk from building to building. They're like, allowed to go outside. There's like, better meals. She's like, it's not like this has, this is not like what detention centers are supposed to be.

[Tommy Vietor]

It doesn't need to be this way. And what happens when there's a storm or a hurricane? You know, it's like, it's crazy. And like the lawyers can't get in touch with these people. You're just getting lost in this system that is like Kafkaesque by design. And this is, you know, this is the Ghost of Christmas future. I mean, like Kristi Noem says she's in touch with five Republican governors about building facilities like this. This is what we should expect will be done with the billions and billions of dollars in ICE funding that was just passed by Congress. And by the way, I'm not like seeing a lot of coverage of plans to triple resources for the immigration court system or hire a bunch of immigration judges to actually speed up the process. It's just like the plan is to build the shittiest prisons in the world, get a bunch of private prison companies paid in the process, and then let people rot.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, and so here's what a lot of these immigration lawyers are concerned about. And this is what they think they're doing, which is make the condition so horrible that they are forcing people who go there to agree to self deport or to give up their asylum claims. Because you can like sign a document and say, like, all right, I'm out. And then that's how they just get people out. So that's how they clear the backlog. Instead of actually hiring more judges to hear these people's asylum claims, they're just putting them in horrible conditions to force them out of the country. Stephen Miller also, like went on Fox and encouraged other red states like Christina Ms. To build their own. And of course, if you're a red state and you're like some politicians like fucking the Attorney General in Florida, whose brainchild this was Uthmeyer, you get attention, right? Like, you do this, you become a star. It helps your political career. And so of course other red states are gonna do this. And the other challenge now is this is in a legal gray area, because it is when ICE and DHS are called for comment about this shit, they're like, well, we're not running this. This is the state of Florida. And so ICE is like, oh, there's no federal oversight. Even though they're getting federal money from the. They're gonna be able to get reimbursed and get more federal money from the bill. So they get federal money to do this, but then the federal Government and ICE gets to say, we don't know. We don't know what's going on there. And that's why some of these lawyers can't even get access to their clients.

[Tommy Vietor]

I think this has kind of always been part of, kind of the big picture plan was to almost build a parallel process.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yep.

[Tommy Vietor]

Sort of outside of the traditional immigration structures and laws and processes that demand accountability or have a little bit of oversight and just do shit like this.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. There was also some deportation news here in California over the weekend. On Friday, a federal judge in Los Angeles temporarily blocked federal agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests in California. The judge found that a person's race, language, job or location does not constitute, quote, reasonable suspicion and therefore violates the Fourth Amendment, which protects people against unreasonable search and seizure. The judge also issued a separate ruling that bars the federal government from restricting attorney access at Los Angeles deportation facilities. Stephen Miller took the news in stride by accusing the judge of waging an insurrection against the United States. Real, real chill. But JD Vance apparently thinks that Southern California is still safe enough for a family vacation. He spent the weekend here at Disneyland where he was booed by other people at the park, mostly over deportations. In fairness. In fairness to JD Though, he did gift all of us this incredibly entertaining video of him attempting to run. Do you think that was his first time running? Did he have. Did he have weights in his shoes?

[Tommy Vietor]

I can't wait till he issues some like 2000 word outrage, self righteous tweet about, I was going to check on my child.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Like, yeah, well, he should have got to the kid faster if he didn't run like that.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's also, you know, I think our friend Peter Hamby has long clocked that JD Just has a really weird kind of walk motion. It's sort of like a hand forward kind of.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And also anytime the guy is out of a suit, it's like, what is he? His fashion sense.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Very troubling.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. I think you said he dresses like he's going to a club in 2008, but in, like, Orlando. Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes. Is exactly right. It was exactly right.

[Tommy Vietor]

He sucks. That guy is so annoying. He's such a hypocritical prick. Like, and yet, you know what? Like, as a general matter, do I think it's. I don't know, like, it'll probably just make him dig in further. I don't care.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

Like, let's make fun of him.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

He. He got booed at Disneyland. Newsome tweeted like, oh, I hope you're. Hope you're enjoying your vacation. The families you're ripping apart aren't. And then, like, Stephen Miller went in on Newsom and was like, the governor of California thinks the only way you can staff Disneyland is with mass migration.

[Tommy Vietor]

I was just like, what?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

What?

[Tommy Vietor]

Talking about Mickey Minnie.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And then J.D. vance, you know, responded to Newsom and just said, thanks.

[Tommy Vietor]

He's such a loser.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean.

[Tommy Vietor]

And the White House communications director said something like, really horrible and personal about Gavin Newsom. Just like, shocking. But, yeah, look, I don't know. He's such an asshole. I'm glad. First of all, shout out to Gavin's. We're talking to him tomorrow for his podcast. I don't know if we're supposed to announce that or not, but we just did. But I would say this to his face. Cause I really believe it. His team's social media presence and, like, aggressiveness and punching has been very fun to watch the last six months or so.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, it's been great.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's like he's. They're. They're really going after it. And it's not like the sometimes cheesy cringy DNC version.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's like they're doing some funny stuff.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. It's not corny. It's not. Yeah, no, it's just. They're just taking shots.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Democrats have gotten better. I'll say that the Democrats account has gotten better over the last couple.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, they're just taking a page from Trump's book. Right. They're being a little inflammatory. They're getting attention. They're picking fights, like, all the things it takes to go viral. I thought, you know, Dan Pfeiffer's conversation. Dan Pfeiffer. Dan's conversation with Mark Cuban about all of this, I thought was really smart over the weekend.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Very smart. What do you make of the immigration rulings we got and. And Miller's response? Like, it is, you know, I took it as, yes, some good news. But of course, you know, they're going to appeal it, so who knows?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I mean, I think what people. Like, we live in la, and I think what people need to understand about what this. What ICE is doing is just terrorizing communities all across California, especially in Los Angeles. Like, their parks near my house are empty because, you know, there used to be lots of Latino families there. And, like, they're not. A lot of them were citizens, a lot of them were, you know, high green cards. But now people are just scared to go out in public. Because there might be an ICE raid. And I think maybe this is popular with, like, 20% of the country. But, like, Normie Republicans even are saying, this is not what I voted for. Like Joe Rogan, Theo Vaughn, Andrew Schultzer. Like, we voted to get criminals out of the country. Not people who have been here for 20 years who are working really hard.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You, for fun, like to listen to debates that Alex Jones has moderates with with Nick Fuentes. In my spare time yesterday, on Sunday, beautiful day out, I sat outside and I listened to Dasha Burns interview with Tom Homan on the Playbook podcast.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's mean to you. Why'd you do that?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I don't know. Cause I, you know, I was like, what? What is Tom Ho. And he's such a fucking liar. His whole response to her about all this was, there is no profiling. What happens is we're going after the worst of the worst. We have lists of people that we're going after. And if while we're going after those people, we happen to see other immigrants who are here without status, who are undocumented, of course we're gonna scoop them up, too. But we're not intentionally going after people who aren't the worst of the worst. We're starting with the worst of the worst. And I'm like, that. It's just like, it's not true. Like, local officials don't believe that's true. The courts don't believe that's true. The videos that people are seeing with their own fucking eyes don't believe that's true. When ICE officers are like, oh, I got a lot today. I hit the. I hit the number today. Trump's really. Trump's really driving us. Stephen Miller's really driving us on how to get these deportations. It's like, what the fuck are you talking about, man?

[Tommy Vietor]

This is entirely happening because Stephen Miller shouted at people at ICE and told them they need to get rid of more migrants. I don't understand it. Like, look, this is Stephen Miller's project. It's the only thing he's passionate about. So I understand why the administration is doing it politically. I actually think it's stupid. I don't think anyone really wants this. I think Trump could be going to the border saying, I closed it down. What a great success I am, and then just slowly, methodically, actually get out criminals without, you know, collapsing industries and, like, chasing people through fields at farms in California. I'm going to racially profile for a second, and I'm going to say that Tom Homan is a thug who's like a wannabe, like, Tony Soprano, community theater impersonator. Have you seen him? Like, whenever he goes to does a little press conference, he walks out and he pops out his sleeve and he starts twisting his fucking pinky ring. He's a big, tough guy.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

He is. And he, listening to him yesterday, I was like, oh, he really believes. He, like, he has internalized all of this stuff.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, they all believe it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

They all believe it. You know, he really thinks, like, you don't know what I' seen in my career and some of the violence and whatever. It's like, I'm sure, I'm sure there are some undocumented immigrants here, just like there are American citizens who've committed horrible fucking crimes and should be held accountable 100%. But, like, that is not what we're all seeing on these videos.

[Tommy Vietor]

It just doesn't justify doing anything.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

One last thing. Wasn't sure where to put this, but Trump also posted the following on Saturday morning, bright and early, Quote, because of the fact that Rosie o' Donnell is not in the best interests of our great country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her citizenship. She is a threat to humanity and should remain in the wonderful country of Ireland if they want her. Is that how citizenship works? Tommy, you lose your citizenship if the president doesn't like you.

[Tommy Vietor]

Imagine you're Rosie O' Donnell in 2006. You pick a fight with Donald Trump on the View. Now this guy is the president, and.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

He'S like, it's like that Domino meme.

[Tommy Vietor]

You criticize his handling of that year's like, Miss USA Pageant. And all of a sudden this man's like, trying to strip your citizenship. Like, it, it's, it's like there's something that's funny about, it's almost like OG Trump, right? Like, this was his original kind of bit, was like picking fights with her and being just a prick. But like, it is fascism to just strip citizenship from people.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's, it's, it's funny and crazy, but underlying it is a very dangerous project that they are engaged in. And you know the announcement the other week that they are. I think you and Lovett talked about it on the pod, kicking up the denaturalization process. Now, denaturalization, even if you try to denaturalize someone, you can only denaturalize someone who was an immigrant and became a citizen here. This is like, oh, this is an American citizen who was born here, and now he's just trying to denaturalize. Rosie o' Donnell and whether he's joking or not, he's at least putting out there that I'm the president and I get to decide who is a citizen and who is it.

[Tommy Vietor]

And I think he called it a threat to humanity, which means I'm gonna kill you, as far as I can tell. I mean, also, she moved to Ireland in part because she is a non binary child and I think has a completely justified concern about this administration's policies and the way that they are not just trying to target her child legally, but also constantly demagogue these kids in the cruelest way possible. Like the President of the United States is the meanest bully possible. And he's like, punches down at like kids, at like trans athletes in high school.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And I don't think this is just a Trump thing. Like, we know it's Stephen Miller. I think JD like this project where the federal government gets to define who is an American and who isn't. Right. Like, for a long time, Trumpy people and Republicans have tried to say, like, oh, we're patriotic, you're not, whatever. But the, this project, which is actually like, we get to decide who's a citizen and who should stay and who should leave.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So this was sort of went unnoticed. But J.D. vance, he gave a speech at the Claremont Institute on July 5th out here, right. Very conservative think tank, super right wing. Yeah. And in that speech, and I guess because it was like a day after July 4th, this was on his mind, he said, and I saw this at Talking Points Memo reported on this, he said, identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let's say, of the Declaration of Independence. That's a definition that would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree with the principles of the Declaration. But conceiving American citizenship purely as an idea would reject a lot of people that the adl, the Anti Defamation League, would label as domestic extremists, even though those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Civil War. So this is JD Vance now saying the idea that we're all created equal, everyone's endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that the idea America is an idea. And he alluded to this in his convention speech, too. The whole America is an idea and its principles. And like everyone who wants to believe in American ideals has a chance to become a citizen. They don't like this. And you're seeing this a lot more now that they're like, oh, the Declaration of Independence and the whole thing that we're all created equal. This is not this is not what America's supposed to be. America is blood and soil and your ancestors and, you know, just because your relatives were confederates and stuff like that, like, just because they didn't believe in equality, that doesn't mean that they don't have a right to this land. I mean, it's an extremely dangerous idea that has been circulating on the far, far right for a while now, and now is being given voice by the Vice President, United States, the president who's threatening to fucking revoke Rosie o' Donnell citizenship, and Stephen Miller who's been doing this project his whole life.

[Tommy Vietor]

And they're all into this, like, goofball Curtis Yarvin who believes we need to return to a monarchy.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yep.

[Tommy Vietor]

Because that'll end well. Yeah. I mean, they've been doing this kind of revisionist history project for a while. I mean, remember after the 1619 project came out from the New York Times, they lost their minds and they created this thing called the 1776 Commission, which put forward a more patriotic, you know, view of, you know, history. America's founding and it is North Korea shit. You know, like, like every, like, government, every country tells its own story. You know, I don't mean to overstate it, but, you know, the blood and soil nationalism is, is a dangerous, dangerous game.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And it is the, it is the center of the authoritarian project. Yeah, right. That, that, that they have in this country and then other countries too, which is like, you know, there's, there's racism, there's xenophobia, there's sexism, there's all of it. But at the core, it's, if you're on our team and you're loyal to us, you can stay. If you're not, if you challenge us, you have to go.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. And also if you look like us, you're welcome. And if you don't, you gotta leave. Even if you have legal status. I mean, look at all the TPS designations. Like, you know, we're sending people from Haiti back to their country and saying it's safe, but saying it's unsafe for white farmers in South Africa, so they're welcome to this country as refugees.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. So keep running. J.D. vance.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, he's the worst.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

He's the worst. There's a new polo today. They did a Republican primary poll for 2028. Echelon did. And he's, he's running away with it right now. Way, way out there from Ron DeSantis, which you kind of. It's all name ID, name ID. But he. But like, crush Ron DeSantis.

[Tommy Vietor]

What if Don Jr. Will take him on? Or Eric went to the FT and like floated that he thought he might run for president someday or that his family is another political brother.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Good free work. Good for you. Best of luck. All right, one quick note before we go. Last week, Vote Save America launched a brand new pilot program to recruit candidates in Arizona, North Carolina and Texas. We're talking school board, city council, state legislature. These are local races that first of all, a lot of them, there's not a Democratic candidate. And so you know you can't win if you don't run. So we need to fill those slots with, with Democratic candidates. And this is the way to win local and state races to like build long term Democratic power, especially in these purple states. And we're kicking things. We, first of all, we have been overwhelmed. It's incredible with the response.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's amazing.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Like you and I, we never thought like our team at Vote Save America, you know, conceived of this and they've done such a great job, but I didn't think the response would be this great.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's wild, it's extraordinary. And, well, it tells you there's a lot of, like, amazing people who listen to this show who have just done a lot and gotten really politically engaged over the years and are excited to take that next step. And thank you for considering that. There's room for more. There's room for a lot more.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Way more.

[Tommy Vietor]

We need to run a Democrat in every race at every level because that's how you build power at the local level and that's how you build a bench for the party for the long term and kind of groom the next generation of leaders.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And VSA is doing a live call this Wednesday, July 16th to sort of kick things off. And I guess you're joining, right?

[Tommy Vietor]

I'll be there. I can't wait.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Perfect. So if you've even thought about running, or even if you haven't but now you're interested, this is where to start. Sign up for the kickoff call and learn [e-mail] Running Run paid for by Vote Save America. You can learn [e-mail] and this ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. All right, that is our show for today. Dan's back from vacation and he and I will be back on your feet on Friday. See you then. If you want to listen to POD Save America ad free or get access to our subscriber discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our friends at the pod [e-mail] friends or subscribers subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed. Also, please consider leaving us a review to help boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Ilick, Frank 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, Carol Pelaviev, David Toles and Ryan Young, our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America eas.

[Tommy Vietor]

The world is on the brink. Wars, contentious elections, disinformation spreading at warp speed, and Donald Trump at the center of all of it. But what does it mean for the rest of us? Every week on Pots of the World, Tommy Vitor and I cut through the noise to explain how global power is shifting. No jargon, no homework, just clear, honest conversations about what's happening and why it matters. Matters. From breaking news to long, simmering international conflicts, we dissect it all with critical analysis and some jokes that will surely embarrass our children one day. Tune in to Pod Save the World every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts or catch it on YouTube.