Trump Is Losing The War and The Country | The Joy Reid Show LIVE!

Summary

The Joy Reid Show Episode Summary

Podcast: The Joy Reid Show
Episode Title: Trump Is Losing The War and The Country
Date: April 4, 2026
Host: Joy-Ann Reid
Notable Guests: Lev Parnas, Melanie Sloan, Dean Obedala, Imara Jones, Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins

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Overview

This episode offers a deep-dive into the unraveling state of Donald Trump’s presidency, focusing on his administration’s failures in the ongoing war with Iran, the crisis within his inner circle, and the domestic political consequences of his drastic, often erratic decisions. Joy Reid gathers a panel of political insiders, legal minds, and policy experts to dissect the latest breaking news, including the fallout from Pam Bondi’s firing as Attorney General of Florida, the alarming escalation with Iran, and the disturbing new Supreme Court rulings affecting LGBTQ+ rights. The episode’s overarching theme is the destabilization and radicalization of American institutions and foreign policy under the Trump regime.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Community and Housekeeping ([00:42-04:48])

• Joy celebrates the podcast community’s growth, pushing for higher subscriber numbers on YouTube, Substack, Facebook, and Twitch.
• Marks the approaching one-year anniversary of the show and teases big plans.
• Quote (Joy, 01:35): "We are on a march to get to 500,000 YouTube subs by our anniversary, which is June 9th."

2. War with Iran: Crisis and Escalation ([04:48-11:07])

• Major breaking news: Iran shot down a US fighter jet (F-15), one American pilot missing, rumors of cash reward by Iran for information on the pilots.
• U.S. allies and civilians in the Gulf facing increasing security threats.
• Iran claims (unverified by US media) to have killed 37 US officers in a bomb attack.
• Quote (Joy, 05:49): “That's scary. Donald Trump here in Jimmy Carter territory.”
• Discussion of the strategic implications: Trump has entered a “hornet's nest”; Iran’s control over 20% of world oil flows.
• US citizens in Dubai received escalating safety alerts, reflecting regional instability.

3. Domestic Fallout: Firing of Pam Bondi ([11:07-17:10])

• Pam Bondi is fired as Florida’s Attorney General, replaced by Todd Blanche (Trump’s former criminal attorney).
• Blanche seen as even more focused on political retribution.
• Trump’s practice: cycle through loyalists, demand loyalty oaths regarding Jan 6th, and create spectacle.
• Quote (Lev Parnas, 11:23): "He needed to change the news cycle in a very major way because of what we're seeing play out today...the hornet’s nest that he knocked over in Iran."
• Melanie Sloan: “It's impossible to please Trump as the Attorney General.”

4. The MAGA Fracture and Political Infighting ([17:10-20:19])

• Major rifts in Trump’s coalition: Labor Secretary and Tulsi Gabbard in jeopardy.
• Info on MAGA power struggles: factions forming around Tucker Carlson and Laura Loomer.
• Alex Jones reportedly turning against Trump, suggesting declining health.
• Lev Parnas: Inner circle more preoccupied with “wag the dog” distractions than actual substance.

5. The Danger of “Loyalty Oaths” and Election Nationalization ([20:19-26:45])

• Trump demands loyalty from DOJ, federal judges, and new AG (Blanche).
• Lev and Sloan: Trump’s real objective is to "nationalize" the election by fabricating a foreign interference emergency (with Tulsi Gabbard and others working behind the scenes).
• Ongoing attempts to leverage Venezuela, and the Epstein files, to create distractions and justify autocratic measures.
• Quote (Joy to Lev, 24:32): “Isn't that the point? ...To try to prove, in retrospect, this falsity that the election was stolen and that there was foreign interference.”

6. Congressional Dysfunction and Legal Jeopardy ([26:45-35:39])

• Chip Roy and other hardliners demand the next AG go after Antifa, J6 harassers, John Brennan, Jerome Powell, etc., none of which is realistic.
• Sloan: Even those improperly targeted suffer financial and reputational harm.
• Bondi’s firing partly due to embarrassing Congressional testimony.
• MAGA base’s list of prosecution demands is “impossible” and sets Trump up to disappoint.
• Quote (Joy, 33:54): “...they have some, a lot of problems. Like I think in Trump's own words, they're gonna go through some things.”

7. Supreme Court Ruling on Conversion Therapy & Its Threat to LGBTQ+ Rights ([39:59-56:35])

• Recap of Supreme Court ruling that overturns state bans on conversion therapy under free speech grounds.
• Imara Jones: ruling could usher in “unprofessional and unsafe medical care” and serves as a test case for rolling back rights more broadly.
• Joy and Imara discuss the pathway from anti-trans policy to broader “early to middle stages of genocide” (per Lemkin Institute).
• Discussion of the SAVE Act and other transphobic laws aiming to disenfranchise trans voters.

8. Military-Industrial Complex and Forever War ([65:28-81:29])

• Joy unpacks Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex, military appropriations, and “forever war."
• US outspends adversaries by an order of magnitude, but Iran and proxies use cheap drones/missiles to asymmetrically escalate.
• Quote (Joy quoting Nick Adams, 72:01): “Cheap drones…give weaker states such as Iran new ways to hold superior militaries at risk while forcing them to expend munitions and resources at a far greater cost.”
• Trump requests a $1.5 trillion military budget, surpassing WW2 spending, while gutting domestic programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and childcare.
• Quote (Joy, 79:03): "We can't do Medicare, Medicaid, daycare…We need to spend all our money on war.”

9. Panel Analysis – Trump’s Switch to Militarist Authoritarianism ([81:29-105:00])

• Dean Obedala on Trump’s transformation from “anti-war” to warmonger, intoxicated by power and militarism.
• Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins: criticizes the lack of imminent threat and strategic value in the war; the endangerment of alliances as Europe refuses to join Trump’s adventure.
• Dean recounts US/Iran history: CIA coup overthrowing Mossadegh, US support for Shah, and how these “bad faith actor” moves haunt us today.
• Jenkins: US incentives drive adversaries like Iran to pursue nuclear arms for self-protection.

10. Institutional Racism and Evangelical Ascendancy ([98:22-103:10])

• Pete Hegseth, new Defense Secretary, firing spree against non-white, female, and non-evangelical officers; leads to a whiter, more nationalist, and more incompetent leadership.
• Dean discusses exclusionary evangelical nationalism—outlined by discriminatory Good Friday services at the Pentagon.

11. Absurdity, Corruption, and MAGA Loyalty ([105:00-end])

• Joy and Dean mock Kristi Noem’s husband’s “bimbofication” kink; use of strippers as sources for military deployment news.
• Pam Bondi’s portrait literally discarded after her firing; she is expected to profit from lobbying in the private sector.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Joy on Iran scenario:
  "Donald Trump put his hand into a hornet's nest, and he can't pull it out." ([05:49])
• Melanie Sloan on DOJ exodus:
  "They have the D team to prosecute those cases…And secondly, those cases aren't real. Judges and juries are rejecting them." ([14:15])
• Lev Parnas on Trump's base:
  "There's no metric by which Donald Trump is winning right now...His base has noticed that." ([10:17])
• Imara Jones on the SCOTUS conversion therapy ruling:
  “If we say that people under free speech can suggest whatever medical treatments they wish, regardless of whether or not they work, that changes the healthcare system for everybody.” ([47:35])
• Joy recapping Eisenhower and McConnell:
  "We haven't won a war since the war that Eisenhower was the supreme commander of in World War II. We haven't won a war since.” ([65:28])
• Ambassador Jenkins:
  “At this point, there’s no reason for us to really keep saying that by being in this war we’re protecting America.” ([81:29])
• Dean Obedala on US-Iran history:
  “Iran was a democracy from 1941 to 1953. The United States of America ended that democracy in 1953.” ([92:02])
• Joy, summing up the show’s theme:
  "You have star chambers taking place in the United States of America. People having to fear prosecution because there's never enough MAGA is never satisfied." ([35:49])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:42-04:48] — Show Intro, Community, Milestones, and Announcements
• [04:48-11:07] — Iran shoots down US jet, war escalation, security alerts in Dubai
• [11:07-17:10] — Pam Bondi fired, “Maduro-style” regime change, Todd Blanche as AG
• [17:10-20:19] — MAGA infighting: Tulsi Gabbard, Alex Jones, factionalism
• [20:19-26:45] — Trump’s “loyalty oath” scheme and election nationalization plot
• [26:45-35:39] — Unrealistic MAGA demands, Congressional dysfunction, legal risks for former loyalists
• [39:59-56:35] — Supreme Court conversion therapy ruling; broader implications for LGBTQ+ and democracy
• [65:28-81:29] — Military-industrial complex, war profiteering, asymmetry
• [81:29-105:00] — High-level panel on Trump’s war pivot, historical context, and looming consequences
• [98:22-103:10] — Institutional racism, Hegseth’s firings, evangelical control
• [105:00-end] — News absurdities, Pam Bondi’s ouster, light moments, and show close

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Tone and Style

The episode’s tone is sharp, biting, and often darkly humorous—Joy Reid's signature approach. She and her guests blend serious analysis with sarcasm and exasperation at the absurdities and outrages of current events. The language is direct, unvarnished, and unafraid to call out corruption, incompetence, and bigotry by name. The lengthy discussions, punctuated by memorable one-liners and pop culture references, make the content accessible and energetic while remaining informative and comprehensive.

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Conclusion

If you missed this episode, you missed a jam-packed, unfiltered, often jaw-dropping examination of how American power has been destabilized, both at home and abroad, by a regime addicted to chaos, spectacle, and self-enrichment. With Trump’s war in Iran spiraling out of control, his inner circle fractured, and American institutions under rising extremist pressure, the stakes have never been higher for the country’s direction—on the battlefield, in the courts, and at the ballot box.

Transcript

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[Joy Reid]

Oh, tjif, everybody. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Joy Reed show. I've got my tea here ready to go. My tea matches my outfit. I guess that's on purpose because it's. It's all gear. Thank you all for tuning in. Appreciate everybody. Everybody that's in the chat already loading in. Appreciate each and every one of you. We gotta. Here we go. From Nancy C. Hello to everybody that is also on YouTube. The Twitchies. The Twitchies, A small but mighty army of Twitch people. We appreciate you guys. Welcome to the show as well as. Well as, of course, our LinkedIn fam, our Facebook fam, our Substack fam, and those who listen on audio platforms. We appreciate everybody. The last time I checked in and told you guys that YouTube, we were at 435,000 subscribers. Now we're at 436. Last time we checked in on substack, it was about. About just short of 210,000. We are now well over 210,000. Our Twitch army growing to now, what are we at, like 294,294? Not a thousand. 294 Twitchies. It's a small army. They're small. It's. They're small but mighty. They're small but mighty. They're dedicated, though. They're dedicated. About 26,000 dedicated soldiers. Good evening, everybody. Good evening. Jason saying good evening. Also the Facebook fam I have. I have about 600,000 Facebook followers on my Facebook fan page. But the specific Joy Reid show Facebook fam is 26,000, I think so. We're growing. We're new. We're still a baby. We're still a toddler. We're still growing, but we appreciate it. We are on a march to get to 500,000 YouTube subs by our anniversary, which is June 9th. I can't believe it's going to literally be a year since we started this podcast. June 9th, we'll be one years old. That's what I'm saying. We're a baby. We will be one year old on June 9th. We have something really special planned for that week, which I'm going to. That's going to be a tease. I'm not going to tell you what that is yet. Yeah, don't guess, Sean. I'm not going to tell you yet. No, because Sean will get mad at me. Sean's like, don't be telling everybody everything. Not going to do that. But we have something really big we got. Are planning a lot of really great stuff for our anniversary. It's our. Our tg, TJRS anniversary, which is coming up. And so we're trying to get to 500k on YouTube. Let's set a goal of getting to 250 on substack. I mean, why not? And let's just. If we can even get to a thousand on. On Twitch, I'll feel so good. Because I love our little Twitch Army. They're adorable. The Twitchies are. They've got emotes now so they can make emote faces. Oh, we got to work. That's eight weeks to get 750 twitchy. That's a lot of work. The Twitchies are amazing. Everybody please hit like and subscribe. The Twitch army is cute. They're adorable. And they have little emotes now. That's like a little face. It goes, hey. When they're happy. So we love them and so we try to keep them happy. So go hey. We love it. It is Friday. Happy Passover to everybody who is celebrating Passover, which goes all the way through the ninth, that is next week. And also Happy Good Friday to those who are in the Easter tradition. I know people are always like, why do they call it good? It's weird, right, that given what it commemorates. But you know, that is actually an English transl translation of what the rest of the world actually mainly calls Holy Friday. It's in the United States that we call it Good Friday, the sort of the British and American custom. But it's. We're not saying it's good, but it's. It's Good Friday. It's the Friday before Easter. Hope you guys got your Easter baskets and everything. All in house. Nala, the dogs Easter basket is already in house. The humans have not gotten theirs yet, but Nala has hers ready to go. It's got all sorts of dog treats in it. And so hopefully she'll enjoy that on Easter because, you know, we got to be good dog parents. We got a big show tonight. Our buddy Dean Obedala will be here in the second hour of the show. Really excited about that. We have a former State Department undersecretary for Arms Control. So y' all be good. We're going to have company be good in front of company. We got lots of great guests coming on. Imar Jones, a great trans journalist, is coming on shortly. But we're going to get right to this open because the big news on today is that Iran shot down a US fighter jet, an F15. Here was the Al Jazeera report on

[Dean Obedala]

that we're dealing with right now is a very significant event. The first time that an American fighter jet is being hit. At least this is what we were having. Also pictures through the Iranian television of the remaining of the fighter jet and that two American pilots are missing inside the Iranian territories and that operations are ongoing. Now the Iranian television just announced also that they are putting 10 billion 2 mans to anyone who can lead to the pilots. So they're asking people, calling on people to be part of the search operation to get the American pilots.

[Imar Jones]

Of course, this would be a changing

[Dean Obedala]

point in this war because it would

[Imar Jones]

mean for the first time that if

[Dean Obedala]

the Iranians are able to get the American pilots, then this is the first

[Joy Reid]

time that the Iranians will have American prisoners of war during this war. That's scary. Donald Trump here in Jimmy Carter territory. There was some reporting earlier today that one of the pilots, these F15s, carry two pilots and one of them has definitely been recovered. Just to show you guys, sort of, this is the area. You can see this map. You know, I love a map. This is the area the Kurdistan Province is around where this plane was shot down. You can see now the geography there. There's the Gulf, there's the Strait of Hormuz, which is the little bend. Above is Iran, below is the uae, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar. So you can see that's the geography that we're talking about there. So if they went down, it would be somewhere in that area. It's a pretty scary situation for those pilots. Hopefully the second pilot will be recovered beforehand because they're essentially offering a reward, the Iranians, for any information on that. Let me show you something that I got from a source earlier today, spoke with a source who has a friend in Dubai. And these are the safety alerts that Americans are getting in their phones. If they are in Dubai right now, which used to be one of the safest places to be in the country, that the alert started out in the morning saying public safety alert, you know, just do your normal activities. All good. Then all of a sudden it went emergency, emergency. And then it went, you know what? Seek a safe place inside of an acure, a secure building. So stay away from open areas, stay away from the windows. Those are the kind of alerts people are getting that are just back to back to back to back to back. So it's getting bad. Iran has also made a claim that 37 US officers were killed in a bomb attack on a gathering of officers in uae, although no US Media is reporting that or has verified that. So we're gonna have a lot more on the Iran situation later in the show, including the math that ain't mathin' for Donald Trump and his new forever war. As Trump seeks a record shattering new amount of money for the Pentagon, the peace guy wants a lot more money for the Pentagon. We're talking about that in hour two. But of course, the other big story this week that we did a breaking news live on yesterday, and thanks to all who tuned in for that, was the firing of Pamela Joe Bondi of the state of Florida as attorney general. Her replacement for now is her deputy, Todd Blanche, Trump's former criminal attorney from the hush money trial, the guy who helped lose that case. He also happens to be the guy who visited Ghislaine Maxwell for a secret meeting, after which there were suddenly no more inconvenient leaks to the Wall Street Journal like that birthday book leak that probably came from her world. So these are the two big stories that we're covering on today because what Donald Trump is facing right now are his polls are on the decline. They are. He's in the 30s when it comes to people's assessment of the economy. He's in the 40s at best. Even in Fox News polls, his overall approval is way down. And the people that he hired, the genius cast of television hosts, frequent television guests like Pam Bondi loyalists, RFK Jr this cast of characters, RFK Jr presiding over rampant measles outbreaks, disease outbreaks, things that we haven't seen before. Like he always says, like you've never seen before. We're getting disease like we've never seen before. Just so I know that CBS is recalling eye drops. We can't trust the fda. We certainly can't trust the Transportation Security Administration. It's scary to fly. There's an incompetent running that agency. There's an incompetent frat boy running the Pentagon. We're going to talk a little bit later about his insanely racist running of the Pentagon, but also insanely incompetent and stupid. So we're not doing well. Donald Trump. There's no metric by which Donald Trump is winning right now. He is not winning the war. He is not winning on the economy. He's not even winning with his own base. He's not winning on the Epstein files. He didn't deliver on that. It's hard to think of a promise that he's kept, and his base has noticed that. And on Iran, I was listening to a bunch of interviews over the weekend by a guy named Professor Robert Pate, who we're gonna try to get on the show, and he says that Donald Trump will want to try to signal that the Iran war is over. He did this before Donald Trump did his address. And he says a political declaration does not end a war when the underlying strategic reality remains unchanged. Iran has already demonstrated the ability to exert control over roughly 20% of the world's oil flows, not by closing the Strait of Hormuz, but by making it unreliable. That power does not disappear if the United States steps back. Meaning Donald Trump put his hand into a hornet's nest and he can't pull it out. But on this question of panel or Joe Bondi, let me introduce our really great panel to talk about her aspect of it, which actually is related to the Iran aspect of it, as you guys heard Lev Parnas talk about yesterday when we had our conversation in our live. Let's bring Lev Parnas in now. Our great friend from Lev remembers, along with federal prosecutor and former counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, Melanie Sloan. Thank you both for being here.

[Melanie Sloan]

Nice to be with you.

[Lev Parnas]

Thanks for having me, Jay.

[Joy Reid]

Great to see you both. I'm going to start with you, Lev. Thank you again for doing that live with us yesterday on that breaking news that Pam Bondi is out. Has anything changed? Because we're now seeing some reporting that she may have tried to beg to stay. What have you got on that?

[Lev Parnas]

Well, she definitely wanted to stay. She. She wanted to stay, I think, till the summertime. I think some of that reporting is correct what I'm hearing also. But Trump, like I said, he needed her for not only to. To give Red me to his base because he needed to something, but he also, you know, needed to change the news cycle in a very major way because of what we're seeing play out today. You know what the hornet's nest that you were talking about that he knocked over in Iran. It's just the beginning of the things that are transpiring there. Like you said, it's not just. Go ahead.

[Joy Reid]

I'm sorry. No, no, keep going.

[Lev Parnas]

I was saying it's not that they just control the 20% of the her oil of but it's just the United States and our allies, they're suffering because the Russians are having their oil freely go through there without having any restrictions. The Iranians are also, he's lifted the sanctions on them. The Chinese are getting their oil. It's just that our allies are being told that they have to go in there and try to get it themselves or the United States. But the American consumer is the one that's paying the price at the pump.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, the oil prices are through the roof. Let me go to you and thank you for being here and we appreciate your presence, Melanie, because I want to for a moment come off of Pambani for just one moment and talk about her replacement. So Todd Blanche, who I got to see in action in person when I attended the penultimate day of the hush money trial, not super impressive, at least to me. He did not win that case. But Donald Trump clearly trusts him a lot. I want you to listen to what he said on stage at cpac, which I think is alarming. And I want to get as a former federal prosecutor, what you think of it. Here's Todd Blanche.

[Imar Jones]

Other things that are happening.

[Dean Obedala]

There is not a single man or

[Imar Jones]

woman at the Department of Justice who had anything to do with those prosecutions. Over how many, how many have been canned?

[Dean Obedala]

Over 200. Over 200 either left before we came

[Imar Jones]

in because they knew it was coming

[Joy Reid]

or were fired or took early retirement.

[Imar Jones]

They are no longer employed by this department.

[Dean Obedala]

And, and when it comes to the, the FBI, which takes a lot of

[Imar Jones]

criticism, especially because of what happened over

[Joy Reid]

the past several years, Director Patel has cleaned house there too. There isn't a single man or woman with a gun federal agent still in

[Imar Jones]

that organization that had anything to do with the prosecution of President Trump.

[Joy Reid]

So, Melanie, you know, yesterday Lev described this as a Maduro style regime change, meaning it's the same regime you just take. You just, you know, remove the head of it. But the underboss is the same as the old boss. This guy sounds like he's just as much into retribution as Pam Bondi was.

[Melanie Sloan]

Oh, he may be even more into retribution than Pam Bondi was. I think it's entirely possible. I don't think he's going to be able to get retribution any more than Pam Bondi was because one, they've lost most of the decent lawyers at the Department of Justice and they have the D team to prosecute those, to prosecute those cases. And secondly, those cases aren't real. So judges and juries are rejecting Them in any case, you could have the best prosecutor in the world and it wouldn't matter if you have literally no case, which is what we've seen with Jim Comey and Letitia James and Jerome Powell. They're just crazy cases. So I think that Mr. Trump is going to be sadly disappointed. He takes out Bondi because he thinks that she hasn't gone after his enemies enough. And then he brings in Blanche and I don't think he's going to see any difference. But this is what happens in the Trump administration, you know, in Trump 1 and Trump 2. Remember Jeff Sessions, the first attorney general who Trump was beloved. He, that's where Stephen Miller, you know, first, first began working. And yet it took almost no time before, before Sessions, he lost his job in about a year too. So it's impossible to please Trump in the, as the, as the Attorney general. And even though he has a great relationship with Blanche, I think he will inevitably be dissatisfied there too.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, I mean, you have to have actual crimes in order to prosecute people. I don't think Donald Trump understands.

[Melanie Sloan]

And you know, this issue about the cleaning house of the FBI, meanwhile, is not mentioned. You know, right. By Blanche. There is that there are numerous lawsuits by FBI agents suing the Department of Justice and suing the FBI for their termination. And in fact, we have a complete joker, Cash Patel, as the head of the FBI and that shouldn't make anybody in America feel safer.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, they can't find Nancy Guthrie. One eighty something year old woman goes missing. They can't figure out where to find her. I, we said it yesterday, Twitter will probably locate this poor woman before any of the FBI do because all the competent people have been fired because they had the nerve to investigate Donald Trump's crimes, which is their job. Lev, let's talk about some of the people you talked about it yesterday. I want to bring it to those who didn't make it on the live Yesterday. This is a 5J. So these are the people who you said Pam Bondi is the sort of worm on the end of the hook. But the thing that Donald Trump is really concerned about is not so much her. They needed the distract, they needed the story to be about Pam Bondi. She's filling up some airtime and some headspace, you know, for the media. But these other people that are on the screen right now, there's the labor secretary whose husband is apparently a problem. He can't go into the building because of sexual harassment issues. Not in trouble because of what you see below her, which is These incredibly racist ad campaigns that she ran on social media where she essentially said, that's what America looks like. And if you don't look like that, sorry for you. There's her, there's Bondi, who's already out, and then there's Tulsi Gabbard, who on this list of the last two remaining, the Labor Secretary and Gabbard are in the most trouble. Jeopardy.

[Lev Parnas]

Well, the Labor Secretary is an easy one. That's, you know, that could be any day. Any, you know, that's not, not a major announcement for him to go. He could replace that. But Tulsi, as I've been telling you, is a major issue. Tulsi, because Tulsi, first of all, is, is a separate frack sec. A separate part of the fraction that's happening in Mega, which is part of the Tucker Carlson Group, which is heads up right now with the Laura Loomer Group, which is completely dividing mega. You have, you know, Alex. What. What's it in the nutstone, Alex?

[Joy Reid]

Alex Jones.

[Lev Parnas]

Jones, yes. Alex Jones out there right now literally saying that Donald Trump is ill and needs intervention.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, he said, he said Trump is over. They. We need to feel sorry for him. He made it sound like he thinks he's dying.

[Lev Parnas]

Yeah, he actually was talking about like our friend Wash talks about the cankles.

[Joy Reid]

Did you see that he was talking.

[Lev Parnas]

Yeah.

[Joy Reid]

Yes.

[Lev Parnas]

I mean, it's all, they're all coming to roost and. But I think that Tulsi Gabbers is somebody that is really on the verge of leaving. But there's major conversations because like I said, she has a lot to do with not only the second fraction, but also with what's happening behind the scenes. Her and Ratcliffe working on giving Trump some sort of a way to be able to nationalize or try to at least nationalize the elections with what's happening in Georgia and the election resort, the election results she's working on. But also I just want to quickly mention because Todd Blanche, I know him very well, better than most. He was my lawyer at some point. He was also represented my co defendant when we, when I got rid of him. So I went to bat with him plenty of times. And Tab Blanch is. And what I'm hearing from my sources is that that's talked about yesterday where she, Pam Bondi was just a distraction because Top Blanche, first of all, he's going to be there for 210 days. 210 days. We're coming up to the midterms. Yesterday he came out and I think on one of the Fox shows, he basically said there's nothing else to talk about. With the Epstein files, work done, the investigation's over. This is another delayed distraction. And basically, and now they're throwing out names like Alina Haba, they're throwing out names. These are all distractions and these are all basically to keep like wag the dog type of a situation. Because the real problem, what he's having is Tulsi Gabber, the Iran war and what's those two major things that are right now unraveling. And he has no control. And you could even see that with what, remember me and you spoke about Susie Wiles, remember her now? She came out with another interview saying that all of a sudden, now, Steve, you know, she, people in Trump's world are giving Trump more of a, of a rosy picture on what's happening with the war. And that's because as I told you earlier, her and Stephen Miller are going heads up. And Stephen Miller is telling Trump this is keep going, doubling down, everything's good with Iran. While Susie Wilds is trying to get an exit as quick as possible. One of the people that's trying to leave.

[Melanie Sloan]

And let's also just keep in mind that no one can get confirmed as attorney General right now. No one that Trump wants to put in. Right. So he's got Todd Blanch in there and he's going to do what he's been doing at the U.S. attorney's offices around the country, just keep putting people in without going for a confirmation because you can't get the confirmation. Thom Tillis, senator from North Carolina, said today, unless you say flat out that January six, you know, if you tell the truth about January six, he's not going to vote to confirm you. And Trump won't put anybody in who won't lie about January6. So that, that's just a line in the sand. We can't possibly get a confirmation there.

[Joy Reid]

And Melanie, is it possible, you know, Lev talked about the 220 days. What are the rules? Like, I mean, Donald Trump is the guy who likes to use the interim appointment so that he doesn't have to, as you said, deal with the confirmation process. Could he literally just leave him there until further notice?

[Melanie Sloan]

Here's the problem. Like, no, you can't just leave him there until further notice. But then Trump goes ahead and does it anyway. And does the Senate do anything about it? I mean, if we look at what's happened at these U.S. attorney's offices around the country, we've seen federal judges coming in Routinely to say you can't do what you're doing and refusing to recognize them and putting and installing other US Attorneys, which then the Trump administration immediately fires. So we're already seeing him do things that are completely unconstitutional. And it will be a big question. What will the Senate do if Trump just leaves somebody in there who's an acting Attorney general? And, you know, he could always, after Todd Blanche, he could put in somebody else. But in any event, Thom Tillis will be gone anyway. You know, he's retiring. It's only too bad that he didn't show this level of backbone, you know, while they were doing the time around him and Tony Ernst, really. But given the situation, we should expect to see Todd Blanche and all the names that are floated, you know, they're just gonna be floated because nothing's gonna happen there.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, well, Thom Tillis, you're right. It's very belated spy that he's showing. But the good thing about retiring as a United States Senator is you don't actually have to do it until January. Like, he's there through the election. No, no, but it just means.

[Melanie Sloan]

Right. They can't. Like, Trump won't be able to put anybody in. Exactly why there won't be a confirmation. Because Trump, you know, he's been making. Anybody who comes to the Department of Justice, in order to get hired there, you have to take a loyalty oath now, and as do federal judges, he's requiring loyalty oaths, and they are asked questions about January6. And if you don't agree with him that it was fraudulent like that, he won the election.

[Joy Reid]

He.

[Melanie Sloan]

You can't get a job. So he's certainly not going to put in an attorney general who's not going to take his. His stance on that he won the election. And yet you have Tillis say, you know, well, I won't confirm them. And obviously no Democrat will either. So I think that you will. We will not see another attorney general nominee for quite some time. But, you know, leaving Todd Blanche there, you know, that's not. That's not great for the Department of Justice either. You know, obviously he, as Leviticus well pointed out, you know, he's just a Trump. Trump. I didn't want to say lap dog, but he's also a little more than, you know.

[Lev Parnas]

Right. She's trying to be politically correct. Go ahead.

[Joy Reid]

He's a junkyard dog for Trump. There is one Democrat who would vote to confirm him, and that would be John Fetterman. I'm quite sure John Fetterman would vote for you know, a pile of warm poo. If Donald Trump told him to. I want to. Because on this point that Melanie just made, Lev, I think it's important to stick with this point for a moment. I mean, there's a reason Donald Trump wants anyone at the Justice Department to swear on a Trump Bible that he won the election 2020. Right. Because his plan, which Tulsi Gabbard is at the center of, and Pam Bondi would have been at the center of, and Todd Blanche will be at the center of, is to try to prove, in retrospect, this falsity that the election was stolen and that there was foreign interference. This is key to his attempts to satisfy John Roberts at the Supreme Court that there's a sufficient foreign emergency, a sort of foreign attack on the United States election system that will let him nationalize the election. Isn't that the point?

[Lev Parnas]

I mean, you connected the dots perfectly, Joy. I mean, just to give you another hint of what's going on during this whole fiasco of firing Bondi with him going out, making, making a speech. The other thing he did, which the news hardly reported on, was he took sanctions off Delsey Rodriguez in Venezuela, the current president. This is all part of the game. You know, he's also, you know, having, trying to get one of Raul, I forgot his last name. I don't want to mispronounce it, but another gentleman, but that is right now arrested in Venezuela to be brought in here to be able to give testimony that the elections, that the smart medic machines going all the way back to the Chavez regime, that they were, that there was some sort of interference. And that is exactly what Tulsi Gabbard is working on. And that is why she is such a major issue with what's up. And I think Tulsi, I'll be honest with you, the more I'm hearing from insiders and the things I think Tulsi's using, this, this is a strategic play that's being played on. That's why first with Kent coming out, doing what he did, then going on Tucker Carlson and now Tulsi coming out and, you know, playing basically, you know, because Trump did give her the opportunity to resign and do a soft landing and she refused. And now she's going heads up with Laura Loomer. So there's there, it's, it's a, it's like an ongoing situation right there between it. But you're right 100% because that's Trump's one thing. You know, originally when, when we were talking about when he was putting ice all over the place, we were talking about him doing the insurrection law, him trying to, you know, you know, do something like that to, you know, stop the elections. But what happened in Minnesota, you know, really was a shock. They took. They had to take a step back. And that's when plan B kind of went into effect. Where, how can we federalize, how can we nationalize, how can we what? Basically, what Putin told him at one time. How can we count the election? Because Putin told him it's not who votes for you, it's who counts the votes. And, you know, that's what Trump is really trying to figure out how to do.

[Joy Reid]

And the gentleman you were talking about is the thing is Raul Goran.

[Lev Parnas]

Goran, thank you. Thank you.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. He's a Venezuelan lawyer and businessman who serves as the president of a company called Global Vision. Billion dollar money laundering and corruption scheme. He is accused of being a part of. And to left's point, they're trying to flip him to. To try to concoct this cockamamie case that. To try to prove that the very dead Hugo Chavez rigged the election against Trump. And it is for the purposes of stealing the next election. I'll be very clear about that. I want to go back, though, for a moment, Melanie, and talk about some of the potential consequences for the people who have served Donald Trump in this regime. Pam Bondi has been very much out front praising Trump. Big sycophant. But there was a moment during the hearings when she went before Capitol Hill, which is probably what got her fired. Right. She embarrassed herself and the administration in front of the world on Capitol Hill. But this was the moment. I just want you to take a look at this because this is the moment when she was accused by a member of lying under oath. This is a six.

[Dean Obedala]

Jason just lied under oath. There is ample evidence in the.

[Joy Reid]

Epstein, don't you ever accuse me of a crime.

[Dean Obedala]

I believe you just lied under oath. And this is on videotape. You said there's no evidence of crime. I'm showing you. Here is a witness statement who called into the FBI's threat operations center. He drove Donald Trump around in a limo. He overheard what Donald Trump said to Jeffrey on his cell phone. He was so angry, he was going to stop a limo and hurt Donald Trump. And he met a girl who said she was raped by Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. She later had her head blown off. And officers at the scene said that could not have been suicide. No one, no one at the Department of Justice interviewed this witness. You need to interview this witness immediately. Epstein should rot in hell. So should the men who patronize this operation. And as we sit here today, There are over 1,000 sex trafficking victims and you have not held a single man accountable. Shame on you. If you had any decency, you would resign right after this hearing concludes, gentlemen, has expired.

[Joy Reid]

Well, it turned out she didn't have to resign. She got fired. That was Congressman Ted Lieu of California. And Melanie, do you foresee potential legal jeopardy for somebody like a Pam Bondi if we ever have a normal Department of Justice again?

[Melanie Sloan]

You know, it's very hard to prosecute someone under what's 18 USC 1001 lying to Congress. Right. And it has a five year statute of limitations. So it depends when, when we get the Department of Justice back, when the Democrats are back in control. There are plenty of Trump, Trump appointees who should be hauled in for lying to Congress. I mean, they would hardly be. Pam, Pam Bondi would hardly be alone. You know, and sadly right now, I don't think she's going to suffer a lot of consequences. She's going to go out and make a fortune like so many other former Trump Trump people. And while she wanted to stay as Attorney General, he's already said she's going to go and find a great job in the private sector. And we're likely to see her go into the private sector and because she's maintaining her relationship with Trump, pull in literally hundreds of thousands of dollars a month from single clients in order to call Trump and call people, call Todd Blanche, with whom she also has a good relationship, so that they can get, say, the antitrust settlements they want. And she's just going to be landing on her feet making literally millions of dollars probably per month in a completely corrupt way. So, you know, nobody should be shedding tears for Pam Bondi.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. Yesterday, Lev, you just confirmed everything that Lev told us. Yes, that's why Lev is smiling because he said exactly the same thing and gave us the name of the firm before we.

[Lev Parnas]

I was going to say,

[Joy Reid]

look, perroberation, that's what we love in the Jewish world.

[Melanie Sloan]

We haven't been on this.

[Joy Reid]

No, no, exactly. They. I haven't even had them on together, which is fabulous that we are corroborating each other. Let me play really quickly. Lev. Chip Roy, the guy running for Attorney General. Oh, no, he's running for. Is he running for attorney? Yes, Attorney General of Texas. Current Texas Congressman. He laid out the bill of particulars of why he thinks what he thinks Pam Bondi failed to do that he hopes that Todd Blanch or whoever replaces

[Dean Obedala]

her will do deal with things like anti tifa. The president rightly declared them a terrorist organization.

[Joy Reid]

We want to see people who are affiliated with these Marxist networks funding antifa

[Dean Obedala]

creating all sorts of danger for the American people. We want them held accountable. We want the people who are harassing J6ers held accountable. We want to know the truth on Arctic Frost. My records were targeted under Arctic Frost. Jack Smith.

[Joy Reid]

We want to see heads roll. We want to see John Brennan, who the.

[Dean Obedala]

The Judiciary Committee referred to the Department of Justice held accountable.

[Joy Reid]

And Jim Comey. These are all things that we think need to happen. The next Attorney General needs to be

[Dean Obedala]

very aggressive, and I hope the President will pick somebody who will do that. And I've been working with Todd Blanche and I look forward to working with

[Joy Reid]

him in the interim. Okay.

[Melanie Sloan]

Okay.

[Joy Reid]

Well, certainly there is a lot at stake and certainly some of this. Yeah, I mean, she was like kind of trying to shut him up at a certain point. I mean, these all seem like fanciful things. John Brennan is not going to prison. They also want Jerome Powell gone to prison. There was a judge just threw that out. Jeanine Perrott was losing her mind about that. Yes. Earlier. It is part of the challenge here that Donald Trump actually can't satisfy his base because these things that Chip Roy just discussed, that's what the base wants. Those things are impossible.

[Lev Parnas]

100%. That's what he ran on each one of. If you listen to everything Chip Roy said and everything is what he ran on the Epstein files. Getting Comey to prison, Brennan to prison, going after Jack Smith, everything that Chip Roy just spoke of as everything that Donald Trump ran on. And now it's all coming back to haunt them because starting with the Epstein files, which obviously Trump couldn't even imagine that he was all over them until. Until they opened them up. Until. You know, and then. And then right now, as far as. With these investigations, they're being embarrassed. I mean, look, Pam Bondi did everything. I mean, Melanie would know better. She, as a prosecutor, she there the. The fact that we had literally grand juries, we say a grand jury will indict a ham sand, but wouldn't indict these ham sandwiches that Pam Bondi and Donald Trump are bringing. I mean, there's only so much a prosecutor could do. So. Yes. I mean, you're going to hear the same. You know, we want Todd Blanch to do this, Todd Blanche to do that. But the big thing that he bought with not with this is time Right now, right now. It's, it's, he bought the time deflection because right now they're in a panic with the midterms. Susie Wiles came out and she said it, she said, look, we are going to get destroyed in the midterms with this war with everything that's going on. They're see writing on the wall and he's trying to do these shake ups and try to start giving his base some, some me, some, you know, try to make some lies like some hope to change. But I don't think it's gonna change. I think they're, they have some, a lot of problems. Like I think in Trump's own words, he's, they're gonna go through some things.

[Joy Reid]

They're gonna go through some things. Last word to you on this, Melanie Sloan, because you know you, John Brennan would have had to commit a crime for you to be able to prosecute him. But the base of the party wants him. Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Jerome Powell, their manager on Powell because he wouldn't lower interest rates. So Jeanine Pero tried to impanel a grand jury against him. That failed. Do the people who've been named, who keep getting named by the MAGA base, should they be worried? Is Todd Blanchard more able inquisitioner?

[Melanie Sloan]

There is of course something to worry about because all of these people do in fact have to hire lawyers. They have to hire very expensive lawyers and spend a lot of money defending themselves on these completely ridiculous charges. And that is not an insignificant amount of money. So for some people, sure, they may have a lot of money, but not everybody has a lot of money and can afford this. What you should keep an eye out for is there's going to be a lot going on down in Florida. They are trying to bring cases against Jackson Smith and they've been issuing subpoenas against not just Smith, but against many of his deputies. People who you would just never think to take on. And they're doing it in Florida. And where do you think they want to be? In front of Judge Eileen Cannon. Of course, as we've seen, Eileen Cannon literally is auditioning for the Supreme Court. There's nothing you won't do for Trump. And even if you can get the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn something she's done, that's not going to stop somebody from having to both spend a lot of money and a lot of emotional energy and be tarred and you know, go through with all like have to listen to Trump and all the people on Fox and Newsmax trashing them every day, trashing their families. I mean, they really. Whether or not you are ultimately prosecuted and convicted of anything, and we can be assured that that will not happen. Everything else is still pretty terrible.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And the journalists that this is happening to, ditto for them as well. Melanie Sloan, left Parnas. Thank you both very much. Wishing you guys a wonderful weekend. Thank you.

[Lev Parnas]

You do have a great weekend. Thank you, Jay.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you. Thank you. Come back often. This is where we stand. You have star chambers taking place in the United States of America. People having to fear prosecution because there's never enough MAGA is never satisfied. There's never enough pain meted out upon the people that they don't like. All right, well, we do like one group of people, and that is the people who sponsor us on this show. We appreciate them so very much. And I want to note that this show, the Joy Read show, is sponsored by our friends at Strawberry Me. Now, you do not have to be unhappy at work to want something more in your career. That is exactly where Strawberry Me comes in. They will match you with a professional career coach who will help you to figure out what it is you actually really want, what is worth your time to pursue. What kind of work could you do that doesn't feel like work at all because you love it? And how to make your move, your career move without blowing up your life. So the reality is that each of us that have risen in this business or any business or any career, we've had help along the way, people we've turned to for advice, people who've helped us to shape our path, people who can give you advice that's trustable, those are the people you would consider your coach. Right? And so when you get that kind of coaching, that kind of personal. That kind of personal touch where people reach out and really understand and seek to understand what it is that you want to do, that in of itself is comforting, but it's also a way to really and truly build your career. So if you've been thinking, you know what, I should probably do something different, but I just don't know where to start. Here's where to start. Go to Strawberry Me Joy, and find out if career coaching is right for you. Just go to Strawberry Me Joy to get 50% off your first session. Give it a try. No great athlete makes it without coaching, and no great career is built without coaching as well. So thank you to Strawberry Me for supporting this show. Okay, so. Well, after Donald Trump stormed angrily out of oral arguments on the Supreme Court, not Hearing what he wanted to hear from the justices, who he later suggested might be too stupid to side with him. John Roberts, Leonard Leo built Supreme Court is still noodling on whether the man who would be king gets to blow up birthright citizenship, just blow up the 14th Amendment, a decision that technically could impact people like Marco Rubio or Vivek Ramaswamy, neither of whose parents were citizens when they were born. But as Georgetown law professor Stephen Vladek pointed out in the New York Times, in some ways, just getting the case to the high court is a win for MAGA Christian nationalism. Vladek wrote the following about this other ruling, not a ruling now, but a ruling that the court made just last June, limiting the ability of district courts, federal courts, to issue nationwide injunctions. Here's the quote. In May, during the first oral argument addressing three consolidated cases, Justice Elena Kagan highlighted an alarming possibility that such a ruling could create that the government would lose a bunch of cases brought by individual plaintiffs but never appeal its losses, so that it could continue to enforce a patently unlawful policy against anyone who didn't bring her or his own lawsuit to challenge it. An injunction, for instance, issued by a federal district court in Los Angeles would not directly benefit anybody other than the specific individuals who had brought that particular lawsuit. Without an appeal, the district court's ruling would not indirectly benefit anybody. Unlike decisions by the Supreme Court and federal appeals court, district court rulings do not have precedential force in other cases, meaning that the regime could simply go to court on an issue, lose in district court, and then just stop litigating so that whatever it is they were doing that's illegal in one jurisdiction could stand. Could fall just in that jurisdiction, but stand everywhere else. They could continue to harm people everywhere else. That's a pretty scary thought. And it is not. Just like citizenship laws that can be quite boutique in our very strange country. Do y' all remember this lady? Take a look at this.

[Melanie Sloan]

New signs that one of the most

[Joy Reid]

controversial freshman members of Congress is considering

[Melanie Sloan]

a run for the White House.

[Joy Reid]

More now from Jonathan Karl.

[Dean Obedala]

They are the queens of the Tea Party. Tough, uncompromising, as conservative as they come, but with one big difference. This one looks like she's running for president. Congressman, how are you? How are you? We caught up with Michelle Bachmann at her hotel room in Des Moines and followed her everywhere.

[Joy Reid]

Hi there.

[Dean Obedala]

I'm Michelle. Hi, Michelle. Oh, my.

[Joy Reid]

I can't say your last name. Bachman. Thanks for coming to Des Moines.

[Dean Obedala]

She charms the conservatives.

[Joy Reid]

Well, I was born in Waterloo, and she can out.

[Dean Obedala]

Tough talk, Palin.

[Melanie Sloan]

I may be 5 foot 2 and

[Joy Reid]

wearing a yellow suit, but I am one tough lady. We need to go toe to toe, eyeball to eyeball with the president and say, Mr. President, you are wrong.

[Dean Obedala]

Bachmann would be a long shot, but few people fire up Tea Party activists more than she does. That's why the chairman of the Iowa Republican Party says she could be a force in the Iowa caucuses.

[Lev Parnas]

They line up with her stated principles of limited government, economic freedom, shrinking the

[Joy Reid]

size of things at the federal level.

[Lev Parnas]

So I think there's an opportunity, opportunity for her here.

[Dean Obedala]

So will she run?

[Joy Reid]

I'm in for 2012 in that I want to be a part of the conversation of making sure that President Obama only serves one term, not two.

[Dean Obedala]

She told us she'll make up her mind by summer regardless of what her friend Sarah Palin decides to do for Good MORNING America. Jonathan Karl, ABC News, Des Moines, Iowa.

[Joy Reid]

So there it is. She was Sarah Palin before Sarah Palin. You remember Michele Bachman. So she was an interesting character in 2012. She actually was considered a pretty formidable potential candidate back then in 2012. And a lot of her staff at the time have spawned off into Magaland and become like leaders of that MAGA movement. But it was not just her bona fides as a right winger on fiscal matters and the fact that she was a right wing Christian born in Iowa with all those bona fides. It was also her husband and his sort of Christian family business. Let's play B3. And tonight with an ABC News investigation, Tea Party powerhouse Michele Bachmann has rocketed to the top of the Republican pack. Tonight, a closer look at the business she and her husband own back home in Minnesota. An outside group filmed under undercover video inside the Bachman's Christian counseling center. Bachman's husband has said he does not try to turn gay people straight. ABC's chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross is here with those tapes and to tell us what they show tonight.

[Dean Obedala]

Brian? Well, Diane, they are quite a couple and we're learning a lot more about their views and how they've made their money. Michele Bachmann tells supporters her husband Marcus

[Joy Reid]

has been the key to her her 33 years of happy marriage. I have a very big advantage because Marcus has his PhD in counseling and he's a marriage counselor.

[Dean Obedala]

But Dr. Bachman's brand of counseling is

[Joy Reid]

highly controversial and could become a campaign issue. Here's my husband, Dr. Marcus Bachman.

[Dean Obedala]

Operating out of suburban Minneapolis. Dr. Bachman runs a Christian counseling firm co owned with his wife that at times, according to former patients, has tried to convert gay men into heterosexuals through prayer.

[Joy Reid]

His path for my therapy would be

[Imar Jones]

to read the Bible and pray to

[Joy Reid]

God that I would no longer be gay.

[Dean Obedala]

Andrew Ramirez of Minneapolis was 17 when

[Joy Reid]

his family sent him to Bachman and Associates where he says, so I'm not going to play more of it because you kind of get the idea. This is a 17 year old kid. He goes into this thing and they try to pray the gay out of them. They pray away the gay thing. This was a thing, right? Well, clinics like the Bachmann's just won a major ruling in the Supreme Court. By the way, that clinic that we were just talking about, it was cited for violations in Minnesota in 2017 that he called just clerical errors, but they cited for violation. But anyway, clinics like that have just won a big, big victory in the Supreme Court. The U.S. supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 this week against a Colorado law that banned conversion therapy for youth in a case that could have major consequences for transgender and queer youth across the U.S. and for health care more broadly. Colorado's 2019 law prohibits licensed clinicians from seeking to change the gender identity or sexual orientation of youth patients under 18. It's one of 23 states with similar restrictions. A case is called Chiles versus Salazar. It was bought by a woman named Kaylee Childs, who's a licensed counselor, who argued that Colorado's ban infringed on her free speech rights to talk with patients about her faith and beliefs on biological sex. Justice Katanji Brown Jackson was the lone dissenter in the case. According to SCOTUS blog. She argued that the majority's opinion could be ushering in an era of unprofessional and unsafe medical care administered by effectively by unsupervised health care providers. Joining us now to discuss all of this is Imar Jones, the Emmy and Peabody Award winning creator of Translash Media, a cross platform nonprofit journalism and narrative organization which produces content to shift the current culture of hostility towards transgender people in the U.S. amar, welcome.

[Imar Jones]

Thank you. Nice to see you.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you very much. Great to see you. What did you make of this Supreme Court ruling?

[Imar Jones]

Well, I think that as I wrote in a piece that declaring conversion therapy to be legal in this country, and let's remember that 23 states, nearly half the states, plus the District of Columbia had enacted conversion therapy bans because it had been deemed to be pseudoscience, quack science, fake science. It's been a long time. Holy grail of the people who wanted to make conversion therapy legal, for it to be declared legal, because one of their intents is to say that trans people aren't real and that if trans people can be converted.

[Joy Reid]

Right.

[Imar Jones]

Can be moved through talk therapy, through prayer, as you heard, I don't know, through other types of. Of quackery, then that means that we don't have to confer rights to trans people, because trans people are not worthy of dignity and equal human rights of other people. And we know that the people that are behind these lawsuits have long wanted a Supreme Court ruling because it circumvents the messy state legislative process that they say that they've supported for all these years because they were losing there, and it puts them on a path to be able to erase people. And I think, as you alluded to in Justice Jackson opinion, you know, one of the reasons why we have had relatively strong health care in terms of standards in this country is because people, namely state medical bodies, get to say things that are fake and things that are real with regards to medical science. And that if we say that people under free speech can suggest whatever medical treatments they wish, regardless of whether or not they work, that changes the healthcare system for everybody. So you could have a situation where people are suggesting, for example, injecting Clorox to cure viruses, and you can't stop them from doing it because it's free speech. So in so many ways, it's very, very dangerous for everybody. In addition to, of course, trans people.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. I mean, I just binged all five seasons of Poldark, which I recommend everybody do. It's quite good. And one of the doctors in it applied leeches to people. Right. And I mean, what if somebody said, what's my religious belief? That the only way to cure, you know, X disease is by applying leeches? And then you couldn't stop them from doing it. They're like, well, that's my religious belief. Like, you could. You could kind of say anything. Right. If the. If free speech means you can slap religion on it, and suddenly you get to say, my treatment that I've made up in my mind is legal. That does feel frightening to me. For everyone.

[Imar Jones]

That's exactly right. And that's exactly what they are doing. And as I have pointed out for a long time now, you know, the things that they are doing on trans people are essentially a road test of what they do for everyone. Because, as you know and are very much aware, their goal is to narrow the idea of citizenship, to narrow the idea of humanity to a small enough group of People that will allow them to remain in power. And you essentially then have to take away citizenship, take away rights, take away recognition, recognition from all of the types of people that you disagree with or that you don't want to be a part of that American story. And trans people are such a small part of the population. You know, one out of every 100 people are trans in the United States. There's such a small group of people where you can experiment on the combination of laws, rules, administrative rulings, customs, to be able to confer that type of marginalization. And once you get that formula right, you can just broaden it to the rest of society. And so I think that's why this case has these broader implications, because it's quite clear that next up are LGBTQ people. We know that they believe that anyone disabled doesn't have equal rights in this country. So whether or not you be anything from ADHD or have some other type

[Lev Parnas]

of

[Imar Jones]

mental health or disability that is even more severe than, you know, anxiety or that sort of thing, that you shouldn't be able to have equal rights. They've issued a ruling that trans people in prison, that they should be allowed to experiment on trans people with psychotropic drugs that may not be widely available to see if they will work. So I think that all of these reasons are why the Lemkin Institute for the Study of Holocaust, which sort of looks at the modern world and tries to prevent Holocaust from happening again in a modern setting, say that when it comes to trans people, the United States, that we are in the early to middle stages of a genocide happening.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. I mean, in Nazi Germany, trans people were sort of an early indicator of what they were going to do. They did. They, you know, sort of went after the trans community. They went after then the gay community and nightclubs, et cetera. And that's sort of the precursor to what they did more broadly to Jewish people. But let's talk about some of the other potential. And I hate to be very pessimistic, but if you know me, my name is sort of ironic when it comes to the Supreme Court. I am not really hopeful about them, about anything. And some of the other laws that may come before them maybe one day could include the SAVE act, which would require your birth certificate and your voting records to match. That means every trans person who's transitioned and changed their name would automatically be not allowed to vote. There's that. And then there's also state laws in some states. I want to say Kansas. I don't want to disparage Kansas, if I'm getting the wrong state that have already made it unlawful for trans people to have a driver's license and told them, turn your driver's license in, if that then goes up to an appeals court, per the Supreme Court's new rules, if, let's say a district court ruled against that state and said you can't have that law, that wouldn't apply to any other state, it wouldn't have any application outside that state. So state by state, you could see states take away people's right to drive. This all feels ominous. And I'm not sure I trust John Roberts to stop it. Do you?

[Imar Jones]

Well, I mean, you know, what's the old Russian saying, you know, trust but verify. And I think that there's so many ways in which, like this isn't about trust. This is about what we can see and what is verifiable. And what we know is that the Supreme Court is bending the rules as they go along to allow them to do whatever they want in service to seemingly a larger agenda.

[Joy Reid]

Right.

[Imar Jones]

And these are things what I just said is not, again, it's not radical, it's not being an advocate. These are what their fellow justices have said. Right. These are what Justices Sotomayor, for example, and Kagan have said in other cases. This is not kind of radical stuff that we are talking about. And no, I mean, I think that the Supreme Court clearly, because it is also steadily losing the confidence of the American people in, is showing that and making the case for the fact that there may be, there may need to be some substantial changes to the way that it as an institution works in America because they're twisting themselves in a pretzel as a part of this agenda. And I think that when it comes to a broad array of issues in the United States, the people that are writing these opinions are violating other opinions that they've co signed on earlier in their careers in order to do the things that they want to do, including on this particular issue. And it's, it's so clear that, you know, they're kind of making up their minds around trans people that trans people should be excluded. And so if they are making their minds up about trans people, who else gets to be on the list of not being included, included in people deserving equal protections and equal rights? Right. Like, you know, what's interesting to me also about like the SAVE act, you referenced that, you know, there's this conversation, trans people are trans women. Women. We don't really know if trans women should be counted as Women. When it comes to the SAVE Acts, trans women are counted as women because the inability to be able to recognize for a name change applies to all people under the SAVE act, including women. If your name. If you did a name change when you got married, it doesn't match your birth certificate, for example, or if all of your documents aren't to date. So, like, the lines that people are making between, you know, what applies to one group and what applies to another group are actually razor thin.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. I'm still trying to figure out how John Donald Hamel, or whatever JD Mans his real name was, would get to vote. Like, I'm like, is John Donald gonna get to vote? Because if I can't vote, I think he shouldn't be able either, because his name. Holy. Does it match? He's changed it four times. Let me ask you just on a personal level. It has been a rough period for trans folks since the 2024 election. You know, a third of the campaign dollars that were spent by the Trump campaign were specifically on ads about trans women in sports and fixating on trans people in a way that was actually very effective. It did move some voters, including some voters of color. How difficult has that been? And do you think that that ice is thawing?

[Imar Jones]

No, I think that Donald Trump has told Republicans in almost every single forum that he can, that the thing that they are to run on this year because they kind of can't move any other part of their agenda, and we could even go one by one and see how they're kind of stuck. The thing that they've done that's relatively popular, not wholly, but relatively popular, in contrast to all of the others, are the things they've done in targeting trans people. So he told the Republican conference in January that they need to run on trans people, that they need to run against rights for trans people and make the case that everything they've done to target trans people is in the best interest of Americans. And so that means that the closer we get to the election, right, we're going to have a repeat of what we saw before, which I don't think is only going to be about ads this time. I think they're going to be much larger moves of persecution and reprisals. And so I think it's going to get much worse this year. And I don't do that because I don't say this because, you know, like you, overly pessimistic, but it's just literally the reality. I mean, when you have, again, a research institute that studies genocide says this Group of people in the United States in 2026 are in the early to middle stages of genocide. That's not hyperbole. That's based upon where we are. The only way that we don't get there is if people wake up. If people really understand that a conversation about trans athletes and trans people using the bathroom and trans healthcare actually is not relevant to them or their lives, that they are being manipulated as a part of a larger agenda, and to not be duped, essentially, to not be deceived into supporting agendas that are not in their best interest, then we don't have to get there. It's only if people allow these things to somehow make sense to them that we'll get there. We don't have to, but it means people have to wake up and stop being used.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, you're paying attention to who being in a bathroom with you. It's not them, it's you. I've never had any interest in whoever you're trying to get your thing going to get out, especially as possible, as fast as possible, especially if, you know, you're not home. He's like, you don't want to be hanging out in there, looking around and scrutinizing everybody, seeing what's happening. Why are you doing that? That's just weird.

[Imar Jones]

I had a conservative woman I was interviewing once for a podcast series. She's like, she's like one of these people that are close to General Flynn, actually his friend and next door neighbor. And, and she told. And she said to me, you know, we were interviewing, and she said, well, if you, if. If I walked in, in the bathroom and you were dropping your pants in the middle of the floor, that would be a concerning to me. I said, connie, if I walked into a bathroom and you were dropping your pants, that would be of great concern to me as well. Like, what are you talking about?

[Joy Reid]

What. It makes me wonder what they actually do in the bathroom, because y' all spend a lot of time and you do a lot of ogling. Because I'm like, I don't want to go in the bathroom with them because literally they do more peeping in the bathroom than anyone I've ever seen. It's weird.

[Imar Jones]

And the people they police the most are. Are people that they don't think conform to gender norms. And a lot of times the people that don't conform to their idea of womanhood, we know historically, are black women, right? And so they challenge like, do you belong here? You know, and it's, you know, and I think that, like, we also have to realize that, like, these things that they are pushing are not in the interest of people.

[Joy Reid]

Right. Come on. When I tell you God is still working on me. But I'll tell you one way that God has got me on this weekend before Easter is God has never let me because I walk around in a baseball cap all the time. I'm a tomboy. God has never let one of them ask me if I'm. So if I'm in my dad's. God knows that we don't need to have Joy bailed out today and be Fox News a block again because it wouldn't go well. It wouldn't go well.

[Imar Jones]

Wild to do that. It is wild to think it is your job to look in people's underwear. It's a very strange thing. And like, that to me is the middleness. Like, who wants to pass laws that allow strangers to inspect the genitals of teenage girls? That's weird.

[Joy Reid]

Well, when you think about the Epstein connections, maybe it makes more sense because

[Imar Jones]

they're a little obsessed.

[Joy Reid]

It's a little obsessive. It's weird. Mara Jones, please come back often, and we can kiki about all the things that go on. Well, we don't want to talk about what they do. Let's come back and let's talk about something fun from your podcast. Please let everybody know where they can follow you.

[Imar Jones]

You can follow me on social media at Amara Jones, which is my name, or follow us on Translash Media and subscribe to the Translash podcast.

[Joy Reid]

Come on back and we're. We'll talk about something fun, because talking about them just gives me the creeps.

[Imar Jones]

Talk about it.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you.

[Imar Jones]

Thank you.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you, friend. Have a great weekend. Yeah, they give me the creeps, I promise you. I don't know. I've never looked at what another person is happening inside of their drawers inside of the bathroom. And I think if you do, there's something deeply wrong with you. But I'm telling you, God. God knows my heart, because I really wish somebody would stop me in my baseball cap and say, am I in the right bathroom? Lord, work on me. Speak, Lord. Speak to me. Speak, Lord. I need somebody to speak to me. Speak to me. All right, y'. All. Let's thank one of our other wonderful sponsors, because this one is key. This is one of our favorites, ZBiotics. Here it is. Let me show you guys what the box looks like. I don't think I've shown you the box. They are. Did you take one of those before we get started? Because you sound like you're gonna be hyper tonight. Lord, Lord, let me let you know that the Joy beach show is brought to you by Zebiotics.

[Melanie Sloan]

Celebrations don't start with the clinking of glasses.

[Joy Reid]

They start with Zbiotics Pre alcohol, a

[Melanie Sloan]

probiotic you take before your first drink so you can enjoy the night and wake up ready? Zebiotics Free alcohol, the science behind your next great morning.

[Joy Reid]

All right, y'. All. Yes. This is such an important part of getting my life, you know, you say, get your life, get your life. Zbiotics is what I rely on to support my goal of being fully present and ready for whatever comes my way by keeping my social life and my wellness goals aligned. So let's just face it. After a night with drinks, I don't bounce back the next day like I used to. Menopause is menopausing. And I therefore have to make a choice. I can either have a great night or a great next day. And that was the way it was before I found pre alcohol. Now, one of the great things about pre alcohol is that it allows you to live your life, live your truth, without having to worry about what happens 24 hours later. ZBiotics pre alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered prebiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Let me tell you how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in your gut. And you know, your gut is where your health lives, and it is a buildup of that byproduct in your gut, not dehydration like your mama told you, that is to blame for rough days after drinking. Pre alcohol produces an enzyme that counteracts and breaks up this horrible byproduct in your gut. So if you just remember to make prebiotic your first pre alcohol, your first drink of the night, then drink responsibly. You will feel your best tomorrow. So let me just show you. I'm going to open up and show you guys the box. And you can see that I'm a sharer, because there's only one left. People be drinking my stuff. People. People be taking my things, y'. All. But I'm telling you, it is. It is the key. It is the key to me being able to have my security. And I first tried this because, you know, the security is a great drink, but it's got a couple of alcohols in it so it can mess with your gut. And I first tried Zbiotics over the New Year's. Over the New Year's. Holiday. It was a game changer. Next morning, we were right on here on the Joy Reid show. I felt terrific. I was able to go just last week. We all went out and took Wangi, one of our team members, to dinner. And the only problem I had after taking my zebiotic, having my meal, having my security, was that I ate too much. And zbiotic can't help you with that. If you eat too much, it's not on them. So let's just be real. Usually a Friday night out used to be in a Saturday morning with the blackout with. With the blackout curtains closed and canceling your outings or your workouts or whatever else was on your schedule. But since I started incorporating pre alcohol, my security cocktail does not disrupt my morning flow again unless I eat too much and it's not on them. If you want to start incorporating pre alcohol into your life and wellness routine, just head to zebiotics.com joy. Use the code Joy. You can do it in all caps just for fun at checkout for 15 off. That's zbiotics.com joy. Use the code joy for 15 off. Do that at checkout. Thank you all very much, and we appreciate Zbiotics. They've been a long time sponsor of the show. Okay, so I just want to say before the record, before we get started with block C, that as usual, I had one. Listen, I had one before we went with one jurors in her party, but that's it. How many drinks did you have this week? When I tell y', all, every time I'm drinking my stuff. How many drinks did you. Or eating my stuff or eating my mosh bars. This one comes on. Am I pointing the right way? This one comes on and says, I didn't do it. I didn't do that. We. We discussed. There's. Right now there's about four of us ahead, and the three of y', all, apart from me, ate your marsh bars. But back to what I was saying, y', all, let me tell y', all, the moss bars is gone. I think there's one left up. They be eating my stuff. Did you eat some last night? I mean, I didn't eat. Well, see, there you go. There goes one less one. I had my bar. Somebody had moss bars, and I had prebiotics. I had one of them. I had one of those last week. Let me tell y' all something right now, because this Friday night, this is mine. I'm keeping it right here. I'm drinking now, so I don't even need it. I taught you later. I'm keeping it. And I get my subscription for it. So I make sure that I don't run out. And because I got. I'm have to double the subscription because all the beef's in the house. Can't trust nobody. Speak, Lord. You better listen to me. Could we get started with block C, please? Speak, Lord. Trip, man. Speak to me. Yeah, that's right. Guilty. Thank you, dog. They know he. They know what they did. They know what they did. Listen, y', all. Yesterday I was watching. Do you guys watch Professor Jang? I love Professor Jiang's YouTube channel. So I was listening to it yesterday and I watched. He did like, it was like a 40 minute piece. I sat and watched the whole thing. And he said something that I think is really important. And this is what he said. He said that the post World War II United States military is not built to win wars. Not built to win wars. It's built to enrich defense contractors. That's deep, right, Jason? That's deep. They're not built to win wars. It's built to enrich defense contractors. Do you guys remember last week when I played that Eisenhower military industrial complex clip? Y' all remember that? Looking over here at some stack? You remember?

[Dean Obedala]

You remember?

[Lev Parnas]

You remember?

[Joy Reid]

Yep. I'm getting a yes from Neil Koskowitz says yes. Everybody's saying yes. You remember it. Remember what he was warning about in that clip? He warned that the confluence of military interests and corporate interests could create a drive toward forever war. Because the industrialists who build the weapons are going to want them to be used up so that the government will have to keep coming back and buying more. And the government's push towards spending your tax money on weapons development, on weapons research, encourages these companies which get that money to focus on building newer, more sophisticated, more spectacular machines, while the government spends less and less and less on things like military personnel, education for those personnel or training. You know, the stuff that actually helps a country win wars. When you think about it that way, you can kind of see why we actually haven't won a war since the war that Eisenhower was the supreme commander of in World War II. We haven't won a war since. If you think about it, we haven't won, not single one. And this despite the fact that in every military battle Since World War II, we've won every battle. We've never lost a military battle head to head with anyone in Korea, in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, but we haven't won a war. Fast forward to another old guy, Mitch McConnell, back when he was still lucid and could talk. This is when he was pushing during the Biden administration, when he was pushing his party, the Republicans, to support funding for Ukraine, to back Ukraine in their war to repel the invasion by Russia. Take a listen to this clip. And this is from the Biden era. Here's Mitch McConnell. The Ukraine assistance. Let's talk about where the money's really going. A significant portion of it's being spent in the United States in 38 different states, replacing the weapons that we sent to Ukraine with more, more modern weapons. So we're rebuilding our industrial base. You hear that? Moscow Mitch told you. Aha. Moscow Mitch just told on himself. He told on the government. The whole point of selling arms to other countries is because they use them up and they have to keep coming back and buying more. And that feeds the coffers of military industrial complex companies like Northrop Grumman in this country who place the production plants for the planes, the ships. These are placed in every single US State. Pieces of are made here, pieces of them are made there. Part in Arkansas, part in North Carolina, part in California. They make them. And they don't make them all in one place. They make them in every state so that every governor, every state legislature has an interest in continuing the grift to continuing building the planes. Keep building the things it's built in your city. If you take, you stop taking that tax money to build them, you're going to lose out. The same goes to the AI companies, right? More war means more need for their products, more for their war fighting robotics, their AI products that they use to target people in the military. It's very lucrative, which is why the corporations want forever war. War makes money. And they don't care whether you actually win the war. They just want you to use the stuff and then come back and buy more. Let me just break it down for a moment. On the industrial side, the cost to build an F35 fighter jet, the F35A let's say specifically, is between 82.5 and $94 million per plane. Our amazing researchers got got this for us. Thank you Bethany, for that information. Depending on which estimate you use, right? 82.5 to $94 million per plane. The cost increases to $109 million per plane for what's called an F35B and 102.1 million per plane for an F35C fighter jet. Now let's go to the F15EX fighter jet like the one that Iran shot down this week. The cost for that plane, 90 to $97 million per plane. Or $117 million for a jet that's fully combat ready. Okay. East plane, a US Navy ship costs anywhere from the hundreds of millions, 300 and some odd million to 13 some odd billion dollars a piece of. Which is why we're probably really not keen to send too many of those into the Gulf. That's why we're not putting those in the Straits of Hormuz. They're really expensive. Nor will our allies, who also spend a lot of money on those ships and probably buy some of them from us. You put one of those out, you're gonna have to be real stingy with what you do with those ships. What about the Patriot missiles like the ones we dropped on that girls school? $3.5 million to $4 million a piece. A piece. So we spent roughly $8 million to bomb 160 little girls in that Iranian state school. About 8 million bucks that cost us. Boom. Let's go to Iran's side. They build a short range missile called the Fatah 110 that cost an estimated $110,000, all the way up to $2.1 million a piece. For their more sophisticated one, Iran also produces and exports a short range drone which is called the Shahed 136, which it also sells to Russia to use in Ukraine. Those drones cost about $30,000 a piece of. So this is the new cost of war. We are firing multiple three to $4 million missiles at Iran, including two. The two, as I said, that we fired to kill those 160 girls at the school while they are sitting back and firing $30,000 guns at the Gulf, wrecking our military bases that our allies allow us to have in places like Qatar, Dubai and the uae, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, making it really costly for them to have our bases and our troops there. They have to make a calculation. Is it worth it to have the basis for the US here when Iran can rain down $30,000 scuds, it's a short range on our cities. They are firing missiles into Haifa and it's so expensive to do the missiles that shoot back. The Iron Dome is starting to fail because so many short range and long range missiles are falling on Haifa in Israel that they're having to spend millions of dollars to stop what, one drone? But they're firing like a hundred of them. They can do this all day. That's the calculation. There's a guy named Nick Adams who writes for the Atlantic Council. Let me read you what he wrote, he said shock and awe was the term of art. When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, that conflict saw the United States bring to bear overwhelming military force backed by superior technology in the form of precision guided weapons, stealth aircraft and satellite technology, as well as a finely tuned military force built on sound doctrine, world class training and a professional cadre of officers and non commissioned officers, except for the ones who are torturing people. In many ways, the initial strikes on Iran resemble this dynamic. A world class military with superior weapons and training, engaging a weaker foe, aiming to achieve a lightning fast military victory in service of political aims. Like what they think happened in Venezuela, where we really didn't do anything but probably arrange to go and get that man without much bloodshed. But we're trying to do this shock and awe, right? But a closer look is what this gentleman Nick Adams writes. A closer look, however, reveals a shift in the battlefield dynamic over the past 20 years that often gives weaker militaries more tools to offset stronger adversaries. Cheap drones, open source satellite imagery and cyber tools give weaker states such as Iran new ways to hold superior militaries at risk while forcing them, the superior militaries to expend munitions and resources at a far greater cost. And despite deep capital markets, a strong innovation base and a growing defense tech sector in the United States, costs remain high and development timelines remain long due to an ornery requirements process, misaligned acquisition incentives and bureaucratic inertia. The Pentagon's challenge is to rapidly field innovative lower cost technologies alongside its exquisite capabilities, ensuring each is used where it delivers the greatest advantage. This is the new asymmetric cost of warfare. The Gulf Information center, which is another group that analyzes this stuff, they broke down Iran's April of 2024 mass strike and that's when Iran fired rockets at Israel, remember that? And Israel fired back when they had that back and forth sort of mini war. They estimate that in that back and forth with Israel, Tehran, that's the Iranian capital, spent $80 million. Sorry, on munitions that night. 80,100 on munitions that night. I think I'm doing that wrong. I think it was 8.1 million. Sorry, 8.1 million. Sorry, that was a typo. $8.1 million on munitions at night. 8.1 million. While Israel and their partners spent about a billion dollars to stop them. So it's 8.1 million to a billion. Which explains why the supposed President for peace, Donald Trump, is preparing to ask Congress for $1.5 trillion for the Department of Defense. To fund his forever wars. And I actually think I got that wrong. It's 80 million. Sorry, 80 million versus a billion. So they spent 80 million. 80 million is what? Tehran spent 80 million. And the United States and Israel and their partners spent a billion. It's still bad math. So they're now asking for $1.5 trillion. Okay. And just to show you how unprecedented that $1.5 trillion ask is, and they're clearly saying they're going to cut domestic programs together. They want another $1.5 trillion in their new budget request. Just to show you guys how crazy that is. Remember this chart? We put this chart up the other day. This was the chart of U.S. defense spending over time. Look at the top. In $2024 in modern dollars, 1945 was the peak of U.S. military spending. That's $1.4 trillion. Donald Trump now wants 100 billion more than that. We would be expending the most money. That's more than the war on terror, which you can see there in the sort of lower half of your screen from, you know, 22,000 on. That's the war on terror. 500 billion, 998 billion. When the so called war on terror peaked, we'd be more than that. More than the war on terror, more than was spent in 2024 when Iran actually did a skirmish with Israel. We'd be spending more than in World War II. Trump is asking for a defense budget in $2026. That's more than the World War II defense budget to fight a country that didn't attack us and that now may have one of our pilots detained as a hostage. And you wonder why they renamed the Defense Department the Department of War. Because that's what they intend to do. Make very lucrative war. Which is wild, right? Because this whole gambit used to be something that drunkypedy Hegseth used to think was dumb.

[Dean Obedala]

I've been a Recovering NeoCon for six years now. Like the foolishness with which we ricocheted around the world intervening think it was in our best interest, when really we

[Joy Reid]

just overturned the table and created something

[Dean Obedala]

worse in almost every single scenario has led to almost. I mean, the hubris of the Pentagon is that they want to now tell other countries how to do counterinsurgency based on what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Are you kidding me? So you really have learned nothing. Okay, nothing. So you're right. That trust, the trust there that our political leaders or our generals would have our best interests in mind is totally broken. It's totally broken.

[Joy Reid]

Hmm. Hmm. Have you learned nothing? Have you learned nothing? What happened to that guy? Right? That guy used to think waging these forever wars was crazy, was dumb. What's the point of running around the world telling the world how to live and how to do counterinsurgency and staying there for 20 years for no reason? For what? What do we gain? He's now in there like a 13 year old kid that's got war toys to play with. And now he's excited about killing the Caribbean, killing in Iran, forever war alongside Israel. What's that about? It's not just him. Donald Trump used to be the guy who said we wasted billions and billions and trillions of dollars on forever wars. And that was dumb. And now all of a sudden he's done the switch up too. Here's C5. This is Donald Trump's little switch up. When in November. Can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable? And if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?

[Dean Obedala]

Well, I would do that. Child care is child care. It couldn't, you know, there's something, you have to have it in this country. You have to have it. We're going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people and then we'll worry about the rest of the world. Let's help other people, but we're going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We have 50 states, we have all these other people. We're fighting wars. We can't of take care, can't take care of daycare. You got to let a state take care of daycare. And they should pay for it too. They should pay. They have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up, but it's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can't do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing, military, military protection. We have to guard the country.

[Joy Reid]

Hear that? We can't do Medicare, Medicaid, daycare. We can't do that. We got to take care of war. We got to take care of war. We need to spend all our money on war, on the military industrial complex. We need more patriot missiles, more F15s, more F35s. We need to enrich my, my donors. I mean, sorry, the people want to protect the country, we need to enrich my donors who want war there because they're making money off of it, because somebody's doing weird investments in oil futures. Whenever I say we're going to drop a bomb on Iran, whenever I brag about dropping bombs on Iran, somebody's making money on those oil futures. The military industrial people gave me a billion dollars. Northrop Grumman needs their money. Y' all people hungry and you want food, you want daycare, you want, you want to live? You want your grandma to live? That's not our job. Let your state do that. They should raise their taxes. Oh, suddenly he's for tax increases. Anything it takes to take all of your money and spend it on the Department of War. Join me now, Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins, currently the Shapiro Visiting professor for International affairs at the Elliott School of International affairs at George Washington University and the Compton Visiting professor at the Miller center at the University of Virginia. She is the former Under Secretary of State, State for Arms Control and International Security in the Biden administration. Quite conveniently alongside her is our good friend Dean Obedala, host of the Dean obadala show on SiriusXM channel 127 weekdays at 6 to 9pm ET. You got, you got to watch one of us. You got, you got to tape the other one. That's the idea. So we want you all to be listening to Dean. Dean is who I listen to when I'm going to pick up Nala from daycare. Yes, she goes to daycare. She's very spoiled. And I sit there and I listen to Dean on my way home. So I love the show. He's also the author of the Dean's report on Substack, which we're going to put in the link to this very show. And he's also the producer of the hilarious, an annual New York Arab American Comedy Festival. And he's also a lawyer. He's very convenient. That's very convenient for us as well. He doesn't always admit to it, but he is. I want to start with you, Madam Ambassador, first, because this notion that we need to fight Iran and Donald Trump says we need to scrap everything else from daycare to Medicaid, Medicare, forget the old people. We need to fight Iran because that's protecting the country. As somebody who is an undersecretary for arms control, are we protecting the country by fighting Iran?

[Bonnie Jenkins]

Actually, well, first of all, thanks for having me here. And no, we're not. I mean, let's go back to why we even entered this war. There was never A real imminent threat, would we enter the war? And so at this point, there's no reason for us to really keep saying that by being in this war we're protecting America. There's a lot of Americans who would think that there's other ways that they would like to be protected. It is not spending money, big money on war. It's protecting Americans like he said he was going to do, by making sure that Americans can actually live every day, you know, and afford the things that they need to afford, but spending the money that we're spending on this war, threatening our own ability to be prepared for other types of potential challenges by using up our military equipment. You know, this is not going to prepare us for the future and it's not going to help us now.

[Joy Reid]

And Dean, you know what happened to that other guy, right? The old guy? I can see how some people were attracted to that candidacy if that's what they were focused on. If you cared about peace. He was saying we didn't spend money on our rail, on our airports, not on war.

[Dean Obedala]

I think the brain swap, is that possible? I think the. Maybe they actually did an actual physical. Moving his brain around. I think what happened, Joy, is Donald Trump's gotten intoxicated with blowing things up and intoxicated with his idea of power. Like, I think he really did run sincerely on no more wars. And I think he believed that then, that the, the problem really was for us was how Venezuela went so easily for him. So then within a week of the Iran war, he point blank said, this will be just like Venezuela. It's going to be easy. This exact word, it's going to be easy like Venezuela and it's not. So the success of Venezuela is because of our military. And they're well trained and they can execute really well. And they did that. So the result is where we are now. And I think he just loves us now. He is all powerful. He's the Putin of our hemisphere. The only difference is with Putin, we and our allies impose sanctions on Putin and on the oligarchs when Trump does it. No one of our allies even talk about sanctioning Trump. They should be Trump, the cabinet officials, his oligarchs should be sanctioned the same way Putin is. If you want to change conduct, you've got to give people skin in the game. And as of now, they're doing nothing so that where that person is gone, Donald Trump is intoxicated with this new power and he likes being a strongman.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, just to your, to that point, Jason, if you could pull up C8. I mean Donald Trump is posting on social media video bragging about destroying civilian infrastructure, which could be a war crime. And he's putting that on his temu, Twitter, his truth social. And I mean this is sick. A President of the United States, Dean, boasting about destroying a civilian billion bridge. And you know what he never posts about and I'm sorry, Jason, this is C7. I'm going a bit out of order in C7. He doesn't post about this. These are the service members who were killed so far that we know of. I mean there's an allegation. There's 37 more, Dean. He doesn't talk about that.

[Bonnie Jenkins]

Right.

[Dean Obedala]

Do you want the ambassador?

[Joy Reid]

I was going to start with you and then go to the ambassador.

[Dean Obedala]

Okay, so look, Donald Trump never wants to know about anything that disrupts the narrative he's trying to peddle to the American people. Donald Trump's lies are catching up right here. Donald Trump said within a week of the war beginning and repeated over and over. Iran has no more air force, they have no more missiles, they have no more anti aircraft capabilities. He literally said they have no anti aircraft capabilities. Today two jets went down, one in F15, which we know was shot down and the other an A10 warhog. And they're wondering was that shot down or not? There are missiles like you were just covering before. We came on every day going against our Gulf allies, hitting these in Kuwait today and in Israel where hen my fiance who Joy knows, she gets the alerts on her phone because her family still lives in Haifa. Every night we hear missiles coming. Every single night she calls her family, make sure they're awake because it's 3 and 4 in the morning over in Haifa and even my family's in the West Bank. The Palestinians, they have to go into shelters too because the missiles come over and they've killed Palestinians in the west bank because Iran doesn't care, they just fire them. Sometimes they get intercepted, sometimes they kill Palestinians. So this is a regional war. And Trump keeps lying, he said about nuclear weapons even though he obliterated them. And he's lying saying they have no military capabilities when they do enjoyful about a war crime taking out a civilian bridge.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, I mean I'm surprised that I'm bragging about killing those little girls in the school because they did take responsibility for that too. But Madam Ambassador, let's play this. This is C6, Jason, when you have it. So this shooting down of a US F15, this is catastrophic. The idea that A small power like Iran could figure out how to do it. Do you have that, Jason? Okay. Oh, go for it. There it is.

[Lev Parnas]

Let's go back.

[Joy Reid]

There's the footage. And this is Iran is putting this footage out. And I'm playing it because it has now been confirmed. Axios reported on it as well as the Associated Press. I think we can be pretty confident that it happened. One of the pilots, at least, has been recovered. The search on for the other one. This is happening at a time when Americans still don't understand why our troops are over there at all, Madam Ambassador.

[Bonnie Jenkins]

Well, I think what you're showing here is one of the biggest problems we talked already about, the lies. You know, there's, you know, there's, you know, saying, for example, that we have destroyed their air capabilities, their ability to take down planes. Clearly, we have not done that. And so that's the first problem. The second problem, as you said, is we continue to underestimate what they can do. You know, we keep trying to tell the American public, oh, they, we destroyed this, we destroyed that. But this really shows a lack of respect, if you have to say that word, for their capabilities, what they could do. We're constantly underestimated, exacerbating them, and we're selling it to the American public. And then two, three days later, they find out that what has been said is not even true. So that's a real problem. And also, just go back what you said about showing the bombs, this desire to show destruction, this desire to show all of the bombings that's going out there a clear disconnect between what's being shown and what the American public really wants to see. And finally, just to go back, what you said about the Lafada, the crimes of, I mean, obviously targeting the civilians, targeting structures that have no connection to the war, you know, and actually bragging about it and saying, we're going to do this. It's incredible. I don't think I've ever seen a situation where a leader will say out loud to the public, I am going to do a war crime. So it's all just crazy that we're doing this, that we're not telling the public what's going on, that we show this interest into desire for bombing and for killing, and is not reflective of all what the American public wants, what the international community even expects. It is almost as if they're in a. Just a whole different world in the way in which they're conducting this war.

[Joy Reid]

Can I say for a moment, Ambassador, I mean, Emmanuel Macron, Came out and said to, you know, effectively gave Donald Trump a little bit of a brush back, saying, you need to say what you're doing. He's saying, you know, he's criticizing Trump, saying that if you say you're going to open the Strait of Hormuz by force, that's not realistic. That's not a realistic thing to say. And you've had multiple European countries say no to sending their ships into the strait to try to force it open. And you've had Spain now say no. I believe Italy Maloney has said no. Donald Trump is getting brushed back. Other than England, which seems to want to bend the knee, the rest are saying, absolutely not. We're not going to help you. You. What is, what does that mean for us and what does that mean for NATO?

[Bonnie Jenkins]

Well, first of all, it says a lot. You really can't underestimate what's happening here. And the fact that our partners and allies are saying, we will not help you, we will not assist you, we will not be a part of this. A lot of it is, of course, because they were not told they have interests in these countries. They have people in these countries. We didn't even have a courtesy to let them know that something was going to happen. We didn't reach out to them. We didn't consult with them. Donald Trump continues to disrespect them, and then they were asking for help. So we cannot underestimate what's happening here. But as you say, this is going to have reverberations far beyond what's happening right now, because the trust that they've had in us is going away every single day. The disrespect we're showing them is hurting us every single day. And to expect that we're going to come out of this and they're going to want to work with us, us and going to trust us. We're sounding like, like they're doing us a favor and that, oh, we're always protecting you, we have to stop protecting you. We're always. But, you know, there is a back and forth. There's a whole history which they don't seem to have any understanding of, any understanding of how you develop these relationships with countries for years. So this is really going to be negative for the US And I don't know how we'll ever get the trust back from our closest partners and allies. And if they don't, what is everybody else gonna do?

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, I mean, why would they trust, first of all, not even just our next leader. They don't trust the American people because we could turn around and elect another joker like Trump. I mean the fact that we knew what Trump was and millions and millions of people, 80 million people said, yeah, put him back in. I wouldn't trust us because we are sometime when it comes to whether or not we wanna pool or a normal president. Another thing that's happened, Dean, that I've never seen. I mean, I know that the Iranians, they're much more savvy they than people give them credit for. People think of them as sort of unsophisticated. No, they're very sophisticated. And I remember when the Iranian president used to give interviews on CNN to Christiane Amanpour and would sort of jock. He's a very jocular fellow and we would talk. In this case now you've had Iran, their new supreme leader. Or he might not be the supreme leader, this might be their spokesperson. They sent a letter to the American people. Let me just read you the top of this letter. And this is posted on social media. They posted it on X Twitter and they said to the people of the United States, they're called this Akobacy letter. And to all of those who emit a flood of distortions and manufactured narratives continue to seek the truth and aspire to a better life. They start by saying that Iran is one of the oldest continual civilizations in human history. Despite its historical and geographic advantages at various, various times, Iran has never in its modern history chosen the path of aggression, expansion, colonialism or domination. That feels very pointed. Maybe focus at Israel. What do you make of the fact that Iran is now going. They're posting meme videos with like hip hop music on social media. They're writing direct letters to the American people and they perceivably are winning the war.

[Dean Obedala]

Well, look, the Iranian regime is awful. I mean we all know that they killed, killed tens of thousands of their own protesters, which is something I was covering on my show before this war began. I had so many friends who are Iranian American who were hopeful that one day they would have freedom and democracy again. I think what gets lost a little bit, it even wasn't brought up there. Iran was a democracy from 1941 to 1953. The United States of America ended that democracy in 1953. The Iranian people wanted Mossadegh and he was their leader. And then what happened is he nationalized the oil companies of the British and the US really the British interest. So what happens is the Shah then goes to Britain and England and the US says put me back in power because he was forced out. And you can have your oil wells. And what do they do? They get rid of them. And then they install the Shah, who becomes the Shah all the way through 1979, who with the help of the CIA and US military, oppress and kill the Iranian people. RCA trained the Iranian regime how to torture people. Iran know this history. So when we talk about now Trump, people rise up. We were the ones that were involved in helping torture those who wanted democracy under the Shah. We helped as a direct line from the United States intervention and the Ayatollah coming to power in 1979 because not everybody in the country wanted Nyatola. They just wanted the end of the oppressive regime of the Shah. So this is an important history because it's not remote hundreds of years ago. It is just 20 and 30 years ago. There are people alive who know our history. They can't trust us in Iran. So him appealing to us is, look, if it's a game, it's a war, it's propaganda, all that kind of stuff. I don't think he's going to win me over. He's not going to get me at hello. But it's a situation where we, we've been bad actors. And the most, the more you know about our history in the region, you understand we are not viewed as an honest broker. We're not good as a good faith actor, sadly enough, we are a bad faith actor who've caused a lot of problems to the Middle east and continue to this day doing that very thing in the name of the United States of America. And it's stunning and it's got to end, but I don't know when it's going to.

[Joy Reid]

Well, I mean, the reality is too, we shot down and apparently by accident, allegedly over the same Strait of Hormuz, a civilian airliner, right, in the 19. Iran still remembers that too. There's a bad history and we have this history. Ambassador Jenkins, across the world, right? I was just last night, the other day, I was watching a lot of YouTube yesterday, but I was watching the rise of Mobutu in my father's country, the Democratic Republic of Congress, because we got rid of and the CIA helped kill Patrice Lumumba, who was their sort of Mossadegh, right? We said, well, he's not good enough. He's helping. He's asking the Soviet Union for help, trying to quell the sort of trying to re rise of the Belgians who own the country. We don't like him. We'd rather have Mobutu, even though he's corrupt. We did the same thing in Egypt. Egypt had Nasser. We didn't like him because Israel didn't like him and he wasn't playing ball. We keep, we'd rather have had, they had a 42 year dictator that we preferred because he played ball. This country keeps meddling in the world. And since arms control was the thing that you were focused on when you were, were in the government, am I wrong to say that some of the things we've done, some of the things the west has done, have driven the desire of countries? And as I think Dean is spot on, this is not a good guy country, Iran. But these people want, they want nuclear weapons or they want weapons in part because of us. Right. And Israel.

[Bonnie Jenkins]

Right. And a couple points exactly right. We have a tendency, and I'm sure other countries do as well. We have a tendency to start history when we want to start history. We always like to start history when we think it looks advantageous to us. And then we start saying all over again, oh, this is a bad thing that happened. These are the worst people with leaving out an entire history of what happened before then. Okay. And so we continue to do that. And you know, that does a disservice to people in America to really understand what happened. But we just do that all the time. Okay. And then when it comes to the arms control and the nuclear weapons issue, as you know, you know, we've been having discussions with Iran even before the JCPOA joined Comprehensive Plan of Action, which of course Trump pulled us out of in 2018, which was actually working up until that time. And so the question about what Iran wants to do has always been out there after we withdrew and there was a series of attempts to try to get back to some kind of agreement. And of course there was a viable agreement on the table before we decided to attack Iran. So the question is, you know, what do they do at this point? You know, there are people who are saying, well, they might actually really go for it now after what they've seen. You know, we wanted to always, through arms control and diplomacy, try to encourage them not to want to go and develop a nuclear weapon, to find ways that we can find agreement so that doesn't happen. But now what we've done is actually go in the direction of possibly giving them even more reason to want to develop a nuclear weapon. So we'll see, we'll have to see what happens after this. But like I said, it'll be interesting because they don't trust us now like everyone else. Doesn't trust us now, particularly since they had something on the table and what did we do? We bombed them. So is that going to help us in the long run?

[Joy Reid]

It's questionable, yeah. Very, very questionable. I will just note just for some updates here that Donald Trump apparently has gone on in a wild posting spree, raging about fraud, crooked Democrats saying that he's gonna make a fortune in oil. He's apparently on a tear. Just so you know what your toddler president is doing at this moment. Before I let you go, Ambassador, I wanna ask you just as somebody who was working in government about this Pete Hegseth sort of firing spree where he seems to to be firing every woman and person of color, particularly black officers who were in line to become first one star generals. He's now also cashiered another senior official who tried to stand in the way of that. His name is General Randy George, who is the guy that you see in the center there. He's now throwing him out because he tried to get in the way of this firing spree of just getting rid of anyone who isn't either a white male or a sycophant to Trump to the other fieries you can see there. What do you make of that?

[Bonnie Jenkins]

I make two things of that. First of all, there's the issue of his issues really with black people and with women and basically anyone who's not a white male. And so that has its own story in terms of who he wants to throw out, who he doesn't want to promote. That's one issue. The other issue is anyone who's not going to agree with what he wants to do and he has his mind set on what he wants to do in Iran. And what you should do, I would imagine as the, as a secretary of Defense is listen to your military officers. You know, they've done war games on these things. They've been thinking about this issue for years. They already knew about the concerns about going into Iran. They knew that the first thing what they would do was close off the street. I mean, this was not rocket science. And they've been telling them this is something that was understood in the military for years. And I was in the military in reserves and did work and worked on WMD issues there. So you listen to your military because they've been through all of this. And I would just like to say one last thing is, you know, I've had a lot of opportunities to work with generals and admirals and I have a lot of respect for those individuals. You know, it doesn't matter where they come from, what the background is. They have experience and they remember things and they know what they're doing. You know, I'm sure there's one or two that may not be great, but for the most part listen to if you're going to go to war, you listen to the folks who've been know what they're doing. And once you reach the level of Arrow in general, you have gone through a lot. You don't get there that easy. So it's unfortunate that he's letting go

[Joy Reid]

people who have experience and imagine just you put this next one. Imagine being cashiered by someone who tweeted about and lifted the suspension of chopper pilots who decided military chopper pilots who decided to buzz Kid Rock's house for fun on no Kings Day and thinking that that is normal. I'm just going to read this piece that was written about Pete Hegseth that I think is actually probably one of the best descriptions of him that I have seen. And it says, quote, with no management experience or strategic background, Hegseth has the chance to remake the US Military in his image. An image and vision roughly equivalent to what you would expect from a 13 year old boy who had logged too many hours playing Call of Duty on the couch. Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins, I will not make you join in that criticism of him. I will take that upon myself. Thank you very much. I appreciate you being here, Dean. We're keeping you as a, we're forming the human chain around you for a little while. Thank you very much, Dean. This guy really does act like a teenager and he thinks this is a game. He did get pushed out of the National Guard because of his bad behavior. I mean he apparently had some drinking problems. It is embarrassing for us as a nation for that to be our secretary of Defense calling himself the Secretary of War.

[Dean Obedala]

First of all, I think if the war continues to go badly, he gets fired like Pam Bondi and Christine Hill. I mean, I think there's a chance for that scapegoating of that. And Pete Haggs has to know it. You know, I read right before he came on here on air, HuffPost was reporting at the Pentagon chapel today for Good Friday, the only allowed Protestant services, not Catholic. And in the email sent out it said there will not be Catholic services. And Catholics were quoted in the article saying they're telling us Catholics need not apply here. And what people don't get for the right wing white evangelicals, not black but right wing white evangelicals, they have a hostility towards Catholicism. You know, Reverend Jeffers, who was in Donald Trump's inner circle in the first term, had called Catholicism like birth from Satan. This is a view of, of the evangelicals. They, it's not. They don't just hate Muslims. They hate both sides of my family, like I'm Muslim, but they don't like the Catholics on my mom's side either. So you've got Pete Hexit now, who is not a Christian nationalist, he's an evangelical nationalist. It's just for one sect of Christianity in today's event with the Pentagon, because I thought for sure that Pete Hexit would respond. That's not true. There's no response from whatsoever to the story that's getting more and more traction now. It's all true because it was an email saying there will only be Protestant services, parentheses, not Catholic ones, sent to people in the military at the Pentagon. And they said this has never happened before. So it's not like this always happened. This happened because that's what Pete Hicks had to want. He is exclusive that you have to be part of his ilk, his tribe and everyone else where the enemy were tolerated, demonized, thrown out. If you're black, you're a woman. If you're Catholic, if you're a Muslim, you are beneath him. So he is a supremacist in his own right.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, well, I mean, I mean, his ilk are incompetent, stupid, juvenile assholes. So there are only a certain number of those in his ilk.

[Dean Obedala]

The incompetence is from the top. It's Trump and Hexen. You've got, you know, as the ambassador just said, and we heard every military expert say where Donald Trump said, no, no one thought Iran would fire missiles at the neighboring countries or close the strait to Hormuz. I didn't serve in the military and I knew they would do that.

[Joy Reid]

I knew. Raise your hands in the chat if you knew. I think anyone with a working Google, working access to Google knew the first move is closed. The Straits of Hormuz. If you know anything about Iran, the one thing you know, they control where that oil goes and that all goes through the Straits of Hormuz. There are people making tiktoks who knew.

[Dean Obedala]

There are influencers who are like 16. And I still go, and they're going to close the strait. And when you start the war by killing the leaders and saying this is existential threat to your whole life and everyone in the regime, then they're going to do everything to stay alive. And how can you not know that and the level of incompetence. It's not just Trump. Hegseth is implicated in all of this. And I am disappointed the Democrats have not called this an unconstitutional war that demands impeachment and remains removal of Donald Trump. Forget you don't have the votes on day one. I was staying on my show on day one. We had special coverage on Saturday. He didn't go to Congress. Congress has the exclusive power to declare war. We're at war. Trump's speech Wednesday, Joy. He referenced having patience, that he cited World War II and the Korean War and Vietnam War. Let's have patience. Only 32 days. He didn't say excursions that we went in. He said in wars, we are at war and it's an illegal, unconstitutional war and Trump should be impeached and removed. And the timidity of so many Democrats who won't talk about this is off putting. And it's why Democrats are not polling well. Because the lack of fight of some. There are some great fighters, but the lack of fight of all of them is so disappointing when the stakes are this damn high.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, indeed. And you know, Hakeem Jeffries was talking about restoring pieces of legislation today. Press conference. And I didn't understand why he was saying it. One thing before we go to do one more sponsor. This is the level that we're at. A stripper. Dean. A stripper is the person that revealed to many people that the deployments were going to happen or play a little tiny bit of this real quick. Jason. Pleased Next to like several military bases and something I have noticed lately is all the military guys are to going, coming in and they're spending all of their money and they're just like, it's sad. Like they're like kind of depressed and

[Dean Obedala]

they're like just coming in like, oh

[Joy Reid]

yeah, we're going to have fun. Like we're getting, what is it called? Deployed. Like we're getting deployed next week or like this is happening.

[Imar Jones]

I don't know.

[Joy Reid]

I, I don't want to spread misinformation or anything, but it's just like they're a lot of them are really kind and to see these like young guys that look like my pinky toe, like they're so just like fetuses coming in and then dancing with them and then being like, bye. And then it's actually like making me emotional. It's fucked up. Dean. I think she would make a better secretary of defense than Pete Hexen.

[Dean Obedala]

He's going to be nominated for Attorney General by Donald Trump.

[Joy Reid]

I think she'll be replaced.

[Dean Obedala]

Pam Bondi.

[Joy Reid]

Any day now. Any day now. All right, let's take a really quick break before we continue talking with Dean, because this is one of our brand new sponsors that we really absolutely love. And let me let you all know that this show, the Joy Reach show, is brought to you by Wild Alaskan Company. So when was the last time that you truly trusted the seafood that you brought home? You know, I used to actually question everything. The nutrition, the taste, the sustainability. You really want to know that it's sustainable and that it's not destroying the earth, right? Wild Alaskan company is the best way to get wild caught. Perfectly portioned, nutrient dense seafood delivered directly to your door. Just trust me, you have never tasted fish this good. So we got our first box about two weeks ago and we've been digging in to the perfectly portioned salmon, the cod. We did a pollock. I did a pollock over pasta with pesto sauce last week, baby. It was to die for, which I can invite y' all over. It was amazing. And what I love about Wild Alaskan is that the seafood is 100% wild caught, never farmed. It means no antibiotics, no GMOs, no additives, just clean, real fish that supports healthy oceans and fishing communities. The seafood is nutrient rich. It's full of flavor. Wild Alaskan fish is frozen off the boat to lock in taste, texture and nutrients like omega 3s and. And the sustainability is on point. It's sustainably sourced wild caught from Alaska. Every order supports sustainable harvesting practices and your membership delivers flexible shipments, expert tips, and truly feel good seafood. So if you want to try it risk free with a 100% money back guarantee, meaning if you're not completely satisfied with your first box, Wild Alaskan will give you a full refund. No questions asked, no risk, just high quality seafood. All you have to do is go to wildalaskan.com joy for $35 off your first box of premium wild caught seafood. Not all fish is the same great seafood you can trust. Just go to wildalaskan.com joy for $35 off your first box of premium wild caught seafood. Thank you to Wild Alaskan company for sponsoring this episode. Okay, let's get Dean back on the stage. Dean, we're gonna go through a real quick rapid round with you here. I've got to hear your thoughts on Bryon. Bryon Gnome. It's B R Y O N. So as a Caribbean, I have to call him Bryon. Apparently he likes a big breast assist on Himself. What's up?

[Dean Obedala]

This doesn't even make sense. And look at the dog. I give the dogs alive.

[Joy Reid]

The dog is like, what's happening?

[Dean Obedala]

The dog's like.

[Joy Reid]

I didn't even notice the dog.

[Dean Obedala]

I'm glad Christy hasn't shot me. I mean, she's just. He's just happened to be alive. It's like a hostage situation.

[Joy Reid]

He's hiding from Kristen. Jason just said he's hiding from Christie, saying, does this mean I'm gonna get shot in the face?

[Melanie Sloan]

Right.

[Dean Obedala]

This is not good. Like, what am I seeing here? I don't know what this fetish is. I'm not well versed. It's called bimbofication. It's called. That's what I. Bimbofication.

[Joy Reid]

It's where men want to be that apparently there's a model stripper or whatever who was paying five. He was paying her $5,000 to dominate him while he was dressed like this. And he wants to be dominated and dress up in exaggerated like a Barbie. So these men who are into vimification, they want to dress like a Barbie and have exaggerated boobs, exaggerated butt, put on like a hot, hot. He wants to be sexy, Dean. He wants to be sexy.

[Dean Obedala]

Next will be in the strip club saying how men are tipping him they're going off to deployment, that type of thing. Just like. It'll be like the stripper in the Tick Tock video. Just so I. I want Brian. That's his name. To be happy.

[Joy Reid]

Yes. So yes.

[Dean Obedala]

Be your best version of yourself. This brings you, boy. Go do it. I'm not here to judge you. Shooting a dog with Chrissy Noem did is so far. It is. That's bad.

[Joy Reid]

It's so true.

[Dean Obedala]

But Chrissy Gnome and she didn't know about this. Like, what are the balloons there, Brian? Oh, nothing, you know, and then they're off center.

[Joy Reid]

Like the nipples are going one way and the other. They're not. They're not always going in the same direction. He's not even sometimes. But you know what? He's living his best life. I'm with you on. I still think that even with this, Brian is a far. I would rather have Brian in charge of the Department of Homeland Security dressed like this than Kristi Noem, who is a liar, called a perfectly decent normal. Two protesters in Minneapolis terrorists after they got shot and killed by their own government. Who the indigenous tribes in her state in South Dakota didn't want her on their land. Like, Brian could dress like that. And I'd still rather have him be

[Dean Obedala]

you could go on ice raids and some people would be like I'm gonna self deport because I can't, I don't

[Joy Reid]

know what's going, I'm leaving.

[Bonnie Jenkins]

Burn.

[Joy Reid]

I'm out of here, I'm gone. Okay, let's talk about this race because you talk about Democrats. So I promised this on my social media that I would do it. So Steve Cohen, who's 76 years old is facing a primary challenge from somebody that a lot of us really love. He's one of the Justin's, Justin Pearson. He's only 31 years old. So it's a 76 year old versus a 31 year old here. And this is the kind of change that Democrats have to start preparing themselves for. Right. That the younger proud is gonna come along and they're going to ask these seniors to step aside and give a new guy a chance. What do you think?

[Dean Obedala]

I just said Representative Pearson on my show two days ago. So we I just chatted with Justin who I've always a big fan of the Tennessee 3. You know, this is someone who's always put himself on the line there. That was to save lives from gun violence. It's hard. Look, there's another side to it. You know, Steve Cohen served for 20 something years and has done a good job and at 76 doesn't feel old. I mean things don't mean what they used to.

[Bonnie Jenkins]

No.

[Dean Obedala]

So you have to take power. That's how it works. And I don't think they're going to give it up. I think some who are are really old who can't function anymore should give it up. They shouldn't die in office. They should. But I think you know, Justin could win this race. If not, he'll be positioned to win in two years. But the future is coming. I don't subscribe to the philosophy that they got to give it up because for them this is their whole life. If they can still function and they're still effective, it's fine if they're not like Gerald Nadler is my congressman and he's leaving at the right time. I mean his functionality probably two years ago would even have been, been better frankly. But he at least he gave it up now and that was a robust primary that he almost ran and I ended up not running in it. We you had me on the show to talk about it.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, you're not running.

[Dean Obedala]

What's happening, what it's looked running and there's a lot of people like I here's the bottom line. I would had to Raise everyone I met with real people who took me seriously said, well, can you raise a million dollars in like three or four weeks ago? I've never tried to face any money, so I don't know how he would do that. I'm like, is there robbing a bank involved in this scheme? And they're like, no. So I'm like, this can't happen. So I started much too late.

[Joy Reid]

But anything, yeah, you can't rob a bank. You're a Muslim. You get deported immediately.

[Dean Obedala]

Oh, I'd be gone in a second. So look, I think there's genera we need people want fresh faces. I don't believe it has to always be someone younger. It's got to be someone effective and someone who's going to be. Bring the fight. I want fighters. If you're a 60 year old fighter, I want you a 30 year old folder any day of the week. But in this case, Justin Pearson is a fighter and I like him. He's really impressed and I think he will be a member of Congress if he doesn't win this time. I think two years from now, I think Steve Cohen will get the message and I, you know, he served, you know, honorably for us. He's been a good fighter. He's been in the media a lot, Steve Cohen, and it's up to him when to go. But the decision might be made by

[Joy Reid]

the voters, coming by the people. Well, I will say, and I won't get into the details of it, but Justin is also a nicer person. Just in my personal experience with the two of them, he's old and he's a little brusque and he's not a personable chap.

[Dean Obedala]

Steve, I like Justin very much.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, Justin is very personable, you know. Yeah, yeah.

[Dean Obedala]

You know, I used to not ask candidates running for congress about Palestine because it was never an issue.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, now you gotta ask them now.

[Dean Obedala]

I do all of them every time.

[Joy Reid]

Me too.

[Dean Obedala]

And apac, I'm like, you coming on my show Palestine and that's.

[Joy Reid]

And some of them get super uncomfortable. But I'm like, you taking that apeg money? We gotta ask. Okay, I gotta play this before we go because it is for the Christians. It is a big holiday weekend, but Donald Trump brought the apostates to the White House. Let's let y' all listen to Paula White and her apostasy. And Mr. President, no one has paid the price like you have paid the price. It almost cost you your life. You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused. It's a familiar pattern that our Lord and Savior showed us. But it didn't end there for him and it didn't end there for you. God always had a plan. On the third day, he rose. He defeated evil. He conquered death, hell in the grave. And because he rose, we all know that we can rise. And sir, because of his resurrection, you rose up, oh, God, because he was victorious. You were victorious, oh, Lord, and I believe said to tell you this. Oh, oh, oh. I can't listen to no more of that. I'm gonna get struck by lightning. That is heresy.

[Dean Obedala]

Exactly what is that is Donald. First of all, you see how uncomfortable Trump was when she invoked the Lord and Jesus, folks. There are people saying, when is the Lord going to call Trump home? It's not the Lord, it's the devil. At some point, the devil's going to be like, donald, you've done more damage than I could ever hope. Thanks. Come on home. I think you know your friend Jeffrey Epstein, hanging out in the green room down there, the pool room, whatever they're going to be doing, but this. And you know who's standing next to her? Reverend Jeffers, who is the guy who called Catholicism a religion comes out of Satan's womb. That's how they are an anti Catholic move with these evangelicals. They're delusional. They're delusional like someone should have come and put her into a special room that was padded.

[Joy Reid]

That's insane.

[Dean Obedala]

Involved. Trump is like Jesus, Trump's the devil.

[Joy Reid]

The thing that so interesting is they are Christian Zionists and Christian nationalists and the Catholic Church. I think one of the other things they don't love about the Catholic Church is that the Catholics are led by a pope, Pope Leo, who is vehemently against what Israel is doing to Palestine. He's against apartheid, he's against genocide, he's against these attacks on immigrants. So the Catholic Church is sort of stepping back into its own as an institution that cares for the poor, the sick and the immigrant. And that don't work well with Christian Zionists and Christian nationalists who are aligned on genocide and aligned on Israel's wild Greater Israel plan and all that stuff. So I think that's part of the alignment too. One more thing before we let you go, Dean. This is D4. Look at this. So Pam body didn't even get.

[Melanie Sloan]

She didn't even get to get out

[Joy Reid]

good before they threw her portrait in the T R A S A H. They throw it in the garbage.

[Dean Obedala]

Deed Pam bought. She did everything for Trump. She protected when she was A.G. floyd from 2011 to 2019, Trump University. She never investigated Jeffrey Epstein, who was running a child rape ring and a trafficking ring in the state when she was ag. And she talked all about bringing down traffickers because she was protecting Epstein and Trump and all the other powerful men. She was Trump's lawyer at the impeachment. She protected Trump everywhere. Now Trump blames her for Epstein. Nobody. Trump, you became friends with Epstein in the 1980s. She was a child then. You know, it is all on you. And now her pictures in the waist. But it's perfect.

[Joy Reid]

Perfect. The Dow. The Dow is $50,000.

[Dean Obedala]

The Dow bodies in the garbage. This is. It's unbelievable that this happened this quickly. I saw this online as I'll assume it's true. If it's not, we don't care.

[Joy Reid]

Miz now reported it. We can say that Ms. Now confirmed it and she did a good job. So Ms. Now says it's true, so I'm going to believe her.

[Dean Obedala]

I think this is a perfect setting. Now you got time. And what is Pam bonding? Maybe her Kristi Noem tour with Kristi Noem's husband?

[Joy Reid]

No, she's apparent. According to Left Parnass, which was also confirmed by our early guest, who's a former prosecutor. She's going right back to her old consulting firm because one of her main clients is Cutter. So she's just going to go get rich. She's probably going to be taking in a million dollars a month or something doing lobbying. She's going to go right back to the lobbying, confirm where she was making money before. Maybe she can get Iran to not bomb Trump's plane because, you know, eventually they gonna bomb that plane. If that plane hasn't left the. Hasn't left. Cutter. It's gonna get. It's gonna get it.

[Dean Obedala]

Why do you think Trump didn't go to China during the war? You know, or they were really like, do you really want to fly across the world?

[Joy Reid]

He said, not with the guy from the real world in charge. Don't nobody want to fly with that fool in charge who hired him. You, sir. You h.

[Dean Obedala]

It is remarkable. I just wonder, though, what we wake up to tomorrow. Because there was some national security meeting they were having in the White House late this afternoon. Are they gonna send boots? Are they not? I'm assuming today's Good Friday. A great Friday. Wake up and Trump's not present anymore. That's a great Friday that I'm looking forward to.

[Joy Reid]

You can get an amen on that one. Dean Obedalla, thank you so much for being here, wishing you a fantastic weekend. And we always appreciate getting to spend so much time with you, my friend. Thank you. So you should rethink running for office. You'd be great.

[Dean Obedala]

One day.

[Joy Reid]

One day when we can. When we can find some paying Bondi money for you. Thank you very much, Dean. All right, everybody, before we go, we're going to do our moment of joy. We're going to sneak it in here. This one was a lot of fun, and it stars two of the former candidates for New York mayor. Go Dr. Sherdish.

[Dean Obedala]

Clewa.

[Joy Reid]

Dr. Clewa, you say? Yeah. Dr. Cleveland, I'm looking at your name here on the chart. I don't even want to try to pronounce it. Hey, is it okay if I just call you the Z Man? Yeah, that's fine.

[Dean Obedala]

You look very familiar, though.

[Joy Reid]

Were you ever riding the trains in the wee hours in the morning from like 1980 to 1991?

[Bonnie Jenkins]

I wasn't.

[Dean Obedala]

How do you say this?

[Joy Reid]

Dr. Klee alive. Okay, young buck, so you're here for a cat allergy shot on? Yes, sir.

[Dean Obedala]

My wife and I are adopting a cat.

[Joy Reid]

It never stops with one or two. Oh, no, it doesn't. That was actually hilarious. But let me read you what local station New York one wrote about the skit. A spoof video featuring Mayor Zorhan Mamdani seeking cat allergy shots from Curtis Sliwa was met with laughter at Saturday night's Inner Circle show, but some Republicans in the room were not amused. The skit featured Sleewa, the cat obsessed Republican. He owns like 40 cats or something, preparing to administer shots to Mamdani, the cat allergic socialist who plans to bring a kitten to Gracie Mansion. Some New York Republicans, including billionaire John Katsimides, called the spoof upsetting, disappointing. Cassimidi said he already believed Sliwa was trying to help Mamdani beat Andrew Cuomo and that seeing Mamdani and Sliwa's joint satire video only supported that theory. Sleea refused pressure from Katsimides and former Governor David Patterson to drop out of the 2025 race for mayor and denied any collusion with Mumdani. Mamdani said, and this is a quote, the only conspiracy is two people who have a sense of humor and are willing to make fun of themselves. It's so dumb to be mad about that. They were raising money for charity. That's what the dinner was about. Get over it. Let these people live. And that is a beautiful show. A display of how politics does not have to mean that you cannot walk back from a fight and still be friends. They both love New York. They're both big time New Yorkers. And I think it's actually lovely that they got together and did that fun show. As long as neither of them is a fascist, I'm good with them making up after the election is over. Thank you all for tuning in. We want everybody to make sure that you get out there and help us, please, please to get to 500,000. That is our goal. We're trying to get to 500K by our birthday. It's not easy. It's a big climb. But if you could tell five friends, arrive with five. Just tell five friends, send them the link and tell them to go ahead and subscribe on YouTube or substack or wherever you subscribe or twitch. We want our twitchies to grow too. So just get five friends to subscribe. That's what we're asking you guys to do. Have a wonderful weekend. Happy Easter to those who are, who are, who are, who are Easter people who are Christians who are actually celebrating. If you're celebrating Passover, happy Easter pass over to you and we will see you on Monday on the next the Joy Reid Show. Goodbye.

[Dean Obedala]

Getting back to the basics grassroots level Let me dig a little deeper with

[Joy Reid]

the shovel Plenty can't tell the force from the trees that I'm hard to detect Like a black hole in the

[Dean Obedala]

dog Injustice anywhere it's a threat to

[Joy Reid]

justice everywhere Let me make this clear I got a bone to pick and I'll never fear the threat of poverty

[Lev Parnas]

they don't want to talk about it

[Joy Reid]

they rap the party so I'm a real talk about it for sure.