← The Majority Report with Sam Seder
The Majority Report with Sam Seder
3539 - Who's Coming for Hegseth and Mike Johnson's Mutiny Woes w/ Jeet Heer, Rep Summer Lee
02:45:56
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- [00:03]
Sam Seder
Today's episode brought to you by sunsetlake sabade.com use the code left is best. You get 20 off and, and maybe you might want to get yourself 20 off on some flower or keef to celebrate Mat Leck's birthday.
- [00:24]
Or you can get some of that lifted tea that Brian raves about so much. I have a birthday too, just not today.
- [00:34]
Get it now and just consume it until his birthday. And through it you can get Saba day coffee and Sabade fudge. You can get lotions with Sabade that are great for dry skin sobs that are great for your muscles and off label use eczema for me. Um, you can get tinctures that help you sleep, tinctures that help you relax, tinctures that help your dogs relax. You can get gummies, gummies that help you relax, gummies that help you sleep, gummies that help you focus, gummies that make you more calm. Or gummies that have a little bit of to say in them and you know, make you have more fun than normal for some people anyways, it's all@sunsetlakesabade.com great farming practices. They don't use any pesticides. Integrated pest management, they.
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- [02:19]
The Majority Report with Sam Cedar where every day's casual Friday. That means Monday is casual. Monday, Tuesday casual. Tuesday, Wednesday casual. Hump day, Thursday casual Thurs, that's what we call it. And Friday casual. Shabbat. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.
- [02:53]
It is Friday, December 5th, 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, Jeet here national affairs correspondent at the Nation magazine and then Representative Summer Lee representing Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district.
- [03:29]
Also on the program today, Trump regime blows up another boat in the Pacific.
- [03:37]
A controversy continues on about the whole program and the double tap.
- [03:45]
DC would be January 6th. Bomber reportedly tells the FBI he bought into the 2020 election. Conspiracies though he started collecting.
- [03:59]
Stuff to build those bombs months. Months before.
- [04:03]
The 2020 election.
- [04:05]
Supreme Court reverses district court.
- [04:10]
In reinstating Texas's racial gerrymander.
- [04:16]
Trump regime shortens term of work permits for migrants. Michigan Supreme Court considers barring courthouse immigration raids.
- [04:28]
And Kathy Hochul of the Hochul administration teeing up a tax increase on the rich.
- [04:34]
Emma Vigeland
Huh. Seems like she can be and we.
- [04:37]
Sam Seder
Were told it was impossible.
- [04:41]
Grand jury refuses to re indict Letitia James Trump to end prison rape protections for trans and intersex people.
- [04:52]
Emma Vigeland
Jesus.
- [04:54]
Sam Seder
RFK's CDC Advisors weakens the recommendation on hepatitis B vaccine for babies. And Netflix to acquire at least half of Warner Brothers. No word as to who's going to get cnn, but for the moment, it appears it won't be Barry Weiss's patron. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen.
- [05:24]
Emma Vigeland
It is casual Friday, Casual Friday and Matlec's birthday.
- [05:36]
Sam Seder
How old are you now? Like, how old are you now?
- [05:40]
Matt Leck
37.
- [05:41]
Sam Seder
Geez.
- [05:44]
I've seen you go from your 20s to your 30s deep into your 30s deep, deep.
- [05:51]
John Berman
You are having an emotional breakdown.
- [05:57]
Sam Seder
What are your big birthday plans in terms of my neurological capacity?
- [06:05]
Matt Leck
Just cope with, you know, the passing of, of my life, I think. But no, I'm well, all right.
- [06:11]
Sam Seder
Spend some time with my whiskey bottle.
- [06:13]
Matt Leck
Rapidly accelerating march of time.
- [06:16]
Sam Seder
Oh, believe me, buddy, sounds like a great party. You have no idea how fast it starts going when you start to get the other side of that hill. I'm staying in the race.
- [06:32]
We'll probably have more to say on that birthday later in the program.
- [06:38]
There's, there's a piece out. We'll talk about this with the Jeep. But there's a piece out today, news and analysis piece that it seems like just incredibly overdue by Charlie Savage and Julian Barnes.
- [06:58]
Saying that the second strike scrutiny, the scrutiny over the second strike and we've lawmakers have seen the video and apparently, like, I don't even know.
- [07:12]
It'S hard to even sort of.
- [07:16]
Like entertain these things, but supposedly they were really shook by the fact that these two guys who are allegedly drug traffickers were just hanging on to shards of the boat and weren't calling in for reinforcements.
- [07:33]
Emma Vigeland
That was what the new lie from the administration has been to justify the double tap, to justify the second strike, which is that these men that are people that were clinging to the wreckage of the boat were using some sort of radio device to signal a nearby other narco terrorist boat. They, the video proves, and I think the admiral Told them, had to in that briefing, that no, there were no radio or communication, communication devices, nor was there a second boat in the vicinity that they could have been signaling to, but with their hands.
- [08:10]
Sam Seder
But even like, okay, like what, what is reinforcements mean? Like they come in and they, they, they, they, I don't know, rescue the couple of pounds of, of cocaine that's on there and then loaded onto another boat and go like, this is all. It's absurd, you know, like it's, and I don't know, it's something to talk about with Jeep. But here is.
- [08:43]
I guess the absurd part is I have no doubt that, you know, these are war crimes. But the absurd part is like, where's the war?
- [08:50]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah.
- [08:51]
Sam Seder
This is like, what's the difference between them just blowing up? I don't know, a guy driving his car on the highway.
- [09:02]
Emma Vigeland
They've already killed people on U.S. soil. This administration, via the abusive tactics by ICE. I mean, this is a murderous regime. And look, every administration in my lifetime has been a murderous regime and has committed war crimes. And I include Obama in that and I definitely include Joe Biden in that. But they are bringing it even closer and closer to home. This is what Richard Beck was talking about also in his book Homeland, the fact that the war on terror tactics are coming increasingly closer to our home base. Fascist blowback or imperial blowback rather. And we're seeing it in real time.
- [09:40]
Sam Seder
Yeah.
- [09:42]
It'S bizarre. But here is Tom Cotton, who is also talking about bloodlust. He is probably one of the most bloodthirsty in the Senate and the head.
- [09:55]
Emma Vigeland
Of the Senate Intelligence Committee at this moment.
- [09:58]
Sam Seder
And here he is with John Berman from cnn.
- [10:03]
John Berman
Question, if they are terrorists, when did Congress pass the authorized use of force to attack them?
- [10:12]
Senator
John, the reason why your question is not well founded is like saying, would Barack Obama be okay droning an American citizen when he was president like he did to Anwar Al Awlaki over in the Middle East? These are totally different categories.
- [10:27]
John Berman
That's why I asked. That's why I asked.
- [10:30]
That's why I asked. When Congress passed the authorized use of military force, there was an authorized use of military force against terrorists. I'm not saying what he was legal.
- [10:37]
Emma Vigeland
Or not, just because it's so cynical to use Anwar Al Awlaki in his death, which. The only people that were criticizing that at the time were left wing folks. I just want to point that out.
- [10:48]
Sam Seder
I mean, Tom Cotton was in the Senate.
- [10:50]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah.
- [10:51]
Sam Seder
And I do not remember Tom Cotton leading the charge against. It's not like they were shy about going against Obama. It was literally, you know, a half a dozen people on the Internet who were arguing that the attack on Al Aulaqi and that we also killed his son incidentally.
- [11:14]
Two weeks later while he was sitting in a cafe, a 16 year old boy. American citizens, both of them.
- [11:20]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah.
- [11:21]
Sam Seder
And the whole, you know, Obama assassination Tuesday meetings that they would have where they would line up who they were allowed to assassinate.
- [11:34]
It was only folks on the left who were, who were crying out about this. Tom Cotton, as far as I remember, said nothing other than, you know, we're in the middle of a war on terror. And Obama loves, I mean there's a.
- [11:47]
Emma Vigeland
He's maybe the most hawkish senator in the country right now. I just like when they're talking about the use of the authorization of military force. You have the 2001 authorization of military force and then the 2002 one. And neither of them even in the broadest understanding of those authorizations would apply because one pertaining to 911 pertaining the others pertaining to Iraq, the Venezuelan drug smuggling. They're not even attempting to make that case. And so that's what Berman is setting up here. The idea that like you really think that this is a legally reasonable interpretation of the AUMFs that were pertaining to Iraq and Afghanistan to say they can be applied to boats in the Caribbean or do you have to pass a separate authorization for the use of military force? Because this is what Congress's job is supposed to be until. But we gave the power, way too much of it to the executive branch. After 911.
- [12:42]
John Berman
Congress passed the authorized use of military force. There was an authorized use of military force against terrorists. I'm not saying what he was legal or not, but that's what they based it on. In this case, one was the authorized use of military force to attract to attack suspected drug dealers off the coast of Venezuela.
- [13:00]
Senator
John, the President has inherent authority as the commander in chief under the constitution to protect America using our armed forces against a foreign terrorist organization. Congress has passed laws that allows the President to designate foreign terrorist organizations. That's what he's done with these cartels in Venezuela who are deeply intertwined with the illegitimate Maduro regime. The President is finally called the non state actors.
- [13:26]
John Berman
The latest explanation, excuse me, Senator. You know, the latest explanation from the administration is they are non state actors in this case. That is important for them to designate. They are non state actors here. They are not for purposes of attacking them off the coast of Venezuela connected to the Maduro regime. They're non state actors. There and Andrew McCarthy and other conservative writers will say that they don't qualify by the statutory definition of what a terrorist is in US Code.
- [13:56]
Senator
Well, John, I disagree that all of these cartels in Latin America do qualify as foreign terrorists. And frankly, their activities have killed many more Americans than Al Qaeda or ISIS has killed. And it's a threat that we should take seriously in our own backyard just as seriously as we take the threat of Al Qaeda and ISIS around the world. I think most Americans, especially those Arkansans who have lost loved ones to drugs, would agree with that. We need to take this threat seriously.
- [14:24]
Sam Seder
You know, for one second, you know, this is by this measure.
- [14:32]
The Republicans taking Medicaid away from millions of Americans and pricing health insurance away from millions of Americans, which we know for a fact will kill 10,000, 20,000Americans over the course of I don't know how much period of time. We know that we have 70,000 overdose deaths. We don't know what percent. We know 10% of drugs in this country come from Venezuela. We don't know what the percentage of ODs they are. But that would be. If it's 10% of those ODs, 7,000 people, more people are going to die because of why he voted for a couple of months ago in this country. We know this. It's a fact.
- [15:27]
Does this. Is, is this the definition of what constitutes like a threat to the American public that qualifies for assassination, murder, murder.
- [15:41]
Emma Vigeland
Extrajudicial murder, without bringing in what's the.
- [15:44]
Sam Seder
Let's bring the drones right over. You know, the Senate Republican caucus interdict.
- [15:49]
Emma Vigeland
The, I mean, exactly. Right, interdict the boat and then make that case. But that's the whole, this whole charade is meant to design or disguise what the true design was, which was to try to goad Maduro and the Venezuelan government into responding just a little bit more. Because Berman kind of makes the key point here.
- [16:08]
Matt Leck
Just say like Cotton never addresses the whole contradiction about non state actors that.
- [16:13]
Senator
Berman brings up would agree that we need to take this threat seriously.
- [16:18]
John Berman
Then when will you vote on an authorized use of military force? If it's as big of a threat as foreign terrorists?
- [16:24]
Emma Vigeland
Yep.
- [16:26]
Senator
John, I think the President has every legal authority he needs as the Commander in Chief. If my Democratic colleagues disagree, then they're perfectly entitled to offer an amendment when we start debating the defense spending bill to prohibit him from doing so. Congress has done that throughout our history. But until they get the votes for that, the President has the authority that he needs to protect our country from these drug traffickers that's not how.
- [16:49]
Emma Vigeland
That's not how that works. That's not how that works. He doesn't have the authority until Congress decides to restrain him. The authorization for the use of military force is supposed to be. It's already insanely broad in its scope, but clearly related to the 911 attacks and to Iraq and broadly to the Middle East. That has nothing to do with this. If you want to make a claim that these are narco terrorists, then pass the authorization for the use of military force that would allow Donald Trump to do this kind of thing. But they're not gonna, because they know there's actually no legal basis here.
- [17:24]
Sam Seder
All right, in a moment, we're gonna be talking to Jeet here, national affairs correspondent at the Nation. We'll be talking about this and more. And then later in the program. Representative Summer Lee, representing Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district. A couple words from our sponsors today.
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- [20:43]
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How do you say free in French?
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I don't know. I took one.
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Fair.
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Oh yeah.
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We'll put all of that info in the podcast and YouTube descriptions. Quick break and we'll be right back with Jeet here.
- [26:06]
Sam.
- [26:32]
It.
- [27:21]
Back. We are back. Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on the Majority Report. Want to welcome back to the program the national affairs correspondent for the Nation magazine. Always a pleasure. Jeet here. Welcome back, Jeet.
- [27:36]
Jeet Heer
Oh, it's a lot of fun to be on the show.
- [27:38]
Sam Seder
So you got a couple of articles that you've written in the Nation over the past two, actually that were right in line with what I wanted to talk to you about today, which is great. I mean, that that often happens. But let's start with this.
- [27:57]
Over the past couple of days, there has been this sort of in seemingly out of nowhere.
- [28:05]
This sudden paying attention to the fact that for the past three months we have been as a country.
- [28:17]
Blowing up boats in the Pacific, in Caribbean, the Pacific Ocean, the Caribbean Sea.
- [28:27]
For seemingly, I mean, you know, no reason, no reason without any clarity as to who.
- [28:37]
Are on these boats. We're not even clear. Like, all we hear is narco terrorists, but we don't even know like, what group is it supposed to, I have.
- [28:46]
Jeet Heer
To correct you, not just narco terrorists, but caliphate cocaine, narco terrorist. I believe that there is some indication from the senator of the great state of South Carolina that what we're dealing with are jihadists who are also smuggling in cocaine.
- [29:05]
Emma Vigeland
But that's how you bridge the, that's how you bridge the aumf, right? Because like we just played this clip of Tom Cotton and they are trying to say that Trump inherently has the authority to do these strikes. That is not true. The authorizations for the use of military force, incredibly broad. We need to be repealing these. This has been a progressive idea for quite a while, but it pertains to 9, 11, Iraq, the Middle east, not Venezuela.
- [29:34]
Jeet Heer
Well, I mean, that is a sort of get to the sort of broader source of all this, which, I mean, it really does go back to the legacy of George W. Bush and the now sainted Dick Cheney, who, as well as earlier presidents who created a sort of broad presidential power on the idea of fighting, you know, this amorphous entity called terrorism and also fighting metaphorical war on drugs. And Trump is basically using that authority to launch these kind of, you know, what I see as sort of performative wars or, you know, I mean, real wars in the sense of, you're like killing real people. But Trump seems to have the idea that, you know, he wants to be a president who can be a military leader but not get involved in the actual wars that could get you in trouble, like Iraq. And so, you know, like, picking up small fisherman's boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific seems the way to go. And as you mentioned, like, this has been going on for months and like, you know, your show has dealt with it at the Nation, I and others have written about it, but nobody was paying attention. I mean, you could not get like Hugh Jeffries and Chuck Schumer to talk about this. And this, I think gets to the other aspect of this. Like the, the thing is like in and of itself, I, I said from right from the start, this is simple murder. Like, like, this is just, like, this is like, it's not a war. You're just like blowing up ships. And even if we stipulate that what they're saying, which they've never provided evidence for, that these are drug ships, you don't actually have the right to blow up like drug dealers at all. You can't do that in the United States. You certainly can't do that in international waters.
- [31:22]
It's a simple policy of murder. But what seems to have happened is that video came out from the first of these strikes on September 2.
- [31:34]
Which showed that even with the broadest presidential power.
- [31:39]
And the broadest claims for like a war on narco terrorism, they blew up the ship, but there were survivors and then they blew up the survivors. And like, that is as clear cut like a crime as you can imagine, even within the rules of war. If you say this is a war, which it's not, that is a crime. You know, this is actually we in Nuremberg, Japanese and German officers were tried, found guilty and executed for doing what the Trump administration did here. They had killed American soldiers who had been wounded and should have been taken as prisoners of war. This is like, so, I mean, what seems to have happened is that even within this horrible system, bipartisan system of accepting presidential war making power, this is like, you know, this actually crosses a real line.
- [32:36]
Sam Seder
Is that, I mean, is that what. Because this is the first piece, you know, I just mentioned at the top of this, Charlie Savage just, and Julian Barnes in the Times just finally came out with a piece. Second Strike Scrutiny Obscures larger question about Trump's boat attacks. But what, what, why did it take so long? Is it just that the, the, the Democrats are too.
- [33:06]
Nervous about challenging the, all the other stuff? I mean, that you just Said, like, put aside the. I guess you could call it a war crime, but there's no war. Like, there's no. Like, it's a second order. Like, it's a second order. Like, like a threat to the American public. Because they're not claiming that the narco terrorists, you know, just sort of the generic narco terrorists are coming and shooting Americans. They're claiming the narco terrorists are selling a product that's killing 70,000Americans a year. We could debate as to, like, you know, why they're in that situation. It was because of Purdue Pharma and, you know, PBMs and whatnot. But.
- [33:58]
Is it now a considered a threat to the, to the US Public if there's something that could kill them? That if you distribute something that could kill them? Like, are we going to do this with, I don't know, cigarette manufacturers? Are we going to do this with processed food? Are we going to do this with, you know, I don't know, people who provided poor PPE during COVID I mean, well, like, there's no, there's no justification. And we didn't hear the Democrats say a single word and we didn't hear the media say a single word, like, why is Charlie Savage, who is a national security, you know, writer. Now? Maybe he's written some stuff about this before, but this also seems to be like second strike. Scrutiny obscures larger question about Trump's boat attacks. Buddy, you could have written a piece about. And maybe he did, to be fair, but certainly not that many people.
- [34:53]
Jeet Heer
I mean, Savage is an excellent reporter. Yes, he did report it, but certainly the New York Times editorial page.
- [35:01]
Sam Seder
Well, this is a news analyst piece that he's. Analysis that he's written. But. But the point remains. I mean, maybe it's not him. I mean, maybe it's unfair because he is a very good reporter on this stuff, but we haven't seen any, any part of the establishment. Yeah. Say a word about this.
- [35:19]
Jeet Heer
No, no. I mean, like, it's.
- [35:22]
Completely deranged. I mean, this seems to be like a sort of broad acceptance of Trump as a commander in chief. I mean, you know, he did win the election. There is a sort of, you know, imperial presidency that goes back to the Second World War. And, you know, like. But one were, if one wanted to credit, like, Schumer and Jeffries with any sort of Machiavellian cynicism, what could say that? Maybe what they're thinking is, look, we have the imperial presidency, Trump has it. We don't want to push it back because next Time, it's going to be our turn. We'll have like a Democrat in power. I don't see that. I don't even feel like that's giving them too much credit. Like, oh, definitely.
- [36:04]
Sam Seder
So what George Schumer's like, I want to make sure that we have a president who's going to be able to push through single payer.
- [36:11]
Jeet Heer
Yeah, well, I mean, I mean, like, but I mean, you have like later. I mean, okay, you know, like, I'm generally very pacific. I don't like, you know, use the military force, but, you know, like, if President AOC wants to bomb the slacker family and for their crimes against, you know, like actually literally being responsible for the death of like thousands of Americans, probably hundreds of thousands of Americans, you know. Well, we've set the president. We've set the president.
- [36:39]
But if we have to like, you know, like, why should we leave the dealing of healthcare executives to Luigi? You know, like, maybe the next American President has to like, realize send out.
- [36:50]
Sam Seder
A couple of drones and wait for their next mission board of directors meeting and that's it.
- [36:58]
Jeet Heer
Yeah, no, but I mean, but unfortunately, I mean, this is our dreams, right? Like, unfortunately, this is not how they're thinking. I just think that they're cowards. I think that they are in a permanent like 2002 mentality. Like, you know, that the Republicans are strong on foreign policy, we have to defer. And we're even seeing like on Venezuela, right? Like, you know, like.
- [37:22]
70, 80% of the population that someone invade Venezuela.
- [37:27]
And you're seeing like nothing from, virtually nothing from the Democrats except saying like, well, Congress should authorize this.
- [37:35]
Sam Seder
Right.
- [37:36]
Jeet Heer
We reserved.
- [37:38]
Sam Seder
There was an attempt to be fair, there was an attempt in the House to.
- [37:44]
Push a bill to block any type of.
- [37:48]
I don't know if it was just strictly, you can't do this unilaterally without our authorization or if it was like really in a legitimate attempt to block it. But, you know, we forget.
- [38:01]
Nancy Pelosi was clapping when Juan Guaido showed up at the state, you know, Trump's, you know, first term State of the Union.
- [38:09]
Emma Vigeland
Biden brought him in, in his term as an ambassador for the Democracy Summit that he was holding. It's a deep rot.
- [38:17]
Jeet Heer
It is a deep. I mean, I mean, basically on, at the highest levels. I mean, I think the Democrats actually divided. I think that there are people in the House who are speaking out against Venezuela and these attacks. But I mean, certainly like Schumer, like the only thing I've heard from Schumer is that he wants congressional authorization, which is.
- [38:36]
Emma Vigeland
I'm sorry, that's not like, no side deals on the. When dealing with Iran. Do you remember that his video about. About after. After Trump bombed Iran, he was just. His critique was processed or right before it was. The critique was process.
- [38:51]
Jeet Heer
Yeah. So, I mean, the larger aspect is you have an imperial presidency that is tied to imperialism. It's seen as you have to give the commander in chief this sort of like, you know, broad authorization to carry out these imperial wars. And among the Democrats, you know, I would say, at least among the leaders, there's acceptance. I think that, you know, like, this is sort of changing in terms of Congress as a whole, but it's going to take time. And I actually think that, you know, if one is talking about bipartisanship, I mean, like, there are actually some Republicans who are, like, also speaking out against us and who could be very useful allies if we really wanted to roll this back. But, yeah, I mean, the thing is, what you said before, like, I kind of made a mistake in one of my columns that referred to this as a war crime. And I think my colleagues and I talked about this, like, no, no, this is like just. It's a crime, pure and simple. This is murder. This is the American government acting like the Mafia. It's totally, you know, and if this were like, you know, like a genuine constitutional republic, this would be on itself, you know, grounds for impeachment and removal. But we're so far away from that point.
- [40:04]
Sam Seder
Yeah, it's amazing to me. I mean, throughout, like, you know, we would headline every time we blew up another boat and. But it was like, there's no. We, you know, we couldn't play footage where, you know, Chuck Schumer comes out after the first boat is like, what is the President doing? Like. And this is the thing that I just find sort of fascinating. It's like the. The timidity. I mean, I was talking to somebody yesterday about, like, you know, going back to the Kerry vs Bush in 04 and how John Kerry was swift voted. But the reason why John Kerry was able to be swift voted, the predicate to that was how defensive John Kerry and the Democrats were when it came to national security. I mean, here's a guy who John Kerry was not only, I think he got a Purple Heart, but he. The. The most admirable thing about him in terms of the military was that he testified in front of the Senate said, who's going to be the last person to die in Vietnam for a mistake? And cut to 2,000. In the wake of 9 11, the Democrats are so terrified of being seen as being soft in some way that Kerry had to like lard up on all this sort of military regalia as a way of like trying to sell himself to the American public. And he basically just said to, you know, George Bush, like, here's my soft underbelly. Because you can, you can sense my insecurity about this rather than just being secure enough and saying like, I'm a vet, like I actually serve. He didn't. That's it. He brought people up there do like whole military pageantry during the DNC 2004.
- [42:00]
Emma Vigeland
But that was why I just want.
- [42:01]
Jeet Heer
To like John Kerry ready to serve.
- [42:05]
Sam Seder
Yes, yes, the whole thing.
- [42:07]
Emma Vigeland
But, but that national mood is so what makes it even more egregious for the Democrats now is that national mood is way different than this one one right now where it's actually quite bipartisan. The disgust with our foreign policy. I mean, especially among the base of the party that's acting in this manner or not acting.
- [42:24]
Sam Seder
I've been corrected. He got a silver star, which involves meritorious combat. Combat action. I mean, so the guy was actually, you know, like sort of a decorated vet. And rather than let that speak for him, he had to do this whole sort of like, like, almost like, like somebody would cosplay. He didn't need to cosplay. He could have just gone up there. But it's this sort of like temerity in these areas. Like Chuck Schumer should have been out there on day one after this is done and just go like, I don't know how we're going to stop him, but what he's doing is illegal. This is wrong. We don't know who those people are. We don't know under what authority he's doing this. There is no such a thing as a vague narco terrorist. That's a made up word. I mean they, they, they, they are so fearful. They miss these opportunities. And now it feels like almost like when a ref misses a foul, you know, a blatant foul on one end of the court, they come back down and they call, they make up. It's like a makeup some level.
- [43:29]
Jeet Heer
Yeah, yeah. I mean if I had to like theorize, my sense is that like some of this might actually be coming from within the military itself. Like I think the Pentagon is quite unhappy with pteg, Seth. They, and for very good reasons. You know, like this guy is like a totally incompetent.
- [43:48]
Sam Seder
Well, that video has to come from somewhere, right? It's not. It's not coming from.
- [43:55]
Jeet Heer
And he's been firing people left and right. And so I actually do think. My suspicion is that what has changed is that the military started to leak this and also.
- [44:08]
Tell their allies in Congress, including Republicans, because I think it's actually notable that congressional Republicans are starting to move away from Hegseth. I actually think that the change is not any discussed at the policy. The change is that some people are seeing this as an opportunity to like, you know, go after Pete Hegset, which, you know, like, I totally support. That's all and good. But I mean, you know, like, you remove Hegseth, hopefully you get somebody a little bit more competent in their place. But, you know, the core problem of the policy, I mean, the core problem is like, it's an imperial fantasy. It's this idea that the US can go back to the 19th century Gunboat diplomacy and keep Latin America in line. And we're seeing a lot of this with Trump, with the intervention in Argentina, in Honduras. And America is a big, powerful country. A lot of these countries are dependent on it. But I think the era of however America could dominate the hemisphere like that, I think is frankly over. And what you're seeing now more broadly is this is really increasing the incentive for all these governments to like, you know, strengthen their ties with China.
- [45:22]
Let's not be beholden to like, this, you know, this grow crazy superpower that is like, you know, will arbitrarily blow up our shows.
- [45:29]
Sam Seder
Like, I think you're absolutely. I think the military, I think that's like, you know, the answer to the question we've been asking around here is like, why all of a sudden. And it's because the military sees this as an opportunity to both maintain their ability to bomb boats, you know, at. But also to get rid of Whiskey Pete. And.
- [45:51]
Emma Vigeland
And when I saw Jake Tapper speaking passionately about this issue and him being across the reporting on these leaks, I was like, okay, it's some national security people that are leaking to him. That's what it felt like, at least.
- [46:03]
Jeet Heer
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I, I mean, like, you know, there's a lot of reasons, you know, like, this is the guy who brought it, like all the, you know, generals and admirals, like in America, all over the world who are serving, brought them to Virginia so they could. He could lecture them, you know, like, about working out, you know, like, start losing some weight or whatever. Like, like, can you imagine, like, if you, you know, you're like career builder, you. You devoted your life to this and this like, you know, this complete degenerate former alcoholic spouse abuser is.
- [46:36]
Well, you know, that's, I want to give him credit.
- [46:40]
Yeah.
- [46:44]
Sam Seder
I would if he, he may be taking a break, but I suspect.
- [46:48]
Emma Vigeland
That, well, that's when he has a fog of war. Apparently. He was at his home.
- [46:53]
Representative Summer Lee
Did you know that?
- [46:54]
Emma Vigeland
That's what the, the, the classified briefing said. So who knows what he meant by fog of war at his house.
- [46:59]
Jeet Heer
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Jack Daniels of war.
- [47:02]
Sam Seder
Can we, can, can cnn. Is CNN gonna do a Kalsi bet on how many seconds after Pete Hegseth loses his job? Will he have a bottle in his hand?
- [47:14]
Emma Vigeland
Sam, I can't come in preemptively next week. I'm down with the case of fog of war.
- [47:20]
Sam Seder
Yeah, exactly.
- [47:23]
All right, so let's move on to the what's going on in the House. You have a piece up about Mike Johnson is, and it's been very quiet about this, but there's like a full on sort of like a mutiny brewing in the.
- [47:41]
The Republican caucus and there, I, I don't know, let's talk about this specifically. But I, I do get the sense that a lot of like, things are cracking up now on that side of things in the, in the MAGA world. It's not just in the House. It's also like we see it in the, you know, the podcast, you know, conservative media world. Things are cracking up too, largely, you know, some to say extent about Israel, but also sort of like broken out in the open with the Charlie Kirk thing. There just seems to be a lot of like things that are unstable on the Republican side right now. Not the least of which I think it's because of that election two or three, I guess a month ago now.
- [48:37]
Jeet Heer
But what tell us about an election in Tennessee where the Republicans like, they won, but it's a 13 point swing towards the Democrats. I mean, I do think that, yeah, I think there's a lot of discontent, probably like, you know, a lot of different sources. Even though, you know, like in some ways the Republicans have been running roughshod, I do think that they have a sense that they had this very narrow window of opportunity of two years with a trifecta and it's coming to a close and they're looking around thinking what have we actually achieved? And I think there's also all sorts of internal tensions within it. I have to say the Republicans in Congress have been a mess for a long time. I'd argue since Newt Gingrich took over in the 1990s. They love fighting amongst themselves.
- [49:30]
Sam Seder
Well, that's the first time that they, you know, Newt Gingrich took over in the 90s, but it's also the first time that they had control of the house for 30 years prior to that. I mean, people don't. I wanted to remind people, up until like, 1994, Democrats controlled the US and House for 30 years. For 30 years.
- [49:56]
Go ahead. Sorry.
- [49:57]
Jeet Heer
Yeah, no, I think the Gingrich moment is kind of like key to a lot of this in the sense that he both did an amazing thing of like, you know, flipping the House for the first time in decades, but he like, sort of flipped the House running as this outsider running as, you know, like, I'm challenging not just the Democrats, but the leaders of my own party. And this actually created this template where, like, you know, like, anybody who's like, you know, underlining thinks, like, well, you know, like, Newt did it, I could overthrow the king, and I can be king. And, you know, like, they've gotten to, like, it's a real contrast between the two parties where, like, you know, the Democrats have had, like, stable leadership, in some cases, perhaps too stable leadership, you know, but with the Democrats, the Republicans have this constant turmoil. And I think we're seeing this, like, with Mike Johnson. And I think, like, one of the more interesting subplots that's kind of coming around is that Mike Johnson, I mean, there's two ways to look at it. One is that he's like a kind of sexist pig who has, like, alienated a lot of, like, women in his own party. Perhaps the other way, maybe more generous way, you know, in the spirit of like, the Thanksgiving holiday is Mike Johnson is recreating second wave feminism. You're suddenly seeing people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and like, wait a minute, we're second class citizens, you know, like, we're months away from Nancy Mace, like, you know, tweeting out the Scum manifesto and like, you know, like, how Valerie Solanas and how, like, you know, like, maybe we should castrate all the men. Because I tell you, the women of the gop, they are not happy.
- [51:35]
Emma Vigeland
That article from the Times is. I mean, that's why it's just funny. Like, they are. First of all, Nancy Mace was also across getting rid of Kevin McCarthy. So I just want to point this out too, that now she's turning on Mike Johnson. But it was Marjorie Taylor Greene, it was Anna Paulina Luna, it was in that article. And also notably Elise Stefanik, who is really, really scorned at this point. Tapped for UN Ambassador and then ushered away to saying Trump says you got to go back to your district. You don't get that fancy outfit and apartment anymore. All those, those dinners. You thought you were going to go back to your district, and then now you gotta run in this race in New York State that is increasingly looking like it's unwinnable, in part because Trump screwed her over by playing patty cakes with Mamdani in and getting flattered by him in that meeting, which was like her going to be her statewide argument about anti Semites and socialism coming for you or whatever. And so she's turning on Mike Johnson now in this very interesting way. And it's like, you guys, what did you think you were signing up for? He's a Christian evangelical fundamentalist. I get it. But it's like you, I guess there's an unspoken rule that if you're a woman in the Republican Party, you can have your own career. But as long as you say other women shouldn't have their career, they should be the dominant under the dominion of their husband, then we'll allow you to play ball. But Mike Johnson's such a true believer that he couldn't even do that. And apparently he just doesn't listen to any of the women. That's what the Times was reporting in their caucus meetings.
- [53:16]
Jeet Heer
Yeah, no, he doesn't. I mean, just to give you a sort of. Sort of. So there's only like out of 220 Republicans in the House, it's only 33 women. In contrast, there's like almost 100 Democratic women. So they have a small number, but not one Republican woman elected is on a committee chair. Like all the committees are headed by men.
- [53:43]
The woman that Johnson is closest to is Lisa McCain.
- [53:50]
But he said about her, you know, she's the person I would trust most to make Thanksgiving dinner.
- [53:59]
By the way, Emma, I hope that you made Thanksgiving dinner for everyone at the.
- [54:03]
Emma Vigeland
If you mean drinking wine on the couch and watching football, then yes, I did make Thanksgiving dinner. My kind of Thanksgiving dinner.
- [54:10]
Sam Seder
And I used to.
- [54:12]
Jeet Heer
It is exactly the case.
- [54:13]
Sam Seder
Emma brings us sandwiches in the office every day. She comes in with, I have to.
- [54:18]
Emma Vigeland
It's in my contract.
- [54:18]
Sam Seder
She's wrapped them in linen napkins for us.
- [54:23]
Jeet Heer
The way to get into good heart of Republican leadership is to be the type of woman that makes Thanksgiving dinner. Johnson and his wife were all like on podcast and they talked about Atlanta, about their theories about the different brains of men and women, how men can, you know, men are for Mars, women are for Venus. Their idea is men's brains are like waffles and women's brains are like spaghetti. So Sam, with his waffle, like, brain is able to compartmentalize, whereas Emma, with her spaghetti, like, brain.
- [54:56]
Compartmentalized.
- [54:59]
Is always like mixing up personal stuff with political, with business.
- [55:08]
This is actually true. A fairly common theory in the Republican world. There's actually a big article in the compact by this woman, Helen Andrews, about.
- [55:24]
How women are ruining the workplace. Basically saying that everything that's wrong with America woke di comes from the fact that you, you know, women are now a majority of lawyers are majority at the New York Times and they're bringing their all their icky women, spaghetti brains, inability to compartmentalize into the public space. And that article made a huge hit. Ross do that, interviewed her for the New York Times, you know, under the headline, you know, like, are women ruining the workplace? So this is like a very serious ideological faction and it's in tension with the fact that, you know, you see, you know, like, there's only a smaller number of Republican women, but they are Republican women. They have all the same ambitions as like, like male politicians. They want to serve on committee chairs. They want to be able to see a future where they can rise in leadership. And Johnson's not having it. So he is like, you know, basically recreated the kind of gender wars that the rest of America experienced in the 1960s inside the Republican Party.
- [56:27]
Sam Seder
It's fascinating. We're gonna link to that piece. Jeet here, national correspondent at Nation magazine, encourage people to read that piece. It is sort of fascinating. And you know, we have to say to Emma all the time, like, fact, facts, don't care about your feelings when it comes to the Giants or the Knicks for that matter. All right.
- [56:49]
Emma Vigeland
Picking these things I'm so emotional about isn't helping my kings.
- [56:55]
Sam Seder
Jeet here, thanks so much. Really appreciate. We'll talk to you soon.
- [56:58]
Jeet Heer
Always great to be on here.
- [56:59]
Sam Seder
Okay. All right, folks, we're going to take quick break. When we come back, we're going to be talking to Representative Summer Lee representing Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district. We'll be right back after this.
- [57:19]
Sa.
- [58:03]
We are back. We are back. Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on the Majority Report. It is a pleasure to welcome to the program Representative Summer Lee. She is representative of Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district, which is Pittsburgh and environs. Congresswoman, welcome to the program. I don't know if you caught part of what we were just talking about with Jeet here, but he wrote a piece about the sort of nascent maybe not so nascent mutiny that's sort of taking place in the House with Mike Johnson, particularly amongst women Republican Congress folks there, because apparently Mike Johnson thinks that women have spaghetti brains and men have waffle brains.
- [58:59]
Representative Summer Lee
When you say I literally caught the last like 5 seconds, but was still able to put the context clues together.
- [59:07]
Sam Seder
Well. So I mean, what is your sense of like.
- [59:12]
Of what has been going on with Marjorie Taylor Greene? This could be her last day, I think, or close to it. I mean, last day where she shows up. I mean, she doesn't qualify for a pension for a month, so she can hang around a little bit. But she's also done quite well.
- [59:27]
She's. Did she like. Does she do like little, like after session.
- [59:33]
Like little learning annexes on how you can make $25 million while you're in Congress for four years?
- [59:40]
Representative Summer Lee
I have not received the link, but you know, you know, I don't know when we talk about just what's been going over there, I think we think about it as being a, this Congress phenomenon. But honestly, obviously I came in, you know, 2023. It's been like this the entire time. So it has been a really chaotic environment. And obviously Mike Jordan wasn't there at the beginning of that. But there's obviously been this push and pull, this tension between the real hardliners, who are incidentally more likely to be women, and this new kind of culture that they've even had to deal with. I've always wondered within Republicans, before it was MAGA Republicans, what would the dynamics be as these women who are comfortable enough or with a desire to harm or oppress other communities and overlook their own oppression within their own caucus, like how long would that dynamic last? And I guess we're looking at that.
- [60:43]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah, I guess so. And it is interesting too that the fault lines also seem to fall around Epstein. Right. You had these women.
- [60:53]
And Marjorie Taylor Greene at the very least was passionate about the Epstein case. And on her way out, she was supportive of the victims. Don't give her a ton of credit basically at all, but we'll give her a little bit there. What was that like, seeing that play out, including one of your own members being prevented from being sworn in in order to help with this cover up? I mean, it must have been a totally wild ride for the past few months.
- [61:19]
Representative Summer Lee
Yeah, I mean, for us, the last few months. But just for perspective, right, for the survivors, this has been years, right? It's been years. And that is back in the media in the way that it is right now. I just always want to go back to them.
- [61:35]
Emma Vigeland
Right.
- [61:35]
Representative Summer Lee
And how it feels for them to just not relive this, but also reopen wounds and threats, harms, risks. Right. Because we're talking about some of the most powerful people even now. Right. We talk a lot about the Epstein Transparency act, which was an important move from the House and the Senate all the way to the White House to bring us closer to some sort of transparency. But the DOJ has actually been obstructing justice since August. Right. We were able to secure a subpoena for all, you know, the complete unredacted vow back then. So they've actually been holding off since then, and that's been because of Trump, and it's been because of that. It's just been like this slow drip. And I'm certainly not sure why they prefer the slow drip to just ripping off the band aid, but they really prefer the slow drip. So every couple of weeks, right, we get new information. We've gotten subpoenas for, you know, the banks and the estate itself, which has been, you know, bringing out and bringing more to light. And, you know, it's all. It's going to mount. Is going to mount. But the lengths that they've gone to to try to keep this from happening. You said it. Not swearing. And one of the, one of the new Democrats who wanted a special election, not, not responding to the legal subpoena. Right. You know, Johnson, not bringing it to a vote in the first place has all makes everybody in this country wonder what on earth is in who on earth? What on earth is in there? Because they are bending over backwards to keep this from coming to light.
- [63:08]
Sam Seder
And I mean, Trump could, you didn't. He didn't need the legislation. Right. I mean, he could have just ordered the file. He could have just said, they're declassified, we're releasing them tomorrow. But he's gone through this whole thing. Do you think there, do you think, is there a sense. I don't know. You know, I don't have a sense of how much insight you have to what happens in the Republican caucus. I don't get the sense that you're pound around with a lot of the Republican congresspeople, but not especially. Do you think they're just like, playing out the clock and that the idea is that maybe the clock is, you know, we all assume, we all assume Donald Trump, you know, everybody assumes that Donald Trump is going to be there for four years. It's only recently that he said that he wouldn't run for reelection. He Sort of gave up that ghost. But you know, there's also, it's not like Trump, we just saw him fall asleep about four, four or five times in a two hour meeting the other day. And he's, you know, I don't know what the, the over under is just since we're in the gambling mode here of, of Trump lasting to the end of the, the, the term. But it does sort of feel like they're playing out the clock, but not, they know they can't play it out for four years.
- [64:26]
Representative Summer Lee
I mean, if we're talking about for Epstein, then I don't think that they can play it out. Right. Again, these survivors have been waiting for years. This has, you got to think the Epstein investigation, the files, the documents, you know, the cases that have involved the entire Virgin Islands and you know, these banks. Right. These have been, all of this has been ongoing. It has seen multiple attorneys generals.
- [64:51]
Emma Vigeland
Right.
- [64:51]
Representative Summer Lee
It's seen multiple, you know, presidencies. And it will be there whether or not Trump releases it or not. It will be there when he's gone and the DOJ will still have it and people will still be demanding it. So if they're waiting for people to stop thinking about it, I don't think that they're going to get that. If they're waiting for their party to reclaim some sort of normalcy, I don't know when the last time they were normal. I don't know that they get that either. Right. Because again, we always are focusing on Trump. But at the end of the day, if Trump doesn't make it to the end of this term or he gets to the end of the term, there's still a. J.D. vance. There is still this movement around them that, that is an agreement with the direction that they're attempting to take our country in. Right. If any of us are relying on just toppling one person or removing one person, then we are mistaken. And we should have learned that, you know, back in 2022 or 2020. And I don't think that we did. Right. We are dealing with something so much deeper than just one man, one person. That goes for both Epstein and Trump. Right?
- [65:53]
Sam Seder
Right.
- [65:53]
Representative Summer Lee
Both of these are indicative of much larger problems and much bigger schemes of corruption than I think we sometimes want to admit.
- [66:05]
Sam Seder
Do you, is it your sense, I mean, I know you've only been in Congress for a couple of years now, but do you, is it your sense that there is.
- [66:16]
Two different.
- [66:18]
Ideas about this within the Democratic Party to the extent that, you know, you can be aware of it because, you know, for a long time.
- [66:27]
Barack Obama, the fever is going to break. 2008, the fever is going to break. 2010, the fever is going to break. 2012, the fever is going to break. 2016, the fever is going to break. Then Joe Biden, the fever is going to break. And I also like, you know, even with, with folks like Chuck Schumer, you know, we're hoping that responsible Republicans will, you know, release these files or do something. But I also get the sense that there is a different generation or different cohort of Democrats who also realize what you've just articulated, that this isn't a Donald Trump problem and this isn't like a head cold. This is sort of endemic in the Republican Party. Now. What is your sense of like, where your colleagues are, broadly speaking, on that?
- [67:15]
Representative Summer Lee
You know, I think that, that, I think that that follows a lot of the fault lines that we see within the Democratic Party, right. The tension that there exists between generations, the tension that exists between what we like to characterize as left versus right. Right. The reality is that there are some people who are serving right now, the Democratic Party who can nostalgically recall a time where they got along better with Republicans, where there was a, you know, camaraderie that existed that they really, really enjoyed. And for them, it was like the Yankees and the Mets, right. You know, we might play against each other or, you know, we, but we're on the same, we're playing the same sport, right. We have the same interest, like it's the same stadium. But the more you are seeing these fault lines kind of just get bigger, right. Marginalized, more marginalized people who are here, right. Marginalized folks who are just like, honestly, I've never liked the things that Republicans were willing to do to people like me and communities like, man, the more that we get in spaces like this, the less you see that same sort of like cigar country club civility, the less you see a willingness to protect them because they're a part of the institution. Right. You're seeing more people who are like, the institution reflects the country and the country is sick right now. Right. The country is going in a direction that might honestly might be irredeemable. Right. The democracy is objectively at risk right now. Like we are in the midst of an authoritarian government, authoritarian takedown. And if, to the extent that there are Democrats who don't want to reckon that and more than rhetoric. Right. But in truth, right. That we know that if your country, if your democracy is backsliding, you probably have two years before it bottoms out. And if it bottoms out, you probably have 10 years before you can fix it. Right. That there is an urgency right now, but I don't think that we are all recognizing. So I do think that that exists. And you know, again, I think it's generational. I think it is demographics of people who are more or less likely to believe that Republicans will come around, you.
- [69:22]
Sam Seder
Know, to that point. This notion of like, you know, where we are with this authoritarianism. We had case Abel Ramanan the other day talking about a third reconstruction and that in response to what we're experiencing now, like inevitably Democrats will be back in, in power. I mean. Yeah, hoping. Hoping, you know, that. Well, let me put it this way, not necessarily inevitable. Right. No, I, let me restate the job, number one is to fight that authoritarianism. In the event that Democrats get back into power, there is no reverting back to whatever the normalcy normalness was beforehand. We've seen like the wholesale destruction of our agencies within the government. We have seen the wholesale sort of like undermining of, of of trust in government. And in some reason we have a secret police force now that goes around in masks. We have a Supreme Court that sort of just is willy nilly signing off on what is going to help Republican prospects.
- [70:29]
What do you see as the amount of change that has to happen? Like I just saw, you know, Gavin Newsom, I can't remember what, where he was interviewed, but he was asked about Mamdani's taxing and we should say Hochul is apparently like moving in that direction, going to allow for. And he was asked about a wealth tax which is different than what Mamdani is proposing. He's just proposing a supplemental tax on extremely wealthy people. But it's not a wealth tax, although I'm very much in favor of one and Warren suggested one. But where like Newsom said, we need to have a big tent. That's why we, I guess, wouldn't tax.
- [71:15]
Emma Vigeland
The wealth, which might be the most popular positioning within the Democratic Party in terms of voters that I could possibly think of. Except maybe also cutting off funds to Israel.
- [71:23]
Sam Seder
The opposite.
- [71:25]
Representative Summer Lee
Oh no.
- [71:25]
Emma Vigeland
What is your raising tax on the rich?
- [71:28]
Representative Summer Lee
That we are not in touch with actual voters. Constituents, whether they vote or not, are actually believing because we are too closely. We're too, we're holding on to the kind of institutionalist view way too hard. Right. That we're missing the mark because we can't see it. Listen, I always say this just to answer. I think both parts of your question. I always say this, that a the Democratic Party will have to choose who it's going to be. It cannot serve two masters. And sometimes when we talk about the big tent, this is not to negate or to ignore that this is a big tent. But I do think that sometimes we use the big tent argument as an excuse to not have to do introspection, right? As an excuse to not have to take a stance. And I think that for a really long time the Democratic Party has tried to serve two masters, right? We want to be the party of the corporations and we also want to be the party of the people. But the people aren't having that anymore. The people no longer accept that. They see it for what it is and they are calling on the Democrats to choose and to choose them. So the tension that we feel is, right, this idea that the Democrats think that they don't have to choose them all the way that they can still straddle the fence. So we say it's a big tent. I do believe that we all represent our districts but it's funny because it's like, well, we don't want a wealth tax people. They're politicians. I don't agree. Obviously there are politicians who will, you know, bend over backwards to protect the ultra, ultra wealthy but will not use that same energy to protect poor and working class people who are taxed, who are taxed and still can't afford their health care. They're taxed and they still can't. They still don't get, you know, quality public schools in their district. Their tax and their roads still are unpaid. They're taxed and they can't afford housing in the communities that they, that they called home communities that are by their jobs and their friends and their, in their lives. Right? It's, I think that it's wrong headed to continue to say that we will never consider taxing people who have just far too much. I mean to say that the poor are on their own and then think that Democrats will come out, the tent is going to shrink if we don't think that poor working people are in it. I think that the last thing about that is that like we think that we orient, that people orient themselves, themselves and they organize their lives and their politics around this left right binary. But people are mostly like man, there are people who have a whole bunch and there are people like me who don't got enough at all, right? There are people who you know are going to be okay at the end of the day and there are people who weren't I do not think that there is a normalcy to go back to. There is no way that we can go back. You said it. Too much has been broken, too much about our checks and balances. The vulnerabilities of them have been exposed in such a way that we cannot pretend that that did not happen even if we come out of this. To go back is to go back and pretend that none of this happens is certain to. We have to move forward. And I think that that's exciting. I think that that presents an opportunity for us to actually be a more perfect union. I think that this was predicted by our founders. It's predicted in our constitution that we would face times like this. I think that they also hope that we would make it through it by understanding and recognizing what we're dealing with. We're not there yet.
- [74:42]
Emma Vigeland
Right. And I think that the Big Ten argument, you said like they talk about building a big tent, but in fact the tent has been incredibly narrowed. It has been reoriented towards like a more consultancy consultant viewpoint that micro targets based on data specific sets of voters. And it has torched the Democratic Party Party's brand. Where.
- [75:08]
There'S that element. There's also the element that we have to contend with the fact that the concentration of wealth at the very top right now, which is only rivaling the Gilded Age right in our in the history of the past 150 years, is also affecting our democracy. And so if we go out and talk about democracy on the campaign trail, but we're unable to.
- [75:34]
Put it forward in practice and make people feel democratic outcomes and responsiveness from their government, then people are going to lose faith in democracy. That's another thing that I wish maybe some of your Democratic colleagues would contend with. And I'm curious about your thoughts on this. You can't make the case for democracy and it makes the case for fascism inadvertently with Trump. When the outcomes for people are not democratic, when they don't feel like their representatives are representing their interests, and when you have that concentration of power at the very top, that's also. It might be the threat to democracy way more than even Trump himself.
- [76:12]
Representative Summer Lee
Yeah, listen.
- [76:15]
This is the core argument that I make all the time, right. Especially if Democrats take over the House. The first thing that we will likely in past years and past Congresses, our HR1 has usually been some sort of voting rights reform, democracy reform package. We are of course talking more about like the corruption piece. But for me, I also talk about you cannot have democracy reform and do nothing about money and politics. You Just can't, right? That's why, right? Getting super PACs, you know, eliminating super PACs. That's why, you know, reversing incidents of United, right? All of our Citizens United, all of those things are foundational to not just your democracy, but it's also foundational to all of the other things that we care about, right? Everyday people are like, oh, you know, you ask most Americans, they believe in Medicare for all system. Well, why don't we have it? Well, because pharma and the insurance companies, all of them have more lobbying power in Congress, more money to support and undergird campaigns than the average person does. Why can't we stop mass shootings in our schools? Well, because the NRA has, you know, such an intimate relationship with politicians, right? Why, you know, do we know that climate change is real? Why do we know that it is an existential crisis, but then we are now backtracking on sustainability, on renewable policy and energy sources? Well, because of money and politics. So it hits both things, right? It gets at our democracy. You can't have an oligarchy and a democracy. You can't have a corporate duopoly and a democracy. People are finding more and more that there is no. That the system of government itself can't represent them. That as long as we have these. I think that the corporate duopoly is the big tent, right? That is the big tent and it's too big.
- [78:11]
Emma Vigeland
Right?
- [78:12]
Representative Summer Lee
People need to find or feel that there is some way of accomplishing something, that there is some. Something in this system that will be responsive to their needs. And we can't be responsive to their needs. The government, the big we. Because, you know, I fight for, I fight for. But the big. The House, the Congress, the judicial, all of those things can't be responsive to people if it's also being responsive to Elon Musk, if it's being responsive to big Pharma, if it's being responsive to oil and gas, big fossil fuel, right? And that's what fundamentally people are seeing. And that's why they don't believe that a democracy can work anymore. Because if this is, if what we've experienced as a democracy, then maybe they don't want that. We have to. We have to address that immediately.
- [78:54]
Sam Seder
I mean, that's what Brandeis famously said on the cusp of the New Deal is we can either have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few people or we can have a democracy. You just can't have both.
- [79:08]
So when you say, like the. There, the Democratic Party has to understand this. And again, we have some people in the ims who are IM and saying like, I love what the congresswoman is saying, but, but will the DNC listen? Is there like, do you perceive the Democratic Party to be that there is this sort of like overarching entity that has a philosophy or is it like a series of individuals that you need to have more individuals like yourself than the other individuals and then that wins out.
- [79:49]
Representative Summer Lee
Okay, this is the cut we hear. Listen, since November, we've been hearing a lot about the dnc. And by we, I mean all of us, right? All of a sudden I left people. The dnc, the dccc. What is it? I think it's, I think it's less, you know, big entity, more individuals. But the individuals who run entities matters. Right? So I will say the Democratic Party is, it is decentralized. It is far more decentralized. The Democratic Party of Pennsylvania is not the Democratic Party of South Carolina is not the Democratic Party of Iowa. That's just objectively true. The dnc, as far as, I don't know the dnc, nobody from the DNC tapped me and said, summer you should run for Congress or summer you shouldn't run for Congress.
- [80:30]
Emma Vigeland
Right?
- [80:30]
Representative Summer Lee
Where good people exist and their communities are organized, you have the power to shape what not just the Democratic or the Republican parties look like, but the government itself. So I don't want people to think of like the dnc, the RNC, as like boogeymen that make us feel like we don't have more power than we do because it is decentralized. Yes. You may have to overcome systemic barriers. We had to do that in my district in Allegheny County. Right? We had to do that. I spent less. I think last year was the first time I was ever endorsed by the Allegheny County Democratic Committee. And I won anyways. Right? We were already winning, which means that people were already on our side. It was just a systemic barrier that we had to notice, we had to address them and we had to move around it and then fix it and change it. We have since put more people now know about the party. So the Democratic Committee is the party. They know about it now. More people are. So you can change those things. The question is, is again, in a democracy, a true democracy, power is inherently with the. And I think that fundamentally the concern or the challenge for Americans is that we have had a real hands off approach to democracy because we have trusted that our government will fund them. It might get on our nerves, right? It might not feed us, it might not invest in our Schools. In a way, it should be, but it won't become. It won't become a fascist government. The Nazis won't take over. Mussolini will not be elected. So we've had a hands off approach. It's like I elect you, you go, you figure it out. But right now we are actually in a point where we can't be hands off. We have to be real in it. If you really want to change the course of things, whether it be the DNC or the president himself, the direction of the country itself, then we have to wield the power that's still vested in us. And that means your labor, that means your money, that means organizing, that means sending people who you want, that means taking on the system head on. We have the power to do all those things. So I would say it's decentralized and that does not absolve the people in leadership of leading and of leading in a way that's responsive to people. I think both of those things are happening.
- [82:39]
Emma Vigeland
Lastly, Representative Lee, I know you have to run in a bit, but I am curious just about your reflections on this last election cycle because two of the members of the squad and company.
- [82:53]
Two of our favorites, Representative Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, were really just taken out by a cannon of AIPAC money. And I remember early on during that time period, you were a third name that was discussed about a target of aipac, but you withstood it. And of course, Ilhan Omar also received a lot of Israel money spending against her. She withstood it too. But how do you reflect on how you were able to overcome that in ways and even when you contrast it with what your colleagues experience, it must have been an incredibly kind of difficult hurdle.
- [83:34]
Representative Summer Lee
Yeah, you know it wasn't my first rodeo, right. I'm actually one of the first races that AIPAC as an actual pack.
- [83:43]
Emma Vigeland
Right.
- [83:43]
Representative Summer Lee
Not dmfi, but like apac, pac, United Democracy Projects. My cycle was the first cycle that they actually got in personally in elections. So not just bundling, but also through their IE spin. So I was one of the first races that they went in. That's where they practice all their tactics not to ever talk about Israel or Palestine, but to instead talk about whether we're good enough Dems, whether we support Joe Biden well enough, things like that. Their tactics were egregious and who they targeted was not incidental, it was not an accident. The districts, the people that they targeted. So I was the only person who outlasted them that first time. And the second time you Know, we organized. We, you know, we worked. I worked hard. At the end of the day, when people say, you know, why did you survive? And others, I mean, part of it is that we work, but also part of it is that I'm. I'm grateful, I'm blessed, I'm lucky, people support me. You know, we work hard in our district. And I say that not to say that or to undermine me and my team, the work that we do, but is to say that there are candidates who are brilliant, who are equally brilliant, who should be. They are representative of their. Of their. Their constituents, of their districts, of their neighborhoods. They've been on the streets, they've been in the trenches. There's nothing that says that they shouldn't have been in Congress as much as I should have been. But sometimes that money hits different. And I want to say it wasn't just AIPAC against Corey and Jamal because I don't want to let any money in politics off the hook. My issue ain't just with aipac. My issue is with all of it. So crypto packs actually spent more than any industry in elections last year. They were the number one spender. And yes, they also went in many of the places that AIPAC went to. So it was a one, two whammy for Corey and Jamal and for others who never made it in the first place. So that's why it's so important that it's like, listen, you can have. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't unleash big money on your progressive enemies or your progressive. You know, those of us who, you know, you're like, we want to protect the institution, so we don't want too many progressives here. You can't be comfortable with unleashing that on our district, on our districts, unleashing that into our politics and think that it won't be a wildfire, because it has been a wildfire. Since that type of money has been into our politics. You have seen an exponential rise in outside spending, just objectively, right. Every cycle. So Corey's and Jamal. Jamal's was the most expensive House primary in history. Corey's was the second most expensive House primary in history. And it will only get worse if we don't stop it. And that means that it isn't just a weapon against progressives, it ain't a weapon against maga. It's a weapon against our democracy. Because the interests of one interest group should not outweigh the interests of the people in their districts. The people in Our country. And that's fundamentally what's happening right now. So to outlast it.
- [86:35]
Jeet Heer
Yeah.
- [86:36]
Representative Summer Lee
We have to raise money. Absolutely. We have to knock on the door, certainly. We have to show up to work and we have to, you know, we have to deliver. We have to do all the things that so many other people who had been in office for hundreds of years just don't have to do. We have to get up earlier. We have to stay ready. So we don't got to get ready when you're black or brown or progressive. And we recognize that and we will do that.
- [87:00]
Sam Seder
I got one last question. I know you got to go, but one last question in that regard, and I think you're probably point is very well taken to about that money, because that money's being raised and there's people invested in raising that money and then expending it. And it's sort of like almost like when, you know, rates were at zero still wealthy people who want to go make their money work and so they start creating bubbles, and if there's, if there's not enough Jamal Bowman's and Cori Bush's for them to deploy that money on, they're going to start deploying it on other people as well. So it's not going to just end there. But as a member of the squad, we don't hear about the squad so much as we did maybe three or four years ago. But as a member, like internally, do you guys have any theories of change? I mean, obviously, like, you're relying on organizing in your district. That's how you get elected. And it's about people power in those districts. But within the context of the inside game, do you have theories of change that you talk about? Like, is there a strategy beyond, you know, slowly primaring and maybe very blue areas and getting more.
- [88:12]
What is the theory of change that you guys employ within the context of sort of the inside game?
- [88:18]
Representative Summer Lee
Well, I will say that for me personally, right. My theory of change is not. It cannot and it will not exist if it is only reliant on six of us talking to each other or six of us being.
- [88:30]
Is contingent on you all, on the people, on our movement to be a part of that. Because at the end of the day.
- [88:38]
We can't hasten.
- [88:41]
The process of more progressives, more justice, pro peace, pro human rights candidates making it to Congress. We have. We have political capital, but it ain't endless. So the answer is, yeah, we absolutely do need more people because we have a Congress of 435 people and it is a Congress by majority. So by the math mapping, we got to make the math math. That's number one. And, but part of the doing that is not just organizing in our district, but it is how do we use our districts to create a model of what's possible and how do we then invest in other areas so that they can, so that they can do that same thing. There are places around this country and they aren't just deep blue places because my, my district is not a deep blue district. Right. My district is not a, you know, majority black or majority person of color district. Right. It is a majority white, majority suburban district in western Pennsylvania, which means that our policies, our vision for the country, it works, it works in other places. And we have to make the case. But that does mean that we have to be out there. That does mean that we have to encourage investments into the apparatus that help us. And I don't just mean electorally, but it does have to be electorally. I'm somebody who believes simultaneously that we have to use every single tool at our disposals. Yeah, we do need people in government because the reality is that you can't out mutual aid the government. You can't out mutual aid or you can't out organize systemic discrimination. We have to be able to end it here or mitigate it here so that the people on the outside can be comfortable, can be healthy, it can be safe. Right. It can be prosperous. But we also have to do those things. I'm a hand to hand person. I believe that right now the thing that we need most are empowered electorates. My theory of change is that we need people right now from the outside. No major change in our country has come from Congress by itself. It just hasn't.
- [90:36]
Emma Vigeland
Right.
- [90:37]
Representative Summer Lee
The Civil Rights act, you know, the abolition of slavery, voting rights, the end of the anti war and anti apartheid movements all came from people moving the Congress, from people moving power, wielding power. And I believe in that to this day. Which is why I believe in the power of young people entering the time honored tradition of student activism. I believe in that deeply. I believe in the power of organized labor. I think that that's why the President has attacked the two things that, that undergird, democracy, education and organized labor. Right. I believe in a disciplined, you know, use of your money or withholding of your money. I believe in those things. And at the same time, yeah, we have to build more power on the inside. We have to, yeah, we do have to be in ranking positions and chairmanships. Yeah, that's, that's all inside game that helps. It helps the outside, not vice versa.
- [91:33]
Sam Seder
Right?
- [91:33]
Representative Summer Lee
Or kind of vice versa. But it is important. But it isn't the end all be all. But it has to happen. We do need to be able to get more people. We need to create an opt in for the inside and we've been able to do that. I'll leave on this right talk. Take APAC for instance. In money and politics, when we first introduced the Ceasefire now resolution, I think it was about seven, nine of us.
- [91:57]
All people of color, right? All uber progressives.
- [92:02]
Maybe we got some other people who started calling for like conditional, you know, we, we want a bilateral, you know, ceasefire. I'm like, they all are, right? But in that year we were never able to move. This year we have now for the first time we had 50 something people on the block. The bombs act. Of those 50 something people, a number of them are people who have actually received APAC dollars. Some of them have gone on the APAC dollars trip. Right? They have now publicly said that they will not accept eight pack dollars. We are moving hearts and soul. We are moving people. So I just want to mention that because of the noise outside, because of the organizing, because of the moral, the righteous indignation, the moral stance, people in Congress are getting the message. And because we are there, we're able to have the bills, we're able to have the letters, we're able to have the organizing things that they can now attach themselves to. So we're giving them an opportunity to, to come to the right side of history. Because our objective at the end of the day is to end a genocide. Our objective at the end of the day is to end racialized capitalism. And all of those things means we need more people in both spaces.
- [93:05]
Sam Seder
Representative of Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district, Summerlee, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.
- [93:13]
Representative Summer Lee
Thanks for having me.
- [93:14]
Emma Vigeland
Thanks so much.
- [93:16]
Sam Seder
All right folks, that's it for us today. You know what? Freebie Friday. Whoa, Freebie.
- [93:23]
Emma Vigeland
I didn't see that comment.
- [93:24]
Sam Seder
Yeah, I didn't either. I just, I. But I just thought what? 137. Oh boy. All right, Freebie Friday.
- [93:32]
I don't look as green on, on these two different.
- [93:36]
Emma Vigeland
I don't think you look that green.
- [93:37]
Sam Seder
People today, people just, people are just. People are just out of control.
- [93:41]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah, I mean I've probably found we.
- [93:44]
Sam Seder
Have the most colorblind audience in all of progressive YouTube. That's one of the things.
- [93:52]
Emma Vigeland
That'S a timely reference.
- [93:55]
Jeet Heer
That's it.
- [93:55]
Emma Vigeland
That's Charlie sheen from like 15 years ago. Yeah, yeah.
- [93:59]
Sam Seder
I didn't even remember Charlie. What is that from?
- [94:01]
Emma Vigeland
It was.
- [94:02]
Matt Leck
Who's Charlie Sheen?
- [94:03]
Sam Seder
Yes.
- [94:04]
Emma Vigeland
It's really not that important. He did a.
- [94:09]
Sam Seder
Matt so desperately wants to play that song. I wonder, would we get. Would we get like a. A notice for that? That.
- [94:17]
Emma Vigeland
I don't.
- [94:18]
Matt Leck
I just got the opening.
- [94:19]
Sam Seder
Thank you note.
- [94:21]
Matt Leck
I just got the opening four seconds of it.
- [94:25]
Sam Seder
Marcos the Brazilian, please speak about the Netflix buyout of Warner Discovery as a member of Yahtzee. We're witnessing the destruction of film and TV industry by capitalism. We need antitrust. The monopolies and tech are ruining an industry I love.
- [94:41]
I don't know the details yet. I know that what I've read is that it's splitting in half.
- [94:48]
And all of the sort of like more entertainment focused properties are going to be from Warner Brothers are going to be with Netflix. Media consolidation has been an ongoing problem in this country since essentially, well, I want to say Reagan.
- [95:08]
But also very much Clinton in passing the 1996 Telecommunications Act. And it's just gotten worse from there.
- [95:17]
It's a real problem. There's just no doubt about it. There is no way. These mergers that we have seen. I don't. I think under the Biden administration, you would not have seen Ellison be able to buy CBS that. Sky. Skywriter. What is it? Sky. The Skylight. What was Ellison's company.
- [95:39]
When it bought Paramount?
- [95:41]
Emma Vigeland
Skydance.
- [95:42]
Sam Seder
Skydance would not have been able to buy Paramount under a Biden administration. So, yeah, it's a big problem. We'll have more to talk about it as we get a closer sense of like, what, what's actually.
- [95:56]
Happening with it. In the meantime.
- [96:01]
What.
- [96:03]
Emma Vigeland
I want to do some clips. Yes, we should probably do one, right? We.
- [96:07]
Sam Seder
Yes.
- [96:07]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah.
- [96:10]
Sam Seder
Poor Scott Bessant. I like. I don't even know if we're up to speed in terms of, of the government issuing.
- [96:20]
Proper job data, economic data, whatnot. We had ADP the other day, which is the private.
- [96:29]
Payroll. Not always the best indication of what we're going, but it's basically what we have. And we know the government payrolls probably are shrinking dramatically, particularly like, you know, since we're at the end of the year, all those retirements, forced retirements, whatnot.
- [96:51]
We also know that manufacturing has contracted. We also know that at least from the adp, that small businesses are losing or shedding workers at a increasingly rapid rate, which again, is a problem of consolidation, of concentration of economic wealth.
- [97:12]
Emma Vigeland
But there was also that Challenger data. You missed it, I think yesterday Showing, which again, it's not the official data, but this is November layoffs. They had it at 71,000 and that puts it officially over the total of a million layoffs for this year with the November numbers coming in according to their data. And then when you look at it in the same 11 month period in 2024, the layoff total is 54% higher. So it's, it's bleak.
- [97:39]
Sam Seder
Things are, are, are bleak and we just don't have the sort of traditional numbers in which to go by. But again, we also know that like Black Friday, not a government, you know, indicator, but Black Friday sales were larger than they've been ever. However, we also know that there were fewer number of goods sold. So what you have is more expensive goods. And we also know from other data sources that a smaller percentage of the country is buying that stuff. And so that again is the, we have such economic disparity in this country that it is warping the traditional numbers that we have used to measure the economy because you have a smaller number of people with more money. So they are essentially driving the economy which leaves 80, 90% of the people completely adrift. And they can pretend for only so long until this stuff catches up with them. It really can only catch up with them electorally at this point because they have the ability inflation can keep going up and Donald Trump is still going to put his guy in on the Fed. Here's Scott Besson with Andrew Ross Sorkin. Andrew Ossorkin is sort of like the, has always been sort of like the doula for the most wealthy in this country. Like I remember back during Occupy, all the rich people, all the CEOs were calling Andrew Oss Sorkin saying like, am I in trouble? Am I in danger here? And Andrew went down to Zuccotti park just as a favor for all of them to find out if they were safe.
- [99:34]
And so he's still sort of serving this and here he is at the.
- [99:39]
The New York Times Dealbook summit.
- [99:41]
Emma Vigeland
Although he does bring out some statistics here that make Scott Besant Bessant look like his head's spinning in a bunch of different directions.
- [99:50]
Sam Seder
You've been talking about is that the regional presidents you think actually are not.
- [99:54]
Senator
As independent unto themselves that you want? Well, no, no, I think, I think when I, when I was on Squat box last week, Becky said, well, Susan Collins at the Boston Fed says this and you know, I, that her.
- [100:14]
People in her district are having an affordability problem. I should have said, well, she's in a red state. Affordability is worse. I mean, in a blue state, affordability is worse than a blue state.
- [100:25]
Sam Seder
We can debate that.
- [100:26]
Senator
But keep. There's no debate. The number 50 basis points higher inflation, the, the 10 highest the inflation rates, they are in blue cities. But.
- [100:42]
Just, just so you know, because.
- [100:43]
Sam Seder
I went to look at this. This is the joint Economic Committee 2000. Since 2021, the highest inflation over the past four years has been in red states, especially Florida.
- [100:54]
Senator
I'm talking about current, current, current. Not over the past four years. Right. Today.
- [100:59]
Sam Seder
Okay. I would think four years would be a reasonable.
- [101:05]
Trend line to look at today.
- [101:08]
Senator
Today it is 50 basis points higher. So anyway, and look that people are voting with their feet. I have the American people on my side that New York, Illinois, California, Massachusetts are depopulating and they're going to places.
- [101:27]
Sam Seder
In Florida like Florida where, where interest rates are.
- [101:30]
Senator
I'm saying inflation's up 22% over the last four years. Well, inflation, then inflation is up 25%, naturally. So it's lower.
- [101:38]
Sam Seder
I believe in New York it was 19%.
- [101:40]
Senator
Sorry, I believe in New York it was 19. I don't think that's right. We can go through.
- [101:45]
Sam Seder
Okay, but. Okay.
- [101:52]
First off, beside is probably talking about blue cities that I would imagine inflation rates in Boston, New York, San Francisco, Louisiana, Chicago are probably. Inflation rates are probably higher than they are in, I don't know.
- [102:16]
Atlanta maybe, or in Houston because.
- [102:24]
There'S richer people there and they. And housing stock in these older cities, incidentally.
- [102:35]
Is more limited. I have no doubt that that is. But it is such a piddling and.
- [102:45]
All of the stuff that the national government is responsible for is.
- [102:52]
Subject to inflation. I mean, to do it state by state is, I think, sort of silly anyways, when you're talking about the President, the United States, the, the states themselves do not have pricing power outside of maybe, you know, talk about regulating.
- [103:10]
Power generation and whatnot. I would also imagine that power generation probably a little more expensive in some of those red states than it is in blue states. But the state doesn't have the ability to regulate these things.
- [103:26]
Outside of housing and maybe power generation.
- [103:31]
But the fact of the matter is inflation is up and I don't think it's going to. That somebody sitting in.
- [103:40]
Alabama or Mississippi or in the red parts of Pennsylvania is going to go well, at least I'm not paying as much. My, my groceries are up 15, 20%. My health insurance is up 15, 20, 25%. At least I'm not paying the same amount as those city slickers in New York City.
- [104:04]
Emma Vigeland
Well, the city slickers that Scott Besant is encouraging to move to a red state. You know, like he did the relatable thing, this incredibly ultra wealthy man who now lives, I believe, in Charleston with his male partner. Just in case people in the Republican Party forgot he's he's a gay Republican, but he had the ability to do that because he's an ultra, ultra wealthy person.
- [104:28]
Sam Seder
He's a simple farmer.
- [104:29]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah, right.
- [104:30]
Sam Seder
Oh, that's right.
- [104:30]
Representative Summer Lee
He's a farmer.
- [104:31]
Sam Seder
He's a farmer too. Right. He's a Caribbean farmer.
- [104:34]
Emma Vigeland
And it's also just like not true too. I mean, there was a CNBC analysis showing that red state inflation, I think Sorkin was citing there is higher in red states right now.
- [104:45]
Matt Leck
It's bad everywhere that you can't get if you rent or even if you're trying to buy a house, you can't do it because capitalism has failed to provide it.
- [104:53]
Emma Vigeland
How I'm glad you brought up housing because there was a Washington Post article about this like a month or two ago where they showed that where the sharpest increases in monthly housing costs were last year.
- [105:07]
Monthly costs for housing. Florida, where the median household income in 2024 was 77k, saw the greatest spike then.
- [105:15]
Matt Leck
I'm talking today.
- [105:17]
Emma Vigeland
Georgia, Wyoming, Mississippi, Mississippi and Alabama were among the states that saw faster growth in monthly owner costs in 2024 than the years before. And then all of the data on where just in terms of like proportionally inflation is hitting, it shows like Texas right now and Florida are the worst. Florida was mentioned by Sorkin, but also Tennessee, Wyoming right now and some of the places where it's best proportionally to live for costs coming down, it's California, New York, Maryland and Illinois at the moment.
- [105:48]
Sam Seder
California Resistance writes back and forth from Palm Springs in L A. Groceries are definitely more expensive in L A than in Coachella Valley. Yes.
- [105:59]
I mean, I think things in cities are more expensive generally than they are in more rural areas.
- [106:06]
Matt Leck
Also you so is labor. So you make more money there.
- [106:09]
Sam Seder
I mean, it costs more.
- [106:12]
The supermarket's paying more in rent, the labor is more expensive. The transportation probably a little bit harder.
- [106:21]
Emma Vigeland
Just upload, just uproot your life. We're not going to do anything to fix inflation. I just, I hope, like that's what you're getting from this press or this, this interview. It's on. You just go uproot your life, leave your friends and family, quit your job and move to a red state.
- [106:38]
Matt Leck
If you're making money with money, which is what all these people represented by Scott Besant are doing. They're not making money by making things. They're making money with money. You don't care about inflation.
- [106:49]
Sam Seder
You don't care at all.
- [106:50]
Matt Leck
It actually might be good for you.
- [106:51]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah, exactly. But just. I just want people to sit with the callousness of that rich guy sitting on that. On that stage and just telling you to move because he's not going to. They're more concerned about getting rich themselves than addressing your cost of living. It's just so incredibly out of touch.
- [107:12]
Sam Seder
Let's get into some fun stuff. We don't have that much time.
- [107:15]
Emma Vigeland
I guess that's true.
- [107:19]
Sam Seder
Yeah.
- [107:21]
So let's check it in on the. Let's. I know I'm a little bored by him too. Although I enjoyed him like, you know, getting very pissy. He's very mad at Candace Owens. But this is the thing, like, we have not really spent too much time on this. But there is such a virulent sort of like, I want to call it a civil war because there. It's like.
- [107:46]
It's almost like it's a reality TV Balkanization. Yeah, that's what it is. That's why, like, I've been sort of allergic to covering this because it's like.
- [107:55]
Emma Vigeland
The Real Housewives in the off season. They're just talking shit over via Page Six and on the Internet.
- [108:01]
Sam Seder
Candace Owens has been. Housewives have the guts to say it to each other's faces. Well. Well, now wait a second. Candace Owens is going on to the Charlie Kirk show with the TPUSA Top.
- [108:22]
People Toilet paper guy. The. The tp. Exactly. TP USA guys. Because Candace Owens has been on the.
- [108:33]
I don't know how to characterize this. Has been exploring. Has been investigating the anomalies. The anomalies in the Charlie Kirk assassination. Now.
- [108:47]
It'S like some combo. It seemed to have started out like first she thought Israel had assassinated Charlie. And I may be getting like, you know, I may be off on some of this.
- [108:59]
Matt Leck
She had questions about. Questions about may have happened and trajectories.
- [109:03]
Sam Seder
And there was, you know, like somebody on Google search from Israel searched the name of the assassin.
- [109:09]
Matt Leck
Got to tell Israel. Really go to Bing.
- [109:11]
Sam Seder
But. But Israel was. Yeah. Using Google to search like searching the name of the assassin. It was unclear to me like what that indicated that some Israeli official was like, wait, I want to Google search this guy that we've chosen to assassinate Charlie Kirk just to make sure in July. I'm going to do the old Google search just to make sure they're not like there's no bad Reddit threads reads about them being dishonest or something or taking money to assassinate somebody and they didn't do. Who knows? And then it was because.
- [109:50]
Two days before Charlie Kirk, September 10, he was going to change his position on Israel, which sort of like made it like, well, how did they plan to assassinate him like three months before he was going to change his position position on Israel? And then it started to bleed into like.
- [110:10]
Charlie Kirk's marriage. Was it, was, was he supposedly going to get a divorce? And did he like I missed that part. What's going on? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And, and, or wait, what? Why were there all these people working for TP USA sort of circling around Charlie? Why were they acting very strange on the day? Like, did they know? Was this an internal takeover? Like, I have not spent a lot of time looking into this because.
- [110:39]
I guess I don't care enough.
- [110:42]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah, because this is all just branding for all of them. They're just positioning themselves. I mean, and I just because Candace Owens has spoken out about the Gaza genocide doesn't mean she is a credible source. Like I see people treating her claims about this as some source material and she's actually a lunatic.
- [111:03]
Matt Leck
She's not switching up.
- [111:04]
Emma Vigeland
She's going to meet about to kill her because she says his wife is, is a man secretly.
- [111:10]
Sam Seder
Right. I mean nuts, who knows? But she's going to TP usa. I think it's going to have like her on to discuss these things. But I, I, I'm interested in this only to the extent that of I think it's very healthy for America if all these people, people are on different pages and attacking each other. And here is interesting, because Tim Pool, who last we checked is not a partisan according to him, right. And he's an anti war sort of more libertarian. But here he is, apparently he's very mad at Candace Owens because she's harming the Republicans midterm.
- [111:54]
Midterm plans by doing this. And it feels like Tim Pool's just trying to stay relevant by getting into this. So I don't know. Here's Candace Owens talking about Tim Pool.
- [112:07]
John Berman
28, and it's because she's a piece of. Because instead of saying guys, let's come together and forgot to work together, she says the stupidest retarded crap. And now everybody's running around divided and broken for what reason? For literally what reason?
- [112:26]
Emma Vigeland
Because they killed Charlie Kirk in broad daylight.
- [112:29]
Candace Owens
And we don't care about your stupid midterms. We just don't get like, they really.
- [112:33]
Representative Summer Lee
This is.
- [112:34]
Candace Owens
This is how they view Charlie Kirk. As I say, was anything in his life real? Tim Pool is going off right now because he's like, it's not the time. You guys need to be mules. You need to keep voting in the very corrupt people that are lying to your faces right now about what happened to Charlie Kirk. It is not the time, because it is your job to get people into office. This is what I mean when I suggest that nothing in Charlie Kirk's life was real. So he really thinks he's doing something there. And actually what he's doing is proving my point. These people just saw Charlie as a means to an end, okay? As a political horse that they could ride. And so for whatever reason, they got tired riding him, and now they're angry because they also were going to whip the horse, the ghost, the ghost of Charlie Kirk, and say, we still need you to shore up votes and it is inconvenient that people who actually cared about Charlie and saw him as. As a, I don't know, human being. A human being want to know why he was publicly executed in front of us and why we're being lied to about everything. That is why Tim Pool is upset, because midterms. It's going to be my fault not to go out of the feds for feeding us bs. It's not going to be the fault of turning Point USA for lying and thinking that they're brighter than us and seemingly not caring about the investigation. It's not going to be the fault of, I don't know, maybe actual politicians like Donald Trump, who's the president states and look us in the face and said, are we still talking about the Epstein files? No, that's not his fault. The fault is Candace Owens for wanting to figure out who murdered her friend. Don't you guys get it? Like, we're just an algorithm. Why do you care so much about humans? Like, why are you a human? Like, somebody really dies? You need to focus on midterms, okay? That is the point of a Tim Pool show. It doesn't matter what you are going through at home. I want you guys to hear this, okay? I don't care if you have family members that are dying, families who have died, if you have children that you care about.
- [114:32]
Sam Seder
Okay? I think we got the point.
- [114:34]
Emma Vigeland
I mean, Tim Pool cares too much about electoralism. Candace Owens is about the movement.
- [114:42]
Sam Seder
I want to say I think they're both exactly right. I agree with everything that they all say. And I just. I just want to. I Just want to stay here and say, I think they should keep doing this. I think they need to hash this.
- [114:59]
Matt Leck
Out, keep pushing Candace.
- [115:01]
Sam Seder
I think. I think. I think Candace Owens should keep going. She should. She should follow her.
- [115:07]
Emma Vigeland
Agree. They shouldn't care about the midterms.
- [115:08]
Sam Seder
She should listen. She should follow her heart. And Tim Pool, who really like. I think it's good that Tim is finally coming out of the closet and admitting that he's a Republican. Yeah, he's always been a partisan Republican. It's just that he's had a different style of doing it before and now he's come out and doing it and listen, in terms of like him being anti war, didn't he say to you that he was more. He was left on war. Let's play this because this is a really interesting position to be.
- [115:41]
Emma Vigeland
I don't know where it is, but this is number.
- [115:43]
Sam Seder
No, this is number three.
- [115:44]
Emma Vigeland
Oh, number three. Okay.
- [115:46]
Sam Seder
He came out and he said to you that he was to the left of you.
- [115:51]
Emma Vigeland
I can recap it slightly for a second. He was. This was over uk, Ukraine. He was very against the funding of Ukraine. I was more supportive specifically in mid 2023 when this happened. And then I said. He said, I am to the left of you on the issue of war. And I said, okay, but what about the issue of Israel? We should cut off funds. And he goes, I don't know enough about that. I do think it is interesting.
- [116:13]
Sam Seder
He's only studied, to be fair, he only got his doctorate in Ukrainian Russian relations. Not in Israel.
- [116:21]
Matt Leck
Palestine has no idea with why he got later up income and then.
- [116:25]
Emma Vigeland
And to. And just to flash forward saying that.
- [116:28]
Sam Seder
To you, incidentally, he was making a lot of money.
- [116:32]
Emma Vigeland
Yes.
- [116:32]
Sam Seder
Coincidentally, it's completely coincidence because he had no idea he was making hundreds of thousands of dollars, ultimately millions of dollars from the Russians.
- [116:45]
Emma Vigeland
Right. And it just is interesting to me because like when we talk about Candace, you know, she was friends with Charlie. That can cloud your judgment. Tim Pool, since that debate I had with him, has new friends. You know, earlier this year it was reported quite extensively that Tim Pool was meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu. We know that Tim Pool has taken foreign money in the past. Chet House rules sensitive foreign money that is also related to two like major conflicts that the United States is involved in. Met along with Dave Rubin, Sean Spicer, Bethany Mandel and others at a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu in April 2025 and his son Benjamin Netanyahu, who is by the way of conscription age but is spending the genocide in Miami in a high rise. Also a major, major fan of Tim Pool as well. So friends can cloud your judgment.
- [117:34]
Sam Seder
All right, let me just weigh in on Tim's behalf. Have you contemplated that he met with Benjamin Netanyahu to find out more about the Russian Ukraine situation?
- [117:46]
Emma Vigeland
I haven't contemplated.
- [117:47]
Sam Seder
Okay, okay.
- [117:49]
Matt Leck
Talk about the guitar situation.
- [117:50]
Emma Vigeland
Yes.
- [117:52]
Sam Seder
Right. That's my case.
- [117:56]
All right, let's hear Tim Pool, anti war Tim Pool, talk about why we should invade Venezuela.
- [118:05]
Matt Leck
Oh.
- [118:08]
John Berman
It'S looking more and more like war with Venezuela is on the menu, boys. Donald Trump has given for a second.
- [118:15]
Sam Seder
Why does he now deliver the news as if he's doing like some type of wrestling? Like, like ringside wrestling. Morning zoo.
- [118:25]
Matt Leck
It's the central anxiety here because Tim knows that he is ostensibly supposed to be an anti war person, so he can throws it into guest face like he did with Emma.
- [118:33]
Sam Seder
But.
- [118:33]
Matt Leck
But he also supports Donald Trump, so he needs to have his reservation sort of be parenthetical and. Okay, so the news just very enthusiastic.
- [118:42]
Sam Seder
No. You know what it is? Reading the menu, boys. It is. There is a slight ironic quality to the way he's doing it. It's a detachment. It is a detachment. It's interesting because, you know, a lot of my friends, when comedians would have trouble doing ads, like when you go in to do a voiceover, you're like, this is just too cheesy. And I don't believe this. And I cannot, I have to indicate in some fashion. And so you get into an announcer voice and because it's. I'm actually playing a character here. And so let's look at what's up here with what's going on with the ongoing possibility of war in Venezuela, everyone. Because that's what it is. It's the detachment. He's doing this at arm's length and he's either subconsciously or even consciously. I'm going into my, my announcer voice. Yep. Let's go over to the big board and check out what's happening over there. Or actually I am getting a report. Let's go to Kathy Pomegranate who is reporting live from.
- [119:53]
Matt Leck
What's that Trump up to now?
- [119:54]
Sam Seder
Yeah.
- [119:55]
John Berman
With Venezuela is on the menu, boys. Donald Trump has given Maduro an ultimatum to flee Venezuela as land operations loom. Warships are reportedly entering the area. And Donald Trump has de facto closed the airspace around Venezuela. Now, a lot of people are debating.
- [120:15]
Sam Seder
This, but it's just check in with the words de facto. Can we get a definition check on de facto. He claims that Donald Trump has de facto Closed airspace there. In fact. No. What Donald Trump did is he announced it on Truth Social and saying that you closing the airspace. That is not a de facto. De facto is what is in reality. So, in fact. Oh, it was not de facto. Back to you, Tim.
- [120:56]
John Berman
Act of war to declare. Now, a lot of people are debating this, but it is in fact an act of war to declare the airspace closed over a country for a variety of reasons. The reason Trump is doing it likely is because as the US Prepares to engage in military operations in Venezuela, we don't want anybody getting mixed up in a crossfire. You're gonna have flights traveling from various countries that are gonna go over Venezuela, usually because you're just, I don't know, flying from Brazil to Mexico or something, if that route makes sense.
- [121:27]
Sam Seder
I don't know.
- [121:28]
John Berman
Donald Trump is basically saying we are about to launch airstrikes. Not necessarily going to happen, but that's basically the idea. So now you're restricting domestic air travel over a country which is going to restrict trade. It's going to cost a lot of money, and you're basically saying, prepare for war. Hillary Clinton famously was warned of this back, and I think it was like 2015, 2014 or 15.
- [121:53]
Sam Seder
What?
- [121:53]
John Berman
She said she wanted the airspace over Syria closed and she was warned that would be a declaration of war, not just against Syria, but against Russia. Now, this is different.
- [122:07]
Matt Leck
Little Dems do it too, actually.
- [122:09]
Emma Vigeland
I mean, it's unbelievable how much they fall back on that. I. It's like, I don't know. He's talking about the no fly zone over Syria from. I understood, but was he upset about that at the time? It's just very odd to.
- [122:25]
Matt Leck
He's probably anti war because Obama was in office.
- [122:27]
Emma Vigeland
Right, okay.
- [122:29]
Matt Leck
Which is why they're saying, like, now it's, it's. It's. See, well, the Democrats do it too, so it's not so bad.
- [122:34]
Sam Seder
Right. Listen, the war is on the menu and there's a lot of times where Democrats have come in and ordered off that same menu.
- [122:44]
Emma Vigeland
I do like that he's quoting the orcs from Lord of the Rings. Right. That's what he says. Meets back on the menu, boys. That's from Lord of the Rings.
- [122:52]
Sam Seder
Oh, Skid Mark Twain writes in. Skid.
- [122:56]
Emma Vigeland
Mark.
- [122:56]
Sam Seder
Mark Twain writes in. I'm outside in single digits wearing a beanie. Had to take it off when I heard Tim's voice. But wait a second. Let's go back to Tim as he's telling us about what's going to happen with the war even Though he is very much anti war, he's going to be talking about this as if it's like, whoopsie daisy, let's see how much carnage we get down there. Go ahead. Ahead.
- [123:22]
John Berman
Oh, and she was warned that would be a declaration of war, not just against Syria, but against Russia. Now, this is different. In Syria, in Tartus, you have a Russian naval base and you have air capabilities. And if the United States shuts down that airspace, airspace that's affecting Russia, Venezuela may or may not have some of these same elements, but it's not as direct.
- [123:48]
Sam Seder
Wait, wait, can you.
- [123:50]
Wait, wait. Shutting down Venezuelan airspace is not as direct to Venezuela as shutting down Syrian airspace is direct to Russia.
- [123:58]
Emma Vigeland
Right. So you can shut down basically any airspace of any country under this standard, as long as it doesn't have. Isn't in the middle of a proxy war and doesn't have the backing of another major superpower.
- [124:13]
Okay, okay. Which means the US can do whatever the hell it wants unless Russia likes the country.
- [124:19]
Sam Seder
Let's not get bogged down with something like that. Let's get back to war. Is on the bed. You go ahead.
- [124:25]
John Berman
And that airspace, airspace that's affecting Russia, Venezuela may or may not have some of these same elements, but it's not as direct. Either way, what elements is signaling hard. Gentlemen, war is about to land. And Maduro, you got a choice to flee, which is absolutely crazy. Apparently Maduro the Venezuelan.
- [124:50]
Sam Seder
Dick, can we get to the part where Tim stops just reading the first paragraph of the article he's found on this and move into the part where he expresses his opinion of it? Do. Do we have a time code? Code, Mr. Time Code Master.
- [125:07]
Matt Leck
We got a couple minutes before the first ad, so he must put it before the first ad breakout.
- [125:11]
Sam Seder
Okay, let's check in on with that.
- [125:14]
John Berman
Which is absolutely crazy. Apparently Maduro, the Venezuelan dictator, they call him, who famously once ate an empanada on TV as his people were starving, is asking for global amnesty.
- [125:27]
Emma Vigeland
Can you pause it?
- [125:27]
John Berman
Let me tell you what's really.
- [125:28]
Sam Seder
Yeah, I know what you're thinking. And how big of an empanada was that?
- [125:33]
Emma Vigeland
Trump is bulldozing a part of the White House for a ballroom as he cuts the health care for tens of millions of Americans.
- [125:43]
Matt Leck
Empanada is just something Venezuelans eat.
- [125:46]
Sam Seder
Can I just tell you that that empanada was made out of pure gold and he ate it right on camera.
- [125:54]
John Berman
Tater Lee, which is absolutely crazy. Apparently Maduro, the Venezuelan dictator, they call him, who famously once ate an empanada on TV as his People were starving. Is asking for global amnesty. Now, let me tell you what's really sad about Venezuela, my friends. I've been there. I had to flee the country. Weird story.
- [126:14]
Emma Vigeland
What.
- [126:15]
John Berman
They accused me of being a spy because they're communists. Their country used to be the wealthiest in South America. They have a lot of. A lot of black gold down there, a lot of oil. Everybody wants it. Donald Trump says we're going to get it, and that's likely the big reason for all of this. But I'm not going to be so naive to say. It's just that the US Is basically going, let's steal their oil. What the US Is basically saying is your stupid communist system is restricting the oil trade. We're not going to have that. I'm not excusing us foreign military.
- [126:49]
Emma Vigeland
We're not going to steal the oil. We're just going to destroy the state ownership of the oil so that it can be.
- [126:57]
Sam Seder
We're just going. We're not. We're not literally going to steal oil. What we're going to do is open it up to be.
- [127:05]
Monetized by our own people. We're going to redistribute the oil of the communist country.
- [127:11]
Emma Vigeland
We're not going to steal from your house. We're just going to break in the door and then my friends are going to come come in and steal from your house.
- [127:17]
Matt Leck
Okay, So I will say we could go for the next couple minutes here to watch the intro where he does not issue any condemnation. Or we could jet ahead about eight minutes.
- [127:27]
Sam Seder
Let's jut ahead eight minutes because we'll.
- [127:31]
Emma Vigeland
Get back because war is touching down or landing.
- [127:34]
Sam Seder
11 past the hour. Yeah, we're. It's 11 past the hour and, uh, 68 group outside. Make sure you bring Windbreaker, though, it's a little windy. Meanwhile, we're getting back to the taking the oil from Venezuela.
- [127:52]
John Berman
I'm not doing this properly. Okay. Maduro, however, and his ilk don't have that view. He hasn't looked at his country over the past 20 years and said, wow, we've destroyed the standard of living in this country. I should let someone else try. He says, I'm gonna eat an empanada on tv. So again, that's not to justify any kind of US intervention. I'm actually opposed to it. Oh, Trump should be doing this. Not a fan. No new wars.
- [128:17]
Matt Leck
Again, this is 10 minutes into the video.
- [128:20]
Emma Vigeland
This he has. Well, it's.
- [128:22]
Sam Seder
I'm just gonna give you about 10 minutes worth of reasons why we should probably do it because this guy's eating empanadas. Here's minutes on the tv. Empanada. But I just want to remind you that, that I am against this. Even though they have screwed up the entire world's oil trade.
- [128:41]
John Berman
I don't think that Trump should be doing this. Not a fan. No new wars.
- [128:48]
We can't feed the poor, but we got money for wars, as the saying goes. I say focus on internal.
- [128:54]
Sam Seder
What is it good for? I've always said that. Hey, let me, let me, let me also just now that I'm doing a full 45 minute story on Venezuela, neglect to mention, as we talk about empanadas being eaten on television, the 20 years of economic sanctions that the United States government has imposed on Venezuela, the multiple coup attempts that we've been engaged in there. Incidentally, those sanctions also shared by our good allies across the pond, as it were. Okay, anyways, just forget I mentioned that.
- [129:29]
Matt Leck
It's a good question for Tim Pool fans. You know, like, when you think about this authoritarianism of these scumbag communist regimes, as Tim calls them, has our, has America got more or less. Does it get more or less authoritarian when foreign influence becomes a concern of the population? Like, it becomes clearly more authoritarian? That's, that's why, that's how this authoritarianism gets formed.
- [129:51]
John Berman
You know, divisions. How can we, how we can mend this country and preserve it?
- [129:55]
Matt Leck
Oh, we could be done. But one thing about, you know, there's, you can't feed the poor, but there's money for war. It's like, how about we feed the poor and also don't do wars?
- [130:04]
Emma Vigeland
But that's what I was saying to him back when we had our debate where it's like, how can you say that you are anti war and support the funding of Israel, which is the top recipient of our military aid? Like, none of that.
- [130:16]
Sam Seder
I'm not familiar with what you're talking about there, Kim. Some credit for not wanting to wade into areas. He's not an expert.
- [130:23]
Emma Vigeland
He's not an expert at that. Yeah.
- [130:27]
Sam Seder
There it is.
- [130:31]
Matt Leck
Back on the menu.
- [130:32]
Sam Seder
Back on the menu. And apparently Emma was correct.
- [130:37]
Emma Vigeland
I saw those.
- [130:37]
Sam Seder
I was correct about her citing the what are they?
- [130:42]
Emma Vigeland
I'm just Lord trilogy.
- [130:44]
Matt Leck
Oh, no, everyone thought you were right. It's just that we didn't get the deep cut for the Lord of the Rings.
- [130:49]
Emma Vigeland
It's not that deep.
- [130:50]
Sam Seder
Turns out that was a deep cut.
- [130:52]
Emma Vigeland
Best film. And not in the extended version.
- [130:55]
Sam Seder
Not a deep cut.
- [130:58]
Emma Vigeland
So you're saying if this was you, it would be pretty Embarrassing.
- [131:09]
If Caitlin Collins spoke to me that way, it might break my heart into. She's too intimidating.
- [131:13]
Matt Leck
If this was you, you would probably never show your face.
- [131:16]
Emma Vigeland
I'm gonna retire.
- [131:21]
Oh, yeah?
- [131:22]
Sam Seder
Yeah. We might as well while we're here. Chris Cuomo. Listen, you gotta feel bad for Chris Cuomo, all right? None of this has gone the way that he thought it would right now, you know, if you go back four or five years, Chris Cuomo is thinking, I'm going to be on CNN for a long time. But.
- [131:43]
And then if you go back six months, Chris Cuomo is like, at least my brother is going to be a mayor of New York City. And. And none of that has happened. And so now he's like.
- [131:59]
I mean, this is. If you were to take a toupee and put it on.
- [132:06]
Tim. Tim Pool's head, take his beanie off, put a toupee on there. And, you know, also, he would need.
- [132:13]
Emma Vigeland
Like, a weight regimen for probably around six months, plus human growth.
- [132:17]
Sam Seder
A lot of protein. A lot of protein shakes and whatnot. This is what you would get. Here is Chris Cuomo trying to sort of, like, justify the unilateral bombing of boats, of people we don't even know. And not only do we not know who they are.
- [132:37]
We haven't even heard.
- [132:40]
An explanation as to who the administration thinks they are. They're just like, rando narco terrorists who are coming from. Presumably not just from Venezuela, some from. From Trinidad and Tobago.
- [132:59]
And the administration doesn't feel like they need to a. Even say who they are specifically be under what authorization they're doing this. See, like.
- [133:12]
What'S the rationale? Like, what is this supposed to achieve? And here is Chris Cuomo defending it by saying by. By projecting onto others what was the truth of him when he was on cnn, which is he never paid attention to any of this shit. It's an irrational, negative assertion to generate outrage instead of insight. That's rage bait. But what about Venezuela and what Trump did in Venezuela? That's a war crime. Since when do you want to go to the mat defending drug dealers? I don't remember you guys doing this when we were killing everybody in a burqa in Afghanistan, in Iraq. We didn't have social media back then, though.
- [133:56]
Matt Leck
Not so stupid.
- [133:57]
Emma Vigeland
Who is you guys?
- [133:59]
Sam Seder
You guys. Is him looking into a mirror that has, like a sort of kaleidoscope because he was actually.
- [134:11]
In a position to have the loudest voice of anybody in this conversation right now.
- [134:17]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah. Notice how. I mean, first of all, you were Dead on about how much he sounds like Tim Pool. It's hilarious. The same argument of whataboutisms where they don't have an argument on the merits so they have to just gesture towards liberal hypocrisy and notice who these arguments are geared towards. They're geared towards conservatives who want to look like. To basically explain it away. And I just think it's interesting that when people are down on their luck in their careers, it seems like 95 to 99% of the time they go in this particular direction where they take the opportunity to do these incredibly cheap gestures towards analysis, which is just about like allowing for conservatives to have some sort of example that makes it so that it's a wash. It's the liberals are hypocrites. I'm going to go all the way back to. I don't know, perhaps there were some Democrats back in the time that were supportive of our war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. There were. If that's who he's referring to as you guys, it's like, yeah, those people are dinosaurs within the party, like your stupid ass brother and. And we want them out.
- [135:23]
Sam Seder
He was on Good Morning America from 2006 to 2009 and I am quite sure he did probably zero stories on the, the drone wars in 2008.
- [135:41]
Emma Vigeland
Right?
- [135:42]
Sam Seder
I am quite sure he did zero stories, critical stories on the drone warfare through the Obama administration when he was on cnn. I mean, give me an effing break. Good. Everybody in a burqa in Afghanistan, in Iraq. We didn't have social media back then though. Not the way we do now. We did have. But we did have to keep up there. We did have mainstream media of which you are. But you were a literally like the top five, 10% in terms of having a platform in the country.
- [136:17]
Emma Vigeland
Also, what's the addition of in a burqa? I mean, just, just, just. I mean, what does that, what does that add to your commentary?
- [136:24]
Sam Seder
That's part of his way of maintaining a little bit of distance.
- [136:27]
Emma Vigeland
Because I thought you were being critical about those about. Thought you were being critical about people not standing up for this slaughtering of civilians which would include women in burkas. I know that's so scary to you. It's just the message is so muddled. Are you against that or are you trying to dehumanize them to your audience by mentioning that they have a different style of dress?
- [136:47]
Matt Leck
That's the Tim Pool ness of this. This is such a thin thing. And you can just tell these guys when like who you're if you're the luckiest sort of like, servant, if you can tell a rich person a concept like rage bait. Because they'll get so excited about. Oh, yeah, this is just rage bait. People being upset about indiscriminate killings where they, where no evidence has been provided. Yeah, that's rage bait.
- [137:10]
Sam Seder
But you're also upset about this second bomb on a drug boat. Okay, so how's that rage bait? Well, because they're making it seem like it's such a big and important deal to them when these were not people who were that upset about who Obama was killing with his drones.
- [137:26]
Emma Vigeland
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
- [137:29]
Sam Seder
First off, that take us fresh out the oven. Yes.
- [137:31]
Emma Vigeland
No, Tim, Tim. I mean, Tom Cotton literally said it. We. That was exactly.
- [137:36]
Sam Seder
Oh, yeah, say stale. Very still.
- [137:38]
Emma Vigeland
Sorry, sorry.
- [137:41]
It's hard to keep up. But they want people like you guys.
- [137:44]
Matt Leck
They like it when. They liked it when Obama got away with that stuff. They wish they could still do it. It's like when, when Zionists say, like, well, you know, nobody got upset when America exterminated its native population. It's like, well, yeah, we, we, we actually have a big problem with that.
- [137:58]
Emma Vigeland
But that's what they're trying to do with that line of argument is that you can't call us out on it because you did something like this too. Like, that's basically it just like negates any debate about it, you know, and what's amazing is, is that the left wing critiques of Obama and, and Trump now were the. Are the same. It was proportional to the amount of criminality that we're dealing with. I mean, Obama did commit war crimes. This is such an insane war crime that you even have Republicans that are starting to turn on Pete Hegseth based on what they've seen in that classified briefing. Jack Reed was saying it was deeply disturbing. They saw them treading water and trying to turn over parts of the boat for minutes. And then there was a strike that came in and claimed that they were trying to call for backup and assassinated them. But yeah, I guess it's liberals who have emotions about this kind of thing. God forbid the guy who wrote the.
- [138:47]
Matt Leck
Book or the guy who wrote the article today that we're talking about, Charlie Savage literally wrote the book on the rise of presidential authority and secrecy during the Obama administration called Power Wars. Like, it's, I mean, not that he's like a crazy leftist, but it was like shows like ours that were interviewing him about that.
- [139:04]
Sam Seder
Yeah.
- [139:08]
Well, what are you gonna do? It's all rage bait. If I didn't cover it back when I had a huge platform and people are talking about it now. Well, it's rage bait off of News Nation. Is he just in the basement? No, he's on News Nation, but I mean, it's not CNN or abc. He's got a second job.
- [139:24]
Emma Vigeland
Barry Weiss, cbs. I am convinced that half this stuff that we've seen over the past month or two with Van Jones and the Wall and the dead babies and all this auditioning. Auditioning for the Zionist platform and, you know, I hope it pays off for them.
- [139:40]
Sam Seder
Augie's left paw. Hey, Sam and Emma and crew. Can I get some funny sound effect to make me laugh? Currently sitting in an ICU waiting room, hoping my father gets better. I used to send him videos of Sam's debates and he really liked what you said, especially about Social Security. He really made a late in life left wing turn. He hated Trump, finds Israel disgusting, and was pro choice. He enjoys some of your content as much as I do. Here is a shofar going out for your dad and then. No, he. Nobody knows what that is, though. Matt. Matt's trying to play a pop song by Jail.
- [140:20]
Matt Leck
Yeah, it's a song called Jail Bait by artist named Olivia Nuzzi.
- [140:25]
Sam Seder
Literally. That is not a sketch.
- [140:29]
Matt Leck
Here's my remix.
- [140:30]
Emma Vigeland
Olivy.
- [140:31]
Sam Seder
Open conversation is the way of humans.
- [140:34]
Jeet Heer
Conn.
- [140:42]
Sam Seder
That's just your first day listening to the show. Trying to translate what the hell you.
- [140:45]
Emma Vigeland
Just did instead of Happy Birthday. Matt asked us to all sing Jail Bait to him when he walked in the office.
- [140:52]
Sam Seder
You're gonna have to take it up with.
- [141:06]
That's fantastic.
- [141:07]
John Berman
The heat is on them when they do this.
- [141:12]
Sam Seder
Oh, I'd love if Chuck just started rapping. Oh, my God.
- [141:18]
We've got to get an AI version of Chuck Schumer singing the song.
- [141:25]
Emma Vigeland
Oh, my God.
- [141:27]
Sam Seder
Strongly worded letter.
- [141:28]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah, write that down, Matt.
- [141:29]
Representative Summer Lee
Write that down.
- [141:32]
Sam Seder
It's the only thing we execute. Of all the ideas, like guests go into the ether and like. Oh, what idea we did execute was whistles. Did we talk about that already? Oh, no, let's do that. Speaking of execution of ideas.
- [141:48]
Augie's left paw. I'm dying. This is great. All right. Glad we could help. Oh, Max Vax says, crime, crime. Drop, please. I thought that during jeet when he was like, this isn't a war crime, it's a crime crime.
- [142:07]
Do that again.
- [142:10]
Crime.
- [142:11]
Candace Owens
Crime.
- [142:16]
Sam Seder
It's like a Halloween song. Fantastic. That. That baseline is fantastic.
- [142:26]
Oh.
- [142:29]
God, that's so great.
- [142:35]
Folks, we are we have a new piece of merch in our merch store and again, you know, we're, we're trying to get the resources to try and help connect people. The Discord's a great place to go. We had so many people reached out to us about doing.
- [142:55]
A 3D printing of, of these whistles. And I would encourage you if you're, if you are, if you have the capacity to print 3D whistles, go to the Discord, find some rapid response groups. We have a lot of people in the Discord who are members of rapid response groups. Immigration, immigrant rapid response groups around the country and in hook up with them and you know, 20, 30 whistles, 50 whistles can be very, very helpful. We got some, we got them as low cost as we could. And we're not, you know, we're selling these at cost.
- [143:40]
And we had the printing on there was donated basically.
- [143:47]
And these are, we got whistles which, with the lanyard. Because I've been reading a lot of like, you know, like in some of these communities it has been both blowing the whistle when you see ICE is very helpful and also wearing the whistle sort of indicates both to immigrants and to other people that like you're part of you know, a community that is looking to fight ice. And people are getting more and more savvy about this. There's been a lot more time for rapid response groups to, to organize and to plan. And here is. So you can head over to our merch store shop majorityreportradio.com pick these up and they, the orders are going to ship in about a week or two from now. So you'll get them, I don't guess by Christmas. I don't know if people would give this as a gift, but not a bad idea. But here is just be careful because apparently.
- [145:00]
The new talking point from ICE is that blowing these whistles little bit racist. Here we go.
- [145:10]
Representative Summer Lee
Do you have any idea how racist.
- [145:12]
Jeet Heer
It is to blow a whistle at workers that are probably legal? You're just alerting them that ICE is here and they're probably legal. That's very racist.
- [145:25]
Sam Seder
Sassy Walker.
- [145:26]
Emma Vigeland
Oh yeah.
- [145:28]
Sam Seder
You know, when you see this you start to realize like all of these guys, not all these guys, but a ton of these ICE guys are just doing it for their, their effed up ideological reasons.
- [145:41]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah, like where are the proud boys where they, they went? I mean that's my point.
- [145:46]
Sam Seder
Like yeah, proud men owning the libs. That's what the, the, the guy is saying. And the guy just explained like they see ICE people are blowing the whistles, and he's saying to presume that they're undocumented immigrants is racist. Let's be clear.
- [146:06]
Emma Vigeland
Why do you approach them then?
- [146:07]
Sam Seder
Let's be clear. Every time you see an ICE guy approach these places, they are doing so because they see a brown person. And every time they. They grab somebody's ID and find out that they're an American citizen and let them go is an indicative of. They are illegally and unconstitutionally stopping these people because they're doing it based upon a racial profile. They don't know this person's immigration status. They don't know who the person is. And the idea that they can suspect someone's immigration status by. By virtue of the. The color of their skin or the fact that they're doing some type of labor is.
- [146:57]
Is unconstitutional.
- [146:58]
Matt Leck
It's immigrants. Like in D.C. there's a story immigrants that are visually.
- [147:04]
Identifiable as Latino, like Guatemalans, are targeted way far beyond their proportionality for who?
- [147:13]
Sam Seder
What?
- [147:14]
Matt Leck
The undocumented population in that city.
- [147:16]
Emma Vigeland
The Supreme Court said that it's legal for them to use those identifying markers to racially profile them. So this is where we. We don't have the legislature to fall back on to protect these communities. This is why this community solidarity has been really important, and it's the silver lining of this moment. People are coming out to support their neighbors, and I just hope that is a durable kind of political project going forward, too.
- [147:46]
Sam Seder
Let's see what else we got here.
- [147:48]
Emma Vigeland
A really quick, fun one. Could be the last Alex Karp, or I was gonna say the 24. The Somali. The meme.
- [147:55]
Matt Leck
Do that maybe next week.
- [147:56]
Emma Vigeland
All right.
- [148:01]
Sam Seder
Should we do this? Number 17. This either is interesting.
- [148:09]
Emma Vigeland
I mean, there's also 12 and 11 and.
- [148:15]
Silly ones.
- [148:16]
Matt Leck
Cash Patel going out of his way.
- [148:17]
Sam Seder
To prove everyone else. Gotta go. Yeah, let's do this. 11 is 12.
- [148:23]
Emma Vigeland
Did you know Cash Patel has a girlfriend?
- [148:25]
Matt Leck
Yeah, she's actually.
- [148:26]
Sam Seder
Oh, yeah, she's a. He wants to know. Right.
- [148:29]
Matt Leck
And there's a threat.
- [148:29]
Sam Seder
She's a wrestler.
- [148:30]
Jeet Heer
I can't.
- [148:31]
Emma Vigeland
She's a wrestler, a boxer, but a TPUSA influencer also.
- [148:36]
Sam Seder
And.
- [148:38]
Yeah, I mean, you know, women for these. Flying to go get his girlfriend and partying with her. I. Let's. So let's. Let's do this. Number 11 is more fun. I think I did see Cash Patel say.
- [148:54]
That if you attack the legislative bodies of this country, you are going to be rolled up by the FBI. He didn't finish the state the statement and say then ultimately pardoned by the President. But yeah, yeah, here is.
- [149:15]
And this is impressive because Donald Trump fell asleep so many times during the cabinet meeting the other day. It's also like a lot more mainstream. People are talking about the bruise on his hand and probably anticipating that it's a function of some type of intravenous drug that he gets on a monthly basis, perhaps to deal with oncoming Alzheimer's, slow it down. But he's, he's clearly deteriorating physically.
- [149:45]
Emma Vigeland
Yep.
- [149:47]
Sam Seder
Mentally, it's harder to assess because the guy's always been sort of a lunatic anyways, but he's clearly deteriorating physically. And so much so that even Sean Hannity now has to defend Donald Trump's.
- [150:04]
Drifting in and out.
- [150:06]
Emma Vigeland
Right. And defend it because, like, I don't think Sean Hannity, you could find a more sycoph Trump person in media. Remember we got those texts from the Dominion lawsuit. He was collaborating with the Trump administration directly on coverage. And so the fact that he feels like he has to even talk about this means this is traveling.
- [150:34]
Sam Seder
You know, they said all the President's slowing down. Okay. I have known for Donald Trump for 30 years in this term. Recently, I have talked to him at every hour of the 24 hour day from 12 midnight to 2 in the morning, 3 in the morning, 6 in the morning, and he's almost always awake. Sean, pause it for one second. Positive for one second. Let's just take this at face value. The President is not sleeping at all.
- [151:09]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah, it's not important.
- [151:11]
Sam Seder
Wait a second. I'm up every night. He's not like you. I'm focusing on the crisis of all the Somali immigrants doing TikTok videos.
- [151:25]
Emma Vigeland
Right.
- [151:25]
Matt Leck
There's many Somalis to go before.
- [151:27]
Sam Seder
How about this? Like, why is he awake 24 hours a night? Like, this was a problem when my mom was, you know, having Alzheimer's issues. Like not sleeping, not sleeping, getting up, like walking around. Like, why is this a. Why are they selling this as a. He's so healthy, he's not sleeping at all.
- [151:52]
Emma Vigeland
You are being confined by the realities of human biology and existence. Now what Sean Hannity is doing is more like what you would see in, say, North Korea, where do you know that Kim Jong Il does not have or did not have a butthole and he just, it just goes and evaporates into air. I mean, these were some of the rumors that were said. That's like a version of what he's doing there. He's so. He's built different.
- [152:14]
Sam Seder
He doesn't even need to sleep.
- [152:16]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah.
- [152:17]
Sam Seder
He gains at least £2 a week.
- [152:24]
Day from 12 midnight to 2 in the morning. 3 in the morning, 6 in the morning. And he's almost always awake. Sean.
- [152:34]
Senator
He'll, he'll call me.
- [152:35]
Sam Seder
Scott, the.
- [152:37]
Senator
I didn't wake you, did you? No, sir. I'm always awake at 1:52 on a Tuesday.
- [152:41]
Sam Seder
You know, they said all the.
- [152:43]
Emma Vigeland
That's okay, great.
- [152:45]
Sam Seder
And what's the the that covers that scandal. Yeah, buried, moved on.
- [152:50]
He's always awake at 3 in the morning, just not at 10am in the middle of his cabinet meeting. Right, right.
- [152:59]
Matt Leck
It's a bold response to hey, why are we seeing that guy sleeping all the time? The guy never sleeps.
- [153:04]
Sam Seder
I should have tried this argument with my math teacher. Like, look, I'm almost always awake in this class. I doze up. I was up all night playing video games.
- [153:16]
Matt Leck
That's why I'm sleeping. It's like Matt seems high. It's like, well, I only smoke like three, three hours a day.
- [153:26]
Sam Seder
All right. I wonder what he's calling Scott passant about at 1:15 in the morning. He's not nervous about anything. Let's. What's going on? Why? Who are we gonna fire? What? How do we stop fix the nitrogen in my raised bed? I know you're a farmer. Do you have any ideas for that?
- [153:47]
Do you know where Melania is?
- [153:51]
He's late night gardening.
- [153:58]
I'm just walking through the rubble in the West Wing. Scott, what happened to the East Wing? Where is it? East Wing? I had a crazy street just like I think the White House was attacked by a bomb. What's going on, Scott? Are you awake? They're trying to kill me. They brought me some cookies and milk to go to sleep and they're trying to kill me. Okay, I gotta go.
- [154:22]
Emma Vigeland
Remember the Hillary Clinton ads about who would you want answering the call at 3 in the morning? Trump's version is who do you want manically calling exactly at 3 in the morning? Your cabinet members numbers at 3 in the morning?
- [154:35]
Sam Seder
Scott, have you seen my phone? I'm borrowing. They took my. Hey, don't let me post that truth right now. I'm calling from Lara's phone.
- [154:48]
It's just prank phone calling, people.
- [154:54]
Scott, hi, it's Roy Cone. Just kidding.
- [155:03]
Emma Vigeland
Oh my God. You could probably actually get some info out of Trump if you prank called him as Roy Cohn at a certain hour.
- [155:08]
Sam Seder
Exactly. All right. God. I just. Wait, it's three in the morning. I'm just trying to see if you're asleep. Okay. You are. Okay, I gotta go.
- [155:23]
Future reactionary yes Lord of the Rings Emma There you go. Carl barks hey Sam, your apples are in danger. Click this link now to buy apple insurance.
- [155:39]
That is the easiest way to wipe out his account.
- [155:43]
Matt Leck
The Great Apple Debate HTTPs Nigerian apple.
- [155:49]
Sam Seder
Merchant just hit me up.
- [155:52]
Grime Grimes I'm walking down the street in Tallinn, Estonia, laughing my effing head off listening to crime crimes. The locals are looking at me weirdly.
- [156:05]
Al Conniption Venezuelan food is so good. Something that really doesn't need to be back on the menu.
- [156:17]
Marcos the Brazilian we read that June Oliver.
- [156:24]
Canada has lots going on right now with an increasingly vile liberal government agenda, an NDP leadership race, etc. Journalist Rachel Gilmore would be a great guest for the show, especially if you want to chat with her about how she made the top of that Charlie Kirk hit list.
- [156:42]
Now we just take her name down. Rachel Gilmore from Canada, left is Big Pharma Plug. Not sure if you've seen the chaos over at the fda, but it's absolutely insane. Commissioner Marque just chased out his fourth director of the center for Drug Evaluation Research, which is part of the FDA that regulates all drugs, most biologics and most combination products. For comparison, CDER directors usually last a minimum of four years. The latest director was a 26 year old 26 year FDA veteran, Dr. Rick Pazder, who initiated the wildly successful Oncology center of excellence. Now Mark McCarry has appointed Tracy Beth Hogue, whose recent work led to the claims by Vinay Prasad, director of the FDA's center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, that at least 10 children died because of the COVID 19 vaccines. Most people don't pay attention to the FDA, much to my chagrin, but given the impact of their work, this would be like sitting in a restaurant waiting for your food while simultaneously there's a massive kitchen fire, knife fight and orgy happening amongst the crooks. The cooks in the kitchen right next to your food.
- [158:06]
We should say there's already now pushback on that 10 children died because of the COVID 19 vaccines.
- [158:13]
Matt Leck
I heard Vinay Prasad and my alarm immediately went off because I'm pretty sure he's not. I mean he's got trumpeting so yeah.
- [158:21]
Sam Seder
MPG Happy Birthday Matt DNC Google Pundit oh my God. I think new Matt was like 25 when he started on Mr. A Mere Tyke 27.
- [158:34]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah, it's crazy that the age I joined too must be same with Brian, right?
- [158:42]
Sam Seder
Plus or minus.
- [158:46]
All right, five more.
- [158:49]
LA accent Can the President bomb pharmaceutical companies? CIA really cool. Last night WFP interviewed three New York 10 challengers to.
- [159:05]
Two plus, including Dan Goldman, Uline Noy, Brad Lander, Alex Villas.
- [159:14]
Are they all running against Goldman?
- [159:16]
Emma Vigeland
No, I. I think that was just a hypothetical. I mean, obviously Lander, in terms of name recognition is going to be strong, but if he. I want to see what DSA does before we see, you know, how we.
- [159:30]
Matt Leck
Avila, I think was. Would be the DSA one there, not you Line was the person who, like, could have maybe challenged him last time.
- [159:39]
Emma Vigeland
She should have. She could have won that primary. But it was. It was Mondaire Jones chose to run in that district. Yeah.
- [159:47]
We'Ve got to avoid that this time. The left vote splitting coordination.
- [159:51]
Sam Seder
Okay.
- [159:52]
Representative Summer Lee
Please.
- [159:53]
Sam Seder
Apac Shakur. There seems to be an element of expediency and laziness with both ICE and boat bombings. Rather than engage with criminal prosecution, summary executions are much faster, but at the cost of U.S. moral authority or whatever may be left of that, I would say zero.
- [160:08]
Matt Leck
The packet today has a story about why they're doing the courthouse stuff. It makes complete sense because courthouses check you for guns.
- [160:15]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah, they.
- [160:17]
Sam Seder
Oh, and why are they going after moms? Why are they going out, like, 70% of the immigration arrests that they have done for people with no criminal record. And.
- [160:33]
We have not heard of one shootout with these immigrants, Immigration, these ICE people. Not one.
- [160:42]
Matt Leck
And supposedly going after the tough hombres.
- [160:45]
Sam Seder
That's amazing. When you think of all of these gang members, violent criminals. Not a single one of them has fought back against the ICE.
- [160:56]
Arrests. That's how good our boys in blue.
- [160:58]
Matt Leck
Are at picking their battles.
- [161:02]
Sam Seder
Exactly. All right, three more. Cole from Cincinnati. Happy birthday, Matt. I wish your soundboard was available on like. Like, RM Browns. It's so good. Many times in my life, blasting and I'm staying in the race would have come in clutch.
- [161:20]
Future reactionary. Pretty sure the Dems held the house from the mid-50s, so it was 40 years of control. You're right, Emma. Thanking is a glass of wine in one hand and a remote in the other. Isn't this basically what Jordan Peterson was saying years ago? We can't gender mix in the workplace because of rouge and lipstick.
- [161:39]
Matt Leck
We don't know what the rules are.
- [161:42]
Sam Seder
Can I just take it out?
- [161:45]
I do it. It's just the boys.
- [161:50]
You're out here trying to make it seem like you are excited that I'm around you.
- [161:57]
Emma Vigeland
You're.
- [161:59]
Sam Seder
Your red lips are indicating you're sexually aroused.
- [162:03]
Matt Leck
Don't deny it.
- [162:04]
Sam Seder
You're provoking me to think no jobs. All I'm I'm sitting here is thinking of, like, of sex because of you, Phil. It's. It's completely out of line.
- [162:18]
Emma Vigeland
Look what you made me think.
- [162:19]
Sam Seder
Look what you made me think at work. Benzos you made me eat just to be able to handle being around you.
- [162:25]
Matt Leck
Man, that's a sign of the times.
- [162:27]
Sam Seder
I can't even go to class now.
- [162:31]
Emma Vigeland
Women should only wear red lipstick in the home.
- [162:33]
Sam Seder
And that's the other thing he said, too, though. Like, I guess the problem with, like. Didn't he say something to the effect of, like, a part of the problem is I don't even know what people's gender are. I don't know how to talk them.
- [162:47]
I don't know what gender you are. I don't know how condescending to be.
- [162:52]
Matt Leck
Yeah, I mean, he's basically trying to cultivate a panic in people and say, that's actually like, just, you know, you could just be cool.
- [162:59]
Sam Seder
If I am not aware that I'm talking to a woman, how do I know it's time for me to talk down to them?
- [163:09]
Poly Marxist Sam is green because he's getting into the Grinch spirit in preparation for the War on Christmas. Indeed. And the final IM of the week.
- [163:24]
I'm a nuts. Hey, Sam, what if Trump's hand bruises are not from medical infusions, but are from cellular extractions collected to be stored in vials for creating Trump clones for future administrations? I know this can happen. I saw the Woody Allen movie Sleeper. I think it's from backhanding. J.D. vance.
- [163:47]
Matt, Brian, Emma. Great job this week, folks. See you Monday.
- [163:52]
It might take all the strength I got to get to where I want But I know somehow I'm gonna get there.
- [164:06]
Jeet Heer
I wasn't looking when I just.
- [164:08]
Sam Seder
Got caught between the truth and the light.
- [164:16]
Won't make me feel any better.
- [164:20]
Yeah, I know the clock is ticking but the meds are gonna kick in and my pilot light shining bright.
- [164:34]
Emma Vigeland
I get.
- [164:35]
Sam Seder
Somewhere the choice was made for the option where you don't get paid for the road that bends before it finally breaks you.
- [164:48]
I guess somehow I lost my drive between the 101 and the 5 do you know how far the teacher takes you?
- [165:01]
Yeah, I know the clock is ticking but the mess I gonna.
- [165:08]
And my pilot light shining bright.
- [165:32]
While I shifted in and out of gear.
- [165:36]
Waiting for my moment to happen.
- [165:42]
I still know how much longer I can stay in or how much more I got to pay to play in I know somehow.