2489 - Mike Walz Out, Miller's Immigration Horror w/ Mehdi Hasan, Matt Lieb

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Majority Report with Sam Seder
Episode 2489 - Mike Walz Out, Miller's Immigration Horror w/ Mehdi Hasan, Matt Lieb
Release Date: May 2, 2025

---

Introduction

In Episode 2489 of The Majority Report with Sam Seder, host Sam Seder delves deep into the tumultuous developments within the Trump administration, focusing on significant personnel changes, controversial immigration policies, and the broader implications for U.S. politics. Joined by guests Mehdi Hasan and Matt Lieb, the discussion offers a critical analysis of recent political maneuvers and their impact on both domestic and international fronts.

Key Topics Discussed

1. Mike Waltz's Departure as National Security Advisor

The episode opens with Sam Seder addressing the sudden exit of Michael Waltz from his position as National Security Advisor. Waltz, a Trump appointee, faced immediate dismissal after making controversial statements against the president during his initial campaign. Seder emphasizes the abruptness of Waltz's exit, highlighting the lack of forewarning to other administration officials.

• Notable Quote:
  Sam Seder [07:09]: “Trump apparently brought him on the helicopter and he's so nervous about firing people that he wants to make sure there's a limited amount of time.”

2. Marco Rubio's Expanded Role

Following Waltz's departure, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was unexpectedly appointed as the interim National Security Advisor, while also retaining his duties at the State Department. This dual role raises concerns about Rubio's capacity to effectively manage both positions.

• Notable Quote:
  Ilhan Omar [08:19]: “And in addition to that, he says that in the interim Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as National Security Adviser while continuing his strong leadership at the State Department.”

3. Stephen Miller's Influence and Policies

Stephen Miller, another key figure within the Trump administration, is scrutinized for his hardline immigration policies, including the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans. His aggressive stance and rhetoric are seen as pivotal in shaping the administration's immigration strategy.

• Notable Quote:
  Ilhan Omar [14:19]: “He essentially called anyone who was captured in combat a loser. It's something that I just personally can't stomach.”

4. Trump Administration's Immigration Policies

The discussion delves into the administration's stringent immigration measures, such as permanently banning the use of the Alien Enemies Act for deportations and canceling $1 billion in grants related to children's mental health. These policies are criticized for their adverse effects on lower-income households and their disregard for due process.

• Notable Quote:
  Sam Seder [05:04]: “So Michael Waltz summarily punted. I don't know if you played this yesterday, but the clip of him getting off Air Force One...”

5. Economic Policies: Tariffs and Their Effects

Seder and his guests analyze the reinstatement of de minimis tariffs on goods from China, highlighting how these tariffs disproportionately affect lower-income families. The discussion points to the hoarding behavior among White House staff as evidence of anticipated supply shocks due to these economic policies.

• Notable Quote:
  Matt Lech [26:28]: “...his de minimis tariffs kick in, slamming lower income households as a Trump official begins this.”

6. Legislative Challenges and the Reconciliation Bill

The Republicans' attempts to pass the reconciliation bill face significant hurdles, with internal disarray among House Republicans hindering progress. The guests discuss the broader implications of this legislative struggle for the Trump administration's policy agenda.

• Notable Quote:
  Matt Lech [26:28]: “...has had the worst stock market performance for 100 days going back to Richard Nixon.”

Quotes and Highlights

• Sam Seder on Mike Waltz's Departure [07:09]:
  “Trump apparently brought him on the helicopter and he's so nervous about firing people that he wants to make sure there's a limited amount of time.”

• Ilhan Omar on Marco Rubio's Interim Role [08:36]:
  “Why would there be any interim period where I would find this out before somebody read it on a shitposter’s account on Truth Social?”

• Ilhan Omar Critiquing Stephen Miller [14:19]:
  “He essentially called anyone who was captured in combat a loser. It's something that I just personally can't stomach.”

• Matt Lech on Trump's Public Relations [37:28]:
  “...the administration's how to build public support for policies that are fundamentally damaging.”

• Ilhan Omar on Liberal Zionists [84:02]:
  “It's much easier to break than it is to build. And this is how Republicans have operated.”

Conclusions

Episode 2489 of The Majority Report with Sam Seder provides a comprehensive critique of the Trump administration's recent actions, particularly focusing on the instability within the national security team and the aggressive implementation of controversial immigration policies. The departure of Mike Waltz and the unexpected appointment of Marco Rubio underscore the administration's chaotic approach to governance. Additionally, Stephen Miller's influence highlights the administration's hardline stance on immigration, raising concerns about due process and the treatment of detainees.

The reinstatement of de minimis tariffs and the resulting economic strain on lower-income households demonstrate the administration's willingness to prioritize aggressive economic policies over the welfare of its constituents. The legislative challenges faced in passing the reconciliation bill further illustrate the internal conflicts within the Republican Party and the administration's overarching instability.

Overall, the episode paints a picture of a fracturing Trump administration grappling with both internal and external pressures, raising critical questions about the future direction of U.S. politics and policy-making.

---

Note: All timestamps are approximate and based on the provided transcript.

Transcript

[Sam Seder]

Hi folks. Today's episode brought to you by sunsetlakeseba.com one of our favorite sponsors. Why? Because they are movement partners who have donated thousands, literally tens of thousands of dollars to strike relief, funds, to food pantries, to last prisoner project, to carceral reform, like I say, refugee resettlement. On and on and on. They engage in mutual aid up in Vermont and they have great farming practices, integrated pest management, no pesticides. They grow great Saba day and make great products that are all third party tested. Things like tinctures to help you sleep, tinctures to help you calm down, solves to help your your muscles that are achy. And in my case, it's the season I start to use it for my eczema that's off label, but I'm sure they don't mind lotion as well. They have fudge and coffee. They have great Seba day. And if you use the coupon code left is best, you get 20 off. So check it out. Oh, they also have smokables as well like vapes and keef Bud and Matt says Keef twice. Wonder why he focuses on that so much. Check it out. Sunsetlake sabade.com use the coupon code left is best. It gets you 20% off. And now time for the show.

[Emma Vigeland]

The.

[Matt Lech]

Majority Report with Sam Cedar.

[Producer]

Where every day is casual.

[Matt Lech]

Friday that means Monday is casual.

[Ilhan Omar]

Monday, Tuesday casual Tuesday, Wednesday, casual hump.

[Matt Lech]

Day, Thursday casual Thirs, that's what we call it. And Friday casual Shabbat. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.

[Sam Seder]

It is Friday, May 2, 2025. My name is Sam Seder. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, founder, editor, publisher of Zateo, Maddie Hassan will be here. Look back on the week that was then. Later, Matt Lieb, host of Bad Hasbro and other sundry podcasts. Meanwhile, a Trump appointed federal district judge in South Texas permanently bans Trump from using the Alien Enemies act to deport Venezuelans who are in that detention center there. But it's a case that very well may be cited across the country. Michael Waltz out as a national security advisor. And Marco Rubio, surprised he's in. Trump meanwhile attempts to revoke thousands of, I should say Harvard's tax exempt status and he signs an EO cutting funding for NPR and PBS. Meanwhile, Trump administration cancels $1 billion in grants, children's mental health, Trump's de minimis tariffs kick in or I Should say his de minimis tariffs kick in, slamming lower income households as a Trump official begins this. As Trump officials begin hoarding in anticipation of supply shocks. Israel likely source of drone attack which hit humanitarian aid flotilla headed to Gaza. Trump unveils budget proposal as House Republicans begin to flail on that reconciliation bill. A US Judge finds Apple is violating its app store reform orders. Refers the case to the Department of Justice. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks so much for joining us. It is.

[Ilhan Omar]

Emma Casual Friday.

[Sam Seder]

I'm super casual. I'm not in the office today. I'm only gonna be here for the first hour because of. Well, I've got to do something else. So.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah, I think that's. That makes sense. Then. Thank you for that explanation.

[Sam Seder]

No, you're. You're very welcome. Let's get to it. Is that not a good explanation? I'm trying to.

[Ilhan Omar]

No, it's not.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, there we go. All right. It's weird. I'm not used to. I'm not used to doing this here.

[Ilhan Omar]

I just gotta say, you got built in shelving. That's really nice. That's the thing I'm most envious about. When I look at your apartment. That's the dream.

[Sam Seder]

It looks much better on camera than it does.

[Ilhan Omar]

Okay.

[Sam Seder]

But with all that said, let's get to this. Mike Waltz is the first of you want to say he's one of the casualties of, you know, the. His own incompetence and stupidity, but I don't know that that's the case. He, of course, was appointed national Security Advisor. He was. They had to have a special election. They were hampered on the numbers of Republican congressmen they had or. I mean, I'm sure there's one or two Congress, Republican congresswomen, Congressman that they. They had. And so it made it a rocky go for the Republicans at the beginning. Of course, it's not like they have gone on to pass any other legislation. And maybe we'll talk to Mehdi about how. What kind of difficulty they're having in starting to actually do the actual work of their reconciliation bill. But Michael Waltz summarily punted. I don't know if you played this yesterday, but the clip of him getting off Air Force, or I should say Marine One, which is the helicopter that flies Trump and his entourage to the airport. And then everybody gets on the. On Air Force One, and he just keeps walking past the airplane.

[James Talarico]

We gotta find that.

[Ilhan Omar]

That's so beautiful.

[Sam Seder]

Trump apparently brought him on the helicopter and he's so nervous about firing people that he wants to make sure there's a limited amount of time. So I suspect as soon as they started to circle the airport, he drops down. But apparently no one else knew that Michael Waltz was going to be fired, not the least of which the person who was going to replace him, who also happens to be Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Here is how his spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, a AM talk radio host, former. Here's how she found out that Waltz was fired and Rubio was hired.

[Ilhan Omar]

Has just written on Truth Social that Mike Waltz is going to become the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

[Stephen Miller]

Well, there you go. Fabulous.

[Ilhan Omar]

And in addition to that, he says that in the interim Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as National Security Adviser while continuing his strong leadership at the State Department. Do you know how long he's going to be serving in both roles?

[Stephen Miller]

It is clear that I just heard this from you. This is the magic. No heads up that this. Well, I have some insights as to the potential of certain things that might happen. But when the president. And this of course, is all President. Presidential decisions. Right. So I'm with State Department. I. It is as I think would be clear to all of you.

[Sam Seder]

You don't really have to question how. And she says, like I have insights into some things that might happen if you're not on the list of people who are going to find out that Rubio is going to be the acting National Security advisor. Like what's on the list?

[Ilhan Omar]

Like, like they forgot to add her to the group chat. They added Tammy Baldwin instead or something like that. Right, right. Or it's just sucked in. Oh, sorry, it's not loud enough. My board yet. Anyway, I gotta keep trying. Stop trying. Keep going.

[Sam Seder]

She gets, she gets, she gets a little heads up on what's gonna be for dessert in the commissary on Fridays. But she doesn't find out that her boss is going to be the acting National Security Advisor.

[Producer]

But let's.

[Stephen Miller]

I'm with the State Department. It is as I think would be clear to all of you, you don't want to get ahead of your skis and drawing conclusions or speculating about what may occur. And you can have a general sense of what's possible and then. But I think the one thing I certainly, I've learned is that things don't happen until the president says they're going to happen. So the fact that that is. Which was obviously Truth Social. Yeah. So that is the miracle of modern technology. And obviously.

[Sam Seder]

Obviously that was on Truth Social. Where Would it be? Where else would it be? Why would. Why would there be any interim period where I, as the spokesperson for the new acting National Security Advisor, also the Secretary of State. Why. Why would there be any interim period where I would find this out before somebody read it on a shitposters account on Truth Social?

[Ilhan Omar]

I mean, that's the beauty of being a part of the Trump administration. There's this, like, spontaneity. Anything can happen. You wake up one day and your boss could be now in an entirely new. As both acting National Security Advisor, acting Administrator of usaid. Rubio is. And now, of course, his traditional role as Secretary of State. Like, they're understaffed overall as well.

[James Talarico]

Little Marco's working doubles.

[Sam Seder]

Go to bed last night, wake up in the morning, your TIMO thing cost four times what it did yesterday. Let's, let's continue here.

[Stephen Miller]

Just certainly that's learned is that things don't happen until the President says they're going to happen. So the fact that that is, was obviously Truth Social. Yeah. So that is the miracle of modern technology and the social media. So that is an exciting moment here. I think that, as I know Secretary Rubio, this is a man who, as I think you all know, has worn several hats from day one.

[Sam Seder]

Several hats he's actually wearing, I think, like three or four at this point. He's also head of USAID to the extent that it exists. So we are to believe. Look, none of this happens. Nobody knows about this until Donald Trump gets on his phone and, you know, posts on Truth Social. No one else knows about this. I mean, she, she is a top official in the government. If she doesn't know about it, nobody can know about it until it happens. That's just the way we roll here. Unless, of course, you're that lunatic who changed herself to Twitter, in which case you not only knew about it, you were responsible for it.

[Ilhan Omar]

The other week when you were able to, you know, basically put in some suggestions that President Trump fire the national security apparatus. And your input outweighed the National Security adviser, Mike Waltz. Did you express any concerns to him about Mike Waltz? My concern was, well, you know, if Michael Waltz is the nsc, I just.

[Sam Seder]

Want people to understand how insane it is that we just got Tara Palmeria. I guess she used to be on ABC or something like that, but she's asking this question, just, I mean, maybe after Trump won, people could have imagined this. But just imagine, 10 years ago, you have someone, you know, a former network reporter, asking the question, you had some concerns about the national security team. And in fact, you went in and talked about this. Do you think that you're signaling out these people was why these people are gone? And you flip to the other person talking and it's Laura Loomer.

[James Talarico]

It's not like Henry Kissinger.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right, right. It's like if, like whose experience in.

[Sam Seder]

Foreign policy was protesting the 9 11, so called 911 mosque. That is her experience in foreign policy.

[James Talarico]

Don't tell her short, Sam. She also was against Muslims driving Ubers and Lyfts, so.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right. And then got banned from it. This is like if Kamala won and she brought in that, that too raw to real influencer to advise her on what to do with Israel, Palestine, suggestions that President Trump fire the national security apparatus. And your input outweighed the national security adviser, Mike Waltz. Did you express any concerns to him about Mike Waltz? My concern was, well, you know, if Michael Waltz is the NSC director and he or the NSC adviser and he is saying that he's personally vetting these individuals who have a history of anti Trump remarks and anti Trump associations, why would he be signing off on them? And then it reminded me of a video that I've saved in my phone for many years of Michael Waltz on video speaking out against President Trump when he first ran for for president, accusing him of being against service members. And so I was about to show this video to President Trump and then Michael Waltz, you know, walked into the Oval Office. You know, I'll just, I could play the video. It just makes me wonder. So when you went to that meeting.

[Matt Lech]

Play the video.

[Ilhan Omar]

Let's just play the video. He essentially called anyone who was captured in combat a loser. It's something that I just personally can't stomach.

[Sam Seder]

He's a warrior.

[Ilhan Omar]

Five and a half years.

[Sam Seder]

He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured.

[Ilhan Omar]

Don't let Trump fool you. Look into his real record and stop Trump now. He essentially called anybody captured in combat a loser. It's something that I just personally, you know, can't stomach. So if you can't stomach it, why do you want to work for President Trump? If you can't stomach it, why do you want to work in the administration? J.D.

[James Talarico]

Vance called him Hitler.

[Sam Seder]

I was going to say, like, I don't know if anybody has seen what Vance said or Marco Rubio said about he called him like, I think Rubio called him a fascist. I mean, there's almost no one in the administration who was, who didn't say these things of Trump. It was obviously something more than that, right? I mean, it was obviously just Laura Loomer's insight from a national security perspective. And so now we don't have a national security advisor.

[Ilhan Omar]

Apparently Susie Wiles didn't like him either. But I like, got to think, is that the thing that pushed Trump over the edge, Some mild criticism of him? I mean, maybe he said he's so degraded. Maybe he forgot about Lila Marco and like JD Vance delivered him the bag. I don't know. I don't know why I'm trying to make sense of his mind. It's impossible.

[James Talarico]

He's insane.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah, it's, it's, it's sheer insanity. That's where we at right now. In a moment, we're going to be talking to Mehdi Hassan, editor in chief and CEO of Zatteo News. But first, a couple words from our sponsors. Did you know that Fast Growing Trees is the biggest online nursery in the country? Thousands of different plants and over 2 million happy customers. I have been one for at least 10 years, way before they started sponsoring this program. I have purchased trees from them, plants from them, fig, apple, Korean pear, all sorts of like, like the grass type of stuff. House plants I'm not so good with. I literally all my house plants have died. But the beauty is, is that they have. It's spring and now it's time to plant in your yard. They have all the plants, yard needs like fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees. I would check out the Bloomerang if they still have any of those shrubs. So much more. Doesn't matter what plants you're interested in. Fast Growing Trees has you covered. You don't have to shove these things in the back of your Subaru, get dirt all over the place. Get a choice between like four different varieties, three varieties of apples. No, they have so many different types of plants and trees. They also have an alive and thrive guarantee. It ensures that their plants arrive happy and healthy. They give you all the information you need to how to, how to plant them. They got Experts on there 24, 7 that'll tell you this is the growing zone you're in. This is the stuff that's going to do best. What kind of stuff do you want? You want shade, then get one of these things. You want something that's ornamental, then get one of these things. You don't have to have a green thumb. They help you with all the care, et cetera, et cetera, anything that you need to know 24, 7. Plus they also got a resource center that has tips and advice from plant experts so that if you don't want to, you don't want to talk to somebody, you don't have to. Which you know at different times is.

[James Talarico]

The way I feel.

[Sam Seder]

Fast Growing Trees has the best deals right now, up to half off select plants and other deals and listeners to our show Get 15 off your first purchase when using the code majority at checkout. That's an additional 15 off at fast growingtrees.com use the code majority at checkout fast growingtrees.com code majority now is the perfect time to plant use majority to save today. Offers valid for limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. Also sponsoring the program today. The way that I keep my info on when I'm online Safe A few decades ago, private citizens used to be largely that private. What's changed? The Internet. Think about everything you browse, search for, watched or tweeted. Now imagine that all your data is being crawled, collected and aggregated by data brokers into a permanent public record. Your record. Well, having your private life exposed for others to see was once something that only celebrities like Emma and I worried about. Yeah, but in an era when everybody's online, everybody is a public figure. So I use Express VPN. I want to thank ExpressVPN for supporting the majority report. And here's the deal. Visit express expressvpn.com Majority you can get an extra four months free. One of the easiest ways for data brokers to track you is through your device unique IP address which reveals information about your location as well. Well, with ExpressVPN, your IP address is hidden makes it much more difficult for data brokers to monitor, track and monetize your private online activity. Also with ExpressVPN, it encrypts 100% of your network traffic, which keeps your data safe from hackers. When you're on public WI fi works on all devices. It's super easy. One press of the button on your iPhone, on your laptop, your tablet, whatever, and you are encrypted. This is hugely important. If you ever connect, if you ever connect in any type of public area with WI fi, or if you live in a building or frankly, you know, people driving around. Super important for security. That's why I use it is to make sure that I never make the mistake of like, I don't know, checking to check your bank account or your email. Even if you sign in for your email when you're on public wi fi, if they find out that address, they can do all sorts of horrible things. So protect your online privacy today by visiting expressvpn.com Majority that's expr e-s s vpn.com Majority you can get an extra four months free. Expressvpn.com Majority all right, quick break. When we come back, Mehdi has we are back. Sam. Ceta, Emma Viland on the Majority Report. Pleasure to welcome back to the program Mehdi Hassan, editor in chief and CEO of Zeteo News and a early happy birthday to Zateo Mehdi. It's been, I can't believe it's been a year, frankly, but I have to say Zateo has had in my mind, I mean, at least in my consumption. But I think broadly speaking, such an impact so quickly and it's really impressive what you've been able to do over there in such a short amount of time. So congratulations, particularly in this environment, but really in any type of media environment, it's been really incredibly impressive.

[Matt Lech]

Thank you so much, Sam. That means a lot, especially coming from you. You were one of the early adopters of independent journalism and alternative media and standing up to quote unquote msm. So I feel very honored to get that praise from you. We are a year old and it's amazing that we've managed to pull off a year. If you'd asked me a year ago, would we still be around a year from now? We are, we're growing, we're expanding. We've got a big new documentary coming out next week. We're on a world tour, live city tour. We were in London, we're going to be in LA and Toronto, New York, Washington, D.C. so we're celebrating our year. But look, it's a tough time for the media right now. We have a president and a government that is openly anti First Amendment free speech and the media. So, you know, we're celebrating, but we're also cautious about the future.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah. And speaking of that president, we're, I, you know, I don't know, there seems to be some controversy at least in my head as to when the 100 first hundred days is. But then, but then I don't care. I mean, it really is just a made up measure. But this is like a measure where everybody checks in. And I don't know, broadly speaking, what's your sense of this first hundred days?

[Matt Lech]

Hard to answer that question because on the one hand, when Trump, as he said on ABC News, well, people voted for this. This is what they wanted. He's got a point. Like he's done a lot of the stuff that he said he would do. He said he would do tariffs and go after China. He has done that. He said he would close the border and end the right to asylum. He's done that. He said he would go after journalists and he would go after higher education and he's done all of that. Government bureaucrats, he's done that right. Whether we like it or not, whether we agree with it or not. Now at the same time, it's been a crazy 100 days where he's just unrolled things that no one voted for. Right? Not even his base. His base did not vote for a first quarter of negative growth or a prospect of a recession. They didn't vote for their 401ks being decimated. They didn't vote for threats of war with Denmark, Panama and Iran. This was supposed to be the anti war president. They didn't vote for a lot of this stuff. They certainly didn't vote for green card holders, permanent legal residents to be detained and almost deported or US Citizen children as we've seen basically kidnapped and removed from their own country, a four year old with cancer as happened last week. So none of that was on the ballot box for sure. So look, the one thing giving me some hope is that the American people have turned quite quickly against him, quicker than against any previous president in their hundred days. He's the most unpopular president at this point in the 100 day cycle. He's had the worst stock market performance for 100 days going back to Richard Nixon. He's underwater not just on the economy in terms of polling which is an issue he led on, but on immigration too, which was supposed to be his secret weapon. And the Democrats Achilles heel. Not quite.

[Ilhan Omar]

Well, I'm those immigration numbers, that's news to some Democrats like Chuck Schumer who would rather focus on the car tax that is really affecting the suburbanites that he so covets. Like I mean what has been your reaction, Mehdi, to seeing this? What do you say, Sam?

[Sam Seder]

Hell no.

[Ilhan Omar]

Hell no. This like split with between the Democrats and I mean Slotkin, I would say and Schumer are on this side of just kitchen table issues. They never identify what the kitchen table issues are. They just say we shouldn't be talking about trans people and immigration. But it appears that the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case in particular has hurt Donald Trump in polling just as much as inflation and cost of living and the tariffs which we're now beginning to see the effects of. There was like an article in CNN about the how Trump last night allowed the a de minimis exemption on goods under $800 to expire. And they, there was a stat in that that nearly 50% of de minimis packages are shipped to the poorest counties in the entire country. Like that is going to start to, they're going to start to feel those effects. But the immigration stuff, that's clearly a major part of what's driving his approval rating falling apart.

[Matt Lech]

So, yeah, let's just take both of those issues. Very interesting. Immigration in the economy, how Democrats approach. Because he's underwater on both. And these are, I will remind viewers, two issues he has consistently led on when he was in opposition, when he was in power. As frustrating as I find it, he's led on the economy even though he has no economic policy to talk of. And yet look at immigration, where, yes, he's doing, you know, people love his border security. But Kilmar Brego Garcia was the single most unpopular issue that the New York Times Siena poll found him on just a couple of weeks ago. And Democrats were saying, oh no, we should stay away from this. Republicans were like, it's an 8020 issue. Democrats are on the wrong side. Yet Chris Van Hollen had the guts to go out there. Maxwell Frost went out there. Other Democrats made a song and dance. Peter Welch of Vermont went and visited Mohsin Madhavi in prison before he was released this week. Right. And there were other Democrats just cowering, crouching in that classic defensive posture, saying we can't win on this issue. These are unpopular people. Actually turns out the American people are outraged when you tell them what is going on, when their rights and due process are being undermined and The Supreme Court 9 to 0 is being ignored so Democrats can lead on that issue. The other issue, Emma, that you mentioned, which is, you know, kitchen table issues, ironically, that's an issue where Democrats don't actually need to say much.

[Stephen Miller]

Right.

[Matt Lech]

Because you don't need Democrats to tell you that you're hurting or that prices are up. You can see that on your own. You don't actually need Democrats to do that much. Donald Trump's doing all the damage to himself. These are all self inflicted wounds. He inherited a very strong economy with 2.4% growth in the last quarter of 2024. And now he gave us minus 0.3% in the first quarter of 2025. And then he says dumb shit like I don't know if you saw him this week in the Oval Office saying, well, if they have 30 dolls, they can have two dolls and they can pay a couple bucks more for it. First of all who is Trump hanging out with other than baron who has 30 dolls? Right. I have two kids. They do not have $30 and if they do, I'm outraged about. I'm gonna go double check but I'm pretty sure I didn't buy them $30. Certainly not in one go for a couple of bucks more. So this is just this ridiculous stance that he's taken where he's completely out of touch with the American people and his own base on some of this stuff. So I actually think it's the reverse of the kind of slot consumer actually the economy takes care of itself right now and they should focus on the due process, the Supreme Court, the American citizens, children. By the way, the Republican Party claims to be the anti child trafficking party. They are literally trafficking American citizen children out of this country to Honduras. Insane. A child with cancer.

[Sam Seder]

I couldn't agree more particularly about those, you know, the two sequencing and how I mean the I on some level what Van Hollen and Frost and et al have shown is that you can take an issue like this and particularly when it's so egregious and change that polling. I mean that's the thing that Democrats seem to be allergic to. You know, I don't know if it's a function of the consultant class or whatnot, but I mean how you know there are, this is a target rich environment as they say. Let's play this clip of Stephen Miller in the. I don't know where he was yesterday. It was a White House briefing room.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

In this instance he's, he is chironed or labeled the Homeland Security Advisor. He seems to be the advisor on just about everything with Donald Trump. He really does seem to be the number, you know, really the, the number two guy. I, you know, I'm sure there's sort of some type of like wiles and he are, you know, both seem to have access to the White House at any time of the day. I mean I should say the Oval Office here is Stephen Miller.

[Ilhan Omar]

Most of your papers never covered her story. When it happened to the extent that you covered it at all, it was because President Trump forced you to cover it by highlighting it repeatedly over and over again. He had to shame you into covering it. And each and every one of you decides over and over again with these Ms. 13 terrorists to the extent that you have the financial means to do so. You all choose to live in condos or homes or houses as far away from these kinds of gang bangers as you possibly can. If I offered any one of You a rent free home with no taxes to pay in any of these gang neighborhoods. And I said Your neighbors are Ms. 13 terrorists or Mexican mafia or Sinaloa cartel or train. I couldn't pay you to live there. But yet you, with your coverage are trying to force innocent Americans to have these people as their neighbors and that one day their daughter may be abducted from their home and raped and murdered. So you're not going to get an ounce of sympathy from this administration or President Trump for the terrorists who've invaded our homes in our country.

[Sam Seder]

You know what's amazing to me about, I mean, just aside from how sort of fascistic he is, but this whole thing where we have terrorist cells in the country, an invading army, and we haven't had one shootout yet with ICE officials and these invading terrorists. So true.

[Ilhan Omar]

What's going on? The wokeness under Biden, they prevented that kind of thing from happening, Right?

[Matt Lech]

They took all the guns away. No, somebody said that recently. One of the many innocent people whose homes were raided recently said, what if I'd had a gun? These ICE people are turning up with no id, their faces behind masks, grabbing people on the streets, grabbing people outside churches, grabbing people in courthouses. It is amazing that no one has actually pulled a gun in the United States of America. This is the don't tread on me party. The right to bear arms, the second amendment, folks. The stand your ground people in Florida, right? If somebody comes up to you in the street and just grabs you with no id, why wouldn't you defend yourself by any means necessary? It's amazing. Thank God we've avoided that. But yes, as you point out, if these really were all gang bangers and terrorists when they put up a fight when they're being deported, rather than, for example, that horrifying video of the Turkish student in Massachusetts who's picked up by a group of masked men and just screaming and crying because she's a young woman being pulled off the street in the middle of Ramadan, Right? That is who they're pulling off the streets, these cowards in masks. So you're right, it is insane. Stephen Miller is a liar. He's a white supremacist. He's. He's the worst kind of white supremacist. He's a Jewish white supremacist. His own family have disowned him. Right, His Jewish family. His uncle famously wrote a piece saying, Stephen Miller, we all can't stand you. And our family wouldn't be in the US if people have brought in the kind of Immigration laws you want, when he talks about living in areas with gang members and terrorists. Well, why don't they go find these areas? Because they don't seem to be able to find any trender Aragua people. The people they sent to El Salvador, vast majority of them were not gang members or Trenda Aragua. And by the way, a Trump judge in Texas just this week said there's no invasion. Like the whole premise of the alien Enemies Act 1798 that Miller invoked is Miller's idea. He's the guy who talked about it during the campaign and they've now implemented it, was that there is an invasion by a foreign power. No one believes that trend. Aragua is part of the Venezuelan government. US Intelligence internally told the State Department it's not part of the Venezuelan government. There is no invasion by any commonly understood definition of the term, certainly not a legal one. So a Trump judge has thrown out the idea of using the Alien Enemies Act. But look, Miller was a crazy, kooky gadfly working for Jeff Sessions on the Hill. He used to get ignored by other Republican staffers who thought he was a weirdo. And now, as you say, Sam, he's the second most powerful person in the White House. He's basically running all policy as deputy chief of staff. He's coming up with these ideas. He's filling Trump's head with nonsense. Right. Trump's head is already filled with nonsense. But when you see Trump on ABC saying they had MS.13 written on his knuckles, that came from Miller. Surely when he says, oh, my people told me that I won at the Supreme Court, not lost. That's Stephen Miller.

[Sam Seder]

We saw him on camera, I think, making that argument in some type of press gaggle where he announces it.

[Matt Lech]

And nobody in the Oval Office.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah, in the Oval Office. And nobody says, well, wait a second, what are you talking about?

[Matt Lech]

Why don't Democrats go big on Miller? Like, if I want to talk about messaging, if I'm a Democrat, I would do all my ad campaign around the real shadow president, this freak just play ads of him speaking. No serious American, no independent voter, no moderate conservative looks at Stephen Miller and thinks, that's a normal dude. And if you remember, in the first term, SNL did that great parody ongoing about Steve Bannon being the real president and Donald Trump as Alec Baldwin sitting at the kiddie table. Trump went nuts and fired Bannon. I think they need to do the same thing with Miller, that Miller is the real president. Trump is just his puppet.

[Sam Seder]

Well, I mean, I think, you know, because in part Two, I would say, is because Musk, who had been sort of the first lightning rod of the administration, seems to be, you know, stepping back because he's a special advisor and also because he has, I think, completely effed up even the plan of his cohort. I mean, the, I think it was, you know, he was claiming that he had $150 billion worth of savings. This is not cuts, incidentally, savings that are projected in 2026. And some conservative think tank came out and said it's actually closer to like 5 billion. So we've gone from $2 trillion of fraud and waste to 1.5 down to 600 billion, down to $150 billion in savings, not fraud and waste, down to 5 billion. But in the meantime, he's wreaked complete havoc now, and I'm curious from a.

[Matt Lech]

Hundred twenty five million people might die in the next fifteen years according to the Lancer because of his cuts to usaid.

[Sam Seder]

And, and I mean, let's also be clear in terms of like, what the implications are going to be for things like NIH grants and, and research grant. I mean, this is stuff that's going to ripple through. This is like that, you know, Bruce Lee kidney punch where three weeks later you die and you don't realize. I mean, this is going to have ripple effects. What do you make of the in there? Like, we're now gonna about to, it seems to me, go into phase two. If you had folks like Russell Vote with the plan of Project 2025, which he had been developing over the past, like, really three or four years, and all of the Schedule F stuff that they even attempted to do at the end of the first Trump administration. He was unable in many respects to implement that at first because DOGE got in the way. The Doge process has been basically just annihilated by the courts. And now we're about to go into the, it seems to me the reduction in force process. Yes, that Vote had been working on that I imagine is a lot more thought out in terms of like, where legal challenges would come from.

[Matt Lech]

Yes, I agree with that. I think Russell Vote is a much smarter and more dangerous enemy of liberalism and social democracy and the government apparatus as we know it. He has been planning it for years. He is a smart guy. He was head of Office of Management and Budget in the first term. He led the, you know, he was one of the brains behind Project 2025. He's caught on camera talking about how they've tested stuff with the courts, right down to even putting military on the streets. I mean, Russ is the guy who was on tape talking about, well, we've advised President Trump what he could do with the military. So it is much more dangerous than this ridiculous Elon Musk, who has screwed up both his Doge and Tesla, by the way, while he's been busy doing Doge, his own Tesla board. According to the Wall Street Journal, we're trying to headhunt a replacement for him. You've got all these ridiculous kids he employed. I don't know if you saw Jesse Watters on Fox, did a puff piece last night where they all sat around the table with big balls or whatever his name is and all the rest of these children and bragged about how much they've done. They've done nothing, as you just pointed out with the numbers. The whole thing is a ruse, is a distraction. Musk turned up at the Cabinet wearing two hats to make a joke about how many hats he has. He's literally the unfunniest man I've ever come in my adult life. Like, whatever you think about Donald Trump, I will admit right here on live tv, I've laughed occasionally when Donald Trump has said things right. I've never laughed or smiled at anything Elon Musk has ever said. He's so desperate to be the cool kid, to get the affection, to get the. He's got none of it. He's just a complete charisma free, unfunny narcissist.

[Sam Seder]

He did legalize comedy again, though, so that was good.

[Matt Lech]

Until he then went. Until he then Shadow banned all the accounts who criticized him. Just on the Doge thing, by the way, it's so important to point out, to go back to your first question, about 100 days, Jonathan Shea wrote a piece for the Atlantic in which he made the very valid point that compared to fdr, who invented the whole hundred day concept and did so much legislating in the first 100 days, Trump has passed no real bills or acts of any consequence. He's passed fewer laws than he passed in his own first hundred days in 2017. But that's not really the point, right? Trump is not about legislating. He's about executive ordering. He's about doging, he's about court ignoring. And in that sense, the first hundred days have been hugely consequential. They have been hugely destructive. And you make a very valid point. Can you undo some of the stuff, the damage they've done to our scientific base, our public health, the nih, maybe that can't be undone at this point, the damage they've done to usaid, I doubt the Democrats are going to come back and rebuild our aid budget from scratch. I wish, but I doubt they'll do that. So some of the damage that they're doing, they know they've moved that Overton window very quickly in the 100 days to a point where even if they lose the next election, if we have a free and fair election, is the next Democratic president going to come in and make one of his priorities rebuilding some of these kind of unsexy, unfashionable areas of public life that they have just decimated. And I think that's what they've cynically realized to be true.

[Ilhan Omar]

It's much easier to break than it is to build. And this is how Republicans have operated. They're just doing it at an even more breakneck speed. And it's also an example of how liberalism has been incapable of responding to fascism because oftentimes liberalism is about maintaining our institutions. And when you get a Republican that comes in and breaks it, the baseline of maintenance keeps going down. And then we're at this, like, complete, corroded period where you can have fascists take advantage of it. And there's this eugenicist thrust that is perhaps the most disturbing piece of this administration. When you mentioned how many people are going to die because with those USAID cuts, the RFK Jr. And the gutting of the research funding also has eugenicists aims domestically towards people with disabilities and disease, where RFK Jr will have this like, faux sympathy towards those kinds of people. But you look just like it's very right underneath the surface, the disgust for people with autism, the disgust for people with disabilities and the idea that, like, if you can't solve it with your personal consumption choices and buy my supplements, then it's survival of the fittest. And that's part of what I think the ramifications are going to be over the next four years and beyond.

[Matt Lech]

I mean, Donald Trump has talked about his obsession with genes, right? That's on the record for many, many, many years. He's obsessed with good genes and his own genes, which I don't think are so good. It's so funny when you talk about survival of the fittest, but and yet the MAGA base is a very unfit, very ill base. If you look at any of the areas where Trump is strongest, they are places that are beset by obesity and diabetes and ill health and lack of access to health care. So it's a kind of, it's like Covid, Emma all over again. Where, you know, the study showed that disproportionately Republican voters died at disproportionately higher rates than Democratic voters because they believed the bullshit about not taking vaccines, not wearing masks, not socially distancing. So they were killing off parts of their own base, which was insane, but they did it. So. Yes, I mean, look, they don't give a shit. I mean, the fundamental premise of everything Donald Trump does is he does not give a shit. That is the framing of all our conversations. He only cares about himself. His family are doing a new crypto deal, I believe, in the United Arab Emirates. They're doing another deal in Qatar. They're doing deals all over the place. He's about enriching himself, keeping himself out of prison and taking revenge against his enemies. I mean, there's some, there's no, there's no 4D chess here. Let's just be clear about that. Not from a Trump perspective. Forget Ross Moat. I'm talking about Trump.

[Sam Seder]

I mean, is there, I mean, on some level though, because you make the last night the, the de minimis tariffs kick back in from China. That is going to hit low income people the most. I think it was like Emma had said earlier, it was like, I don't know, 45% of those, 48%.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

People and then about 22% higher income. But the, the economy, there's havoc is being wreaked in the economy. I mean, it's just no other way to.

[Producer]

Bizarre.

[Sam Seder]

There's no, if you're, you know, I, I, it's all anecdotal at this point, except for of course, the, the negative growth, which is clear that shows people panicking, buying early. The story that comes out today in Rolling Stone about the White House, people working there are hoarding toilet paper because they're anticipating potential supply shocks. You know, we'll have a better sense of this I think in the next like two to two to six weeks. But the, this is where things could go really sideways. I mean, we have the first person fired from the administration. Granted it was because Laura Loomer said so, but there also must be some pressure there too. So like it feels like we may be on the precipice of just yes, which is going to make folks like Russell Vogt be much more aggressive. It seems to me like a cornered rat type of mentality, to borrow a.

[Matt Lech]

Line from the late Donald Rumsfeld. It's a known unknown. Right. We know that there's some shit coming down the track, especially in relation to the economy. Because he's done such crazy stuff. We don't quite know what it is. We don't know what the repercussions will be and how they'll play out. I mean, Donald Trump could be remembered as the first president not just to be impeached twice, but to deprive of his toilet paper twice. And that would be quite a legendary achievement for himself if that's what we end up with. Panic buying and empty shelves. Look, it's gonna be fascinating to be a kind of Marry Antoinette. Let them eat bread, Let them buy two dolls, not 30 as people panic, buy over, I don't know, Fourth of July weekend or when we hit Christmas and there are no toys because every toy company says they're going to go bust. It'll be fascinating to see how Trump, the man who lives in a golden apartment in New York, how he reacts to this kind of self inflicted recession. Now they're going to blame Biden. He's already said that. Even quarter two of growth he's going to blame on Joe Biden, which is a blazing. Because a year ago when the stock market was doing very well, he said it's my stock market, it's a Trump stock market, not Biden. But when he's actually president and the stock market is collapsing, it's Biden's stock market. So I think even the thickest members, the dumbest members of the Maga cult surely will see through that at some point. Maybe I'm being crazy, but you're right. There is a lot of stuff coming down the track at home and abroad. I mean there's a lot of pressure. You saw the Hegseth tweet this week about attacking Iran. I mean this was supposed to be the anti war president. The guy who went to Michigan and said don't vote for Harris and Cheney, they'll kill lots of Muslims. I'm the anti war guy. And here he is threatening Iran to be bombed like it's never been bombed before. The Mike Waltz shift was supposed to be oh, the neocon guy. But look, guess who's running all foreign policy now in the administration. Marco Rubio. I think he's got like four jobs right now. Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, acting administrative USAID and national archivists. So this is Rubio, the guy who once mocked Donald Trump's manhood, called him a con man. He is now basically the guy lumped with all this. And we know that Rubio is a hawk.

[Sam Seder]

Yep, 100%. I mean this is, I, I don't know. This Is, I think an administration where, you know, day 200 is going to be, is going to be far more telling, I think, than where we are now. And I think it's going to go in a couple of different directions. The national economy may go south, but, but Trump's family economy, I think is going to do quite well. I think this is going to be a, we're going to see like the mentality of, of everybody getting to the getaway car because I think they're going to realize by it, by next fall, they're going to lose the house. It, you know, by all.

[Matt Lech]

But I think, but I think that the cornered rat line that you use is an important one because too often on the left there is this thought that when the economy goes badly, when people are suffering, they will turn towards the left. That was a theory after the financial crash in 08. In fact, we saw over the next decade the far right benefit across the Western world. And that is a slight problem for the left, especially the non populist left. And I think that is, if we get into a severe recession now, you could be like, oh, well, Democrats will benefit. Oh, they win the midterms. Actually, you could see Trump doubling down on all sorts of vile messaging that, you know, that enables him to deal with economic repercussions. The Republicans are the masters of culture wars of distraction from economic issues. You saw the story this week that they're looking at options to try and redefine gang members in the US as enemy combatants who can be detained in the US without due process. Forget sending them to El Salvador. You will see more and more of those trial balloons floated in terms of civil liberties, in terms of restricting the right to protest, in terms of the government having the ability to round up people. You saw Sebastian Gorka, the director of National Counterterrorism at the White House. Ludicrous individual. He did an interview recently where he said, if you are speaking out in favor of Hamas, we could charge you with aiding and abetting terrorism. This is a very slippery slope from picking up pro Palestinian foreign students to going after American citizens as terrorists. I mean, this is George Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft on steroids.

[Sam Seder]

Betty Hassan, editor in chief, CEO of Zateo News. Again, congratulations for the work you guys are doing there. We'll of course, link to that. And folks should check out all the work at Zateo. Really incredible achievements and appreciate you coming on today.

[Ilhan Omar]

Thanks so much, man.

[Emma Vigeland]

Appreciate it.

[Sam Seder]

All right, folks, Emma's gonna take over from here. Say hi to Matt for me. I Will been around when Matt Lieb has come on.

[Ilhan Omar]

Well, we. It's too many. Too many Jews. The quota goes over.

[Sam Seder]

Exactly. We have to push one one out when the next one comes in. All right, folks, I'll see you on Monday. Emma, back to you.

[Ilhan Omar]

All right, folks. Yes. Happy weekend to Sam. Let's read some IMs.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, I just can't even.

[Ilhan Omar]

I just can't even. Sexually confused by older Jewish women. Said, did you guys see the New York magazine piece about John Fetterman? Yes, we did. We are hopefully going to be talking about that with. With Matt in just a second. He's going to be joining us soon. We'll read some IMs to that up to that point. Dobby. Juan, how much amphetamine do you think Stephen Miller takes before his press appearances? Where do I get the free house? That sounds awesome, but I'd be concerned about police raids for no reason in. I have no idea. I would. He kind of has the. The crazy. Like, I don't get the sense that he's jacked up on anything except fascism.

[James Talarico]

Yeah, he looks like again, like, I can't. He reminds me of that kid who filmed himself talking about how much women don't get him and then shot up a school. Like that's the energy he has.

[Ilhan Omar]

Exactly.

[James Talarico]

It's not party drug energy.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right. Fabulous. Eric Prince, Blackwater CEO is the brainchild of El Salvador prisons as one of the largest military contractors. No wonder slot in an ex CIA agent is trying to distract from the deportations. I think that's. That's a very astute point, but we do have Matt. So let's just take a quick break and when we come back, we'll be joined by Matt Lieb.

[James Talarico]

Sa.

[Ilhan Omar]

We are back. And we are joined by our friend Matt Lieb. And it's also his birthday, so everybody's got to wish him a happy birthday right away.

[Emma Vigeland]

Do it chat. Put hearts in the chat if you want to wish me a happy birthday or say happy birthday.

[Ilhan Omar]

The standup comedian hosts of podcasts Bad Hasbro and Pod Yourself a Gun, which has now become Mad Yourself a Man. Mad Yourself a Man.

[Emma Vigeland]

It is a madman podcast.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right.

[Emma Vigeland]

It used to be a Sopranos podcast right now, but if you want to find it, you still have to put in Pod Yourself into the. We've made our podcast impossible to find.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yep.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, Deep web. Only really like, dedicated, you know, listeners of podcasts can find our podcast about Mad Men. But once you find it, oh, you will enjoy it. You were on it, Emma.

[Ilhan Omar]

I was on it. I've, I'm a big Mad Men fan and I know yes, I have a coastal elite sensibilities, but I do have to say it's my favorite show of all time.

[Emma Vigeland]

So it's a great show. It's a great show. I think anyone from anywhere can love it, you know, that's what I think.

[Ilhan Omar]

I mean especially if like Don, you know, you have daddy issues or something like that. That seems. That's me.

[Producer]

But some people.

[Emma Vigeland]

Not me either. No, not me.

[Ilhan Omar]

No surprises for mommy issues.

[Emma Vigeland]

Mad Men for daddy issues.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yep. You can get both the Wire.

[Emma Vigeland]

We also did the Wire and that's for societal issues.

[Ilhan Omar]

Oh, wow. Yeah, that was really deep.

[Sam Seder]

It's a very deep show.

[Emma Vigeland]

If you're into deepness, listen to that. Or if you're into Israel, if you.

[Ilhan Omar]

Love Israel, you're a big fan of Israel. You should listen to Matt's show. Go to stand Up. See your stand up next week. Next Wednesday.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes, yes, next Wednesday. This Wednesday. Coming up May 7th, Cobbs Comedy Club. Myself and Francesca Fiorentini, who is my wife. Borat voice, my wife. And we're gonna be co headlining Cobbs and it's gonna be really fun. Get your tickets now before it's too late. Not that it'll sell out.

[Ilhan Omar]

But a link to that in I, you know, don't sell yourself. Sure, we'll put a link to that in the description if people want to check it out and we'll, we'll plug it towards the end as well.

[Producer]

But what city is Cobbs in?

[Emma Vigeland]

It's in San Francisco. It's San Francisco, California, which is on the west coast. So if you are anywhere on the west coast, it's just a few hours drive or it's right next to you. If you live in San Francisco, please come. It's my birthday. Nice thing for yourself.

[Ilhan Omar]

So big story this morning about our favorite, I don't know my top pick for the live action Shrek, John Fetterman.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes. My favorite professional wrestler turned senator. I don't know what he did before he was a senator. I just assumed he was a professional wrestler and then I was told, no, he's just some Harvard guy.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah, just a Harvard guy who we now Lessons learned. Perhaps if we have candidates who have a history of like chasing down somebody with a gun and perhaps it's racially motivated that. But sometimes those aren't one offs. Those situations can't be explained.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, egg on my face, right? I looked at him and I was just like, yeah, that's what we need. We need, you know, just a, a 6 foot 8 white guy who just had a stroke to finally, you know, get that, get that MAGA crowd to start, you know, seeing some, some sense, you know, and then, and then he just started doing MAGA talking points. I was like, oh, that actually makes more sense. That makes more sense that he is just that guy.

[Ilhan Omar]

And what's fun about Fetterman is, is that all of this usual suspects had decided preemptively. Well, maybe not preemptively, but once he started going down the I'm. Zionism is the most important thing ever to me down that road. There was a class of Democrats that said this is the kind of populist that Democrats.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, this is the kind of populist, the one who's, who's going to take really unpopular positions in both his party. And you know, I think more. So it's happening more and more in the Republican Party.

[Ilhan Omar]

Well, Iglesias is a popularist, right. So he's always says you got to just respond to the polling as a Democrat. But they ignore things like Israel, where a majority of Democrats, it's not close now, have negative feelings about it. And also like ignores the fact that you can have agency over public opinion as a politician by using the bully pulpit. That's kind of important.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's like the whole point is, that's why to be a leader is, is when you lead. Right, Right. Isn't that the whole thing?

[Ilhan Omar]

They don't like doing politics. They're resentful of it. But it was this, these people said this like two years after they had declared Eric Adams is the future of the tough on crime Democrat.

[James Talarico]

Can we maybe cut like they, they care about what's popular with donors.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's where it comes from. Right.

[Ilhan Omar]

You know. Right. Go ahead.

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean, sure. But also, you know, what's, what's popular with donors and other people who are sucking on the teat of those donors. And I think you forget that that's a class of people.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah. Stop ignoring them.

[James Talarico]

Don't erase them.

[Emma Vigeland]

Don't erase them. Those are workers. Those are part of the revolution is the people who are going to be actively serving the, the, you know, the moneyed class.

[Ilhan Omar]

Would you hide them? Would you hide them?

[Emma Vigeland]

Would you hide all of the personal assistance of the oligarchy?

[Matt Lech]

I would.

[Ilhan Omar]

I would. And so that's how, you know, we're, we're, we're on the right side of history here. So Fetterman was sitting. All right, like this. This article is kind of sad. Spoiler alert he's lost his mind after having a stroke. But this is someone who was. Saw him.

[James Talarico]

The Summer mob at S U M E R M O B on Twitter, Instagram.

[Ilhan Omar]

Good job. Summer mob spotted Fetterman in public the other day and this is how that went down. Senator, do you still feel that Israel has the right to kill and kill and kill people? You still think Israel has rights to defend itself still? When is enough enough? Senator, I don't know why you're harassing me. That's not harassment. You're a senator, right? I saw you coming and I assumed.

[James Talarico]

You were going to come over.

[Ilhan Omar]

I mean, you work for the people, right? You're supposed to. You're in these halls for the people.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'm just sitting here on a bench.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right, and my people are being being slaughtered because of your votes and the money that you send to Israel and your complicity in genocide. You have nothing to say about that. Over a hundred thousand Palestinians have been slaughtered. How do you sleep at night, Senator?

[James Talarico]

We're not adding those crickets.

[Ilhan Omar]

Seriously, how do you sleep at night? Do you not see the videos and the, the. And the. Just the children that are being slaughtered out there?

[Emma Vigeland]

I don't have anything to say.

[Ilhan Omar]

You don't have anything to say? Of course not.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'm just sitting on a bench because.

[Ilhan Omar]

APAC pays you way too much money to say anything to be a human being. Yeah, what a shame. What a shame. You do not deserve the position that you have at all. Shame on you for being complicit in genocide. Shame on you.

[Emma Vigeland]

Agree how you do it 100%. This should be the standard for anyone who's in a position of power being in public. The standard should be you go up to them and tell them what they, you know, what they're supporting and then ask for an explanation. That the idea that he's like, I'm just, listen, I just came out here in an open field to sit on bench. Like, I do love bench. Love to sit and think, Think my thoughts. What are they about? I think blood and soil. Doesn't matter what my thoughts are. I'm thinking them and I would like to be alone with my thoughts. Yeah, the idea that is like. And now you're harassing me in this position where I'm literally sitting here in public being like, oh, you know, I'm just. It looks like he's waiting for a meeting. You know, he looks like he's going to feed some birds and tell them to, you know, start funding the idf.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right? Yeah, he. It. Well, it Also looks like, I don't know, the. This is. It's almost like the Forrest Gump scene of him sitting on the bench, but. But instead Fetterman's imagining the woman asking him questions about the box of chocolate.

[Emma Vigeland]

He's just sitting there waiting for a bus. This bus is going to take me to Jerusalem. We need to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque and build the Third Temple.

[Ilhan Omar]

Just on a loop.

[James Talarico]

Can I just get really remedial for folks for a second? That's a senator of our nation here. The Senate is one of our bodies of Congress. It's supposed to be the greatest deliberative body on earth. Does anyone watching this think that they can't deliberate better than that guy sitting on that bench?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ilhan Omar]

It's wild. So the problem is, is that I want to. This article that just came out this morning in New York Magazine is expansive about John Fetterman. So great reporting by Ben Terrace of New York Magazine. I want to be sympathetic because as I'll read in some of these experts excerpts, it's abundantly clear that he is. He has lost his mind.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ilhan Omar]

But the problem is, is that then perhaps he needs to be removed from the Senate because he is voting for genocide. But there's a lot of money, moneyed interests like AIPAC that are okay with somebody who's functionally basically, like, brain dead.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Ilhan Omar]

As long as they vote to send weapons to Israel.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, I think this is what they. They would much rather have someone who's just going to, you know, like, all they have left of their brain is the lizard part that's just like eat chicken, sleep, you know, go pee pee, go poo poo, vote for weapons for Israel. Like, that's all they really want. They don't want anyone who's actually going to have any, like, critical thinking skills or someone who is going to bend to the will of their constituents because, you know, they want, you know. Yeah, they want people to vote for Israel. That's it.

[Ilhan Omar]

And I saw Zach Zachary Carter say this like that. Now there's this man with serious mental health struggles, and it's now indistinguishable from the bipartisan foreign policy of the United States. And that kind of tracks. But this is how this opens this piece. It's called all by Himself over in New York magazine. When John Fetterman was released from Walter reed Hospital in March 2023, Adam Jentelson, then his chief of staff, was proud of his boss for seeking help for what the senator's office and his doctor had said was a case of clinical depression. His six weeks of inpatient care had been the latest medical setback for the Pennsylvania Democrat who had a stroke mere months before being elected to the US Senate in 2022, nearly derailing his campaign against Republican Mehmet Oz. But a year after his release from the hospital, Fetterman's behavior had so alarmed Gentleson that he had resigned his position. I should say that Gentleson was kind of defensive of Fetterman for a while, and I remember being critical of Gentleson in particular.

[James Talarico]

And I'll say he's still bashing the left in a way that I don't think this, this really, I think this is protecting his legacy a little bit. And I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have Gentleson back on this program, which he has been on this program before. I wouldn't have him back on this program. He need to do a lot more than this, in my opinion.

[Ilhan Omar]

He, he went on the record and of course, there's some career self preservation here. I'm sure cynically grateful for this information at the very least, but. Agreed. Yeah. But after his release from the hospital, Fetterman's behavior had so alarmed Gentleson that he resigned his position. In May 2024, he wrote an urgent letter to David William, director of the Traumatic Brain Injury and Neuropsychiatry Unit at Walter Reed, who had overseen Fetterman's care at the hospital. I think John is on a bad trajectory and I'm really worried about him, the email began. If things didn't change, Gentleson continued, he was concerned Fetterman, quote, won't be with us for much longer. His 1600 word email came with the subject line concerns, and it contained a list of them from the seemingly mundane. He eats fast food multiple times a day.

[James Talarico]

Okay, easy.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, that's the mundane part. I like that too, because it's just like, well, he just had a stroke.

[Stephen Miller]

Right?

[Ilhan Omar]

Well, I mean. Right. That's a good point.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. Yeah, that's like the, they're like, no, that's not even the worst of it. Him actively trying to kill himself with McDonald's is not the worst of it.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right, right. That's, that's benign here to the scary. We don't know if he is taking his meds and his behavior frequently suggests he is not. We often see this kind, the kind of warning signs we discuss. Gentleson wrote conspiratorial thinking, megalomania. For example, he claims to be the most knowledgeable source on Israel and Gaza around, but his sources are just what he reads in the news. He declines most briefings and never reads memos. High highs and low lows. Long, rambling, repetitive and self centered monologues. Lying ways they're painfully, awkwardly obvious to everybody in the room. Federman was, according to Gentleson, avoiding the regular checkups advised by his doctors. He was preoccupied with the social media platform X, which he previously admitted had been a major accelerant of his depression. He drove his car so recklessly, Gentleson said, that the stat that staff refused to ride with him. He had also brought. Bought a gun.

[James Talarico]

What?

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, I gotta get my staff in the car somehow.

[James Talarico]

Was a black guy jogging nearby.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right. It's like I didn't know D.C. was so. Let's just say diverse, right? Just a diverse. Got to protect myself here.

[Ilhan Omar]

Another red flag, Gentleton added. Every person who is supposed to help him stay on his recovery plan had been pushed out. He damaged personal relationships, blah, blah, blah. There's also stuff about delusions. Just keep going. There's this. I highlighted all of these different parts, but you know, there's stuff where he thinks he's being followed, right?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Ilhan Omar]

Okay, let's go.

[James Talarico]

DSA is gang stalking.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yes. Go to, if you could search members of his team. And the paragraph that starts from that's a little further down. Members of his team told me this was an early warning sign that something was off their Boss. In early February 2023, after Fetterman had indeed been sworn in, members of the Senate gathered at the Library of Congress for a caucus retreat. Fetterman, fresh off a hard fought victory in the cycles marquee race, should have been riding high. Only he wasn't. A staffer recalled getting a text from a person at the retreat saying if their boss was okay. Fetterman was sitting at a table by himself, slowly sipping a coke and refusing to talk with anybody. Later that day, another staffer heard an alarming port from a journalist. Fetterman had just walked obliviously into the road and was nearly struck by a car.

[Emma Vigeland]

This is amazing. This is like, I don't know if you guys have ever, you know, like, owned a very, very old dog, but there's like, at some point you're just like, what is it doing? And you're like, oh, it's going somewhere to die. That's like. It's like, why is it spending so much time in that corner? Yeah, it's very, it's very sad.

[Ilhan Omar]

I know I haven't heard about anything.

[James Talarico]

This is like when Nixon is like after the Kent State shootings he was, like, wandering around the Lincoln Memorial, I think this isn't like the Oliver Stone movie, like, walking around with the Lincoln Memorial and gotten to, like, fights with, like, anti war activists, but, like, trying to make them think he was a good person. This is like, Fetterman's been doing that. That was just one night for Nixon.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah, Nixon.

[James Talarico]

Just, like, his entire time in the.

[Ilhan Omar]

Senate, Nixon just had some stiff drinks. Like, that's Trump level delusion. We're at a different level with Fetterman.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's so funny because it's. It's like this was, you know, like, all of the incidents that they're citing happened, like, not long after he had won the election. Like, as soon as he became a senator, his attitude was like, oh, leave me alone.

[Ilhan Omar]

I know.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's like, you just ran for this. Why are you mad at everyone?

[Ilhan Omar]

Why do you have the disposition of, like, a teenager in a. In a Disney original? A week later. This is. Okay, this is crazy. I'm sorry. Sherrod Brown maybe helped give background on this because he's named specifically. A week later, Democratic Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown came to pay Fetterman a visit in his new Capitol office. They seemed destined to get along. Each hailed from a purplish. Purplish red states and exuded an everyman energy more likely to be found in union halls than in the halls of Congress. But their meeting went awry. Brown tried his best to get a conversation going, but according to two people present, Fetterman was virtually, quote, catatonic. He could barely string two sentences together, talking so quietly that everyone in the room had to strain to hear him. Fetterman then stood up and began walking around the office in tight loops, a move the two staffers described as doing figure eights. After Brown left, Fetterman paced from one room inside his office complex to another and back again. At one point, one of his aides said he walked into the hallway peering over his shoulder as if he were being followed by shadowy figures. Hamas.

[James Talarico]

That sort of pacing, that is not a good sign.

[Emma Vigeland]

No, that's pretty bad. Especially, like, the looking over your shoulder and pacing and just being like, no way out. No way out. That is. I mean, it's clear, obviously, is. This was like, you know, before his hospitalization for whatever mental health crisis was going on, Right?

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

And. And then we all celebrated him putting, you know, his mental health, like, forward, you know, like, making that an issue, because we all said, yes, we need to start talking about mental health, and then he's not a good role model for mental health. It's this thing where we're all like, well, you know, obviously we're not trying to paint every person with mental health with the same brush. And also it's important to talk about these things. There are people who are depressed and that's a thing. You know what I mean? You can be clinically depressed and a dick.

[Ilhan Omar]

And a dick too.

[James Talarico]

And if you're gonna say like this is, this is how we do it, you better be a good model for it. Or maybe don't put yourself on that pedestal. I would just say here's another section. I don't know if you had this, Emma, but behind the scenes, things are worse. In March, Fetterman suddenly took an early morning trip to Heart to Hartford, Connecticut without telling his team why, leaving them at a loss to tell for what to tell Giselle, his wife, when she demanded to know why he was missing one of their kids birthdays. Fetterman objected to his characterization, saying to me, the writer, I took a weekend trip in March to visit the gravesite of my friend from grad school who died in 1993. Trip my staff and family knew about.

[Ilhan Omar]

Okay, this is the last piece I'll read because you mentioned Giselle and I actually feel for her here because I don't know what's going on. But he. This, this is when October 7th happens. This piece, it's. The paragraph starts. Within the days after the October 7 attack, Israel declared war and retaliated with brute force, killing Hamas forces as well as thousands of civilians in the U.S. progressives began calling for a ceasefire, at least to at least pause the carnage. Fetterman felt differently. Now is not the time to talk about a ceasefire. He posted on October 18. We must support Israel in efforts to eliminate Hamas terrorists who slaughtered innocent men, women and children. The base. Here it goes. Early on in the conflict, 16 of his former campaign staffers wrote a letter anonymously saying they found his full throated support for Israel to be a quote, gutting betrayal. Gentleson had been had taken to defending Fetterman on X from such criticisms. I had mentioned that earlier. But it wasn't just staffers who were upset. There was also Fetterman's wife, Giselle, who had become something of a political celebrity in her own right. She is a kind hearted philanthropist, the proprietor of a free store in Braddock that gave away goods and clothing, a formerly undocumented immigrant from Brazil, and a vocal progressive. In early November, just weeks after the attack, Gisele arrived at her husband's Senate office. And according to a staffer present, they got into a heated argument. They are bombing refugee camps. How can you support this? The staffer recalled her saying with tears in her eyes. That's all propaganda, Fetterman replied.

[Emma Vigeland]

God.

[Ilhan Omar]

Later, a still visibly upset, Giselle pulled the staffer aside. She asked him if members of Fetterman's team were pushing him to take these stances for political reasons. The staffer told her that the opposite was true. Many of them were as upset as she was. If you're pushing back on this, there's no hope, the staffer recalled her saying. This is horrible news. Lose.

[Emma Vigeland]

That is really terrible. Like you would. You would at least hope that. It's like, oh, well, you know, he's got a. A bunch of APAC people, you know, lobbyists, right, either on staff or nearby who are pushing him to say these things. And it's like his whole stabs, like, no, he just is doing this. He's doing this gratis. He's just for free, going to carry water for a genocide.

[Ilhan Omar]

And I know that maybe I'm too obsessed with these details. I promise these are the final two paragraphs, but this is just astounding to me. A few days later, Gisele texts the different staffer. I am at a breaking point and can't co sign this any longer. I'd love some help and language to separate myself from this. Can anyone help me?

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, geez.

[Ilhan Omar]

Giselle might have just.

[James Talarico]

The language is divorced.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes, exactly.

[Ilhan Omar]

But like, I. Your husband goes through this enormous health situation, like a stroke. You want to stand by him and you don't, and you hope that it gets better and he gets back to his former self. But the final paragraph points out that his father, Carl Fetterman, an insurance executive, is very pro Israel and would love when. When Fetterman would go on Fox News. So he's. He's regressed to his childhood state is what it seems like. So.

[James Talarico]

Uncle Carl happy.

[Ilhan Omar]

There you go. Whoa.

[Emma Vigeland]

That is. It's. I mean, listen, it's always hard to, you know, be in a marriage with two people who are very political. You know, my wife and I go through this all the time when, you know, she's trying to speak out against Palestine and I am making tiktoks, making fun of the victims of. Of Israel. You know, like, that's. It's hard. It's hard when one person cares a lot about something and the other person is a literal genocidal monster. You never know who you're gonna marry, is the point.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right. You kind of flipped a coin with Francesca and it came up to, yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

You know, it worked out. But, hey, who knows for how long? I could have a stroke at any. I just turned 40. I could have a stroke right now. And then all of a sudden I'm just like, you know, it's great. Israel and dead kids. Those are great things that I love. The article also pointed out that he had kind of had these positions before October 7th. Right. That he had been a, like, you know, pro Israel, but.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right.

[Emma Vigeland]

I. There is part of me that doesn't. That has trouble fully buying a commitment this strong. You know what I mean? Like, this. This does feel like a commitment to Israel this strong does feel like stroke based. You know what I mean?

[Ilhan Omar]

Yes. It's not to say he didn't have major problems as a politician before Ben.

[James Talarico]

Burgess, I mean, before Fetterman was even elected. Had a piece. And he's basically progressive except for Palestine.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right, Right.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right. So. But this is the kind of thing that, you know, I mean, puts it into overdrive. Right. And like, why don't we have any mechanisms to deal with this kind of break? Like, and we can talk about Biden in this instance. And frankly, well, we know that Trump's. They're not going to impeach Donald Trump because the Republicans hold the Senate in the House, but he's clearly completely lost his marbles believing the photoshopped MS.13 knuckle thing that, that Stephen Miller is just like feeding to him on his desk at this point. Yeah, these guys are losing it.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, it is wild.

[Producer]

There's a tweet I we found. You want to put it up, Matt, before we let Giselle completely off the hook or, you know, cry too big of a river for her. This was in March, her posing with Netanyahu.

[Ilhan Omar]

I mean, that's not great, but, I mean, they said he got a gun and there's like, sounding things in the article.

[Emma Vigeland]

And also, if you look at her body language, she is facing away from him. So as a certified body language expert, I would say that she is not into that particular situation.

[Ilhan Omar]

Oh, you were. You're trained in body language expertise. This is for your audition for Fox News, I understand.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's right. Yeah.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

This is how I punched.

[Ilhan Omar]

Or Joy Reid, rather.

[James Talarico]

She was a body language expert. There's just one fine, I think, to underline, kind of like the genocidal mania this guy is. He's meeting with Jeremy, Ben and me of the sort of liberal Zionist organization, J Street, which is pro Israel, pro peace, you know, whatever. And Fetterman lectures the guy saying, you can't reform sour milk, he told Ben Ami, according to the notes from meeting, referring to Palestinians as sour milk. Fetterman said he did not believe in a two state solution and claimed that he had never met an Arab person who would condemn Hamas.

[Sam Seder]

Correction.

[James Talarico]

The notes from the meeting stated only a single Arab he has met with that staff was present for wouldn't outright condemn Hamas. Fetterman went on to make statements that shocked people. In opposing a ceasefire, he said, let's get back to killing. A person who heard the conversation told me he said, kill them all. In a statement, Fetterman denied the account, adding any reference to killing was solely about Hamas. And I do support the destruction of that organization down to its last member. I don't believe him.

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean, he can claim. I mean, that's, that's the old, you know, switcheroo trick, what they do with the Hamas thing where it's just like, no, all of my genocidal language. If I just direct it at Hamas, then I don't have to think about the fact that, you know, I consider literally every man, woman and child in Gaza to be Hamas.

[Ilhan Omar]

You know, they're either Hamas then that's the top tier pre Hamas or Hamas enablers. Like the women that are married to Hamas.

[James Talarico]

They're not overthrowing Hamas. So, you know.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right, exactly. Yeah, they're Hamas voters or they're the progeny of Hamas voters. Like, this is they, you know, they've all but stated that there is, you know, not a single uninvolved person in Gaza. And you know, you know that, that Fetterman is, is buying that line hook, line and sinker. So, like, he's, you know, he can, he can play off. It's just funny to be like. No, no, I just meant Hamas. Saying kill them all about anybody is weird. Saying kill them all is one of those things that Nazis say.

[Ilhan Omar]

It's literally what, what movie villains will. Oh, like, like that's a classic movie villain screaming, kill them all.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Producer]

Or metalheads.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, well, yeah, but I mean, they're just calling out for a song name they like, that's different.

[Ilhan Omar]

I'm not. I'm too posh to understand this reference.

[Emma Vigeland]

To Metallica. Well, listen to, listen to Reload. Reload by Metallica has some of their. More like, you know, more melodic stuff. You'll like it.

[Ilhan Omar]

All right, well, thanks for the tip. So back to genocide. No, like, what's been your. Your bad Hasbro. Everybody should check it out. I really had such a great time when I was on with you. I mean, maybe that must have been like a year ago at this point. Yeah, but what's been your experience covering this over the, like, over the first hundred days of Donald Trump, I mean, activism for Palestine, It's. It. I mean, it's not harder. The struggle is always difficult, of course, but you have a completely untethered, unhinged administration. And there's no food that has gotten into Gaza in food, water, or medicine in 60 days. And it feels like we're at one of the most dangerous points in the genocide.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. I mean, in terms of the first hundred days of the Trump administration and everything that's gone on, you know, with the genocide since, it's been. It's. It's gone kind of exactly how I thought it was gonna go and how it was supposed to have gone this whole time. You know, you have the PR ceasefire. This essentially a win for the Trump administration right off the bat. And it existed, I think, primarily so that Trump could have this, you know, easy Runway for his first hundred days that Israel couldn't help but break almost immediately. They, and, and, And I knew as soon as they did, you know, all of this talk of, like, oh, you know, they had, you know, people going to Netanyahu and saying, you better do a ceasefire. You know, Trump wants one, and you're gonna do one. And then as soon as they broke it, they were like, okay, are you guys gonna kill everyone? That's fine. What do you need? And it was, it's just. It was. It's so clear. I mean, you know, all of the, The. For all of the, the talk about, you know, how terrible, you know, the Democrats are, which they are. You know, they were. They lost this election because they could not admit to themselves or the American people that this was, you know, a genocide. I mean, you know, they lost for a ton of reasons, but that. I think that is a big part of it.

[Ilhan Omar]

Huge.

[Emma Vigeland]

And, and they, they ceded that ground to Trump to where he was going out and pretending like he was a dove. It was completely, like, ridiculous. Like, people were like, he could say that because they were out there, you know, being like, we gotta make sure that Israel has everything they need in order to do genocide. So anyways, he has bar around that has been interesting because you. You seen kind of a split, whereas I feel like the more liberal Zionist PR spin was kind of, I would say, the mainstay of the Biden administration. Now you are seeing the PR go full betar. And if you don't know what Baytar is. It's this very right wing Zionist organization that is like, they think, they think the ADL are Hamas. Like, that's how psychopathic they are.

[Ilhan Omar]

And Jonathan Greenblatt, I mean, he's obviously anti Semitic.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, 100%. I mean, you know, he, he is. He just doesn't know. He is.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yes, like, like future Hamas. He's future anti Semite. We just, you know.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes. But like, it is, it is wild just watching kind of, you know, for his mask off as Israel has been. It's. It's wild to watch, like, oh, I didn't know there was more mask. Like, they keep removing extra parts of the mask and I'm like, jesus, at what point, like, Netanyahu just recently said, like, we, we prioritize the destruction of, quote, Hamas over bringing back our civilians. Like, he, he's saying that out loud, which is a wild thing to say when you can just infer it using your brain. You know what I mean? Like, just look what's happened for the last 18 months. We know that, you know, he gets.

[Ilhan Omar]

Off on it in, like, the way that when Trump, they did that press conference and Trump was saying, who would want to live there? It's destroyed. Sitting next to the man who is responsible for the destruction.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Ilhan Omar]

He's smiling because they think they're, they're doing a little bit of a trick, like, in the same way that. That they messed with the Biden administration, who was not earnestly pursuing a ceasefire, but they wanted better PR for themselves. @ the very least. Netanyahu was toying with him in that way, too.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. Yeah. It's wild to see. I mean, the repression has obviously gotten even more insane, but, you know, I kind of see it all as a continuation. You know, it's. This was like the logical endpoint of what the, you know, Democrats have allowed to happen, essentially. And that's why when I see, like, Cory Booker, Hakeem Jeffries, or like, any of these, like, centrist Dems who are talking about deportations, I'm just like, you set up the dominoes. You. The idea that you're just like, who, who would.

[Ilhan Omar]

Who.

[Emma Vigeland]

I didn't think you guys were gonna knock them down, you know?

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

I just thought it was like, wow, look at all these dominoes all next to each other. I thought we were just gonna look at it, enjoy. Like, you know, I can't. I can't take any of them seriously, and I can't take anyone seriously. Honestly. The Democratic Party who doesn't, you Know, full throatedly ask for, you know, not only no weapons to Israel, but also complete isolation of it as if it were apartheid South Africa. Because it is, but worse.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yep. And it's. Our old producer Bradley referred one time to Cory Booker as having a Winnie the Pooh disposition. And I think about that offing with him.

[James Talarico]

And if Winnie Boo had a psychopathic will to power from like teenage years.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right. Or, but like, or not even the disposition. It's more like his, the way he presents politically. And it's like, why are you wearing the, the pin that's meant to like falsely link the genocide to the return of the hostages? As you talk about like the dangers of authoritarianism.

[James Talarico]

It's right to talk about authoritarianism in 2025 and for like a whole day and not mention Israel and what we're doing one time. That's kind of, that's, well, it's, it's.

[Ilhan Omar]

Why liberal Zionists are fascist enablers. And I think that's like a really important way for us to refer to them because we wouldn't have this, as you say, the situation that we're in without this permission structure being created by many, many Democrats. What is like just to zoom out about some of how liberal Zionists are reacting, like maybe even in your life, because we've talked about this on your show too, how there was, you know, outrage for probably like four or five months of like, I don't know, me getting freezed out maybe you a little bit by some people after October 7th. I'm an anti Semite, whatever.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Ilhan Omar]

Then we have. Okay, like tensions begin to cool. Maybe not from my end because I'm infuriated by these people like justifying this, but like, like there's now been, I think maybe around six to eight months of these folks that were saying anybody speaking out for Palestine or anti Semitic, it's just radio silence. And it feels like that's maybe even a longer period of that where it's like they just. These people who were very vocal about the anti Semitism in the pro Palestine movement are just like quiet nothing. Is there any self reflection happening in your experience?

[Emma Vigeland]

I, you know, I, I've been shocked by the lack of self reflection like that, that, that truly it's almost like a feat. It amazes me the amount of people I know who, who still have not like apologized to me, oh, I'm gonna.

[Ilhan Omar]

Be waiting until the end of my wife. Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's like, it's just for, for the reactions and like the worst thing that I've seen Has been a, like, very intense revisionism with a lot of these liberal Zionists where they'll start saying things like, you know, oh, well, everyone, everyone wanted a ceasefire. We all wanted a ceasefire. You know, it's like, who, who doesn't want a ceasefire?

[Ilhan Omar]

We agreed that they're being genocidal. They won't say genocide, but they'll say they're being genocidal. Oh, yeah, I love to be murderous and not do murdering.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right, Exactly.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

Just, just, just for, you know, for a treat. But like, they would straight up start like calling me or my wife anti Semitic for saying the word ceasefire in like, you know, Obviously October, November, December 2023 up until like May of 2024, just the, anyone saying ceasefire, it was synonymous with being like a Hamas supporting anti Semite. Now, I swear to God, I've seen people who are straight up just, they're guffawing at anyone who ever said ceasefire because they're like, yeah, we all wanted a ceasefire. Everyone is doing the thing where they're going to revise everything that they said beforehand. They're gonna, they're gonna change the goal posts as to what they cared about while simultaneously remaining firmly in the camp of, well, Israel's got to do what Israel's got to do. They will find whatever way to defend it that they can. And in my life, it's been, you know, for the most part, people who are, you know, who at one point may have been like, yelling at me about stuff, texting me, insane propaganda, now, you know, we're. They, they don't, they still don't talk to me, but they will, like, post like, like, man, that, you know, this, this Donald Trump, he is a bad guy. He's a bad dude. And I'm just like, yeah, you, you have no right to talk about anything. If you, if you spent the first, what, 14 months of genocide actively supporting it and now you're just like, oh, this, this Donald Trump guy. I don't, I don't know about him. You know, he, I think he's bad. We all need to band together. Just like, no F off.

[Ilhan Omar]

Do you think that that is, like, really, for me, there's this navel gazing element of which we're all guilty of. I mean, like, you have to have a healthy ego to put your face on camera and talk to it. So I'm not excluding myself from, from this.

[Emma Vigeland]

We all gaze at navels, sure.

[Ilhan Omar]

But, like, the, the thing that's been most difficult, I think, to fight through with some of the liberal Zionists is Just like, like I vote Democrat, so I am a good person. I have like these very set viewpoints about like racism, but it's only in a domestic context. I don't want to think about our foreign policy. I don't want to think about capitalism and its role in, you know, immiserating people in the global south, in the Middle east. Just like that is also a part of our racist worldwide structure where like, I don't the idea that the greatest barrier for you to oppose one of the greatest crimes in the history of humanity that we're currently, currently living through is your own personal like narcissism about how good you are.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Ilhan Omar]

Is there anything more privileged than that very notion?

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. Yeah.

[Ilhan Omar]

No, I mean, mad.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, no, it is, it's insane the amount of, of, you know, how much Zionism does come from being completely self centered, but like just. Or how much fascism just comes from being completely self centered. It's especially, I think it's when it's, you know, like when it's liberals, it's always worse because it comes from this deeply insecure part of their psyche that defines like goodness by the perception of goodness. You know, it defines morality by the perception of they themselves being moral. And so whatever decision they make, whatever position they hold must be moral. Because I, because they are moral. They're like, I'm good, so everything I think good. And it's like this really like baby brain thing where you, you realize how many liberals are just, just essentially conservatives in waiting. Because the inability to learn, the inability to self reflect is like, you know, it's like the classic like conservative stereotype. And you just, you know, people always wonder, it's like, you know, how come, you know, the youth, they start out liberal, then they go conservative and it's like, well, it's. Yeah, because a lot of liberalism is just, you know, completely superficial. It's not actually about learning anything or believing in anything. It is about, you know, feeling good about yourself and, and then as soon as something affects you personally, that's why it's always starts with like taxes.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right.

[Emma Vigeland]

Or someone will just be like, you know, I used to believe in like, you know, gay marriage and stuff, but then I had to pay $10,000 to the IRS and now pretty much throw anyone under the bus in order to, you know, in order to get that money back.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah. And I mean even like you see it here, especially on the, the east coast with the salt deduction fight, like the same people that were obsessed with this is just like a more upper middle Class deduction that is in blue states that primarily, like, was that Trump eliminated the first time, which is this. It's, it's a, it's a taxation deduction. It's called the salt, the state and local tax deduction. And the, there, there's a fight, you know, with like the Josh gottheimer and the conservative Democrats and then the moderate Mike Lawlor. Republicans are, want to bring back the salt deduction. But Trump initially used it as a way to punish blue states. And I just see this, like, all liberal Zionists are all like, you ask them about taxes and they're like, God, you know, I hate Trump because of that salt deduction thing. Oh, you hate Trump now because he made your taxes go up by like a small amount.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, that it is is, it is like, it is crazy. The amount of this is why it's so funny to talk to a liberal Zionist because, yeah, I, I, I, I, I enjoy hearing. It's like, so what do you care about? Because that's always fascinating to me to be able to compartmentalize. Like, it used to be you were compartmentalizing something that was, you know, like, without doing any further reading, you could just assume Israel. Good. You know, it was like, especially if you were, you know, grew up loving Israel or thinking Israel was, you know, belonged to you because of, you know, past Jewish trauma and whatnot, but now, like, you know, genocide happening. And to be able to compartmentalize that and still be like, you know, complaining about the salt tax, like, that's, that's incredible to me. It's like I want to, I want to, like, dive into that brain and swim around for a bit. Yeah, I just want to see what other little pockets of weird shit you've been, like, suppressing.

[Ilhan Omar]

I should correct myself. It's. Trump capped to the salt deduction, so it limited it to, you couldn't do, you know, tens of thousands of dollars. It was at 10K.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, 10,000. Yeah.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah. But that's just one example I can think of.

[Emma Vigeland]

But, but yeah, I mean, even in deportations and shit like that, I mean, you see the amount of like, you know, these are the same liberals who were at the anti ICE protest, you know, back in what, you know, during the Trump administration, the muscle ban, they were against that 100%. And now it's like, you know, they, some of them will still, you know, march against Trump and I'll be like, you, you have seen the amount of students they are deporting for writing essays or attending marches. You're, you're attending a march. How do you live with this in your brain? It's wild because those marches are.

[Ilhan Omar]

And it's nice to see people in the streets, but it's just about demonstrating your opposition where it comes back to the navel gazing thing steps in too, as opposed to having concrete demands, which is an actual threat. The pro Palestine demonstrations are about divesting from Israel. Like, very, very specific.

[Matt Lech]

Hey, school.

[James Talarico]

Divest from Israel. That's what. And R wasn't even that. It was like, hey, school. Our students said, divest from Israel. Listen to them.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, it is. It's wild. It's such a specific demand. I. I talked to a liberal Zionist recently who said that he was like, you know, I think they shouldn't have done the encampments, all that stuff, because it's like, people get annoyed by that, you know, it's like bad optics. And also it's like, what do they even want? And I was like, you. Did you not talk to anybody?

[Ilhan Omar]

I know they're recycling the Occupy. The anti occupy critique. What do they even want? No, I mean, okay, I'm sorry, you cannot make that critique of these protesters. Their demands are right in front of you.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes, yes. It's completely ridiculous. It's on signs. It says, yes. Divestiture. Yeah.

[Ilhan Omar]

Anyway, what'd you say? You want to do this? Do you have.

[James Talarico]

Okay, I don't know if Matt's got to go. There's another Fetterman.

[Emma Vigeland]

I don't, I don't got. This is my birthday. I told my wife. I told my wife. I'm doing whatever I want today. I'm going to go on Majority Report. We're going to talk about Fetterman's weird ass.

[Ilhan Omar]

Let's go nuts. We got another Fetterman clip here. Another time where he, he's seated and seemingly unaware of his surroundings. This time in public, or at least on an airplane.

[James Talarico]

This is from a prem talker video from February when John Fitterman got in an argument with a pilot about wearing his seatbelt. So it was visible.

[Ilhan Omar]

And, and this was cited in that extensive New York magazine piece.

[Emma Vigeland]

Of course he's getting in fights with fucking flight attendants. It's okay. Okay, it's okay.

[James Talarico]

But it just has to be visible to the crew at all times. It's a federal regulation. So if your seat bel's on, just has to.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right now, it's not visible.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'm depressed.

[Ilhan Omar]

Bro.

[James Talarico]

What are we doing?

[Emma Vigeland]

The point of a seat belt is for me to be safe, right? I don't want to Be safe.

[Ilhan Omar]

I want to die.

[Sam Seder]

I'm trying to die.

[James Talarico]

I'm thinking about my friend from grad school that died in 1993.

[Emma Vigeland]

He wore a seatbelt and died anyway.

[Ilhan Omar]

Wouldn't it be amazing if he was going to Israel as some sort of, like, death wish? He's just like. He wants a Hamas rocket to fall on him so bad.

[James Talarico]

Blow me out of the sky.

[Emma Vigeland]

Just walks into the sea. Yeah. If he really wants to die, you know, just hop aboard an aid flotilla, you know?

[Sam Seder]

Right.

[Emma Vigeland]

Do that if you really want to get killed. Yeah, it is. It's so funny. These, like, Fetterman videos that keep coming out and every. It's like. It's like every picture of glum Keanu met. Every picture of glum Ben Affleck. You're just like. There's not a single phrase, like, whatever. It's a photogenic version of always looking depressed. But he is. I think he is actually very. A very, very sad man. Which, I mean, you know, that's just called karma, I think.

[James Talarico]

Yeah. I'd like to ask him, like, hey, can you talk about how important joy is to your life?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, exactly. Can you speak on joy? Yeah. Well, it is wild.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah. He should. He should probably watch inside out. That will help him identify his emotions.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's right. That's right. That'll help.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah. Matt Lieb, we're. We really appreciate your time today. Happy birthday, my friend.

[Emma Vigeland]

Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here. Sorry Sam couldn't show up again for our scheduled debate, but that's fine.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah, no problem. You're gonna have to find a time to do that because he needs to be called out on some of the horrible things that he.

[James Talarico]

Pro Hamas stuff.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right, well, consider this his official calling out. Sam, you run away every time I show up. Every time I show up, you're just like, oh, I'm scared to debate, Matt Lee. Well, guess what? I'm calling you out. You better show up next time.

[Ilhan Omar]

Content as a throwdown.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's right. I'm tired of you saying how much you love Hamas. Always out here. Hell, yeah.

[Ilhan Omar]

All right, well, everybody please check out Matt and friend Franny in San Francisco on Wednesday, May 7th.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's right. Comedy club.

[Ilhan Omar]

Cobbs Comedy Club. We'll put a link to that in the description below. Appreciate you, buddy. Thanks so much for coming on.

[Emma Vigeland]

Thanks so much for having me. Bye, y'all.

[Ilhan Omar]

Bye. We're. We're not. Should we just. Can I freebie Friday? Can I do freebie Friday?

[James Talarico]

This is Emma's making her first freebie Friday call.

[Ilhan Omar]

Am I gonna get fired?

[James Talarico]

Sam comes storming the red phone. The red phone starts ringing.

[Producer]

Just blame it on me.

[Emma Vigeland]

Go.

[Producer]

Go ahead.

[Ilhan Omar]

All right.

[Producer]

Yeah, everyone, exactly.

[Ilhan Omar]

You're not. You don't respect the rule of law. You've shat all over. That's what you did, and we know it now. You know, honestly, my one regret is, is that I wish that, that Megyn Kelly was like a part of, you know, an all female talk show. Right. As a part. Just like I, I think her voice is sorely needed in, like, the. To have real conversation in the feminist talk space. Rust, we have merch. We've got to talk about that. Right? That's the most important thing on the.

[Producer]

There's new merch.

[Ilhan Omar]

New merch. We have new merch. Really?

[Producer]

Well, I don't know if.

[Ilhan Omar]

Or merch.

[Producer]

Yeah, there's merch.

[Ilhan Omar]

Might be new.

[Producer]

It's new. I just, I just got here, guys. I don't know what's old and new.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah, I don't know why I'm.

[Producer]

I think it's new.

[Ilhan Omar]

Shop majorityreportradio.com we're about to pull that up and then we'll. Oh, it is. Oh, my God, this is hilarious. Okay, I didn't, I did not know that this is what the merch was. People will get the joke in just a second. But maybe if you're on the podcast audience, we'll just, we'll make you go to the website shop. MajorityReportRadio.com so you can see what we're talking about here. But new ways to identify the, the, the fact that you're a total hysterical extremist and not a right and not a populist. Charlie. Charlie Kirk. Oh, you want that beanie, huh?

[James Talarico]

Well, I know somebody who might.

[Ilhan Omar]

Oh, it's true. Well, that. Didn't Sam try to give that to him as a gift?

[James Talarico]

I think he did. Yeah. Give him one of them.

[Ilhan Omar]

Do we have more. Is that all the new stuff, like, to show the show? Yeah. I mean, then there's the classic stuff.

[James Talarico]

But here's the, the Max Left trucker hat there.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah. If you want to show everybody that you're completely unreasonable.

[James Talarico]

Part of the irresponsible Max left. That's the reason, you know, Trump isn't doing left wing stuff.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right. Because you said that if you, if you think that trans women should be able, like, five trans women should be singled out from participating in sports or like, three girls in the state of Texas or something like that show you're completely insane by buying this merchant.

[Producer]

See, I thought it was like there was a guy that used to work here named Max, and he left. So it's like.

[Ilhan Omar]

Nah, no longer. That didn't make any sense. Max left, writes in our old employee. You stole my podcast name. Sorry, buddy. We trademarked your name back in the day. Like Kim Kardashian. Dig with her kids. Kids. George from Colorado, please know this is the worst thing Anna has done. Actually. I want her to fade into obscurity so bad. I'm not sure what you're referring to.

[James Talarico]

I've been offline.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah, right, exactly. Shapeshifter. Whoopsies.

[James Talarico]

You're about to be value taint.

[Ilhan Omar]

Compartmentalizing Israel's genocide. That's what Bernie Sanders does there. You know, look, we have a. There's a spectrum of what is acceptable in Washington to say. And I think, you know, we've been clear.

[James Talarico]

Bernie's the best senator on the issue. But as far as he shouldn't say genocide. He shouldn't say Goldemeyer is a model of, you know, getting along with others.

[Ilhan Omar]

Like, you know, But I also give him grace as an older Jewish man in his 80s where it's like, he's doing. He's up to. He's. He's. There's sometimes like a lack of elasticity where some of that stuff's more ingrained. But he's trying to block arms sales to Israel, and that really is what matters, I think.

[James Talarico]

And you know, I think it's fairly obvious to most people that take Palestine serious issue. That, like, that's what you can expect at this point. Like, the pattern is there. He's not going to be leader rhetorically, like, say Rashida Tlaib might on a lot of these issues. It's just not what we can expect from Bernie. But frankly, like, like, look at the Senate.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah.

[James Talarico]

Who is going to be remotely courageous on that issue? Like, and that's a very important body to have. And the truth is, like, Bernie is better than what senator is good at. Bernie. On the issue of Israel, Palestine.

[Ilhan Omar]

None.

[Producer]

Someone just posted here in the YouTube comments. Mopo. Sam is the same age as Bernie and he isn't a Zionist.

[Ilhan Omar]

That's correct. That they're the same age.

[Producer]

Yeah.

[James Talarico]

They're born in what? I mean, I think Bernie's. Bernie's older brother. Right. Is like actually more of an anti Zionist than maybe Bernie is. Maybe. I'm getting that. Misremembering that.

[Ilhan Omar]

But his brother, the one who voted for him. Yeah, yeah, that's that was such a sweet moment at the convention in 2016. Fabulous. I already read that one. Hopeful one. I live in a nice zip code in a lovely condo. My downstairs neighbor is a bougie drug dealer, a white man and the son of high ranking police officials. Miss me with this fear of brown people. Exactly. Punch drunk pulpit. Sam, Please ask Mehdi to bring back America Unhinged with Francesca and Wajahat. Well, that passed, but agreed on the sentiment. Shapeshifter. You have to be insanely boring if you think cheating at path of exile 2 would make you cool. I don't get that reference.

[James Talarico]

That's about Elon Musk hiring people to level his guys up. You know, I wish I could say that I didn't understand it, but I will occasionally pay in to get extra cards on NBA 2K because I want my team to be better. So, like, should I do that? No. But it's nice to have a. A game that's a little bit easier because you have a good card. I don't know.

[Ilhan Omar]

I used to do that in sims. I'd put in rosebuds so I could get all the money I wanted.

[James Talarico]

Just buy a big stereo system, make.

[Ilhan Omar]

A pool, have a nice family. I mean, I would get bored after they'd have like two kids and it's time to start a new family.

[James Talarico]

I do think like Musk is like 60, right? Like, I think at that age, like I'm a little bit. I'm actually over that. My 20 year old self understands the thing of like, like I wouldn't do it, but I understand why somebody would want to like appear better at like Rocket League or something. You are a titan of industry that does government contracts for billions of dollars. Like that is weird that. That's very strange.

[Ilhan Omar]

Wavy Gravy. Yesterday you guys played clip of Trump's town hall with Stephen A. Smith. Not sure. You guys saw the other part where Stephen A. Asked Trump about the Harvard situation. I guess Trump thought, yes, I did see this. Stephen A. Said Harlem. So Trump goes into a rant about Harlem but realizes halfway through that Stephen A. Said Harvard. Trump then rants about people from Harlem protesting at Harvard. But.

[James Talarico]

He'S gone, man, he's gonna be so fried.

[Ilhan Omar]

But do you think he just. He heard Stephen A. Thought New York and black guy and then went with Harlem?

[James Talarico]

That could have, have. That could have definitely been sort of like the preconditioning for that mishearing.

[Ilhan Omar]

Although maybe I'm being too generous by even thinking he made the New York connection and just thought Black guy, then Harlem. That's probably how direct it was.

[James Talarico]

The most straight line.

[Producer]

I thought that there's a previous, like, I don't know if it was right before this, but also some discussion about the HBCUs. So I don't know if it was like in his brain that sort of mushed into like Harvard versus the hbcu.

[James Talarico]

Black overload. Yeah, overload.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yes. Harvard or Harlem University, the famous HBCU that everyone's heard of. All right, so let's do some clips here. What's good, folks? I didn't.

[James Talarico]

I like this ilhan1.

[Ilhan Omar]

Oh, yeah, okay.

[James Talarico]

I also like the one with our boy from Texas, Talarico.

[Ilhan Omar]

But we'll, we'll do seven and eight. Just because Ilhan Omar is up there with like some of the, arguably our best elected Democrat. I mean, that's, that's absolutely. I think she, you can say, I mean, Rashida Tlaib, aoc, Bernie Sanders, this is the kind of people that we're talking about here. But Ilhan Omar for me has this blend of just being completely uncompromising in a good way on the moral issues of our time, including Israel's genocide in Gaza. And she stood up to APAC and took a huge, huge hit being called an anti Semite really early on in her career. That smear was aided by the leader of her own party, Nancy Pelosi, and other Democrats. She withstood that she got into more high up leader leadership positions on the Congressional Progressive Caucus. She's just a very smart and talented politician in addition to having the right things to say. And this is how you deal with freaks like, like the, this guy. Miles Morell of the Daily Caller trying to talk to her on the street about immigration. Congresswoman Omar, I'm Miles Morrell with the Daily Caller News Foundation. Do you think more of your Democratic colleagues should be traveling to El Salvador to advocate on behalf of Rodrigo Garcia? I'm sorry, what Congresswoman who should.

[Emma Vigeland]

Why me?

[Ilhan Omar]

I'm not taking any questions right now, but here you go. Yeah, thanks.

[James Talarico]

Hell yeah. Oh, that is what we like to see. God bless Ilhan and her staff.

[Producer]

Yeah, his reaction's pretty funny too. It's in there.

[Ilhan Omar]

Can. Oh, what?

[Producer]

He posted a reaction video, like clutching his pearls about her.

[Ilhan Omar]

Oh, please, please, let's play this because, I mean, we're going to have a Republican that's upset about some disrespect to the press.

[Producer]

He's a journalist.

[Ilhan Omar]

Oh, oh, right. The Republicans who have a president who is so respectful of journalists in the press. So much so that if they don't follow his lead and change their. The. The data internally at their news organization to say that the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America, he's going to ban them from the White House.

[Producer]

Also, a journalist who, in his Twitter profile, like the background picture is him standing in front of the Trump 2024 plane with like a big thumbs up and a grin on his face. Ah, that's objectivity.

[Ilhan Omar]

That's the guy. This is the bastion of the free press here in this country. So this is his poor victim upset about Ilhan, telling him to fuck off. Today I've been asking House Dems if they would incur. Encourage their colleagues to go to El Salvador to advocate on behalf of Abedigo Garcia. And when I encountered Ilhan Omar and I asked her that question, she immediately responded by telling me to f off. I asked her to follow up. She told me to f off.

[James Talarico]

She said off again.

[Ilhan Omar]

And I just found that very unprofessional, very rude. Especially when I was just a journalist who's trying to do his job.

[James Talarico]

No, you're hot today.

[Ilhan Omar]

Oh, a journalist just trying to do his job.

[James Talarico]

You're a hog that should be in a pen.

[Producer]

He was verbally assaulted.

[Ilhan Omar]

I. We're gonna. We're gonna really clutch our plurals about the freedom of the press here. Come on.

[James Talarico]

That is the freedom of the press. You got your quote.

[Ilhan Omar]

Fuck off. Yeah, that's exactly.

[James Talarico]

What do you mean, professional? You're not the. You're not the. Who the hell are you? Who's my. Well, can we get a little biographic information on this? On this hog? Like, who is he to lecture a elected doubly. How many times has Ilhan been elected a member of Congress? Yeah, yeah, about manners, bro. It's you. You're not the professionalism police. You work for the fucking Daily Caller.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah, and. And it's just silly because they do this all the time. I mean, this is how the far right operates. They're both like. They accuse the left of being snowflakes and weak and pathetic, but they. They can't handle any kind of pushback without whining. Yeah, cry bullies. But isn't that the hallmark of fascists too?

[James Talarico]

That's all Vance does.

[Ilhan Omar]

They hold these contradictions in their minds, and they don't even think twice about it. Where fascists, when they define their opponents, often, whether it's, you know, the Nazis and the Jews and other movements that have targeted minority groups in the past, their opponents in the people that they're persecuting Israel and the Palestinians. Oh, Hamas, they're so powerful. They're in this terrorist organization that has the capacity to kill us all and they want to wipe Israel off the map. But they're also so pathetic and don't have Western values and are essentially primitive and fascists. Do this here in the United States that they are both like, incredibly weak and fragile, but also the strong men and the tough guys, like, pick which one. But that's kind of the binary that they put themselves in with their worldview. So Donald Trump is the. One of the worst presidents in the history of this country in terms of press freedom and freedom of speech. Let's not even get into that right now. Ilhan Omar has the freedom of speech to tell you fuck off. You know, who doesn't have the freedom of speech to say how they actually feel about the world and who want, who try to engage in political protests which is the hallmark of the First Amendment and our country's founding. Romeo Osterk, Mahmoud Khalil, all of the other political prisoners right now in the Trump administration who have been speaking out against the genocide in Gaza.

[James Talarico]

Here's some headlines from the Daily Caller about Ilhan Omar. And this is what these like. And look, I don't like the, the mainstream press either.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right.

[James Talarico]

This is not an improvement. These, these stupid hogs. She learned young that crying racism pays. That's Tucker Carlson blasting her in 2019. Ilhan Omar defends Dem Rep. Who called Israel racist. That seems like probably Rashid Tlaib maybe, but that is a good call. Israel is racist. Lawmaker calls Crenshaw racist. I'm pretty sure or should leave defends Ilhan Omar's 911 comments. I'm sure that was a good defense. Racist Trump. I mean, this is fuck the Daily Caller. Like.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah, well, I mean they were a huge part of the direction of extremely racist xenophobic attacks towards Ilhan Omar. As I said earlier, like, people may not remember what it was like when she first entered Congress.

[James Talarico]

Oh yeah.

[Ilhan Omar]

I mean, she, she has come a long way within the caucus that finally defends her or doesn't at least maliciously go after her. But for a while, she was fighting on two fronts. The entire Republican Party that was foaming at the mouth with Islamophobia and saying that she had sex with her brother and these disgusting, disgusting Islamophobic Nazi smears. And then you had Nancy sex trafficker.

[James Talarico]

By a guy who got busted at Anton Lazzaro in Minnesota. The source for the Ilhan married her brother thing is a guy named Anton Lazzaro who Tucker Carlson defended, who had a one young girl recruiting others for him for sex stuff at St. Cloud, Minnesota.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah, right. And you. And then the Democrats were also throwing her under the bus as well. So good for her for standing up for. Or just. Just telling that guy to fuck off, as she says.

[James Talarico]

There's a quote. Because. I mean, let's address the actual issue.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right? Yeah. Yeah.

[James Talarico]

Will you go defend people who are Ms. 13 members just allege that. Take that as proven in court, even though it's not. What has been said by court is don't send that guy to El Salvador and then you send him to fucking El Salvador to a prison colony. That's the issue.

[Ilhan Omar]

It.

[James Talarico]

Honestly, he could be like a mass murder. He could be a serial killer. It doesn't matter. When the courts say, don't send that person to that country, and you send that person to that country and then you say, well, fuck off. I'm not going to try to make this problem better. That. That's the problem.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right, right.

[Producer]

You know, I think one of the things that makes. Or a show of how great of a politician Omar is. I don't know the order of these things either. This exchange took place, and then she walked into Congress and gave a speech where she talked about the Abrego Garcia case.

[Ilhan Omar]

Can we play that?

[Producer]

Yeah, we should play to have it in the sound sheet or if. If it was vice versa, which would sort of make more sense that she'd given the speech and. And he heard it or. Or read it or something and was like, oh, I'm gonna. I'm gonna call her out on this. But I just think it's. It's cool to listen to, like, she in the street. She deals with this idiot the way she did. And this is what she sounds like when she's actually engaging in, like, political discourse that's in good faith in a.

[James Talarico]

Way Fetterman could never.

[H]

I am here today as a representative of a community that is deeply alarmed by the actions of this administration. Just weeks ago, the Trump administration defied a unanimous. We didn't think this was possible, but a unanimous Supreme Court order. By refusing to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father wrongfully deported to the notorious prison in El Salvador Door. Despite the court's clear directive, the administration continues to ignore the rule of law, undermining the very foundation of our democracy. In my own district, the situation is equally troubling. A graduate student at the University of Minnesota was detained by ICE agents without warning. Despite having no involvement in political political activism, he was taken from his home, held without immediate explanation, and had his visa retroactively revoked. This action not only disturbed his education, but also instilled fear in our academic community. These are not isolated incidents. Across the country, people are being detained and deported without due process, often based on tenuous or unverified allegations. The administration's use of obscure laws like the Alien enemies Act of 1798 to justify these actions is a plain abuse of power. We must ask ourselves, if the rights of non citizens can be so easily disregarded, whose rights will be next? Our Constitution guarantees due process and equal protection under the law to everyone in this country, not just citizens. If the government can silence you, detain you, or deport you while defying court orders, then none of our rights are safe. If we let this slide, we are saying the Constitution is optional and it is not. What we are seeing is authoritarianism creeping in through the back door, one ignored ruling at a time. My colleagues and I are ready to fight back with everything we've got. Thank you and I yield back.

[Ilhan Omar]

Amazing stuff. Love, Ilhan Omar.

[James Talarico]

And folks, I don't want to go too far afield, but one of the big early things she did was go after Elliott Abrams, right? And people can look up that clip. I'm sure we covered it here. And I just remember, like, just want to point out the type of crap that she's had to deal with her entire time in, in Congress. This is a Vox explainer of that by Zach Beauchamp, who is for some reason their Israel guy, even though I think he's probably not great at it. And this is just the first paragraph. First term Rep. Ilhan Omar is making headlines again on the heels of a controversy surrounding a tweet of hers that struck many observers, including me, as anti Semitic. Omar has again garnered attention over her tough questioning of Trump's special envoy to Venezuela, Elliott Abrams. So Zach Beauchamp decides to start off and that tweet was the all about the Benjamins tweet about why we support Israel so much. That tweet is 210 toes down. Absolutely correct. And the clutching of pearls from people like Zach Beauchamp is every bit as problematic to me as the Daily Caller type bullshit. And it's so clear why and how complicit our media class is with how far this goddamn stuff with Israel's gone getting out of hand. Where. I mean, it's just taking drones, let's, let's bomb flotillas of people just trying to bring food into the country because Zach Beauchamp because he can't figure out if there's a tunnel between the west bank and Gaza yet. That's a famously correction he had to put on but yet Vox is going to put him on this and he's going to clear his throat before Ilhan Omar. This is one of the best things that a congressperson done is take Elliot Abrams to task. We're going to imply that she's anti Semitic. It's disgusting.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah. I mean Beauchamp was the guy that thought there was a bridge land bridge between the west bank and Gaza which.

[James Talarico]

Is like oh sorry, that was just thought of.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah, that's.

[James Talarico]

Let's keep publishing this guy on the tub. Let's not pull him off the subject forever.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah, let's.

[James Talarico]

Let's hear what he has to say about the possibilities of liberal Zionisms re emergence something this everyone's head is filled with by complete charlatans.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yep. George from Colorado that clip goes to show how clear and concise of communicator she is. And Buenora credit credit where it's due to America's neoliberal turn we figured out how to outsource concentration camps. A well the Nazis also did not put their concentration camps in Germany proper. So it's just a fascist. They're borrowing from some of the worst people in history. Molly Gray Jedi, someone in an oversized sweater and basketball shorts. Serving surviving on fast food is literally the least surprising thing about fetterman. Yeah. Courier 11 seconds. Twitter left searches far and wide for babies to throw out with the bath water. Bobby Nafo have you tried asking Megyn Kelly about her take yet? Not quite.

[James Talarico]

Her take on what? I don't know what you mean.

[Ilhan Omar]

Whoopsies. Jersey Bernie bro. It's similar to Occupy critiques, but more like BLM 2020 critiques where many on the right and liberals left of center were saying they don't agree with with how people were protesting. That's always the the fig leaf druish Federman running around wearing the Israeli flag like a cape. Makes more sense now. Yeah. Majority Report Wardrobe coordinator Trump in December Let them eat Fentanyl labor guy Federman should resign and start a podcast with Ethan Klein. That's actually a good idea. Tom from Akiba Matt, leave the world's most moral birthday boy Vinnie from Buffalo Palestine has done a unique thing in splitting liberals into people who can reflect on their morality and people who fell into liberalism by accident. Well said. Josh from Minnesota is matches Sam wearing glasses. When did you last see the two of Them in the same room. Think about it.

[James Talarico]

Sam also wears glasses.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yes. Molly Gray Jedi says he still wears. And one basketball shorts. Those are. Those are like old school basketball shorts.

[James Talarico]

2005.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah. Right. Like the baggiest. Baggiest ever. I mean, that's like, you know, Shaq and Kobe on the Lakers. That's how everyone was wearing.

[James Talarico]

Yeah.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yep.

[James Talarico]

I thought that was going to last forever. And now people are. Even me. I'm wearing above the knee right now.

[Ilhan Omar]

Well, baggy stuff is back. Like, baggy stuff is back. I think I'm not ready for it.

[James Talarico]

It's back for, like, women. I feel like. Like. Well, Charlie XCX was really big, but.

[Ilhan Omar]

No, it's back for gay men, too, who lead straight men, I think, into more fashion. Fashionable wear. Like, that's way better to have short shorts.

[James Talarico]

I'm sorry.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah. I mean, look, I. I'm not going to talk about this anyway. I agree. I agree. I like the more fitted stuff, but it's. It's. Now it's all those, like, big, oversized, thick T shirts. Right. And the. And the cargo pants. That was a cyclical.

[James Talarico]

Did this in the 2000s.

[Ilhan Omar]

I know. Clear water, Nick. I desperately want to dump Derek Van Orden from the house. Will you guys cover the Democratic primary in his districts? Emily Burgay and Laura Benjamin both have a great shot at flipping the seat. Sure. All right, let's do some more clips. What numbers are. Oh, wait. 17. Okay, you. You wanted to do. What did you suggest, Russ?

[Producer]

Well, there's some. There's someone. There's a woman that has a take. Oh, and then also there's a take.

[Ilhan Omar]

Huh?

[Producer]

Well, yeah.

[Ilhan Omar]

Who has this take?

[Producer]

It's. She.

[Ilhan Omar]

Whoopsies. This is number 13. I haven't seen this yet. I was prepping for the show, so I missed the premiere of her take.

[Producer]

And then after that, I was gonna say.

[Ilhan Omar]

Which one?

[Producer]

13.

[Ilhan Omar]

Okay.

[Producer]

But then after that, I was gonna say 14.

[Ilhan Omar]

All right.

[Producer]

But, you know, up to you. You're. You're steering the shit.

[Ilhan Omar]

I don't even. Is this just the promo?

[Producer]

Yeah, we don't. We don't want to do it.

[Ilhan Omar]

I don't care.

[Producer]

All right.

[Ilhan Omar]

I don't care. Oh. Oh, wait. 13's not the. Not the show. Not the. The take show. Yeah, let that. Well, let me just put it to the side for now. I. I don't feel like dealing with. With it, but. But. Yeah, but I. I hear you. Okay. Which one's this? All right, this is the fun half. So we're going to have Some fun with this, I guess. Here's Texas State Representative James Talarico. He's a Democrat. He's in this clip calling out Republican State Representative Stan Gerdes, and he says that this Republican is wasting people's time. And I guess I don't want to even spoil what they're referring to. Let's just go right into it.

[I]

Can you name a school where it has been confirmed that students are using litter boxes?

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, what we do with this bill is we prevent that from.

[Ilhan Omar]

From happening.

[Emma Vigeland]

What we don't take out.

[I]

Well, can you name a school where it has been confirmed that students are using litter boxes? This was at the top of your press release. This was mentioned when you introduced this bill. Created quite a stir. So I'm asking, can you name a school where it's been confirmed that there are litter boxes being provided to students?

[Emma Vigeland]

No, I cannot.

[I]

Your tweet about this bill was flagged by the app itself under their community notes. And their fact check said sensationalist claims about furries literally behaving as animals and receiving accommodations such as litter boxes have been repeatedly debunked as hoaxes. Is that correct?

[Emma Vigeland]

It was flagged on. What is it? Community notes.

[Ilhan Omar]

Okay.

[I]

I find it concerning that these types of debunked conspiracy theories are being used by politicians at the highest levels of our government, including in this legislature, who know that they're incorrect. Are you aware that Governor Abbott said, quote, kids go to school dressed up as cats with litter boxes in their classrooms?

[Producer]

Sure.

[I]

Are you also aware that when the governor was asked by the Dallas Morning News to name a. I sort of.

[James Talarico]

The shamelessness of that. Sure. Like, sure. And I'm pushing this furries act, and there's. I can't name a single fucking school. But we're trying to get out ahead of this. This is demented, but I don't even.

[Ilhan Omar]

Understand what the acronym is. Oh, so forbidding unlawful representation of role playing in education. Act. Act. You know, all the furries that.

[James Talarico]

They got the acronym down, so you gotta do the ACT now.

[Ilhan Omar]

Well, I'm here on the WOKE east coast, and every New Jersey school knew that you had your social studies. You had your algebra class, and then you had the sex pest class where everybody dressed up in furry costumes and learned about each other's bodies because of the woke. So these guys. I just. Let's just be clear. This guy has seen furry porn and is now working backwards from that. Okay, cool.

[I]

By the Dallas Morning News to name a single school where this happened. He couldn't. And PolitiFact called this a pants on fire false claim started by online rumors.

[Emma Vigeland]

Okay.

[I]

Do you think it's a good use of our time to write laws based on debunked Internet conspiracy theories?

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, this isn't. This piece of legislation before us covers that among other things that are true.

[I]

My concern is that instead of holding a hearing about student mental health, instead of holding a hearing about school closures across Texas, we are spending precious legislative time toward the end of this legislative session on a bill called the Furries Act. And honestly, Representative Gerdes, this whole thing is just weird and honestly, a little creepy. And I think that's the point, because this is all, in my opinion, a manufactured, debunked smear campaign against our Texas public schools. Governor Abbott has used this litter box rumor to paint our schools in the worst possible light to voucherize. He even used used the litter box conspiracy theory to push his private school voucher bill. These culture war attacks are nothing more than an effort to discredit our public schools to justify defunding those public schools. Texas librarians are not grooming kids, Texas teachers are not indoctrinating kids, and Texas schools are not providing litter boxes. And I think the most disappointing part about all this is I, I think you know, that that's.

[James Talarico]

That's great.

[Ilhan Omar]

Well said. And that's exactly right. That's what these attacks are on public schools. It's also how they. When they attack teachers as groomers, you get, you use the homophobia, the transphobia as a way to gut our public education system. We're seeing at the federal level Trump saying he wants to eliminate the Department of Education. And this is the truth. One of the number one indicators in exit polling if you voted for Donald Trump is if you're a lower information voter. They want us not to. Tim Walz was saying this the other day. They don't want an educated proletariat. They want it all to be about, like, if Trump shows up to a WWE show or whatever, like the wrestling match and he is funny or like, is in the news constantly and that's all you need to know about her politics. You know, need to know that he's getting our Social Security. You don't need to know that he's giving tax cuts for the rich. You don't need to know that he's actively making your quality of life worse. What? This helps conservatives. This helps those interests if people are uneducated. That's why since we've all been alive, there's been a war on the arts. There's been the war on the humanities. There's been all of this like, oh, that's such a waste of time. All those pink haired college kids on campus learning about, you know, our history and slavery and wokeness and stuff like what apartheid is. They should be focusing on, you know, trades and they should be working in more of like a capitalist framework. The furry, the litter box thing, Joe Rogan was spreading that back in the day.

[James Talarico]

He said he knew firsthand before. He's like, oh, I was misled by somebody who told me the wrong thing.

[Ilhan Omar]

He said he knew a teacher in a public school that had seen this happening or he hurt and then he maybe muddied it. Oh, yeah. All the public school teachers that Joe Rogan is chatting with about this kind of thing, it's a Facebook meme that turned into a conspiracy theory in like 2022, and now they're making it into legislation down in Texas. It's not a coincidence this is happening as they're trying to pass this like the biggest school privatization bill in the country's history because of Texas's size.

[James Talarico]

It's intentionally why they're doing it. We had my buddy Chris Leal from Dallas on one of the few times I've sat in Sam's chair talking about explicitly Texas, the state of Friday Night Lights. People love their public schools, particularly in rural areas. All of this stuff, the litter boxes thing, they're teaching you to hate your country thing, they're grooming you thing, all of that was an effort to soften that support so they can privatize this. So what happens? I mean, Tellarico has a good clip on this. We played too. But really what vouchers mean is the private schools that parents send their kids to, now those parents get a voucher. So instead of $25,000 a year, it only costs them 15,000. Now normal people ain't paying $15,000 even if there's a $10,000 voucher. So it's just a subsidy for fucking rich people.

[Ilhan Omar]

Exactly.

[James Talarico]

And that's what. And God damn it, they did it in North Dakota too. And I said this before, but North Dakota has a great public school system.

[Ilhan Omar]

Them.

[James Talarico]

And now all of a sudden, people that want to send their kids, richer parents that want to send their kids to basically soft, segregated Catholic schools, they get a tax break on it and nobody else is going to benefit from it because no one else is going to pay that shit.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah, look, I went to public school until seventh grade and then I went to an all girls school and it was a great education, but it's not something that should have been getting subsidized by the state. And I don't really believe now, as my politics have evolved, that private school should even exist in this country. And, and, and that is in part because of conversations that I would hear of like, you know, oh, gosh, I'm sending, you know, my daughter to school, you know, with you, Emma, or whatever, and we got to pay these high New Jersey taxes for school that my daughter doesn't even go to. And this is brought like it. Probably every parent had this conversation at the school I went to.

[James Talarico]

This is submerged.

[Ilhan Omar]

Exactly. But even though the school I went to was a non denominator, the only non denominational all girls school in the state and was like much more liberal, they called us scholar leaders, it was more multicultural than a lot of and different, a higher proportion of black people than other private schools. Like they made an effort. But you still saw even there how conservative the institution was and how the parents were resentful of paying taxes to a school their kid wasn't going to, but they were rich enough to afford to send their kid to this school. What is happening in Texas and in North Dakota is gratifying the wishes of those parents. But it's even more insidious because this is about religious schools too.

[James Talarico]

It's taking money from public schools to give to those parents.

[Ilhan Omar]

It's granting their wish. Okay, so even though you have the financial means to send your kid or they're on scholarship to a private school, you shouldn't have to pay into the public school system to subsidize other kids. You can voluntarily take that back to go to a private institution. This is a way to undercut publication, undercut public education broadly, because if you can opt in and opt out, it means there's no universality. We've said this within the context of Social Security and Medicare. Why are these programs so durable? Why are Republicans always going for Medicaid? First, it's because it's not universal. The best protection of any social program is its universality. It's why Medicare for all is such a threat too. It's because if everybody is in it together, like public education too, if everybody is in it together, then people all finally understand what the value is, and it makes it more durable because people accrue this kind of goodwill with it. And like Matt was saying about public schools, we're in this car society, everybody's in their little suburban fiefdom and all these plots of land we have no centers of community, even in these. In the city, everything's privatized. Privatized except our libraries, basically, and. And some of our parks. Although you go to Gramercy, you need the damn key to get into that park. But like, there. I mean, there's. There's. There's other. Our public spaces are becoming increasingly privatized in rural areas. Public schools are one of the only centers of community that are left. And this is what they're targeting.

[James Talarico]

And look at what happens when society collapses. Like which. That might sound a bit extreme, but it did happen about five years ago.

[Sam Seder]

Where were we?

[James Talarico]

Coordinating of pickup meals for folks. It was through schools.

[Producer]

Yeah, but now, here's the thing, guys. I'm not saying that in the public schools, kids are going to the bathroom in a litter box. I'm not. I'm not saying that that's happening. But if it was to happen, that would be bad.

[Ilhan Omar]

That would be bad.

[Producer]

That would be bad. And so, you know, so we need. All I'm trying to say, y'all, we.

[Ilhan Omar]

Need some preemptive legislation on that. You know, first we defund the schools, but then we protect. Attacked against the imaginary boogeyman. So shoot. Do we have. It's Friday. I'm sorry, Russ. We can. We kept meaning to get to the. The David Hogg clip, which was really good.

[James Talarico]

Kind of old news.

[Ilhan Omar]

It was fun. People should check out that debate between Carville and David Hogg. I mean, Hogg won so much that Carville basically conceded and said he was right at the end, is what I'm hearing, basically.

[Producer]

I think. I mean, the long and short of it is Carville really talked up a big aggressive game until he was confronted with David Hogg in. In a conversation. And then he's sort of like, okay, well, look, I agree, mostly.

[Ilhan Omar]

All right, guys. Maybe Bobby Dog says they long have Gramercy Park. I used to live up the street. What is the park in? It may not be Gramercy Park.

[Producer]

There's two private parks in New York City. Gramercy Park.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yep.

[Producer]

And Sunnyside Gardens Park. Not to dox myself, but somewhat close to where I live.

[James Talarico]

Gramercy park has always been locked up since I've been here, anyway.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah. I mean, I remember meeting someone who bragged about having that key, and I thought, very weird.

[James Talarico]

Like, when you're walking through Manhattan and you come. That's a very strange area. Some different about it.

[Ilhan Omar]

It's like, I think, like, majestic. The Upper east and Upper west side get talk about as like the wealthiest part of Manhattan. But I think Gramercy is kind of like, that's, that's, that's. Or Tribeca. That's where like a lot of the. The big money is these days. I think even in Brooklyn, like Brooklyn Heights over there is just awash in money. You probably could. Yeah. Anyway, Burger dude. Some schools may call. May store cat litter in classes as a last resort when they are on lockdown and kids are forced to stay quiet in their classrooms for hours and hours.

[James Talarico]

Right, Exactly.

[Ilhan Omar]

That's how it started. That's how it started because they. They had cat litter because kids may have to go to the bathroom if they're locked in the school because there's an active school shooter.

[James Talarico]

Well, it's kind of woke in its own way.

[Producer]

I don't know how to date myself, but when I was a kid, if someone threw up up, there was like a gravelly sort of substance. Like if someone puked in class, they would, oh, wow. Dust it with some sort of. It seemed like kitty litter. I don't know if it was like.

[Ilhan Omar]

Something to absorb the moisture.

[Producer]

Something to absorb the moisture and then they would sort of sweep it up.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah.

[James Talarico]

And February found out later it was giving everybody cancer.

[Ilhan Omar]

So many just like layers to this particular story of how horrible our society is. Is Dan from Columbus. The left is full of soft PC police and also they are tough authoritarians. And it's always the funniest double speak that the right tries to do. I recall Alex Wagner calling out Jordan Peterson on Real Time with Donald. Donald Trump's new bestie years ago. And JBP short circuited and probably had to pop a couple benzos after German leftists. I started working at my local library today. Can I get a shofar? You absolutely can.

[James Talarico]

That is awesome.

[Ilhan Omar]

.. TRUMP saved TIK TOK would vote for him again. MAGA young adult.

[James Talarico]

I mean, might not be out of the woods yet. It's kind of a sort of object in this terror or tariff stuff. We're dealing with the trade war.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah. Stephen from Pittsburgh. Disappointing with people in your Twitter replies taking a Mox Maximus Lib coded F Giselle position. As far as I can tell, Federman is close to not being one bad day away from. I don't want to read this speculation about their family life here. I'm sorry. I appreciate it, Steven. There you're speculating about that. There could be some violence. It does sound like a very volatile situation. So look, I'm, as I've said, I'm in a very feminist mind space these days. And I'm thinking about those kinds of situations, maybe more than I normally would. But the article goes into it. He bought a gun. There's he injured apparently may have injured her in a car accident. And this sounds like a very volatile home situation. So I'm just trying to like I don't know. Not. Not. It's. It's Fetterman who I care about here in this situation. Like me here for Matt repeatedly calling right wing journalists hogs Throw them in the pen. Daddy Sam Sex house toasted Emma playing the Sims is totally in character. Yes.

[James Talarico]

Being professional is calling it the Gulf of America.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right.

[James Talarico]

Bootlicking losers.

[Ilhan Omar]

Spaceline. Been talking to a centrist lived friend for a long time about Gaza and Trump and the whole thing. He's always insistent he sees what is right and wrong. He just has a problem with any expression of it because he's sure it's unpopular among people who he sees as the voters.

[James Talarico]

Yeah, maybe a bit of projection. Maybe sometimes easier to say other people have a problem with the thing you actually have a problem with.

[Ilhan Omar]

Between the 11 and the 5. Didn't Socrates say know thyself righteousness. Tom Cotton's beard. You guys should read Omar El Akrad's book one day everyone will have always been against this. Maybe have him on to he is just funnily enough Russ and I were talking about that yesterday so we're going to work on that. Groucho Marxist. Pretty sure we I had ran past Chad Matt in assassination coordinated assassination coordinates redacted yesterday. Had one second to process so I just shouted Matt Leck and gave him the finger guns. But he absolutely ignored my ass. Planning a right wing pivot as we speak. Someone saw you on your run and and you didn't see them.

[James Talarico]

I am listening to music when I'm running.

[Ilhan Omar]

But Groucho Marsh has called you Chad Chad Matt. So congrats on that.

[James Talarico]

Thank you for that.

[Ilhan Omar]

Cole from Little Rock not talking to anyone and wandering aimlessly. Sounds like he's already practicing for the Shrek role. All right, three more. Blair Mountain enjoyer Stephen Miller is probably afraid of his own shadow, but only because it's black Seattle. Steve, I'm really loving the new Emma whoopsie. This Emma sound board might be the best thing to happen this year. Oh, which one? Which one? Which whoopsie are you referring to? You mean this one? Whoopsies. It's whoopsies plural. Wolf as a furry. I can 100% say that we don't go around utilizing leather boxes. Anyone who does that is not doing it because they are a furry. They are doing it because they are in need of mental health counseling. I can't tell if you're joking or not, but, you know, to each their.

[Producer]

Own shout out to the furries in the. In the listenership. Right.

[Ilhan Omar]

I guess, you know, it's. I. To be honest, Russ, I. I don't. I don't know what I'm endorsing, so I don't know if I can wearing.

[Producer]

If they're wearing costumes, outfits, and hanging out, I guess.

[Ilhan Omar]

Sure, sure. Yeah. If you want to wear cartoon outfits and you want to have sex in cartoon outfits, I mean, more power to you. Honestly, I feel like it might have.

[James Talarico]

Fell off a little bit, but don't hear about as much as you did in, like, 2019.

[Ilhan Omar]

It's coming back. Jerry at the beach. Have you guys heard Kanye's upcoming song, Heil Hitler, Song of the Summer coming up? I have not.

[Producer]

I heard it last night.

[James Talarico]

It's a banger.

[Producer]

Mind blowing.

[Ilhan Omar]

What?

[Producer]

Absolutely.

[James Talarico]

I believe the. The lyrics. I haven't committed them all to memory yet, but it's. Despite the fame, I still can't see my kids. Despite all of the tweets, I still can't see my children.

[Ilhan Omar]

Oh, my God. Well, okay, I'm. I'm. Hold on. I'm finding. So I followed this guy, you know, Jordan JD first, or Jordan Firstman. He's a comedian, and he. He does, like, little songs, and he posted one of Kanye's recent ones, and he said, I'm surprised this wasn't one of his parody ones. Listen to the lyrics of this. Of this crap.

[Emma Vigeland]

Okay.

[Ilhan Omar]

You don't like that?

[James Talarico]

No.

[Ilhan Omar]

Okay.

[James Talarico]

It's not quite. It's not quite. Jesus.

[Ilhan Omar]

It is depressing because he's completely lost. Talk about people who've lost their mind.

[James Talarico]

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. One of my favorite music artists had a kind of similar thing in the 80s. You know who that is?

[Ilhan Omar]

David Bowie.

[James Talarico]

David Bowie.

[Ilhan Omar]

Right. But Bowie. Bowie, he said that he had that break because of his addiction to cocaine. Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[James Talarico]

So just.

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah.

[James Talarico]

Hail Hitler. Not. It doesn't sound any better in auto tune.

[Ilhan Omar]

And the final IM of the week, Sax repair man Russ is an excellent addition to the crew. We're gonna leave it like that. All right.

[Producer]

Thank you, guys.

[Ilhan Omar]

So I'm sorry, but some of the live lovely. Would you make it the new fun half song? All right. I appreciate it. Okay. All right. Lots of. Lots of thoughts on. On. Okay. I'm sorry. Not Nazi. Dashu camp was in Germany. I didn't mean all of them. Yeah. Yeah, Daco. Sorry. All right, that's it. Thank you all so much. We appreciate it. We appreciate all your support. Ross, Matt, Sam, Dorsey, everybody working on the Gino.

[Producer]

Gino.

[Ilhan Omar]

Gino. Thanks so much, guys. We will see you on strength.

[Producer]

Like to where I want But I know somehow I'm gonna get there.

[Ilhan Omar]

I wasn't looking when I just got caught between the truth and the life of.

[Producer]

Finding out won't make me feel any.

[Ilhan Omar]

Better yeah, I know the clock is.

[Producer]

Tick kicking but the men are going.

[Ilhan Omar]

To kick in and my p light shining bright I get somewhere the choice was made for the option where you don't get paid for the road that bends before it finally breaks you I.

[Producer]

Guess somehow lost my drive between the.

[Ilhan Omar]

101 and the 5 do you know.

[Producer]

How far the teacher takes you?

[Ilhan Omar]

Yeah, I know the clock is ticking but the man.