Congress Is Back! And So Are The Epstein Files | Nov 12, 2025 Episode

Summary

The Joy Reid Show

Episode Title: Congress Is Back! And So Are The Epstein Files
Host: Joy-Ann Reid
Date: November 13, 2025

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EPISODE OVERVIEW

Theme:
Joy Reid unpacks a whirlwind day as Congress returns after a protracted break. The episode delivers sharp analysis and real-time excerpts from House committee hearings, with a focus on accountability around the shutdown and the resurgence of the Jeffrey Epstein files in the national spotlight. The conversation also dives deep into Trump-era economic policies, SNAP benefits, the struggle within Democratic leadership, and the fight over transparency in government, culminating in an extended segment about the political and legal intrigue surrounding the release of Epstein-related documents.

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KEY DISCUSSION POINTS & INSIGHTS

1. Congress Returns After 54 Days—Accountability and Tension

• [00:01–04:33]
  Joy opens by highlighting Congress’s return after a “mandated” 54-day break, emphasizing the lack of legislative progress and skewering House Republicans for their "historic paid vacation."
• Notable Exchange:
  Rep. Jim McGovern (MA) calls out the GOP:

  “We started handing out missing person posters. Nobody has seen you for eight weeks. But hey, I’m glad you survived your nice two-month paid vacation while Democrats stayed in Washington to try to end this shutdown.” [01:42]

  • McGovern confronts Republicans for failing their constituents on healthcare, cost of living, and prioritizing billionaires over working Americans.
  • The host and guests point out that, despite attacks on Obamacare, its approval rating dwarfs Trump’s.

2. Committee Clashes—GOP Defensiveness and Democratic Probing

• [05:13–10:07]
  Clips from the House Rules Committee illustrate pointed questioning by Rep. Joe Neguse (CO) of Republican leadership, especially Chair Tom Cole (OK) and Rep. Chip Roy (TX).
• Memorable Moment:
  Neguse exposes Republican hypocrisy in decrying government shutdowns they themselves instigated, quoting Roy’s previous statements about "exacting tyranny."
• Exposé:
  Representatives pressed on whether they had real constituent engagement during the recess—no in-person town halls, just “tele-town halls.”

3. Economic Hardship and Trump’s Tariff Policies

• [10:08–12:47]
  McGovern rails against Trump’s tariffs, calling them a “hidden tax” on everyday Americans, and ridicules Trump’s claims about understanding household struggles:

  “He says food prices are way down. That’s coming from a guy who dines on caviar at Mar-a-Lago… Trump is literally renovating his bathroom in marble and gold... while regular people are getting letters saying their health care premiums are going up by a thousand bucks.” [10:21]

4. Food Assistance, SNAP, and Executive Cruelty

• [13:12–16:53]
  Joined by LaTosha Brown (Black Voters Matter Fund), the show spotlights the Trump administration’s refusal to release already-allocated SNAP funds. Reid and Brown detail how Trump appealed to the Supreme Court to block food stamp distribution, even when lower courts mandated it.
  • Brown’s indictment:

    “He wants people to suffer. The chaos is the point. While he’s building a gilded gold dining room, 42 million people are struggling to understand where they're going to get their food from.” [13:59]

5. Strategic Surrender on Health Care—Policy and Party Failures

• [16:53–22:33]
  The fallout from Democrats conceding on healthcare negotiations is dissected, including an interview segment with Sen. John Fetterman (PA) whose shifting, rambling justification draws scorn:

  “He couldn’t even articulate a real solid, compelling argument because there is none. The bottom line is you don’t have any courage... You have been captured and corrupted.” – LaTosha Brown [22:33]

6. Organizing Consumer Power—#WeAintBuyingIt

• [23:23–30:18]
  Brown announces the “We Ain’t Buying It” campaign—a planned action leveraging Black, Latino, Asian, and white consumer spending power over Thanksgiving weekend as both a protest and tactic against corporate complicity in authoritarianism.
  • Instructions:
    "On Thursday: Spend time with your family, don’t spend a dime. Black Friday: make it a Blackout Friday. Saturday/Sunday: shop small/local/minority-owned businesses. Monday: No Amazon/Cyber Monday boycott." [28:43]

7. Epstein Files—Political Intrigue, Document Leaks, and Trump’s Ties

• [33:32–67:34]
  The rest of the episode is dominated by the long-delayed release of Epstein documents.
  • Key revelation:
    Three critical emails directly undercut Trump’s claims of ignorance regarding Epstein’s activities, suggesting both knowledge and efforts by his circle to “craft an answer” if confronted.
  • Interview with Lev Parnas—former Trump donor now whistleblower:
    • Parnas affirms Trump had deep knowledge of Epstein, and details interlocking relationships among billionaires, journalists, and power brokers implicated by the emails.
    • Parnas:

      “Now we know that Donald Trump lied for a fact, because Donald Trump… has been coming out saying he’s never been to Epstein Island. Now, we know he has been in Epstein’s house for several hours with a minor.” [48:40]

    • Discussion on possible efforts to pressure representatives into retracting support for full disclosure.

8. The "Clean CR" Lie—Backroom Deals & Senatorial Self-Dealing

• [68:44–77:55]
  Exposé on the so-called “clean” Continuing Resolution (CR) to end the shutdown:
  • Republicans (with a handful of Democrats and 1 independent) inserted a provision retroactively allowing eight GOP senators to sue for $500k apiece if their phone records were subpoenaed in January 6th investigations, with payments coming from public funds.
  • Rep. McGovern:

    “Now we have an earmark on steroids… This money, hundreds of thousands… possibly millions, goes directly to… specific Republican senators. This is corrupt and it’s disgusting.” [73:35]

  • Guest Ezra Levin (Indivisible):

    “We have now sent a message to the regime that if you cause enough pain, we will give in.” [83:21]

9. Democratic Leadership and the Limits of “Normalcy”

• [93:24–100:00]
  Reid and guests sharply critique Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democratic leadership as out-of-step with a moment that requires aggressive resistance to right-wing authoritarianism.
  • Host’s thesis:
    "This is the 30s, not the 90s, Chuck... If you can't see that and you can't get that, you can't lead the party." [98:00]

10. The Broader Narrative—Oligarchy, Fascism, and the Stakes

• [100:00–119:38]
  Joy ties together oligarchic wealth redistribution (via the Trump tax cuts), the weaponizing of hunger, and the protection of powerful wrongdoers as evidence of a crime syndicate-like regime—urging listeners to recognize the existential crisis for American democracy.

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MEMORABLE QUOTES & MOMENTS

• [01:42] Rep. Jim McGovern:
  “We actually started handing out missing person posters. Nobody has seen you for eight weeks.”

• [10:21] Rep. Jim McGovern:
  “Trump is literally renovating his bathroom in marble and gold and posting about it on social media while regular people are getting letters saying their health care premiums are going up by a thousand bucks.”

• [13:59] LaTosha Brown:
  “The chaos is the point. While he is over there building a gilded gold dining room... 42 million people... are struggling to understand where they’re going to get their food from.”

• [22:33] LaTosha Brown (about Fetterman):
  “You don’t have any courage. You want to operate where you’re independent and you have been captured and corrupted, and now you’re capitulating to this administration.”

• [48:40] Lev Parnas:
  “Now we know that Donald Trump lied for a fact, because Donald Trump… has been coming out saying he’s never been to Epstein Island. Now, we know he has been in Epstein’s house for several hours with a minor.”

• [83:21] Ezra Levin:
  “We have now sent a message to the regime that if you cause enough pain, we will give in.”

• [116:19] Hakeem Jeffries:
  “You’ve been out for seven weeks. You don’t have the time to have a back and forth. We hear you rant for a few minutes, basically threaten to repeal the Affordable Care Act and then don’t want to defend that position.”

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TIMESTAMPS FOR IMPORTANT SEGMENTS

• [01:42] McGovern opens the critique of Republican absenteeism, healthcare implications
• [05:13–10:07] Neguse and GOP in Rules Committee: town halls and "meaningful work"
• [12:47–13:59] SNAP benefits & food insecurity—Trump's executive cruelty
• [22:33] Fetterman’s meandering defense and Brown's sharp rebuke
• [28:43–30:18] 'We Ain’t Buying It' campaign details (Thanksgiving–Cyber Monday)
• [33:32–67:34] Epstein files leak, key emails, conversation with Lev Parnas
• [73:35] House explodes at GOP senators’ $500k “coup bonus”
• [79:05–80:47] Ezra Levin: primarying Democrats and reviving leadership
• [116:19] Hakeem Jeffries challenges Republican evasiveness

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CLOSING: THE MOMENT OF JOY

[119:38–122:12]
A poignant counterpoint—video of President Obama surprising veterans on an Honor Flight, offering thanks:

“As we approach Veterans Day, I wanted to stop by and just say thank you for your extraordinary service... The sacrifices that all of you made to protect our country is something that will always be honored and we are very grateful.” – Barack Obama

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SUMMARY CONCLUSION

Joy Reid’s Nov. 13, 2025 show offers a sweeping, unsparing survey of Congressional dysfunction, policy cruelty, and the high-stakes political battles still to shape 2025. Through congressional audio, interviews, and guest analysis, Joy paints a picture of a country at an extraordinary crossroads: Americans squeezed economically, a political class riven by scandal and self-dealing, and the threat of autocracy fueled by secrecy, oligarchy, and the calculated starvation of millions. The episode urges listeners to organize, use both political and consumer power, and—above all—reject the normalization of corruption and fascism.

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Resource Links Mentioned:

• We Ain’t Buying It campaign
• Indivisible

If you want to understand what just happened as Congress returned, who is angling for what, and why the Epstein files matter—a must-listen Joy Reid breakdown.

Transcript

[Joy Reid]

This episode is brought to you by Netflix from the creator of Homeland. Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys star in the new Netflix series the Beast in Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences. The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt, justice and doubt. You will not want to miss this. The Beast In Me launches November 13th only on Netflix. Okay. Evening everybody. Happy Wednesday. Welcome to the Joy Reed Show. A big up to everybody that's listening on YouTube, on Substack, and if you're listening on one of the podcast purveyors, Spotify or iHeart or wherever you're listening to it. Thank you for being here. We appreciate everybody that is on Team tjr as you all are extra special, but everyone who's watching and listening is special. We appreciate every one of you. Well, we are here after 54 days off paid vacation as mandated by the speaker of the House. Congress is back in session. The House is back in session. They were back today. So I want to show you all how that went on in a couple of committees today, how that played out the the folks returning. Here's how it went. First, the first person you're going to hear from is Massachusetts Democratic Representative Jim McGovern, and he's the ranking member of the House Rules Committee. And in this clip that I want to show you, he's confronting the chair of that committee, North Carolina Congresswoman Virginia Fox. And this is A1.

[Representative Jim McGovern]

Hello, Madam Chair, welcome back. Long time no see. I hardly recognize you guys. Where the hell have you been? It's good to see you back on cap back in the Capitol building. We've been looking everywhere for you guys. I mean, seriously, we were worried. We actually started handing out missing person posters. Nobody has seen you for eight weeks. But hey, I'm glad that you're okay. I'm glad that you survived your nice two month paid vacation while Democrats stayed in Washington to try to end this shutdown. I mean, have you heard from anybody in your district who has seen their health premiums double or triple? I mean, I mean, and what do you tell these people? I heard that their own tough luck.

[Joy Reid]

And you know, Mr. McGovern, I'll answer, okay. No, I have not. But I heard when Obamacare was put.

[Latasha Brown]

In effect how horrible Obamacare was.

[Joy Reid]

Mr. McGovern, I'm answering your question.

[Latasha Brown]

I heard how awful Obamacare was when.

[Joy Reid]

It went into effect.

[Latasha Brown]

I hear from people all the time.

[Joy Reid]

Not just now, but for the last several years, how their insurance premiums have gone up over and over again.

[Representative Jim McGovern]

You know, the approval rating of the Affordable Care act is like 65% and Donald Trump's approval rating is at 37%. I'm happy to go down to your district, we do a joint town hall together and listen to people tell us their health care stories. But I can't go back to my constituents, just tell them, mcgovern, screw you, you're on your own.

[Representative Tom Cole]

We're not going to help Mr. McGovern.

[Latasha Brown]

It's mine.

[Joy Reid]

That's literally what they were saying.

[Ezra Levin]

It's not a solution. That's just printing more money while trying.

[Representative Joe Neguse]

To go run campaign ads while you shut the government down for very clearly.

[Ezra Levin]

And obviously political purposes.

[Representative Joe Neguse]

I yield back, manager.

[Representative Jim McGovern]

Madam Chair, I wish the gentleman had that passion condemning the $40 billion bailout of Argentina, the right wing cuckoo clock in Argentina. I wish he wish. I wish he had the passion to condemn that. Mr. McGovern, you don't even have, you don't even have a health care plan. You've been promising one for over a decade and we've never seen it because it doesn't exist. Or maybe it's simply just hiding behind the missing appropriation bills that this Republican majority hasn't passed. I don't know. But what I do know is this, Republicans have been in charge for 292 days. That's 292 days to do something, anything, to lower costs, to bring down prices, to make America more affordable, to do something about health care tariffs, grocery prices, rent or heating bills. And what did you do? You handed out tax breaks to billionaires and took the longest paid vacation in modern history.

[Joy Reid]

Fair firm, but fair. Representative Jim McGovern, one of my favorites in the Congress. He's quite effective. Okay, next up in the same committee, House Rules Committee, we call him the big negoo. Congressman Joe Ngoos of the great state of Colorado confronting two Republican members. You're going to hear Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma and Texas's pro hanging, slash lynching Rep. Chiproy. And if you don't remember him, he's the guy who once nominated Byron Donalds of Florida to be House speaker in air quotes just to counteract the nomination of Hakeem Jeffries, literally on the basis of both men being black. So that's who that guy is. So here are those exchanges.

[Representative Joe Neguse]

I just have to start. Chairman Cole, I have a number of probing questions, but before I ask you some questions, I have to address some of the comments made by the gentleman from Texas. I'm just going to Read a quote. And I do this because I actually don't think I could find a quote like this from Chairman Cole. So in some respects, although I disagree with, you know, much of his testimony, but he certainly has more clean hands than some of my other colleagues. Quote, let's not fund a government that's going to be exacting tyranny over our American brothers and sisters. Full length of the interview is available here, and some key quotes are below. This is from the gentleman from Texas. Mr. Roy's website, November of 2021. Should any Republican vote to fund an executive branch? In other words, should Article 1, Congress, which has the power of the purse as the founders gave us, should we give any dollars to the executive branch or President Biden to issue unconstitutional and lawful mandates that are causing people to have to choose between their livelihoods and getting a vaccine which they don't want. Let's stand united. Let's not do what these 13 Republicans did last Friday and go side with Nancy Pelosi. Let's not fund a government that's going to be exacting tyranny over our American brothers and sisters. This is for Mr. Roy. Spare me, Mr. Roy. It's my time. It's my time. You certainly made that clear with the Chairwoman. Spare us. Mr. Cole, perhaps, I think, as I said, can have some clean hands to talk to us about this particular set of circumstances we find ourselves in. You cannot. There might be other colleagues of yours, I think, who might share Mr. Cole's world of view, but I don't know, I thought I've heard everything in Congress. But to hear my colleague from Texas, you know, his indignation about the government shutdown as he instigated, tried to instigate shutdown after shutdown just three years ago, four years ago. We're not. This is in distant memory. Let's talk about the last 54 days. So the speaker, he said something that was fascinating. I thought it was a really interesting quote, if I can find it.

[Representative Jim McGovern]

Here we go.

[Representative Joe Neguse]

Yeah, that was interesting. So the quote is, House Republicans are doing some of the most meaningful work of their careers. They are in their districts. I don't want to pull them away from that. You agree with the Speaker's comments?

[Representative Tom Cole]

I don't speak for the speaker, but I don't disagree with him.

[Ezra Levin]

Look, we're waiting.

[Joy Reid]

No, no, no, no.

[Representative Jim McGovern]

That's not the question.

[Joy Reid]

That's not the question.

[Representative Joe Neguse]

You answered it. You answered it.

[Joy Reid]

Okay.

[Representative Joe Neguse]

So, Chairman, it sounds like you're saying that you agree that this with the Speaker, Republican members Were. Were doing some of the most, quote, meaningful work of their careers during that 54 days. I assume you were here in Washington and back in Oklahoma.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Ezra Levin]

Right.

[Representative Joe Neguse]

Did you have any in person town halls?

[Joy Reid]

No. None.

[Latasha Brown]

54 days.

[Representative Tom Cole]

Did several tele.

[Ezra Levin]

Town halls.

[Representative Joe Neguse]

Teletown halls. But you've done in person town halls before? I know that to be true. Why not? 54 days is a long time. Not one town hall?

[Joy Reid]

Nope.

[Representative Joe Neguse]

Did you visit any of the federal facilities?

[Joy Reid]

Oh, I visited federal facilities.

[Representative Tom Cole]

I've done multiple meetings with chambers of commerce, Rotary clubs. It's been highly visible.

[Representative Joe Neguse]

I don't know if you heard my colleague, Ms. Fishbach. She took great umbrage at this notion that, you know, that Republicans were somehow on vacation. Did you make it down to the Mar A Lago Halloween party?

[Representative Tom Cole]

No.

[Representative Joe Neguse]

You didn't get the invitation to the Gatsby invite? I don't know.

[Ezra Levin]

It'll be interesting.

[Representative Joe Neguse]

I don't know if any of her colleagues here on the other side of the dais made it down there. It strikes me that it would be hard to Describe the last 54 days, at least from what I've seen as meaningful work on the part of my colleagues in the House Republican Conference. But, you know, again, those are. That's something you'll have to defend, and folks will defend to their constituents.

[Joy Reid]

The Great Negus, we call them the Big Negoos is what we call them from Colorado. If you guys are not familiar with him, you should be. And by the way, the reason that Tom Cole was sitting there on the. In the place where he's being questioned is that Tom Cole is the chairman of the very important Appropriations Committee. And what Appropriations Committee means is they're the ones who are technically supposed to be writing all the checks and deciding how the money is spent. Appropriations is one of the greatest power. It is actually the greatest power granted by the eminent founders to the Article 1 branch, which is Congress. So they're the ones who are supposed to be. Not on vacation, not just. They're supposed to be deciding what money Trump is allowed to spend. But he was like, I was in my district. Were you doing any town halls? No. Okay, let's hear. Not a. Not a one. I didn't want to talk. I did some teletown halls. I called some folks and let them call me on Zoom. Okay.

[Representative Joe Neguse]

All right.

[Joy Reid]

Tom Cole. Good. Let's hear one more clip from our friend Representative McGovern. And in this one, he calls out the President, who to which you're going to see the president respond with tacky golden fixtures.

[Representative Jim McGovern]

What's happening? Trump's reckless tariffs continue to wreak havoc on the economy. He says food prices are way down. That's coming from a guy who dines on caviar at Mar a Lago. He's never shopped for groceries a day in his life. He doesn't have to pick between plastic or paper. But his tariffs are costing the average American household over a $1200 this year. And next year it will be $1600. That's money for groceries, for bills, for rent taken out of the American people's wallets. And he's not even hiding it. He's rubbing it in. Trump is literally renovating his bathroom in marble and gold and posting about it on social media while regular people are getting letters saying that their health care premiums are going up by a thousand bucks. People are struggling to stay afloat. And this guy is golfing. He had Air Force One fly over a football game. How much did that cost? And then giving your donors a fancy new ballroom at the White House while moms and dads can't afford to put food on the table. And speaking of putting food on the table, Trump illegally withheld food assistance from 42 million Americans. Kids, veterans, seniors, working families. Two federal court orders demanded that he pay out these benefits in full. But he would rather appeal to the highest court in the land to starve people out than to simply provide them with the food assistance that he is legally obligated to send to American families. Like, who does that? I mean, that's the Republican policy position. We'll give you your food if you let us take away your health care. I mean, who the hell thinks like that?

[Representative Joe Neguse]

A lot of people are wondering who.

[Representative Tom Cole]

Which child would be the best, certain way. They all could. Take a look at this, fellas. You want to see?

[Joy Reid]

Or Ingram of Fox.

[Representative Tom Cole]

Like the sign? Most people just do a sign. They paint it on the wall.

[Joy Reid]

Look at it.

[Representative Tom Cole]

So that's half inch thick bronze carved by a very talented person. And it's brass. It's pure brass. It's half inch thick brass. And you can't just do that. You know, you look at that, that's quality, right? And then we start with George Washington and we go down to Trump. Pretty cool, right?

[Joy Reid]

No, no, no, it's not pretty cool. It's pretty tacky. Donald, why did Mind Shifter say that? What? Trump shops for his wifeies and he shopped at the Kit Kat Club. Apparently that's where he got Melania. Joining me now is Latasha Brown. Co founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund. And I hope it's okay for me to say birthday queen. She's turning young.

[Representative Jim McGovern]

Young.

[Joy Reid]

Happy birthday, Latasha. Yes, thank you.

[Latasha Brown]

And then we gotta do a shout out to our sister and fellow machete. Today is her birthday. Brittany Pack. Nick Cunningham. We're gonna shout out scorp. This is scorpio season.

[Joy Reid]

It's scorpio season. They're incorrigible. What are we gonna do with these Scorpios? Happy birthday, Brittany Technic Cunningham. We hope you're having a wonderful and incredible day. Yes. It's missing Machete day. Machete night. So let's talk about this for a second because I feel like Representative McGovern really nailed it in the sense that he called out Donald Trump, who just this week claimed that you have to use ID to buy groceries and gas, proving that he's never actually been in a grocery store in his life or bought gas. Right. He doesn't think about it. And yet you had Republicans try to claim Democrats were keeping people from getting food stamps when literally. Let's put this update in a 4. Donald Trump appealed all the way to the Supreme Court so that his branch could avoid paying food stamps. Giving people their food stamps.

[Latasha Brown]

That's right. He went through extraordinary measures to not pay even when he is. He had a court order. Even when the lower courts said that. No, you got to. The federal courts told him that he needed to. To use the contingency fund. Because what people may or may not know is there's 6 billion DOL that's been set aside as an emergency contingency fund. This didn't even have to be an issue. They could have used contingency fund while they worked this out. But he wants people to suffer. We need to understand the chaos is the point. While he is over there building a gilded gold dining room. The truth of the matter is he can care less about the 42 million people who are really struggling around understanding where they're going to get their food from. And so we've got to really understand who he is. Like really understand who he is. He's not entertaining. We put it in a. Like he's entertaining. And that's just what he do. No, he is actually hurting and harming people. Like something as basic. If we ain't pissed off about this food, like this man is building a 300 million dollar dining room, personal dining room. And our. And 42 million people don't know. And. And we're saying 42 million. But the truth of the matter. We're looking at kids. We're looking at extended families in the month of November. Not only is November the month for Scorpios, because it is, but November is month of Thanksgiving. This is the month that out of all of the holidays, the holiday that is centered around giving thanks for food and having access to your basic needs is this month. And so he would be so callous to care less about that. That sends a message that sums up who he is. We don't need to see any other further evidence of who this man is.

[Representative Jim McGovern]

Right.

[Joy Reid]

And, and we've said this on this podcast before, but I have to reiterate it again. The SNAP benefits running out of money had nothing to do with the shutdown because it is the executive branch that controls the Department of Agriculture. And they had an independent authority and a legal mandate to take the contingency fund that Congress already gave them $6 billion sitting there that could pay and fully fund SNAP. They literally, Donald Trump, he did, went all the way to the Supreme Court to say, I don't want to pay that. That was not the shutdown, folks. But I don't think that everyone, even in Congress, understands how all of this works since it is machete night and we've bigged up Brittany Packnett Cunningham. We've bigged you up, my good sister. Let's go to one more machete. Let's watch Sonny Austin attempt to reason with the maga, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman about his support to cave on this question of healthcare. Horrific mistake. Governor Gavin Newsom called it pathetic and a surrender for poll after poll found more Americans on both sides of the aisle blaming Republicans. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene blamed the gop.

[Latasha Brown]

As you mentioned, Democrats had big wins last week, so you had momentum. Why give in now?

[Joy Reid]

Why bring a butter knife to a gunfight? Are you willing to gamble that the GOP will negotiate on health care in.

[Latasha Brown]

Good faith once the government reopens?

[Joy Reid]

Because if that gamble is wrong, half a million Pennsylvanians that you represent, their health care costs will skyrocket.

[Latasha Brown]

If you are wrong, and I believe you are wrong.

[Senator John Fetterman]

Well, first of all, you know, MTG is quite literally the last person in America that I'm going to take advice or to get their kinds of my leadership and values from. And now if Democrats are celebrating crazy pants like that, then that's on them. And I don't need, and I don't need a lecture. I don't need a lecture from, from whether it's Bernie or the governor in California because they are representing very Deep blue, blue kinds of populations. And a lot of those things, a lot of those things were part of the extreme. And now, remember, what really needs to win, to win, the big win, is involving my state and other states and those things. And why have we arrived here after the election a year ago? We want to forget, we got to forget some of the things that cost us that election. Or now for me, it's like, that's why I'm trying to remind people that kinds of the extreme extremism, we can't return to those kinds of things and realize we need to find a way forward. And I would like to, rather than cite mtg, I'm going to cite one of the new governor elects saying that my election is not a green light to continue this shutdown. Because I promise you, this isn't a political game. It is viewed by that, by many of us. But the reality is 42 million Americans now not sure where their next meal is going to come from. And because we vote like that, vote like that, or people that haven't been paid for five weeks now, and that kinds of chaos, those workers borrow more than half a billion dollars, you know, from their credit union just to pay their bills now. So. So for me, we're in the middle of this.

[Representative Tom Cole]

Senator, I got to ask you to hold up.

[Joy Reid]

Okay, so this is the question I have for you. Latasha, he included, it sounded like he thinks that SNAP benefits not getting paid are quote, unquote, because of the way we voted. He doesn't even seem to understand that this is an executive branch issue. And also that was a whole word salad. Did you understand what he was talking about?

[Latasha Brown]

He understands he's lying. Let's just call it what it is. He is. He is straight up lying with the people in Pennsylvania that he knows need these benefits. He also understands he's been in there. Part of the reason why he was incoherent is because he's incoherent, that fundamentally what he is doing is capitulating to Trump and the power of Trump. And he basically said it. What he basically said was these elections, we had extreme elections. He's basically saying that he's making a decision around what he thinks is best for his seat. No, partner, you're in that position to serve the people of Pennsylvania. The truth of the matter is he couldn't possibly think that here it is. Someone that does not want to support SNAP benefits in the interim is also his who has been rallying, has been rallying saying that he wants to cut these programs Permanently in the big beautiful bill, it cuts. And even in his own state, it cuts food and it cuts even school lunches for children around the nation. So he's not serious about that. This has a lot to do with one, this is what we're seeing, the kind of cowardiceness that we're seeing. We've got to hold him accountable. Number two, even what his, his posture around. Nobody's supposed to lecture me. No, you're in public office. You, we pay you to listen to us. Who, how dare you mean? Nobody's supposed to lecture you. You just supposed to do your job. Do your job. And so what he's not doing is he's not protecting the interest of folks long term to get a short term win because this is a challenge. The truth of the matter is, what is he getting out of it, Joy? Like what are, what is Pennsylvania getting out of it? That ultimately here you are all of this time you're capitulating and shifting, right? You can't even articulate a real solid, compelling argument because there is none. Right? The bottom line is you don't have any courage. You want to operate where you're independent and you have been captured and corrupted, right? And now you're capitulating to this administration for whatever reason. We don't know what, we don't know what he getting out the deal. But what we do know is that, what we do know is if this bill, this big ugly bill passes, if they allow this to go through, that we know without question that millions of Americans are going to see their health care double, triple, some of them will see their health care jump from 200 to $2,000 a month. What we do know is that the same program that he claims that he's trying to protect, like snap, will be on the cutting board. What we do know is many of the social programs that he's saying that, oh, that what people need, even the firing of FAA workers. Did he not see what air traffic controllers, that Trump just said that air traffic controls, he basically put a threat to them. So like you, you're putting a threat for people because they don't come to work because they're not getting paid. I mean, ain't that what work is? I mean is you get paid, right? And so do your job. He needs to do his job. And so ultimately I'm extremely disappointed. But he, he, you know, he been kind of shady for a minute.

[Joy Reid]

For a minute.

[Latasha Brown]

The people in Pennsylvania see this and they go after him with avengers. Because at the end of the day, these Little. It's not going. It's not going to cut it anymore. These little short term, little halfway spins that you're not saying anything. People have people. I hope folks are woke. You need to be woke at this moment. People are not going to stand for that. That's not what I believe.

[Joy Reid]

What do we do? Because there are a lot. There are a bunch of people who are doing separate. We're going to talk with someone later from indivisible. People are thinking, okay, we need to do a national strike. We need to stop spending. We need to. These guys, all of them who voted to end the shutdown and get nothing for it. Strategically, none of them are up for reelection anytime soon. So they're not going to be able to be got in terms of electoral punishment anytime soon. So what do you recommend people do? You're always talking about the uses of power and how to do it. What do we do?

[Latasha Brown]

So I think there's a couple of things. I think we got to use all our levels of power, I think our political levers of power. I think we saw that last Tuesday. Last Tuesday, what we saw all across this country is people are saying no. That ultimately they're saying no. I don't think it's with one party like in particular. I don't think people were driven just because they were driven because they want to stop this. They want to stop this madness that we're seeing happen. And if it was a day when people were talking about dei, last Tuesday was bdei. It was the day that we affirmed that we wanted diversity. It was the day that we affirmed that we wanted inclusion. And it was the day that we affirm that we want and support people who have an equity agenda. So that should be clear. We should make sure we're saying that. The second thing, though, is a couple of things that we do. I saw a recall of scene. Yeah, we need to recall some people, too. We got to get serious. So there's a political element, but there's another element that we never really talk about that we, we got in our back pocket as consumers, that we have economic power. We don't just have political power. We have economic power just in the holiday seasons alone. Let me just tell you. We control $1 trillion as consumers just in the holiday season. White consumers are 600 billion. Black consumers are 150 billion. This is just the Thanksgiving, the Christmas holidays, y'.

[Joy Reid]

All.

[Latasha Brown]

Latino customers, 125 billion. Asian American consumers are 100 billion. That's a lot of money. That's a trillion. Dollars. So what we have to do is we also got to use our power as consumers to say, no, we, we ain't buying it. We ain't buying that. We've got. We got. We're not buying fascism. We ain't pay for that. We didn't spend for that. We didn't vote for that. We're not buying fascism. We're not buying that our democracy can be eroded at the whim of political leaders who lack courage like a Fetterman. We're not buying the fact that we have a government that are taking our tax dollars, that are stripping away families from each other. Like I always said, going into daycares, traumatizing our children. Right? We're not buying that. And guess what? We're also not buying from businesses that are not standing with us, that businesses that go over to the golden. The. The golden. I don't know what you call it over there, right?

[Joy Reid]

It's pretty much a golden bathroom with a chandelier over the toilet, essentially.

[Latasha Brown]

Right? That's what it is. With some gold sparkles in there. I wonder. They come out with gold. Gold flicks, flakes on.

[Joy Reid]

Hope you can't wash them off.

[Latasha Brown]

I hope not. Right. But are going over there entertaining, getting billions of dollars. Companies like Amazon, they're getting billions of dollars in tax cuts, right? But at the same time, how are they making their money? They're making their money off us. Right? I know they come to my house about three days out of week. So I'm the first one to say that I understand how difficult it is and how Amazon and all these companies that we've supported. But in this moment, we're going to have to really buckle down and we're going to have to show some discipline. In this moment, we're going to have to be much more conscious about our choices around what we spend. In this moment, we're going to have to utilize our collective power, not just as voters, but our collective power as consumers and investors in this nation, that we're going to have to use that power and put pressure. And so for that reason, that's why this week, on Monday, we launched the We Ain't Buying it campaign.

[Joy Reid]

We Ain't Buying it and how. Meaning we just basically go on a shopping diet basically all the way through Black Friday. And how long does it. When does it start? When does it end?

[Latasha Brown]

So it starts on. So our We Ain't Minded campaign. And I want people to go. Make sure you go to the website and sign up. We have over 50 organizations, national organizations, that are signed on. Everyone from working families party to national coalition on blacks in participation to labor union. We're excited. SEIU and it just signed on. The fifth Indivisible all across the board is multicultural as multiracial. 50, 51. You know, the bottom line is on the weekend Thanksgiving, I want people to understand Thanksgiving weekend from that Thursday to that Monday, 20% of retail sales retailers make just that weekend alone. Black Friday is the largest retail day of the year. On that Monday, Cyber Monday is the largest online purchasing day of the entire year. Many companies like many companies that is 20% of their annual sales for the entire year, they project their six months out. And so what we, what we want to do is we're not calling it, we're not calling a boycott, even though there are boycotts that we're asking people that are part of the support is that their economic actions that we're asking for those five days that we do a number of things on. On Thursday, we're saying don't spend no money with the haters. Spend the money with the folks you love. Spend your time with. We not. We're spending time. We ain't spending a dime. So on Thursday, spend time with your family. I don't know. Do you remember Joy when Thursday when Thanksgiving who like all of a sudden they started opening up my malls. Thanksgiving.

[Joy Reid]

Making people work on Thanksgiving is crazy. That's right.

[Latasha Brown]

We shouldn't even be supporting that anyway. So on Thursday, shut it down. Don't spend time, spend time with your family and loved ones on Black Friday. I want black folks. We got to make it really a Black Friday. We gotta make it a blackout Friday. We've got to make it a Friday that we're literally sending a message we ain't spending no money. But there are some people that are doing actions all across the country. There are people that are doing actions in front of Target. There are people that are doing actions at different companies where there are people that are showing that that are deciding that day to get together and write postcards. Whatever you have to do on that Friday, we're not doing a Black Friday traditional. We gonna show them what a Black Friday. We're doing a blackout Friday on Saturday and Sunday because support small businesses. And there's a lot of small businesses that have been hurt by the tariffs and this economy. We're asking people on Saturday and Sunday that is small to shop small Saturday and Sunday. So the shoe. Small businesses, minority owned businesses, women owned businesses, local businesses. If you're going to shop that weekend, spend Your money with them and on and on Monday. It ain't cyber money. It's cyber shut down on Monday. Shut them down. We are not buying Amazon now, y'. All. We cannot buy from Amazon for at least five days. Come on, now.

[Joy Reid]

We can do it.

[Latasha Brown]

We can do it.

[Joy Reid]

Think of it like a diet. You're gonna. You're gonna slim down your debt. You will. You will owe less money on your Amazon card and your credit card. Latasha Brown, always teaching us how to use our power. I appreciate you and love you, my sister. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for educating us as always.

[Latasha Brown]

Thank you. Hold your money and sign up. We ain't Buying It Dot com. We ain't buying it.

[Joy Reid]

Buying it dot com. We're gonna put a link in the description for this show so everybody can see it. We ain't buying it Dot com. Jason, can we get in a round of applause for Latasha Brown. Thank you very much. Enjoy the rest of your. Well, your whole birthday season. Thank you, Scorpio.

[Latasha Brown]

All right.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you very much. All right, y', all, that you've got your marching orders, and I have to play one more video that reminds you, which we always have to remind ourselves we know who he is. Jason, please play a six.

[Representative Tom Cole]

Knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.

[Joy Reid]

I'm trying to tell you so. By the way, yesterday was Veterans Day, and it appears that Trump may be looking to create even more veterans by starting a war with Venezuela. Perhaps. The Wall Street Journal reporting that the U.S. navy's latest aircraft carrier arrived in waters near Latin America on Tuesday. That's yesterday. Expanding the American military's buildup as the Trump administration seeks to ratchet up the pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Trump has expressed some reservations about taking military action against Venezuela, the Wall Street Journal reported last week. But the arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group with several destroyers equipped with Tomahawk missiles will boost the US Military's capability to attack targets in the country, including Venezuela's air defenses. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the carrier strike group will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking and degrade and dismantle transnational criminal organizations. Maduro is reportedly preparing for guerrilla war if the US Attacks his country. He's a terrible person. But seriously, it's giving Iraq. And this is all happening as the US Continues to kill people in the Eastern Pacific. Six more just two days ago, bringing the grand total of murdered fishermen to 76 that we know of. And you should Know that the few men who have survived these bombings by the US Military have not been arrested or charged. No, no. They've not been charged with drug trafficking or killing Americans through fentanyl. Nope. They've been sent home to their countries of origin. Meaning Trump and Pete Hegseth. They're just doing killings for show. And I wonder what it is that they're trying to distract from. What are they trying to distract from? I want to noodle on it. Let me think about it. There's so many choices. I mean, they could be trying to distract from the terrible economy, which is really bad, and the affordability crisis Trump has created in the US with his tariffs. Or maybe like, distract from RFK Jr pretending Tylenol causes autism while a measles outbreak continues to rip through the country, which no one's talking about in the media. Or maybe, maybe they're trying to distract from them. Daily human rights violations by ICE thugs nationwide who are gang tackling disabled people and old people and fruit vendors, you name it. People with green cards using facial recognition technology to put all of us under government surveillance. Maybe that. Or work with me on this. Maybe they're trying to distract from the Epstein files. I want you to watch this video from Adelita Grijalva as she was finally sworn in. This is after she was finally sworn in as a member of Congress after a clear Epstein delay. That would be another.

[Latasha Brown]

That would not be my question.

[Joy Reid]

This is the look. I really like this lady.

[Ezra Levin]

She's going to be an excellent member of Congress. She's a great person.

[Joy Reid]

I just told her on the way in that she fills her father's shoes or she's going to try. No one can. No one can.

[Ezra Levin]

He was a giant around here, sir.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. He's like, I really like her. I sure do hope she doesn't get us to release the Epstein files. Let me let you now watch House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in his own words, explaining the delay. This is B3.

[House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries]

Unbelievable that for seven plus weeks, representative elect Adelita Grijalva was elected in late September, decisively has been denied the ability to serve more than 800,000 people in Arizona. And why is that the case? It's because Republicans are running a pedophile protection program. They are intentionally hiding the Jeffrey Epstein files. But those days are over because as soon as Representative Elect Alita Grijalva becomes Congresswoman Grijalva, her first act, as she's indicated, is going to be to sign that discharge petition. It's going to force a vote on The House floor. And the American people are going to get the transparency that they deserve.

[Joy Reid]

Which brings me to the New York Times digital front page earlier today, which, weirdly enough, it leads with, like, giving Republicans credit for releasing some Epstein files, when in fact, it was actually Democrats that released three key emails from Jeffrey Epstein. No sooner than they were back in session, they did the release. But the New York Times sort of, you know, kind of seems like it's crediting Republicans. This is before it just looks there to get. There it is. GOP lawmakers released thousands of Epstein files. Did they really, though? Did they? I'm holding in my hands the three. The three emails that were released. But I'm gonna read this like, but let me just read you what the New York Times wrote. They said House Republicans on Wednesday released 23,000 pages of documents from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein after months of delays. The move came shortly after Democrats disclosed emails from that trove suggesting President Trump knew far more about Mr. Epstein sex trafficking than he previously acknowledged. The documents were obtained by the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Representative James Comer, through a subpoena in August. August, you say August, like way earlier this summer. So what's been the holdup, sir? Let me just continue. They were published online about two hours after House Democrats released an email from Mr. Epstein in which he wrote that Mr. Trump spent hours at my house with one of Epstein's victims. A trove of emails released on Wednesday by lawmakers include numerous references to President Trump. Among them. House Democrats highlighted three emails between Mr. Epstein and his associates, suggesting that Trump might have been more aware of Mr. Epstein's conduct than he's publicly acknowledged. House Republicans asserted that the emails revealed little new information. And of course, Caroline Levitt, the junior Birdman woman White House press secretary, called him a clear distraction. Well, let's just for ourselves, shall we? We're going to put them on screen. We're going to go through three of these emails. Let's look at the first one. And the first one, Epstein writes to gmax. G Max is his adorable, cute little name for Ghislaine Maxwell, the woman who was trafficking children to him. And this email was sent on April 2, 2011. 2011. And marked importance high. And he writes to her in 2011. 4, 2. 2011. I want you to realize that that dog hasn't barked. Is Trump that the dog that. That dog that hasn't barked is Trump victim who's unnamed. It's blacked out. Spent hours at my house with him. He has never been mentioned. Police Chief, et cetera. I'm 75% there. I'm 75% where. Because remember, this is 2011. This is three years after he was indicted in Florida for sex trafficking. But he got a sweet deal, which he was in and out of jail pretty quickly. Now he's back and being a free mail. And this is the email saying he's 75% there, where, like, they were supposedly not friends anymore at this point. Was he 75% of the way toward naming Donald Trump? Very interesting. Right? And it, you know, that victim's name is blacked out. It mentions Mar A Lago. So that's interesting. So let's go to the second email. There's a second email we're gonna put up on screen. I've got it in my hot little hand as well. Now, it also mentions a victim whose name is blacked out. And it mentions Mar A Lago. But this email is not to gmax. It's to Michael Wolf, the journalist we've had on this very show who's probably interviewed Jeffrey Epstein more than anybody other than, you know, Donald Trump himself and to whom Epstein puts the lie to Trump's bogus claim that he kicked Epstein out of Mar A Lago for being a creep. And here's the quote. He says. Trump said, he asked me to resign. Never a member ever. Never a member ever. So he says, victim Mar A Lago blacked out. Peace. Trump said, he asked me to resign from Mar A Lago. Never a member ever. Of course, he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop. To stop what? To stop what? Trafficking women from Mar A Lago. To stop raping and allowing Jeffrey Epstein or to stop what? Okay, so that email that I just read you was sent in January 31, 2019. This is when Donald Trump is president. This is not long before Jeffrey Epstein actually gets indicted on a federal level. Okay, federal level. So now let's go back again. Let's go back once again. I'm going to read you email number three. In email number three, it's also to Michael Wolf, who emails Epstein on December 15, 2015. So now we're going back four years when Trump was running for president the first time to tip him off the quote, and this is Michael Wolf tipping off Epstein, quote, I hear CNN is planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you, either on air or in scrum afterwards, meaning the little scrum they do with all the media afterwards. To which Epstein asks, quote, if we are able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be? What do you think it should be? And this is what Epstein says back to him. He says, I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn't been on the plane, the Epstein plane, or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you. Or if it really looks like he could win and become president, you could save him generating a debt. Of course, it is possible that when asked, he'll say, Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime. Even he calls it a regime. Isn't that interesting? So it sounds like the kind of advice that would say use this as blackmail, right? That this is your leverage. Now, this is before Donald Trump becomes president the first time. Now, apparently the issue never came up in that CNN debate, but once Trump was actually the nominee, his sexual peccadilloes became front and center, became a big issue. So much so that in October of the following year, 2016, before the second presidential debate with Hillary Clinton on October 9 in St Louis, two days after the Access Hollywood tape drops, Trump pulled a stunt where, remember this, he appears with Paula Jones, Juanita Broderick and Kathleen Willey at a St. Louis press conference, all three of whom have accused former President Bill Clinton of either having a sexual relationship with them or of making unwanted sexual advances. This was literally a theme of the 2016 campaign, if you recall. And in that debate, Trump turns to Hillary Clinton at one point and says, there has never been anybody in the history of politics that has been more so abusive to women. Never anybody in the history of American politics that's been so abusive to women. 2016 is also the year when he pays off Stormy Daniels to suppress the story of their one nighter from 2006, which was the same year, or which was one year after, which was one year after Donald Trump made those infamous comments in the Access Hollywood tape, which was then leaked in 2016 but actually made the comments on the Axis Hollywood tape, the grab them by the P word comments. Those comments were made in September of 2005 as he's chatting with Billy Bush, George W's nephew. This is where I remind you that Trump was friends with the Clintons and they both attended and both Clintons, Hillary and Bill attended his wedding to Melania. There are photos of it. Bill Clinton and Trump also shared some level of relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, with Clinton flying on the Epstein plane more than once. Allegedly. Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in Florida for the first time in 2008. And all these emails are kind of happening around that time. Isn't that weird? Now, fast forward to today. There are a bunch of rumors out that Nancy Mace, Congresswoman Nancy Mace is going to take her name off of the discharge petition to make Adelita Rehalva's signature irrelevant. And she wouldn't then be the 218th vote. That's just a rumor that's going around, which means that there's a ton of pressure being applied and placed on all four of the Republicans who are on that discharge petition, meaning the petition that would go around Speaker Johnson's strange and suspicious refusal to promote the release of the Epstein files. This while the Republicans have put. There's a website, you can just go to it. I'll put a link to it where you can go and you can just scroll through the 23,000 emails they put out because they were responding to the Democrats putting out these emails that are definitely incriminating toward Trump because they show he's lying when he says he didn't know what's going on. At least he doesn't seem like it. Thomas Massie Mace, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene right now are on that petition. So we're going to keep an eye on that. But what's very clear is that Donald Trump really doesn't want those files released under any circumstances. In fact, word is he's considering commuting the sentence or even pardoning pedophile sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell to shut her up. Like the Bill Barr run federal penitentiary got Epstein silenced one way or another. Let me show you a tweet from somebody who does know Donald Trump. His name is Lev Parnas, who used to raise a lot of money for Trump in Florida. He's a Ukrainian origin guy who's, you know, Lev and Igor, remember them, they used to raise a lot of money for Trump and who back in the day helped him set up Joe Biden and his family as criminals doing dirt, dirty stuff with Ukraine before he saw the light and turned on the gangster president. Here is his tweet. It says, my sources, my sources say Trump went ballistic, blowing up phones and leaning on GOP allies to keep Democrats from Democrats from aiming to block. Sorry. To aiming to block any move to release the Epstein files. Stay tuned. From hitting 218. From hitting 218, meaning 218 votes. Aiming to block any move to release the Epstein files. Stay tuned. More to come. Well, More to come right now because Lev Parnas joins me now. Lev Parnas, great to talk to you. Thanks for being here.

[Lev Parnas]

Hey, Joy, good to see you again. How are you?

[Joy Reid]

I am wonderful, thank you. Better than Donald Trump because it seems. Oh, yes, Diaper. Worrying about these Epstein files released to your knowledge, these emails seem to suggest Donald Trump was lying when he claimed not to really know what, what Jeffrey Epstein was up to. Do you think Donald Trump knew exactly what Jeffrey Epstein was doing?

[Lev Parnas]

Oh, 100% we've been speaking about. And that's one of the things I've been breaking on my sub stack for the past several. You know, I'll never forget that July 4th, 5th weekend when they tried to hide this whole thing when they came out with the memo and a lot of the media was talking about like, this is a nothing burger. And I'm glad that you and others stayed on this because this is Donald Trump's kryptonite. Donald Trump's all over this and now it's starting to come out. And you could see a lot of my sources I have on the inside that are telling me that he pushed so hard on Lauren Boebert, but he couldn't. It looks like Lauren Boebert didn't budge, but it looks like Nancy Mace is where they're gonna put the pressure on. So we gotta look out. You know, stay tuned for that Nancy Mace. Watch what she does.

[Joy Reid]

She is a sexual assault survivor herself, Right. Who wept when she met with the victims. But she's also a crass political operative who will do anything to become, I think she wants to become governor. So is that what they're gonna basically dangle in front of her or do you think they're threatening her?

[Lev Parnas]

I think there's a lot with her. I think she's also going through some things lately. She's been acting very radical with, you know, what happened at the airport, her going after saying she's been raped and attacked by her ex boyfriend who's now coming out and saying that's all false. And so, so I, you know, just, you know, knowing the, the beast that we're dealing with, there's a lot of things and a lot of pressure that they're going to be putting on her. But there's, I'm hearing other things also besides the pressure they're putting on her. Because remember, once they get the 218, then it has to Congress. And that's another set of things where Johnson is already putting in the motion and putting in place to try to be able to Block or do whatever they can to make sure that it doesn't come out.

[Joy Reid]

Donald Trump. This is some of the things he said about Donald Trump. He used to say, I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. Trump told New York magazine in 2002. He's a lot of fun to be with. It's even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do. And many of them are on the younger side. In 1992, George Hourani, a Florida based businessman, had organized a calendar girl competition at Mar a Lago. And they arranged for a bunch of these contestants to fly in. They go to Mar a Lago for a party. It turns out the party was not a bunch of VIPs. It was literally just Trump and Epstein. Let me show you a video. This is B9Jason. This is a party that was shown from a 1992 party where you can actually see Trump and Epstein partying together looking at women talking about which women are hot. That is a 1992 party at Mar a Lago. 1993, Daisy Williams, then a professional model, visits company Trump Tower with Epstein. On arrival, she would later tell the Guardian, his hands all over my weight, all over my breast, waist and buttocks. While Trump and Epstein smiled at each other in what she believed was a twisted game between the two. And then of course there was that birthday book that Donald Trump continued contributed to back in 2003, a year after this party. In your experience back when you were a donor to Trump, was Jeffrey Epstein a part of Donald Trump's circle and life and for how long?

[Lev Parnas]

Well, you know, I, when I was around Donald Trump, I wish I would have known something about Epstein so I could be divulging it. But at the those times, I, I had nothing to do. I was put towards the Ukraine stuff, Venezuela stuff. So I really didn't have any knowledge of what was going on with Epstein. But I could tell you just, you know, you, I, I hope you saw my documentary by the great Rachel Maddow. So, you know, my, my life was a little bit where I was interwined with a lot of these oligarchs, a lot of these people in the 90s. And mine and Trump's world collided a lot of times. That's, there's a reason why Trump had the Miss Universe pageant, Miss Teen pageants, and back then the competition. But the one thing I do want to mention is you, right before I came on, you were reading some of these emails and some of these emails are extremely damaging. And if we break them down a Little bit like the, the first one of them that you said where Donald Trump was in the. For several hours with name redacted victim. We know that that victim now is Virginia Jeffrey because Caroline Levitt mentioned her. This opened her up in, in her press conference. She mentioned that's what the victim is. So now we know that Donald Trump lied for a fact, because Donald Trump for the past several months has been coming out saying he's never been to Epstein Island. He specifically said Epstein Island. Now, we know he has been in Epstein's house. He was in Epstein's house for several hours with a minor. Now, we also know Virginia Jeffrey has mentioned several times that at that time she was drugged. They were giving a different type of drug. So she doesn't remember everything because now they're trying to use that model. Oh, she never claimed that Donald Trump did anything. She never claimed a lot of people did anything because a lot of those times she was drugged up and doesn't even remember. And she mentioned that and said that plenty of times. But the fact that they're not disagreeing that she. Carolyn Lover didn't say he wasn't in the house. He didn't say that he wasn't with it. He said that the way she responded was specifically saying that Virginia never said that Donald Trump did anything bad. But the fact that he's there with an underage girl, with Jeffrey Epstein for hours in this house, what are they doing? The next thing is Epstein is concerned. Why is Epstein concerned? Because he's saying, wait a second, I'm being prosecuted. In his email to Maxwell, he's saying, I'm. They're going after me for this minor. Meanwhile, Trump, Trump is sitting there and he's not being looked at at all. And, and that's why a lot of people were talking about that Trump might have been giving information about Epstein. But then if you take a look at that, you only give information to save your own. But so, so then if he's giving information, that means he was doing it to protect himself. The next thing, the next thing that.

[Joy Reid]

You got to look at, but I want to go for you, I want to play a piece of video that backs up what you just said. This is B10, Jason. This is Donald Trump specifically talking about the late Virginia Giuffre. I want you all to recall that she ended her own life over a year ago. But she did write a book in which she disclosed a lot of the things, all the things that happened to her, naming Prince Andrew, who's now lost his royal titles because of it. And she talks about the things that she went through. No, she did not name Donald Trump specifically, but to Lev's point, she was clearly known to Donald Trump. And Jeffrey Epstein was being abused and raped repeatedly by Jeffrey Epstein and passed around to his friends slash clients. Here's B10 Trump talking about Virginia Giuffre.

[Representative Tom Cole]

Some of the workers that were taken from you were some of them young women? Were some of them. Were some of them young women? Well, I don't want to say, but every, everyone knows the people that were taken. And it was. The concept of taking people that work for me is bad. But that story's been pretty well out there. And the answer is yes, they were.

[Ezra Levin]

Yeah.

[Representative Tom Cole]

What did they do in the spa? Yeah, people that work in the spa. I have a great spa, one of the best spas in the world at Mar a Lago. And people were taken out of the spa, hired by him. In other words, gone. And other people would come and complain. This guy is taking people from the spa. I didn't know that. And then when I heard about it, I told him, I said, listen, we don't want you taking our people. Whether it was spa or not spa, I don't want him taking people. And he was fine. And then not too long after that, he did it again. And I said, out of here.

[Joy Reid]

Did one of those stolen, you know, persons that include Virginia.

[Representative Tom Cole]

I don't know. I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people. He stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know, none whatsoever.

[Joy Reid]

He stole her. It seems unusual to me. To your point that you were making love, that. When I was 15, I wanted to get a job working at McDonald's. I wanted to make money. No one would hire me because I was 15. Who hires a 15 year old girl to do massages at a spa? That doesn't even make sense.

[Lev Parnas]

And the other crazy part is he said she wasn't the only one. He said he stole plenty. And then finally, when he still saw there was more, there was others that we don't know about. They were stalling. And then in the email, you also hear him telling Maxwell that he told Maxwell to stop, stop doing it.

[Joy Reid]

But also, stolen is a weird way to talk an employee or, or a girl, a child. This is a child.

[Lev Parnas]

It's a human being. Let's start here. I mean, how can you. It's like, you know, possession. It was this possession that was still. That's how Donald Trump views it. That Virginia's gravy and all of these employees are his possession and Epstein was stealing him. But this is the other interesting and very disturbing part, that if that is the case, if you even want to take that disgusting version of what Donald Trump said, what was he doing in Epstein's house with her then afterwards for hours? So it still begs the difference. The, the other thing that Joy, which should be happening right this second is right now Maxwell should be remanded and being sent into a maximal security prison. Right now there should be a outcry in a port to have Blanche to be pulled out in front of Congress and open up behind closed doors, but open session to respond what the hell is going on and why is she there? And she, we have right now, black and white, she's lied. I mean, you have her on tape that they released. These idiots released the tapes themselves of her saying how Donald Trump has never been in the, in the place with the minor. Donald Trump's never been around Jeffrey Epstein. How she's never seen even Jeffrey Epstein do anything wrong. And now she's sitting with a puppy getting Uber delivered to her thing while, you know, we're seeing this play out. What else I'm hearing from my sources is she's not sitting tight either, Joy. Her attorney Marcus is putting tremendous pressure now on Trump to get not only a commutation but a pardon quickly. Because part of how this whole thing started, if you remember, was the Wall Street Journal release of that infamous birthday. That was Maxwell doing it, sending a message. The other thing you got to keep in mind, my sources, you know, I've been working this really hard, is there's a reason why Prince Andrew, two weeks ago they got their strips. She, you know, her family's from London. I mean, they're very well connected to the monarchy. She was very good friends with Prince Andrew. And they were given a heads up. That information is starting to come up because remember, this information that we're seeing is not from the doj. This is from personal, the estate of Jeffrey Epstein. So she knows, she knows more than anybody what's in those because those, those are emails are between her and him.

[Joy Reid]

Him.

[Lev Parnas]

The other very important thing in these email, I think that is extremely disturbing to me is the email between Michael Wolf and Epstein. It's so crazy, but literally last night and today in the morning, I was reaching out to Michael Wolf because he wanted to come on and do a substack live with me after I approached him on one of the shows and for two and today all day he's obviously today, but last night and 10 in the morning, he hasn't been responding. I spoke to Wajahid Ali, by the way. He says best regard sends, you love him. We just did a show and wash. Also the Michael Wolf hasn't responded. Another couple of interviewers of Michael Wolf hasn't responded. That email is very troublesome because it's not an email from Epstein to Wolf. It's Wolf basically telling Epstein of how to go blackmail or go, you know, the, the next President of the United States.

[Joy Reid]

That's right.

[Lev Parnas]

And he's had all this information. He, he has these emails he talks about on all these shows, how he has all these audio recordings, but he also has all these emails that he's been keeping. Now, a lot of people could come around and say, listen, a lot of reporters do this. Look at, you know, Maggie Haberman and others that, you know, report and then write a book about it. And that's fair to say. I, I always think, you know, it's a fine line when a reporter should report or save it for the. But, but this is different. He's not just reporting her, he's actually telling him, advising him of how to use certain information to have leverage over the next President of the United States and how he could use it for political purposes. And if we take it a step further, what happens three years later?

[Joy Reid]

Correct.

[Lev Parnas]

He gets arrested by Donald Trump's Bill Barr and then he disappears.

[Joy Reid]

So you're going where exactly? I wanted to go live because I do the, I did. I didn't read them in exactly the same the, the date order, but if I reverse them and put them in order in 2011, he's emailing with Ghislaine Maxwell saying that the dog that hasn't barked is Trump. He says, he mentions police chief etc and says, I'm 75% there. This is 2011. This is after he's already served time in Florida and he's back on the loose again. You fast forward three years or now at. Or you pass over four years. So I read 2015 and this is where Michael Wolf is advising. I can only as you, as you have sort of interpret it as saying, yeah, my advice would be you can hang him with the information that you have that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, meaning leverage over the potential next President of the United States. Then Trump actually gets elected after surviving the scandal that's literally about the way that he talks about and treats women in which he's throwing Bill Clinton, his former friend and fellow Democrat, at the Time who went to his wedding and he's now throwing that guy's wife under the bus us with accusations of what? Sexual predation. And then he becomes president. Now Jeffrey Epstein is indicted not by Barack Obama's Justice Department, but by his own. And he's not only prosecuted by his own Justice Department, but the guy in charge of the Justice Department is the guy whose father hired Jeffrey Epstein at that school where he was a math teacher before he suddenly becomes like the world's top investment manager for no reason and gets huge clients including the guy who owns Victoria's Secret. And then that guy gives him a house for free. Almost all of this stuff is weird. Then he ends up dead. This is after he's been advised to use this leverage against Trump. Trump gets to be president and he gets dead. It's just weird.

[Lev Parnas]

And it gets even weirder because I'll give you some other information. So first of all, I spent time in solitary confinement. I went to prison for Donald Trump. I stayed in exactly the same not his cell but a cell like that. And I, I could tell you for a fact things that transpired doesn't have. It's almost impossible to hang yourself in that. That's why the conditions are made to be that you don't have all of those sheets. You're not. I mean you would have to figure out. Second of all a lot of people don't know but I'm going to be also I'm trying to find him right now but one of the individuals I served prison time with in Otisville Penitentiary happened to be serving time and was doing the cleanup up right after in, in the, in Brooklyn Metropolitan right after he cleaning up the. The cell after EPSTEIN Literally within 24 hours he got transferred to a camp when he was supposed to go to a medium security prison. He was doing a 10 year bid for drug possession. He got transferred to a federal camp where I was Otisville and got a cushy job. He also. And as we became friends he started telling me a lot of weird things were going on like in the jail cell that night when Epstein passed away and he told me for a fact he said love he did. He did not kill himself. This was all prepared and planned and what was happening. So I'm trying to find him right now if he got from where he is to bring him on because uh, you know this come back on with.

[Joy Reid]

Him if you find. Absolutely. Because you know the two security guards, the two black security guards get blamed. One of them is now working I believe in insecurity at a hospital. They, they were thrown out of their jobs. But then the, the lie gets busted because Pam Bondi, who again was the Florida Attorney general, she's not the one who cut the sweet deal with Jeffrey Epstein, but she's serving after Jeffrey Epstein is back on the lamb, back on the loose, free to prey on young girls and kid. And he would normally go in trailer parks, find girls who are poor. Okay, we prey on the poor. And she's now Attorney general and he's, he's free to operate with her there. She then is getting all this money, a hundred thousand a month from Qatar as like one of their, you know, flacks in the United States. So she's able to get rich. And then when Donald Trump needs to swap out Matt Gates, who was accused of sexual predation. Correct, swaps her in. And now she's the Attorney General who. All she does is go after people Trump hates, like a mob boss or a mob mall. This whole regime operates like the Mafia.

[Lev Parnas]

Lev Joy. I know them very well. Remember Brian Ballard? Where she came from and Susie Wells came from was my, I'm the one that brought him to Washington D.C. he was a floor, he was a Florida, you know, he was a Florida lobbyist until he met me and I introduced him to President Erdogan into Ukraine and made him the powerhouse. And that's how they got Qatar and Susie Wilds all over there. I know them all very well. But before it was even Pam Bondi, there was even some, somebody more important that keeps, you know, slipping that we need. It was Acosta because if you take a look at the email that he sent them and, and, and what transpired.

[Joy Reid]

Is, you know, U. S. Attorney. For those who don't remember all the names, this was the guy who was the U. S. Attorney. Please go on.

[Lev Parnas]

Yeah, he was a U.S. attorney for Florida and then became the labor secretary for Trump and his first administration. But the way things play out is Acosta's a prosecutor, he prosecutes Epstein, Trump gets away with, no, not get mentioned anywhere. Epstein gets a sweet deal, and then Trump gives him a position as a Labor secretary. And then as soon as in 2019, Epstein gets arrested, Alex Acosta quietly resigns and walks away and into the, into the sunlight. I mean, so this is a. And then right now, that's another thing. If you take a look at some of the Democrats, I didn't see all of them. I didn't get a chance. I've been doing lives all day. But it looks like he's perjured himself in his testimony that he's just given in front of the House committee. So that's another thing. So again, this is just the tip of the iceberg, Joy.

[Joy Reid]

It is exit question to you, lab. Thank you for staying a little bit longer. Donald Trump is now effectively getting every billionaire in the country that even, that is even slightly right wing or even some who, I don't even know what their ideologies are to fork over money. I mean, everyone's paying him. All these billionaires are paying him. And is there, is there any, do you think that there is any connection?

[Lev Parnas]

You want to say quid pro quo?

[Joy Reid]

I mean, look, what Jeffrey Epstein did is he trapped. He was a billionaire and he trafficked among other billionaires. His clients were billionaires. He, you know, there are a couple of these billionaires who are with Trump who were literally in emails potentially planning trips to Epstein Islands. That reporting has come out as well. Is part of what this is, is people that were involved with Epstein protecting each other. Is that some of what we're seeing here, money passing around?

[Lev Parnas]

Oh, absolutely.

[Joy Reid]

We're all being protected.

[Lev Parnas]

Oh, absolutely. It goes deeper than that. Joe, you're right on the right track. First of all, we've heard of Bannon has been involved with Epstein. We heard Elon Musk, we heard Peter Thiel. All of these people are close to Trump. But the other thing that you need to understand what Trump is doing with these billionaires, he's learned from Putin and Kirill Dimitriev and Jared Kushner and Steve Woodkoff. They've trained him to use these billionaires to make his own set of oligarchs.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Lev Parnas]

So now he's basically during what Putin did in Russia, he's learning here, he's forcing them, making them bend the knee. And these are all billionaires that control communications, news stations, Internet, AI, all of these technologies that controls information. And that's part of a dictatorship. And that what he also is doing, which we could talk at a different time, I know you, you have to go, is he takes them along with him. What made Putin very powerful is he took all of these oligarchs, he spread them all over the country, all over the world, made them invest in all these strategical places all over the world where then Putin had pieces of. Trump is doing the same thing when he goes on these tours to the Middle east or wherever. Take a look who's following behind. It's all of these brogarchs, oligarchs that are going behind and making all these deals. When he goes not Only his sons, so. Absolutely, Joe, you're on the right track. 100% right. There's a lot more to that than just the Epstein, but it's. It's bigger than that. We're going to explode it, expose them.

[Joy Reid]

Come back anytime you want. Left Parnas, I think we need to make you a regular here, my friend. You've got information I appreciate you. Say hi to watch for me and thank you very much. Appreciate you Left Paradise. Come back.

[Lev Parnas]

Love you, Joy. God bless you. Take care. Thank you.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you, my friend. Well, there you have it, y'. All. Wow. We are talking about an international crime syndicate effectively operating out of the White House, out of the American White House, and a president who is behaving like Vladimir Putin, like a dictator and like a mob boss all rolled into one, who maybe potentially had a guy with Kompromat on him, Jeffrey Epstein, who was even advised to use the Kompromat, how to use it, and how to leverage it against the President of the United States. Welcome to hour two of the Joy Reacho. We're well into it. It's scary, but we've got more to say. It gets worse. Just when you thought everything is bad, it gets even worse. Just when you thought that even the betrayal that we saw by Democrats couldn't get worse. It turns out that the deal that seven Democrats and one independent cut to give Republicans a win for nothing and get nothing in return is even worse than you thought. Yeah. Republicans have been using one set of talking points consistently. Right? And I'm gonna play House Majority leader. The guy who used to call himself David Duke without the baggage, Steve Scalise. He sums it up nicely here. This is C1.

[Representative Tom Cole]

Remember, when the Senate votes today, they're not voting on some big, massive omnibus bill, a bill that resolves all of our differences. You know, if you're one of these Democrats and it only takes five to get this government back open and you're struggling with the decision, do you offend your far left radical base? It's about to elect the new leader of their Democrat Party in Mondami, in New York. Or do you stand up for the tens of millions of people around the country who are actually suffering? And if you vote yes today, are you giving anything up? What's in that bill? A clean continuing resolution that violates any of your principles? There's nothing. Again, that bill does not solve our differences. That bill just keeps the lights on. That bill just allows federal workers to get paid for the work that they're doing.

[Joy Reid]

Well, it turns out that's not quite true. The bill that passed in the Senate with the help of those seven Democrats and one independent, Angus King of Vermont, was not a clean cr. And it did have some things that should offend not just the Democratic base and Mamdani, but the MAGA base too, if they care about anything. I'm sure Mamdani won't like it, but neither should any Republican. So let me explain to y'. All. A clean crowd would mean that it would exactly match the continuing resolution that the House passed to fund the government this summer. Now, that House clean cr, meaning it's just a continuous. They're not passing a budget. They're saying, here's the resolution, a budget resolution to pay for the government. That resolution that the House passed this summer cut Medicaid, it allowed the Obamacare premiums to expire clean would mean that you make no changes to that funding bill and just pass it as is. But that is not what those seven people, seven Democrats. I don't even call Fetterman a Democrat. Those seven plus one helped pass. Republicans actually added some things to the bill for themselves. From ABC News, the spending bill approved as part of the package the Senate advanced on Monday night to reopen the government includes a provision that would create a legal pathway way for senators to sue the government if their phone records are investigated without their notice. And what's significant, per abc, is the language in the bill that appears to be retroactive, meaning that the eight Republican senators who had their phone records subpoenaed by Special counsel Jack Smith as part of his investigation into Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election could seek hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. Senate Majority Leader John Thune was personally responsible for adding the text to the bill, sources tell ABC News. So Republicans snuck that into the bill. According to the bill text, these senators can seek up to $500,000 in statutory damages if their phone records are subpoenaed without or not. That's not normal. The language is inside one of the three full year spending bills that the Senate included in its government funding package. The House is expected to approve the bill as soon as today Wednesday. So just riddle me this. What does paying off insurrectionist senators who got investigated for helping a coup. What does that have to do with funding the government? Steve Scalise. And making sure hardworking federal workers get paid when literally the law says they have to get back pay? What does that have to do with keeping the lights on? Oh, yeah, right. Nothing. So Republicans were just able to change the bill to give themselves a free pass to collect a half a million dollars apiece if they were part of the insurrection. Got it clean. CR and my question is, do Republicans in the House have a problem with this? Let's go back to our favorite tag team Today, Congressman Jim McGovern and the Big Negoo. This is C5 and they're answering that question.

[Representative Joe Neguse]

Far from haranguing the Chairman, I'm given the opportunity for the Chairman to explain the meaningful work that he's been engaged in. And I suspect that he welcomes and relishes that. So I want to talk to you about the provision that my colleague from Pennsylvania noted earlier. And this is the provision that essentially allows specifically eight Republican United States Senators to reap upwards of a half a million dollar payday with respect to the phone record notice provision that they've added into the bill. You support that provision?

[Representative Tom Cole]

I didn't have anything to do with it. Didn't have any knowledge of it.

[Representative Joe Neguse]

Not asking me if you have knowledge of it. Do you support it?

[Joy Reid]

No.

[Representative Tom Cole]

Do I support the bill? Yes. Do I support every single provision in the bill?

[Lev Parnas]

No.

[Representative Joe Neguse]

You don't find this provision repugnant? I think most American people are going to find this.

[Representative Tom Cole]

I was surprised to see it in the bill.

[Representative Jim McGovern]

You know, I remember, I remember when Republicans raged against earmarks. I mean, some of us have been around here long enough and I mean, when we had bills that had provisions that helped the specific members, constituents, and we had some Republicans that would rage against them, and what we have here is an earmark on steroids. I mean, forget about the constituents. This money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, possibly millions of dollars, goes directly to a specific, to specific Republican senators. And most Republicans are just going to say, oh, well, what can we do? We just have to get, to move on. Trump is trying to get hundreds of millions from the Department of Justice. So now I guess we have some senators who want their cut. And my Republican friends just seem to be all okay with it. I mean, this is corrupt and it is disgusting.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Representative Jim McGovern]

And at some point we, you know, I mean, people have to be willing to stand up, develop a backbone and say, no, we're not going along with this.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, Rep. McGovern, I wish that they could see that it's disgusting. But let's just be clear. They're not just going to be good with it in the House, they're going to expand it. Let me take you back to the recent past. Let's go back to ABC News. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley released documents earlier this year, suggesting that phone records from Republican Senators Lindsey Graham, Bill Hagerty, Josh Hawley, Dan Sullivan, Tommy Tuberville, the dumbest member of the United States Senate, Ron Johnson, Cynthia Lummis, and Marsha Blackburn. She's a competitor with Dubberville. On and around the day of the insurrection had been accessed by investigators as part of Jack Smith's investigation. Last month, attorneys representing Smith sent a letter to Grassley seeking to correct what they called inaccurate claims that Smith wiretapped or spied on Republican lawmakers. As part of his investigation, Smith's office sought limited phone toll data from the eight senators and a member of the House in the days surrounding the January 6th insurrection. Lindsey, you will recall, reached out to the Georgia Secretary of State. Lindsey Graham, I should say you'll recall, reached out to the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, asking him to help Trump steal the state. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger at the time had said that Graham reached out to him to not count mail in ballots so that Trump could win. Here's the quote from npr. Senator Graham implied for us to go ahead and audit the envelopes, the signature on the envelopes, and then throw out the ballots from counties that had the highest frequency of error rates on signatures. And Raffensperger said, I went ahead and I explained our laws. It's pretty clear what Senator Graham, President Trump, and attorney Lin Wood, they're all on the same page and they don't understand the laws of Georgia. So I wonder, when the House takes up this bill, will Speaker Johnson go back to whining about a clean CR, which he was doing all through the 50 days he had his people on vacation? Or might he instead add a provision for current and former House members, too? Because I want you to recall what former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as the star witness during the January 6th hearings, I want to remind you what she said in her sworn testimony. Mr. Jordan talked about congressional pardons, but he never asked me for one. It was more for an update on whether the White House is going to pardon members of Congress. Mr. Gohmer asked for going as well.

[Ezra Levin]

Too.

[Joy Reid]

I'm sorry, I need to talk to you directly. Yes, he did. Did Margaret contact you?

[Latasha Brown]

No, she didn't contact me about it. I heard that she asked White House.

[Joy Reid]

Counsel office for a pardon. Ah, so I get it. This whole exercise would not was not just about destroying Obamacare and, you know, holding on to the cuts to Medicaid that were used to fund the Trump tax cut for the super rich. No, no, it was also about protecting senators from criminal liability for joining the coup and even allowing them to get paid a fat payday from your tax dollars because if they sued, they'd be suing the government and getting money from you. So they want to get paid for doing the coup. Got it. Let Congressman McGovern have the last word on that.

[Representative Jim McGovern]

Republicans are choosing to go after nutrition assistance. Trump is doing this because he is a bad person. He's a lousy president and an even worse human being. He's weaponizing hunger and trying to rip food away from more than 40 million Americans, including 16 million children, for sadistic political leverage. How dare he? How dare he exploit the pain of hungry Americans. How dare he make working folks choose between health care and food. How dare he starve poor children who go to bed hungry? These people, people are sick in the head. They take food away from poor folks on Friday and then they go to church on Sunday and proclaim to be good Christians.

[Joy Reid]

Joining me now is Ezra Levin, co founder of the progressive nonprofit organization Indivisible. He's a co author of We Are Indivisible, A Blueprint for Democracy After Trump, published in 2019. Ezra, welcome. There is so much, I don't even know where to begin. It seems to me that this so called clean CR was a money grab by Republican senators, aided by seven Democrats and an independent. Your thoughts, Joy?

[Ezra Levin]

Unfortunately, I think it's even worse than that. I don't think it is just the Democrats who voted for this surrender in the Senate. If you look at those senators, every single one of them is either one retiring or two not up for reelection next year. That doesn't happen by accident. We're talking to a lot of folks on Capitol Hill and what we've learned is there were many more senators who were in favor of surrender. And whether you think Schumer orchestrated it or just as I believe was incapable of stopping it, didn't have the leadership skills or the respect of the caucus to lead a strategy here. Doesn't matter. The result was the same. An utter capitulation to the Republicans at a time when the Democrats were finally winning. Joy, we were finally winning and boom. Surrender. So look, I've spent the last year trying to organize a unified opposition. I've been trying to convince these folks to start fighting back against the regime as they invade American cities and terrorize American communities. Zip. Tying children, Dragging them out naked from their apartment buildings. My God, we need to fight back. At this point, I'm done trying to convince them we've got to change them. Primaries are the way to do it. That's how we demanding leadership. That's where we are.

[Joy Reid]

Right? I mean, I think at minimum, Chuck Schumer, I said this on the show the other day. It's. There are only two choices here. He either, as you said, is either completely. He's lost control of his caucus and he can do nothing to cause them to stick to whatever his plan was, or this is what he wanted and he hid behind them like a coward, which means he really shouldn't be the leader either way. So the question then becomes, what do we do right now? Because it seems like the House, at least it gives. Gives. You know, Hakeem can lead them. He can get them to stick together and vote one way and the way he wants them to go. He learned greatly from Pelosi how to keep them together. The Senate is useless to us right now. What do we do about it?

[Ezra Levin]

Well, we got to demand better. And I know there's a lot of focus on those eight who voted for surrender, but none of them are for reelection next year. So I think we got to focus on those who are. Folks like Jack Reed in Rhode island, folks like Mark Warner in Virginia, folks like John Hickenlooper in Colorado, folks like Chris Coons in Delaware. These are all safe Senate seats. Whoever wins the primary is going to win the general election. We're going to have a Democrat in there. Question is, what kind of Democrat, Joy? Is it a Democrat that's a part of the rollover and play dead caucus, or is it a Democrat who's part of the fight back faction? I think we ought to have fight back Democrats. That's not an ideological stance. This isn't about left or right. This isn't about your position on economic policy or healthcare policy. This is, are you a loser? Are you a winner? Are you a fighter? Are you somebody who's going to surrender? And that's something that rank and file Democrats agree on. We took a vote of our members. These are folks who are organizing the way we saw last Tuesday. These are folks who are organizing the largest peaceful protest in American history with no kings do a month ago. And we asked them, look, this shutdown's been going on for a while. Do you think the Democrats should just cut a deal to reopen the government, move on? Or do you think until they get the ACA subsidies, Democrats should hold on to their leverage? 98.67% said keep fighting. 98.67%. This is not some marginal lefty grassroots position. This is anybody with a brain paying attention saying, why the hell would Democrats give up their leverage now, now. And as, as frustrating as it is to see the Democrats cave now, the one silver lining here is the capitulation was so complete, was so embarrassing that I think it might have convinced enough people that now's the time for building a new Democratic Party through the primaries.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, I mean, and I say it all the time. The power is in the primary. And look, the reality is I spoke with a member, a United States center off, off the record, who was saying that they were getting people coming up to them in the grocery store saying, I myself have been riffed. I'm worried about, you know, paying my bills. But I want you to keep. Because at the end of the day, what the Republicans. I've never seen an American president starve his own country, but he's saying, I will starve 42 million people until you let me raise your health care costs. Cuz I want Obamacare to go away. This was it. They're like, you starve until we get to jack up your health care costs. And the fact that any Democrat would take that deal is shocking to me. But it means that they're of no good to us when we're dealing with an oligarchy wrapped in a corrupt kleptocracy.

[Ezra Levin]

Well, you said it better than I can joy. The real. There are so many bads about this. I will say. And one of the bads is we have now sent a message to the regime that if you cause enough pain, we will give in.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Ezra Levin]

What incentive does that give them? You think this is the last time they starve children? You think this is the last time they try to jack up your health care to enrich their donors?

[Joy Reid]

Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you, but. Right. You said if we cause enough pain. Thank you for saying we. It was the administration that controls. It is the executive branch that controls the food stamp funding. That SNAP is not a congressional thing. So it wasn't even saying Republicans and Democrats in the Senate had no control over the SNAP funding. That was the administration. They're saying, we, the Trump regime will starve people. We will do it and we want you all to let us destroy your health care.

[Ezra Levin]

They went to court and then they appealed the ruling when they lost two starved children. Two starved American children. They went to court because they wanted to pressure the Democrats at a time when Trump himself was saying, gosh, the shutdown really cost us those elections on Tuesday. We've got to figure out a way to end it. And the Democrats response to that is, yeah, we should probably give him what he wants. Look, I'm done. I'm done, Joy. And I hope more people around the country are done. This is the way not just to build a new Democratic Party, but to stop the fascists in the midterms. Because I guarantee you we are going to build blue wave margins and then I guarantee you they're going to try to steal it. So what's the quality of our leadership when they try to do that a year from now? Do we have fighters or do we have people that want to go along? We need fighters. The time to build those fighters up is in the coming months in the primaries.

[Joy Reid]

I agree with you. And the thing about it is, as you said, and this is what the Tea Party movement did. I mean, the Tea Party movement, which was maga, before MAGA had the name maga, it was just the same thing. But what they did is they went after the seats they knew that would be Republican after a primary. So they didn't go. I mean, they took out any Republicans, Republican who was even slightly off the Tea Party message. And at this point, to your point, Democrats can put in younger, more aggressively progressive, or even if just more aggressively win centered people who know how to win, know how to communicate, and start to build that. That group of senators will then elect a Senate leader who isn't like the current Senate leader. Because that's the challenge, is you need a leader with cojones and with a plan.

[Ezra Levin]

That's exactly right. And I do think there's some concern among good rank and file Democrats who say, gosh, but the fascists are escalating. Do we really want to be fighting amongst ourselves? Don't we need to focus on just beating them? And to which I say, look, I'm not talking about going after vulnerable Democrats and trying to kick them out of office. There are plenty of blue state and blue district Democrats who are aligned with the Schumer way of thinking. And we can remove them, replace them with inspiring leaders, and then go on and stomp the Vascists in the midterm. Both things are possible. And in fact, the party will have a rehabilitated brand. In the same way that after Ayanna Pressley replaces a rollover and played dead Democrat or Alexandria Ocasio Cortez replaces a rollover and played dead, this is how we revitalize the Democratic Party and become stronger. And then we go forward in the general election and we win. That's the plan. I think it's attainable. But it's only gonna work if a lot of people around the country recognize we're not playing anymore. This is the time to demand better from the party. Otherwise we're going to get the same failed leadership.

[Joy Reid]

How do you get that plan that you just talked about to also happen in the Deep South? You know, one of the things Democrats have failed to do is to even attempt to play in places like Mississippi. They've given a Florida probably for good reason. Florida might be lost to us, but I mean places like Mississippi and Louisiana, Republicans win by pretty narrow margins. They're not blowouts. And yet the Democratic Party has refused to spend money there. They're going to be compelled competitive statewide races in Mississippi, Kentucky. These things are happening in Florida too. Our friend David Jolly is running in Florida. How do you get Democrats to come up off of some of that money at the DSCC and spend money in places where there are lots, frankly of black people, brown people, people who are affected by the immigration rates, etc, they just never get asked if they care to vote.

[Ezra Levin]

Joy, if we're putting our faith in the DSCC to save us, I'm sorry, we're not. What I will say is there are good groups out there that are organizing, not just indivisible call out black voters matter. Who's doing serious organizing in Georgia and other states in the Deep south really has people power, is plugging candidates, is organizing for democracy is on the right side of the issues today. We've got to if we want a change. We cannot just rely on organizing in the same place or with the same people. I'm from the Deep South, I'm from rural Texas. I'm from a place where the word Democrat is a bad word. When I started getting involved in politics, there was no Democratic Party to speak of where I was. It was a joke. They didn't actually contest for elections. The indivisible leader there a few years ago decided to run for state rep. Representing my hometown and won and then won again and then won again. But that's because there wasn't any organizing in that place before. You need a foothold. You need people to come together and say, no, we're not just going to elect Republicans every single time and help them and have them fail us. But so for folks who are trying to figure out where to get a foothold, I would recommend find your local organizing chapter, whatever it may be, and get to work. Because if you start contesting for elections, eventually you're going to build up and you're Going to turn something like a red state that Georgia once was in to a firmly purple state where you can win two Democratic statewide senators. That's in reach for a lot of these states, but it's not going to be in reach if we say, oh, those are Republican land. We shouldn't organize. I think about the no Kings 2 protests. They were 2,700 protests on a single day. That wasn't in the blue city centers only. That was in the blue states. That was in the smallest towns in the most red and rural and Trump country in the deep South.

[Joy Reid]

They had them in Wyoming.

[Ezra Levin]

In tiny little. There were three in my home county that you were. Democrat was a bad word. So there are people out there who don't like what this regime is doing and it's overreaching so much. Gosh. I think actually we can contest in places that we weren't able to contest in before because the mask is off. They are not lowering your prices. They are not helping you in any way. They're invading your town and terrorizing your community. That's what they have to deliver while they shut down the government in order to hide the Epstein files. Give Democrats a shot. If you have a Democrat worth a damn who's actually asking for your vote, they might be able to make some headway this term.

[Joy Reid]

Well, I mean, and that's just if the Democrat is worth a shot. Because the challenge that I have and the fear I have is that people reward Democrats or essentially punish Republicans for the, you know, essentially the theft. I've been saying, stop the steal. I mean, they're just literally stuffing money into their pockets in this United States House, United States Senate Republican caucus, while Donald Trump is doing the same. Billionaires are being treated as oligarchs, as Lev Parnas just said on the show. And essentially he's creating his new own little oligarchy. But let's say Republicans, let's say Democrats take control of the United States Senate and they behave this way, you know, as a majority, they still behave in this. We don't think this is anything other than normal politics manner. They still do business as usual. Then we've gotten nowhere. I mean, it really does matter. So do you think this is the time? And I've been really flirting with this idea of going into the Working Families Party because the Working Families Party works alongside Democrats, but they can actually produce a better kind of Democrat because you can only get get my vote at this point in New York. If you get their endorsement and you're a Democrat, you know what I mean, I want a Democrat that's endorsed by the Working Families Party. Should we start thinking about doing those kinds of outside the Democratic establishment connections?

[Ezra Levin]

Oh, I'm a huge fan of the Working Families Party. I think Maurice Mitchell is a generational political talent and a real leader who's been leading that party. And they've made incredible gains most recently. They're one of the key backers of Mamdani in New York, who didn't just win, didn't just crushed the Democratic establishment, but young. That won back young men by 40 points. 40 points. Do you remember all of that, all of that discussion about how do we, where's the Joe Rogan have left? How are we using the young men? We've got to change. We got to moderate. We got to throw trans kids under the bus. We've got to. We've got to throw immigrants under the bus. That's how we're going to get young men back. And here's Mamdani coming in and winning them by 40 points with Chuck Schumer voting for Cuomo, as far as I can tell, and refusing to endorse him. So I absolutely think we need to give people something that they can be inspired by and not just Republican light policies that is going to disappoint them. I do think, though, part of the problem that the Democrats face is the policy agenda, what they're actually promising to do. But a lot of the problem is they're widely viewed as being feckless and corrupt. I don't think they are nearly as bad as the Democrats. We're in two different worlds. But they aren't trusted by normal, everyday voters. And you can't change that just by giving a good speech, writing an angry letter, or cussing more the way they figured out that they can do to try to show that they really care. You got to change leadership. You need a different set of messengers to convince normal everyday Americans that, hey, maybe this isn't the same old failed Democratic Party. Maybe I should give them another shot. But when your leader is literally the least popular political figure in the country, which is what Chuck Schumer is, you make that message stick. How do you win in a place like Texas or Mississippi or Alabama? You think there is a Chuck Schumer general election voter in Alabama, Mississippi or Texas, that person doesn't exist. So we're shooting ourselves in the foot by sticking with the same field leadership. It's not working out for governing and it's not going to work out in the midterms.

[Joy Reid]

Do you have A favorite if to replace them out of the group that are there now.

[Ezra Levin]

You know, I'm a fan of Chris Murphy. I'm a fan of Chris Van Hollen. I think Bernie and Warren are great, although they're progressives. And so a lot of the caucus wouldn't vote for him, I guess. But the point, the idea that there aren't other leaders who understand the moment we're in and would be able to lead the that's ridiculous. I think what we need, though, before those leaders emerge, I think we need a cacophony. We need voices out there demanding this indivisible has been out calling for new leadership, move on, has been out there. PCCC has been out there. We need more folks out there saying, yeah, now's the time to make a switch. I don't want to see donations to the DSCC until there is a shift in leadership. I don't want to see I want to see donors coming to the Democrats saying, look, I want to support you all, but you got to change leadership because I'm not going to throw good money after bad. And I want to see voters all around the country asking primary candidates, primaries to incumbents and primaries and open primaries saying, are you going to vote for new leadership? Okay, tell me. And if you're not going to tell me that simple question, you don't have my vote, you don't have my attention, you don't have my money. That's how we demand the change and we get the party we demand. So we've got to start demanding it.

[Joy Reid]

Ezra levin, it is. Indivisible.org is where you can find it. We're going to put that link in the description of the show so you guys can find him and find the organization and doing God's work out there. Ezra Levin, thank you very much. Or doing the universe's work. For those in the chat who may not be godfare people, but you're doing the work. EZRA thank you very much. Come back. ALFRED so there it is. We have to change leadership. I mean, obviously, Chuck Schumer, he may be a nice enough guy, but I mean, he doesn't have the leadership skills or the public trust to do this job. And that is for, I would say, two reasons. Reason number one, he thinks that this is normal politics. He thinks that we're still living at a time when the United States Senate can operate the way it operated in the 1970s. I think that Joe Biden had this problem as well, thinking that they're living in the same United States Senate that operated in the 70s, in the 60s. They think that it's a place where you can have bipartisanship and where you can operate in a normal political manner. And because they think that, because they do not understand that the people on the other side, who they call my friends, my friend, the gentleman from wherever named the state that's a Republican, they think that person is operating like a normal Republican. They're not. At this point, the Republican Party is gone. It is nothing more than a cult. And the high priests of a cult, they don't operate even at their own behest. They don't have their own ideas. They don't have their own. They just do whatever Trump wants. They are a Duma at this point. They're operating like the Russian Duma. So the first problem is thinking the Senate is normal and that the people on the other side are your friends and not the high priests of a cult who will only do what Donald Trump says and nothing more. That's true in the House. It's true in the Senate because Schumer does not understand that, that he cannot lead. That's reason number one. Number two, they think that we have an American president. We don't. Donald Trump does not believe in anything about the American system. He doesn't believe in the Constitution. He doesn't believe he should be beholden to the rule of law. He doesn't believe in any of it. Donald Trump is angry that he has not received and never received the love he thinks he deserves from the United States. United States. He thinks that America should be worshiping Donald Trump and should have always been worshiping Donald Trump. He is a tacky, needy, weird, long tied, poor taste, wannabe king. He really believes that he ought to be the king of the United States. He doesn't believe in the American system. And so thinking that you're dealing with Donald Trump as a normal president is, is problem number two for Chuck Schumer. You're not dealing with a normal president. You might as well be dealing with Satan, the devil. He believes that he can remake the United States into his personal kingdom because the people he admires that are leading other countries are people like Vladimir Putin and Victor Orban, who he just fed it in the White House. He thinks those people are strong. He really admires Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un of North Korea, Xi Jinping of China. Those are the people he admires. He admires El Salvador's president. He admires, you know, people in the past like Duterte of the Philippines, like, this is who he admires. He admires strong man dictators because he loves the fact. Did you remember when he said of Xi Jinping, he loves the fact that when he speaks, his cabinet stands up at attention, salutes. That's what he wants. Like he actually wants to be treated like a dictator. He wants to be a dictator. So therefore doesn't believe in the American system. System. He doesn't believe in the American presidency. It has too many limits. That's problem number two. And then problem number three is that Chuck Schumer, sorry, Chuck Schumer actually doesn't have a plan. Chuck Schumer doesn't have an actual governing plan. He's just kind of tooling along, waiting for the world to change. You don't go into a shutdown that is going to cause real harm and pain for tens of millions of people. And you know what a shutdown will do? Because Donald Trump has presided over the most shutdowns of any president in history during his first term. So he's a shutdown government kind of guy. Republicans have shut the government down before. So you knew what a shutdown means. It means people don't get their paychecks, including your own staff. You knew that it's going to mean suffering. You didn't have a plan, Chuck. You didn't think, maybe you should plan ahead for, number one, what the ending is. If anybody ever used to watch the show Lost. Remember the show Lost? Anybody old enough to remember that? The problem with Lost is you can tell that when those writers wrote Lost, they didn't seem to know how that show was going to end. And so they went on from season to see. I feel the same way about Game of Thrones. You're doing a show that's actually really entertaining and you're building this really complex narrative. But you yourself as a writer have not thought through how this thing ends. Who actually wins the Game of Thrones? Why were they on that island? That's why those shows had such unsatisfying endings. Because if you don't have a plan, your show kind of peters out in an unsatisfying way. And so what you have with Chuck Schumer is somebody who thinks the Senate is still normal, that we're in a normal time of the normal Senate, that the presidency is more or less. Maybe he's a little outre, but he's normal. And he doesn't have a plan for how he's gonna navigate any of this. He has no plan for any of it. So either he got taken to the cleaners by Those eight. And they betrayed him utterly and didn't listen to him or he was behind what they did. Neither of them are good. And so the reality is he cannot remain leader. He cannot. He may be a nice person. I'm not going to judge his character. He also can't read the room. This is a guy who refused to endorse Zorhan Mamdani even on election day. He couldn't figure out where the train was going. One thing about politics is read the room. You've got to know where this whole thing is going. If you see the arc of history, you need to follow it. LBJ understood that, and he was a man of the United States Senate. This is a guy from Texas who used the word negra on a regular basis, even though he did have a black woman that was one of his secretaries. And he did some pretty revolutionary things on civil rights, even though his own personal attitude. Truman. Truman was like a whole racist as a young man. He was like Klan adjacent. But he saw in World War II that you're going to need these black people to fight. We need more troops. And if these black men want to fight, I'm going to let them fight and I'm going to integrate the military. He had to do a study before. It took a while for it to do it. But Truman saw the arc of history. It's not that he was like a not racist person, but he saw the arc of history. Fdr, fdr. I don't know what his views were on race. He didn't seem to be that great. You know, he was willing to let the south do all sorts of horrible things.

[Lev Parnas]

Lincoln.

[Joy Reid]

Lincoln too. Lincoln literally wanted blacks to be returned to Africa because he didn't want them living near white people and said there would never be a time when black men are equal to white men. But he could see where this thing was going. He said the arc of history is that the country cannot survive half slave and half free. This is an untenable situation. So men of vision and good leaders can actually see where the thing is going and they can get themselves there and they can lead, even if it's not. Not leading on their own ideology. But they see where it's going and they understand they need to be at the front of the parade, not the back. Schumer is always at the back of the parade. He's trying to figure out where things are going. And he doesn't seem to have a handle on. On even where the parade is. He doesn't even know what city it's in half the time. So I think his time has passed. He doesn't get it on Gaza. He just doesn't get it. Just like Biden, clearly. We talked about it in the last show. He just didn't get it. This genocide is happening. And he's like, oh, no, Bibi's my friend. And so I think we're just facing this moment when we've got these leaders in the Democratic Party who just are not meant for the moment. They're not right for the times. They are not meant for the moment. LBJ was right for that moment. Truman was right for that moment. FDR was right for that moment. Woodrow Wilson was a whole racist piece of hot garbage, but he, you know, in some ways understood was right for the moment. He did sign the income tax, which is why Republicans will never forgive the Democratic Party or him. Terrible, racist, awful person. Screened Birth of a Nation in the White House. Just a hideous, horrible man. But he understood that we needed an international body that could kind of create international law. So he creates a League of nations, which eventually becomes the U.N. it's like, we need to have some sort of governance of, you know, the world can't just operate just willy nilly. We got to have some things, you knew we needed something like that. That man of his time made this, you know, the. Was something that didn't exist. We need to have a progressive income tax so that the wealthy can't have another Gilded Age. We. We need to not have a Gilded Age. So we need to have a. An income tax that's progressive and bring back the thing that Lincoln actually created, the income tax, which then he rescinded after the World War, after the Civil War, because people were like, we don't want a tax. We left England to get away from taxation. Taxation was the thing that made, you know, the. The wealthy oligarchy that started the country break off from England. He was like, but. But we probably need an income tax. So this is the problem. Chuck Schumer, and there are a lot of defenders of Chuck Schumer. People I respect are defending Chuck. He is not the right person for this moment. He's just not built for it. He's not built to fight a fascist. And Donald Trump is a fascist. And, you know, at minimum, at sort of the most generous way to describe him is an autocrat. But what we heard Lev Parnas talk about tonight is that he's essentially running a syndicate, a crime syndicate that is taking American tax dollars out of your pocket and giving it to billionaires who are already Billionaires, and in some cases trillionaires, they're taking your money and giving it to Elon Musk. He has a lot of government contracts. He's now trillionaire or about to be a trillionaire, and he's still going to get your tax money. Why? Why are these men who are giving $300 million for Donald Trump to have a ballroom, why do they get a tax cut? Again, why do they get, in addition to that government contracts, which by the way, is your money, and to give them the tax cut. And I've said it 473 times, but I will just say it for the 474th time. To give the super rich that record busting tax cut. They took the money out of Medicaid. Medicaid paid for the tax cut. The big beautiful bill, as they called it, which was Orwellian. They called it that because they are, George Orwellian evil. They called something beautiful, which was the biggest transfer of wealth in the history of the United States. There has never been a larger or more massive wealth transfer from the poor to the rich in 249 years of history. That bill transferred $4 trillion from you to Elon. The PayPal mafia, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, who just had that big party at his house with all the celebrities at it. They got your money and they're still not done. They're getting more because they get contracts on top of it. I'm sorry, how is that not a syndicate when they're also doing everything they can to protect a pedophile ring, which is the largest and most extensive pedophile ring in the history of the world. So let's just review. Donald Trump is leading a crime syndicate in which his own family is raking in money. Every time he goes to another country, by the way, he's going to Spain, I think, to watch the commanders play. They're having to reroute everything so that he can go watch again. He's so rich, that's what he's about to do with your money, because you pay for that. They're living in a new gilded age and you're paying for it. It they made this $1.7 trillion tax cut permanent at a cost to you of $4 trillion that you all have to pay for. They took the money out of Medicaid, meaning rural hospitals and poor folks. They also then went and cut more money out of Obamacare, ended the little subsidies that you get, which was $3 trillion, and now they're saying we're never giving it back. You don't get the subsidy, so you can't afford health care. And if you don't like it, we will starve 42 million people to make you comply. And by the way, they're still starving them. The Trump regime has not fully funded snap. They're still in court, in the Supreme Court, waiting for the appeals court and the Supreme Court to finish the case. They haven't restored the money. They haven't restored the money. Travel is still a hot mess. They haven't fully restored people's back pay. They haven't done any of it, even though it's literally in their purview. It's an executive branch thing. SNAP is not the legislature anymore. They already passed the money. It's Trump that's refusing to give the money. So again, he's partying with his friends, hosting lavish parties, theme parties at his estate. All the billionaires are partying. They're all living the life. They're living it up and taking the money out of Medicaid to pay for it. This is their dream, to have back the perfect capitalism they had at the beginning of the country. Because the country began as an oligarchy where you had perfect, pristine capitalism, very low cost to produce, very high profits, zero wages, no unions, seven day a week, work week, no ability to strike, no ability to retire, and no one had to pay for any more time. That was slavery. Perfect capitalism. Perfect. And it made people extravagantly rich. And the people who were being made richer than anything that has existed until the present day went to war with the King of England so he wouldn't tax that wealth. That was how we ended up as a country. Is that these people who, before the current tech billionaires, created the greatest wealth in the history of the world off of free labor. Free labor. No, even you didn't even cost anything to feed slaves because you just gave them the scraps off your table. That's why you have oxtail, that's why you have neck bones and chicken wings, because they just threw the wings to the. That, you know, y' all made it gourmet now, but that's just the extra food off of the massless table. So you don't even have to pay to feed them or just throw some cornmeal with, you know, half to the hogs, half to the slaves. It's perfect capitalism. Zero labor cost, almost pig feet. All that stuff black people have made into gourmet food is because that was the chitlins. All of that just thrown to the throne to the side crap that black people were forced to eat, and they just made it hot because we just like that, you know, that is capitalism. Pig's ears, all the stuff that the chat is talking about, right? And so now you had. People literally were like, we're going to go to war with England so we don't have to pay taxes on this. We want this tax free. And now, boom, America. And then they did it again in the Gilded Age, where they're like, we're making factories. We don't want to pay these people. We want them to work seven days a week. All right, maybe we'll let them give them Sundays off. Fine. Even the slaves. Let them pray on Sunday that they could be good slaves. And let the little, you know, immigrant workers with their, you know, they don't even go to school. We don't even want them at school. We just go work seven days, six days a week, get off Sunday off. We're not going to pay you good wages. And no unions, no labor protections, nothing. The 20th century destroyed their dreams because suddenly in 1913, you have an income tax. Now it's like, you got it now. We're going to take some taxes out. Then you get. FDR comes along and says, no, not only are we going to keep that income tax going, we're going to take some of that money and let people retire. We're going to create Social Security. The fight against Social Security was so serious, a bunch of billionaires at the time, their version of billionaires plotted to overthrow FDR and replace him with an American furor. That happened. The allegation is that one of Bush's kin was involved in that. George Bush's kin. They were going to overthrow FDR because he had the nerve to have federally funded employment and Social Security. And they were so angry about it, and they stopped him from also doing universal health care because they were going to originally also do universal health care. But they were like the fda, what is it? They have the Doctors association, the. The Doctor Medical. So they were like the ama. They were like, hell no. The doctors got together and said, hell, no, we're not giving these people free health care. No, we're not giving people subsidized health care. No, they didn't even. Couldn't get it. And then they took another several, you know, decades to finally get a version of federalized health care for old people and poor people. Medicare and Medicaid, those are part of the. Medicare is part of the Social Security Act. It's just an extension of Social Security that they finally got the health care Part and they couldn't even get it for the poor in there because the rich people were like, hell no again. So they had to make it different. They made it block grants to states, Medicaid. That's the only difference. And then it took another several decades to fix that with Obamacare. You see how, you see what I'm saying to you? We have been engaged in a 249 year fight against oligarchs. And to fight that, you need revolutionary thinking. You need people who are willing to understand what they're fighting. In FDR's age, he was fighting literal Nazis overseas and at home, he was fighting Nazis who were willing to replace him with a Fuhrer. People who were in the 1920s going to Madison Square Garden, Sig Heiling. For real. For real. So we're facing a crisis of a oligarchy, a noxious, vicious oligarchy that is also on top of it, racist and engaging in ethnic cleansing. And who do you think they think is going to replace those brown workers that they're importing? If you thought the blacks, ding, ding. They're like, we want back what we have. Thank you very much, Citizen Morgan, for the $5 tip and for the compliments on the civics history lesson. This is the stuff I try to explain. I really wish Democrats would have just said you're trying to impoverish people and starve Americans to try to force them to give up their health care because that's all that this whole exercise has been about. And for Chuck Schumer and those eight people to throw us under the bus when we know for damn sure that Democrats, I mean, that Republicans are never going to allow a vote to extend those subsidies. And whatever sad thing comes out of this supposed vote in December is going to be less than what we have now. It's going to. They're going to force them to give in and give away some things in order to even get that. And whatever comes out of that December vote is going to be less than what y' all have now. And I'm very sad about that. It is not a good thing. I think we need a moment of joy. Jason, let's go ahead and get a moment of joy because it's a sad, sad thing. But I do hope before I get to the moment of joy, that we have to understand that we are fighting something that has not existed in the United States really since the 1930s. We're fighting a full on fascist couple that only started on January 6, 2021, but is completing itself now very much 1930s, Germany style, right? Hitler did this coup, the beer hall putsch. He ends up in jail. He comes out, then he becomes chancellor. He gets elected, right? I mean, all this stuff just happens again and again and again. Human history is like a wheel. It just keeps turning and repeating and repeating and repeating. And we keep on. We're like Dieter the repeater. We just keep repeating the same things. And so we know how it came out. In the 1930s, we ended up in a world war. Donald Trump is now bombing fishermen, threatening to do an Iraq on Venezuela. At a certain point, this all explodes. And you'll pay for that, too. Because if there's a war against Venezuela, you will pay for that. If they invade Panama to steal the canal, you'll pay for that. That if they invade Greenland to take their rare earth, you'll pay for that. They're now saying they're going to protect Christians by going after Nigeria. Okay, you want to have a war in Africa, too? They're welcoming the new Syrian president. Hopefully he doesn't go back to jihad, just what he was doing before. And what's so interesting is that the thing that they keep name tagging, name checking, is communism. And that is also a clear fascist thing. When you're a fascist, you call everything that isn't fascism Communism. And it's a tell. Just listen to when they keep calling people communists. Mike Johnson does it, Donald Trump does it. All these Republicans go out and they call people like Zoram Dani communists. They're not communists. Communism, socialism are two different things. I really wish a journalist would say, what is a communist? And they say that, but they don't. But calling people communists, that is another sign. You have to see what you're seeing. And accept me that my argument against a Chuck Schumer or a Dick Durbin or any of these guys, thank God Dick Durbin's retiring. They don't understand any of this. They think that this is like the 90s and it's just Clinton versus Newt Gingrich and this is just politics. Even that wasn't normal. This isn't that. This is not politics. They're not learning. This is the 30s, not the 90s. Thank you. H.W. duncan. 3. I appreciate the $10 tip. Thank you. This is the 30s, not the 30s, Chuck. And so if you can't see that and you can't get that, you can't lead the party. You can't lead the party. It's just not your time. You're not a man of this time. This isn't the right time for you, and it isn't the right party for you. It isn't right. It can't end. Jeffries. You know what? Let me play really quick. We have a clip of Jeffries, and you guys can tell me if you think that Jeffries is. Because I think he's picking up and I think he feels the heat at the back of his neck. He can feel the horses of change. Here's C10. Let's play C10.

[House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries]

This is interesting that my colleague from Texas wanted to sit there and lecture both Katherine Clark and I.

[Joy Reid]

But couldn't.

[House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries]

See fit to ask us a single question, engage in a debate. Where y' all been, bro? You've been out for seven weeks. You don't have the time to have a back and forth. We hear you rant for a few minutes, basically threaten to repeal the Affordable Care act and then don't want to defend that position. You should feel free to defend that position. You've done it 70 times. And if you think that's on the right side of the American people, then fine. That's your plan. Repeal and displace tens of millions of people, people. That's the Republican plan. And what I don't understand is why my colleague cut and run. I'm sitting right here. Catherine Clark is right here. Hopefully, Madam Chair, we can have a back and forth as opposed to just being lectured to by our Republican colleagues.

[Joy Reid]

I think Hakeem Jeffries has potential. There are a lot of people who get mad at him all the time. Thank you, brands Miller 1278 for the $2 tip. But I think he has potential. I think he needs to let go of apac. I think he needs to make a clean break. You know, endorsing Mamdani was a good sign that he is teachable, that he actually can. I think, you know, he's younger. Obviously his generation is younger. I think he has potential. I. I want to see more. I want to see more distance. I want to see more pushing away. You know, he's a good communicator, which is helpful. We'll see. But even he has got to. Everyone's got to show improve at this point. I don't think anybody automatically gets support. I think it's really a matter of who is willing to fight for the people, who is willing to fight hard, and who is willing to fight Trump like you're fighting the devil. I need to see you fight like you are an exorcist with that cross in your hand saying the power of Christ compels you. I want to see some power of Christ compels you leadership. You need to fight like you're doing an exorcism of the United States. The behind me, Satan. The behind me say it has to be like an exorcism. Okay, exorcism. Because that's. We have a. Somebody called it a. It's like a virus that has taken the United States. But a lot of people are waking up, even people, again, who voted for Trump because of the money thing. The main thing is the money thing is they voted for Trump because they thought he was going to put money in their pockets. There are some of them who are cult members, but not all of them. But the ones who were not cult members who just thought he was giving them some coins in their pocket, they're the ones that are going, oh crap, I'm in trouble too. And so there. And look, it is not even a matter of the Democratic Party anymore. I'm not even interested in them anymore. We just have to fight this fascism. We have to fight this fascism. We have to fight it like it's an actual problem. Now we're gonna play our moment of joy. Our moment of joy comes from our former and truly American president. He's an American president, former President Barack Obama, who actually believes in the Constitution, believes in the system, maybe even too much, right? He maybe wasn't even too nice, maybe believes in it too much. But while Donald Trump was yapping about himself at a Veterans Day event yesterday, which I refused to play, he was actually surprising veterans on an honor flight on a US Airline. This is such feel good video. We had to make it our moment of joy. Jason's the one who found this one for me today. Jason, play D1, please.

[Jason (Producer/Assistant)]

This Honor Flight is to honor all the veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam. It's all free for them. We show them all their monuments and explain what their monuments are about. We just try to treat them with dignity that some of them didn't get when they came home from the war.

[Joy Reid]

Hello, everybody.

[Representative Jim McGovern]

What? As we approach Veterans Day, I wanted.

[Joy Reid]

To stop by and just say thank you for your extraordinary service to you, your family, the sacrifices that all of you made to protect our country is.

[Representative Jim McGovern]

Something that will always be honored and.

[Joy Reid]

We are very grateful. And we always also happened to welcome you with a 70 degree day in D.C. which doesn't always happen around here.

[Jason (Producer/Assistant)]

That's the first time I've seen a president, former or current greet and honor flight. And that is absolutely amazing. A commander in chief, a leader who's going to show up and tell you that your service was worth something. I think that's the important part. So I think it was a great thing to have.

[Representative Tom Cole]

Last time I got to see a president it was Gerald Ford.

[Joy Reid]

How about that?

[Representative Jim McGovern]

Thank you.

[Representative Tom Cole]

It was a joy, joy of my.

[Joy Reid]

Heart today to see all these people. It's good we still got people in our country. That's good.

[Representative Jim McGovern]

I had tears in my eyes. I just couldn't believe that there was that many people around that remembered us and was there to greet us.

[Representative Tom Cole]

And it was just unbelievable. Unbelievable. Well, it means a lot because back then you got off the plane there and you had no welcome and people were almost booing you.

[Lev Parnas]

I'm real happy that now with current.

[Representative Jim McGovern]

Troops that come back from deployments, they get welcomed back.

[Joy Reid]

Really nice because that's what should happen.

[Lev Parnas]

So it's being recreated in this flight and it makes you feel good.

[Joy Reid]

I haven't flown for 50 years and.

[Lev Parnas]

I was in the military from 72 to 76. Our country puts these things up, these.

[Representative Tom Cole]

Memorials honoring the men and women that served. You couldn't ask for something greater.

[Jason (Producer/Assistant)]

This has been going on over 20 years and it started out very small and now a lot of states have their own hubs and they raise their own money and get their. And they set up the whole flights. They set up where they're going to go, the buses, the flights. Flight like today from Madison, Wisconsin will come in in the morning and leave in the afternoon. And we'll get them around to every monument we can within reasonable time. Every city in this country has got veterans in it. I guarantee it. Go up and say thank you and just tell them how much you appreciate them.

[Joy Reid]

How do you not love that? You can't, you can't have a, have a full human heart and not love that. Happy Veterans Day. Unbelievable. To everybody who served. The generation that fought fascism cannot have to live to see us fall to fascism. Anyway, quick programming note. Tomorrow night we're going to be airing an interview on this channel with a young woman from the African nation of Burundi who was admitted to Harvard last year only to have the Trump regime. It's a shorty to have the Trump regime ban visas from her country and put a stop to her dreams. It's showing the real life consequences for international students, but also to American universities who are losing out on some great students. That's going to be a short that's going to air tomorrow night, 6pm on the Joy Reid Show Channel. Do tune in. That's it for now. Thank you all for tuning in. Please hit like subscribe and share this episode. If you're in the merch store, don't forget to hashtag wearing. Joy and readers, we love y'. All. Thank you to our team TJs people and everybody who's in the chat. Y' all were on fire tonight. Fire, fire, fire. See y' all on the next the Joy Read Show. Thanks for tuning in. Bye Bye. Okay, it.