← The Majority Report with Sam Seder
The Majority Report with Sam Seder
3584 - Kimmel Silenced; Tracking ICE Abuses; Trump The Mafia Don w/ Austin Kocher, Dan O’Sullivan
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It's Emmajority Report Thursday on Majority Report On Todays Show: In order to protect an illegal merger and please the King, Disney indefinitely suspends Jimmy Kimmel after he made a factually correct joke about Trump's callous response to Charlie...
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Emma Vigeland
You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this show@jointhemajorityreport.com and get an extra hour of content daily.
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Sam Cedar
The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.
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Emma Vigeland
It is Thursday, September 18, 2025. My name is Emma Vigeland in for Sam Seder and 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, Austin Coker will be back with us to talk about tracking ICE's rogue deportation regime. And later in the show, Dan O', Sullivan, co host of the outfit, joins us to talk about Trump and his mafia don tactics. Also on the program, ABC pulls Jimmy Kimmel off the air after local TV affiliate conglomerate nexstar complied with Trump's free speech crackdown in an effort to get its monopolistic merger approved. The move was met with wide condemnation from non fascist politicians and media figures. The House shelves Nancy Mace's resolution to censure Ilhan Omar for daring to say what Charlie Kirk did in life. It would be nice if the other members of the squad were coming to her defense a little bit more. I'm not seeing that too much and I don't like that. Maybe I missed it. Trump prepares an executive order targeting liberal groups and says he'll declare antifa, which stands for anti Fascist, a domestic terrorist organization. Telling on yourself, buddy. Trump's troop Deployment within the US reaches 35,000, a 75% increase from July. And that may be an undercount. Democrats are posturing like they'll shut down the government. Senate Republicans need seven to eight Democrats to fund the government for a few more months. Another poll shows how public opinion in the US on Israel has shifted. Half of US adults say Israel has gone too far. Bernie Sanders calls Gaza a genocide for the first time. Following the UN's declaration, Saudi Arabia signs a mutual defense pact with nuclear armed Pakistan. Another US Allied nation seeking alternatives. A Louisiana immigration judge orders the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, which he will fight. RFK Jr. S anti vax quacks at the CDC are meeting to reconsider recommending the Hepatitis B vaccine at birth, one of our safest and most effective vaccines. And lastly, Representative Ronny Jackson, Republican former doctor of Donald Trump calls to mass institutionalize trans people.
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Matt Binder
Pop another pill, Ronnie.
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Emma Vigeland
Yeah, Ronnie. He's been holding off on those media appearances because it was so obvious whatever the hell he was on. But it's, it's the trans people that are the danger here. Psycho. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Cheery little intro there, the hepatitis B thing. I was almost like about to start screaming a bloody murder at the beginning of the show when we were reading that stuff this morning. It's, it's, it's, it's insane. And, and I mean Bill Cassidy, Senator, doctor who knew better, was the deciding vote on getting this insane man to be the head of Health and Human Services. And he was up in 2026 down in Louisiana. It's not that far in history when they had a Democratic governor. I mean he was a mansion type Democrat, extremely corporatist and centrist. But there is a possibility to have turnout and punish a guy like Bill Cassidy for what he has done to public health in this country more broadly.
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Matt Binder
It's a lesson for all sort of medical and scientific folks, some of whom supported this Trump administration and the sort of anti woke agenda. You can see quotes of people at different sort of institutions who had their funding slash being like, you know, I thought we were going too far with some of the gender stuff, but my research is now being impacted. You have to understand like what politics are. You can't be sort of apolitical and then all of a sudden you have, you get propagandized on some weird thing and you're supporting the fascist administration. And I'm not afraid to use that word. This is an anti fascist show. Welcome to the majority of public.
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Emma Vigeland
Hello. Snowy4VA11 says as a pediatrician, the HEPV vaccine has prevented countless miserable and painful deaths.
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Dan O'Sullivan
Right.
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Matt Binder
But you gotta think about the downsides.
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Emma Vigeland
But have you as a physician been scanning airports for children's mitochondrial deficiencies? Cuz that's the science that this administration's.
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Matt Binder
That's easy for you to say pediatrician because you don't have a worm in your brain.
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Sam Cedar
They're fat. What more do you need? The kids are fat, they're unattractive.
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Emma Vigeland
You might take the medal for best in the office. Sam kind of veers into Alex Jones territory with his.
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Matt Binder
Yeah, and I got to like lower his mic volume.
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Emma Vigeland
Someone's got to reign that guy in. Okay, so biggest story obviously of the of the day really is that last night ABC took Jimmy Kimmel off the air. And the context of this is that next Star Media, the largest owner of local TV stations in the United States already, including stations affiliated with ABC and Disney owns abc. They basically came out with a statement saying that they will not air his show on their ABC affiliate, state affiliate stations indefinitely. And just coincidentally, let's pull up that tear sheet. Some news from last month probably has nothing to do with it. Nextstar CEO praises Trump administration as local TV giant announces $6.2 billion merger with rival let's read the first few paragraphs of this. There's Trump. Trump looking very happy, please, showing off those neck folds. Nextar, the largest owner of local television stations in the United States, announced Tuesday that it would be acquiring rival Tegna in a $6.2 billion megadeal that would reshape the landscape of local media as the Trump administration seems poised to loosen regulatory limits. Now, this was in August, so last month this article came out, in fact, seemingly alluding to the presumption that Donald Trump's handpick Federal Communications Commission chief Brendan Carr would approve the deal despite current restrictions in place. Nexstar CEO Perry Sook heaped praise on the administration in his company's announcement of the deal. The initiatives being pursued by the Trump administration offer local broadcasters the opportunity to expand reach, level the playing field.
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Matt Binder
Can we talk about the metaphors they use? I know, like expand reach. These are supposed to be business people, but they get all poetic and talk about things like level the playing field. You are a billion dollar monopoly media organization run by fascists.
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Emma Vigeland
What do you mean, expand your reach? You already are the largest conglomerate in the country. But they were limited. I mean, we don't even need to read the rest of that. He just is sucking Trump off. But they. Let's pull up my tweet then here just to explain. So this deal is really reliant on Trump's FCC changing current regulations. It's not just. I mean, look, they're going to greenlight all attempts to create monopolies, it seems like. Remember all that talk that they would be antitrust partners, like in the way that Lina Khan was.
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Matt Binder
JD Vance might be interested in Lina Khan.
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Emma Vigeland
Oh, because Josh Hawley once said something fiery in public and then just capitulated to Donald Trump on everything in private. So broadcast industry analysts, this is cnn, said all the deal talk is premised on pending action by the FCC to loosen the government's limits on broadcast station ownership. Currently, through a regulation known as the National Television Ownership Rule, companies are capped at reaching 39% of all US TV households. Station owners say the cap must be raised so that they can survive in the digital age. And they believe FCC chair Brendan Carr, a top Trump ally, agrees, and it's quite clear that he does. Carr recently called the station ownership caps arcane and artificial and opened an FCC proceeding to review the matter. Now go to the next image, what this would do, it would obliterate that previous rule. Nexstar, the largest station group in the country, also has a major merger before the Trump administration. Its proposed acquisition of Tegna, creating a mega company with 265 stations in 44 states and the NDC representing 80% of US TV households. The current rule, as if we don't have enough consolidation in the media sphere enough, is you just, you can't do 40%. You can't be in 40% of households, one company. This is a, this is too much of a monopoly. The Trump's fcc. And by the way, this guy Brendan Carr cut his teeth underneath Ajit Pai, the FCC head under Trump 1.0 who helped kill net neutrality in the first Trump administration. They are convinced that he's going to do it. I mean, that's not just like a raising of the rule slightly. You're just obliterating it and allowing for complete consolidation of local TV stations. So speaking of that guy, Brendan Carr, this is what he said on the Benny Johnson show yesterday about, I guess it was really Jimmy, Jimmy Kimmel. And his reaction to this is it's just an emblematic of this incredibly authoritarian free speech.
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Matt Binder
And he is absolutely thinking of these companies, Nexstar and et cetera, when he's making these comments.
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Emma Vigeland
100%.
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Austin Coker
Should we play the monologue joke first and then this.
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Emma Vigeland
Let's play this first and then we'll show you what Kimmel actually said.
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Brendan Carr
There's actions that we can take on licensed broadcasters. And frankly, I think that it's really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say, listen, we are going to preempt, we are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out. Because we, we licensed broadcaster, are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC if we continue, AKA me.
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Emma Vigeland
You're the fcc.
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Dan O'Sullivan
Yeah.
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Austin Coker
And fined for what?
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Emma Vigeland
Right, right.
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Matt Binder
Well, that's what we're going to get into. Kimmel, who said nothing wrong, but we'll.
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Brendan Carr
Get into that if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion. So I think again, Disney needs to see some change here. But the individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it's time for them to step up and say this garbage to the extent that that's what comes down the pipe in the future, isn't something that we think serves the needs of our local communities. But, but this sort of status quo is obviously not, not acceptable.
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Dan O'Sullivan
Where we are.
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Austin Coker
Our local communities.
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Emma Vigeland
That's what he cares about. That's why he's basically. I mean, his line there is indistinguishable from the CEO's statements about what they want to do. He's loving this like pie. Who I believe, you know, was very much in the revolving door when he come from Comcast. This is the kind of thing where I want to make sure I have it right. Verizon. Sorry, Verizon. He came from Verizon. You know, this. The car is looking to cash out in the corporate world eventually and giving the. These conglomerates everything they want, especially when they suck up to the President by taking Jimmy Kimmel off air. They have a mutual kind of beneficial relationship.
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Matt Binder
Right now, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. And make no mistake, the executives in these television channels, they're not doing this entirely unwillingly. And that's the truth of any of the law firms that are bending to Trump or Columbia and the Ivy Leagues bending to Trump. There are conservatives at the executive level that are willingly complicit in all of.
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Emma Vigeland
This, in part because they've probably wanted an excuse to take out late night shows before. That's caused problems with them pulling politically because God forbid, comedians say how they feel and also because they have large staffs and these are like productions that are staples of television that have rich histories but have a lot of overhead for them.
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Matt Binder
But because they basically deal to the majority of the country, they're not right wing.
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Emma Vigeland
Right, right. And so this is what Kimmel said, see what you heard that was so inflammatory that he had to be taken off the air for that.
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Austin Coker
This is called indefinite lies.
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Emma Vigeland
Yes.
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Matt Binder
And misinformation, what he said here. And yeah, we'll get into content.
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Dan O'Sullivan
We had some new lows over the.
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Sam Cedar
Weekend with the MAGA gang, desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
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Dan O'Sullivan
In between the finger pointing, there was grieving on Friday. The White House flew the flags at half staff, which got some criticism. But on a human level, you.
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Sam Cedar
You can see how hard the President is taking this. My condolences on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk. May I ask her personally, how are.
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Dan O'Sullivan
You holding up over the last day and a half, sir?
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Sam Cedar
I think very good. And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years. And it's going to be a beauty. Yes.
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Dan O'Sullivan
He's at the fourth stage of grief construction.
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Emma Vigeland
That's a really good joke. That was a really good joke.
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Matt Binder
And there's this lie going around by the fascists that want you to eulogize Charlie Kirk that what he said there was wrong in any kind of way. He's not wrong that we don't know much about the ideology of the shooter. But it's a lie to say that he's left wing, which is what all of these folks were doing immediately after. We don't have anything to base that off of. What they're basing that off of is he is a white kid born to a Republican family, pictured often with guns, and then turned out to be gay. That's being gay or bisexual, whatever that is, is not left wing.
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Emma Vigeland
No.
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Matt Binder
Ask Peter Thiel. Ask Dave Rubin.
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Emma Vigeland
Exactly.
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Dan O'Sullivan
J. Edgar Hoover.
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Emma Vigeland
Ask the Treasury Secretary.
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Matt Binder
The violence thing, I would say comes more to. From this part of his life where he was taking pictures with guns at a young age.
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Emma Vigeland
Exactly.
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Matt Binder
And taught that that was the way to deal. But specifically, Kimmel is referencing what everyone saw, which is the governor of that state, Spencer Cox, say this right in front of the FBI director who's fumbling this and tripping all over his. You know what? This is what Spencer Cox had to say.
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Dan O'Sullivan
You know, this bad stuff happens. And for 33 hours, I was. I was praying that if this had to happen here, that it wouldn't be one of us, that somebody drove from another state, somebody came from another country.
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Emma Vigeland
Okay, so that is what Kimmel was referencing when he said that phrase. And they are lying in order to use any pretext imaginable to crack down on free speech, because there is an.
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Matt Binder
Emergency about violence that happens in this country and the lies that happen after it. And it's things Republicans do. Ted Cruz will play in the fun half, still lying, saying that the guy who shot up people in Minnesota was saying that he was a wall supporter. Walls put a Republican in a city position or in a municipal, in a state position, and that's how he's repaid when that guy goes effing crazy. Actually, it's a good lesson for Democrats. Don't put Republicans into any kind of position. They're going to make a list of abortion providers and Democrats and shoot them up. And the Republicans, like Ted Cruz, will lie about it. There is an emergency about how we react to these things, but it is entirely on the side of the right wing.
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Emma Vigeland
And I don't even think that that What Walls appointed him to, it was like some business advisory pants, small business panel that every kind of governor does these things of local business owners and having some sort of summit or whatever. The idea that he has any association with Walls. But you would probably have like 30% of the country, if they've heard about this story at all believing that. Because the right wing keeps saying it over and over again. And that's what they're trying to do to get out ahead of the story. First, the bullets were trans. Oh, no. Turns out the bullet casings just have T. RN or whatever listed on them. Right. That was the acronym.
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Austin Coker
Yeah. That was not even the right bullet.
- [18:27]
Emma Vigeland
Yes.
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Austin Coker
The one that Steven Crowder was putting on everybody.
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Dan O'Sullivan
Yeah.
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Austin Coker
That's just the name of the manufacturer.
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Emma Vigeland
Exactly.
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Austin Coker
It was a 9 millimeter, which doesn't go in a fucking hunting rifle.
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Emma Vigeland
But they. They got that from Crowder, then they leaked it to the Wall Street Journal that republished it. And clearly they probably got some verification from somebody at. In the government that is eager to put that misinformation out there. Then they were saying the shooter's definitely trans. Definitely trans. Definitely trans. Oh no. Oh, no. Has a roommate that's trans. Might have had a relationship with the roommate that is trans. And how can we find a way to fit our narrative into this horrible killing as a way to justify the authoritarian crackdown that he's been preparing for? And they've been trying to do this by trying to get people to. To provoke violence against ICE officers or whatever. They're trying to make it so. To give them any pretext when they're sending people into our cities to McCarthy ism to crack down. Exactly.
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Austin Coker
Never waste a crisis.
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Emma Vigeland
Right.
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Dan O'Sullivan
And when they talk about and find any crisis.
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Emma Vigeland
Yes. Yeah.
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Matt Binder
Hyperventilate about it.
- [19:42]
Emma Vigeland
And why is net Benjamin Netanyahu going on over the top to talk about Charlie Kirk over and over again? It's because he is desperate to own this as well and to martyrize Charlie Kirk as a supporter of Israel to use the same tactics that the Trump administration is trying to do to manufacture consent for a far right agenda, to get ahead of the story and make it something that's convenient for them because they do not care about free speech. Let's be abundantly clear. This is multiple direct attacks on the First Amendment already throughout this administration, including the detention of folks like Mahmoud Khalil and others for their speech. Romayya Osterk as well, and more. When the right talks about free speech, it's because they want to say the R word. They want to use anti translers, they want to say racial slurs on the Internet. They want deregulation and they want to be replatformed whether they're a Nazi or a groiper or whatever freak that they flavor of freak that they are on that side of things. They want to be able to go on their social media platforms and say what they want to say. But everybody else, you make a light joke about Charlie Kirk, we're canceling your show. The thing about Republicans, why they were so upset about cancel culture is because they were fucking jealous. They were jealous and now they're trying to use state power to do it. And that's fascism.
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Matt Binder
They are using.
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Emma Vigeland
They are. They are. I'm sorry. Yeah, but like, I mean, and corporate America, this is how liberalism is failing and collapsing before our very eyes because you can't have free markets and free rights in this way because corporations are siding with their bottom line here. They want these corporate mergers, they want to consolidate. They will throw all of our rights under the bus to do so. And that's how Trump is currying favor with them as he crashes the economy because of tariffs or whatever. I'll give you whatever you want. Just go along with my agenda. And that is the definition of what fascism ends up being. This merging of state and corporate power. It's happening right before our very eyes. And the militarism of nationalism, of fascism, the nationalism there, we're witnessing and living through it right now. Oh, and just as an aside, Trump wants to declare antifa. Antifascist is what that stands for, as a domestic terrorist organization. In case you weren't getting the picture.
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Matt Binder
Mahmoud Khalil also voted to be deported to Algeria or what are they saying?
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Emma Vigeland
Or Syria.
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Matt Binder
Yeah, this started before Trump was in office this time. And Guy Blagojevism. Goodchicago. Tweeter on Twitter said Zionism was the hardened tungsten tip of the authoritarian projectile that was fired into the American institutions. It was liberal, piercing and I'm sorry, like all this stuff is, is part of it. We've been. We have had a McCarthy. We've been in a period just as bad. I mean, yeah, I mean, in certain ways. Like, like what's going on right now, the deportation machine, the alien Sedition act being ruled out. And people were like questioning whether Hannah Einbinder should have used her opportunity to say something about ICE or Gaza at the speeches. Absolutely. Everyone needs to. This is an absolute emergency. It's going to look fucking weird to people in history. All the people that are acting normal about all this stuff.
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Emma Vigeland
Yep, that's exactly right. In a moment we are going to be speaking to Austin Coker. But first, first a word from some of our sponsors. When the Majority Report started, Sam talks about this all the time. People were asking for merch, but we kind of do things slowly here. It's tough to get that all set up. But we have our show. We've got to record, we've got to read a bunch before the show. It's overwhelming and every day it seemed like though according to Sam, back in the day people were asking about merch and it and they found a solution basically. And that solution was Shopify. Finding the right tool not only helps you out, it simplifies everything and it can be such a game changer for millions of businesses. That tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, from household names like Magic Spoon to brands that are just getting started. Also the Majority Report show or shop? Shopify has hundreds of ready to use templates to help you build an online store to match your brand. Whether that's beautiful, edgy or minimalist, Shopify is packed with AI tools that help you put together product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. And best yet, Shopify helps you with managing inventory, international shipping, processing returns and beyond. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Shopify made it extremely easy for the Majority Report to set up our merch store and I'm like the audience can attest it works well. Turn your big business idea into kaching. With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com Majority go to shopify.com/majority shopify.com Majority link below in the YouTube and episode descriptions. Again, that's shopify.com Majority and lastly, if you like deep, thoughtful, progressive analysis, which of course the Majority Report listeners do, you will love the print or digital edition of Current Affairs Magazine. Current affairs combines intelligent commentary, biting political satire and gorgeous artwork to produce one of the country's most elegant and informative magazines. And it's all ad free. Current affairs is a fantastic complement to the Majority Report's work, delivering hard hitting, totally independent and entertaining coverage of the most important political, social and economic issues of our time. I love Current affairs magazine. Nathan Robinson is one of the goats. He's been doing this for a while like the Majority Report and is, you know, one of the more trusted writers on the left. Great writer. He also has a show Current affairs does YouTube channel people should check out as well. But beyond Nathan, they have all these other great writers there. I keep citing that piece on the Gaza death toll that I've been sending around passive aggressively to family members as I like to do. And it's, it's just great work.
- [26:41]
Matt Binder
If you are looking to get more plugged in on the news and seeing different institutions collapse right before your eyes this Current affairs actually. And you can sample Current affairs. They have their issues from last year, all of them.
- [26:55]
Emma Vigeland
Wow.
- [26:56]
Matt Binder
You can just go and download the PDFs, the newer ones you got to subscribe for but you can sample some of their stuff. Great graphic design but you know, really good work and dense articles, really relevant to the time. So I would recommend folks you can sample it and subscribe.
- [27:14]
Emma Vigeland
Use code MAJORITYREPORT for 30% off for a year on any subscription of your choice. Go to currentaffairs.org subscribe and enter the code majorityreport one word at checkout. Again, currentaffairs.org subscribe code majorityreport at checkout. The offer expires October 31st. Quick break and when we come back, we'll be joined by Austin Coker.
- [27:46]
Sam Cedar
SAM J.
- [28:51]
Emma Vigeland
We are back and we are joined once again by Austin Coker, political and legal geographer studying immigration enforcement, assistant research professor at Syracuse University. And you can follow him on his a great substack that helps track deportations and ICE and their actions. Austin, welcome back to the show.
- [29:10]
Austin Coker
Happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Emma.
- [29:12]
Emma Vigeland
Of course. So you are doing work, great work documenting, helping tally these deportations, getting data together. It's extremely difficult to find comprehensive data on this. But you just announced an immigration enforcement dashboard that uses the deportation data projects data to create kind of visual evidence, visualizations of the deportation efforts and the numbers that we're looking at here. Just speak a little bit about that project and why you undertook it and what some of the challenges.
- [29:51]
Dan O'Sullivan
Were.
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Austin Coker
Sure. So despite this administration's claims that it's going to be the most transparent administration in history, the Trump administration has choked off crucial data sources about how much immigration enforcement activity and deportations are happening. That's basically put a bunch of pressure on civil society and researchers like myself to find more ways to get the data and make it more public so that everybody has access to the same objective data and not just talking points and spin coming out of the administration. So what we've done and launched today was we took data from this amazing group from Berkeley University, the Deportation Data Project. They use public records Requests and litigation to get the government to release detailed data about all of these immigration enforcement efforts. And it's been really a trove of data. Reporters have used it, researchers have used it. It's an incredible resource, but they're huge data sets. And so it takes technical expertise and programming ability to really get in there and understand it. And I'm just a huge believer, and I want everyone to have access to today that I don't want to have technology or expertise. Barriers get in the way. I believe in the democratization of knowledge, as I know the majority of what does, and it's part of why you exist. What we did is we took that data, we simplified it a little bit, and built some interactive dashboards so that anybody can go to enforcementdashboard.com and look at that detailed data. Right now, we just have the ICE arrest data up. We're working on some of the other data sets, but this is the data set that I've been getting the most questions about. So it's public today, and we hope people will use it and use it to understand both the scale of what's happening right now in our country and also start to think about ways to use this data to inform how they might push back.
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Emma Vigeland
So what is the data showing here? What would you say over the past few months has been the theme, and.
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Dan O'Sullivan
What.
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Emma Vigeland
Can you, like, not include in your research? What is being still hidden from researchers in terms of numbers?
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Austin Coker
Yeah, it's a great question, because more data is being hidden than ever, so absolutely worth talking about. The overall finding is that there's been a meteoric rise in ICE arrests across the country. Certainly we've seen a lot of reporting on what's going on in Southern California, where ICE has been essentially targeting taco trucks and day laborers, and other places where immigrants live and work normally in relative peace. But actually, Texas and Florida, we've seen the most arrests in Texas and Florida, as well as targeted arrests in other places across the country, which you can see in the dashboard. We really haven't seen the number of monthly arrests like this. It was well over 30,000 arrests in June alone, up from, you know, a fraction of that a year or years past. Certainly there were a lot of arrests during the Obama administration as well, but we think this is probably at a historic high. The other thing that the data shows, and now, for the first time, people can go and see for themselves, is that that spike in arrests in May and June was driven entirely by the arrests of people with no criminal charges or convictions, which runs Counter to the message that the administration has been putting out there. Now, this data only relates to arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It doesn't include arrests from the Marshals Service. It doesn't include arrests by sheriff's offices and police departments who have signed on to 287, which effectively gives them immigration enforcement authority. It doesn't include those arrests, unfortunately. So there still are a lot of other arrests out there. There's other ways for people to get put into the deportation system. But this is a pretty good indicator of what ICE specifically is doing. And it also helps us to understand, okay, with this new influx of $150 billion to the Department of Homeland Security, what is that now going to look like? I mean, this is now a budget larger than most militaries in the world. And we can start to, as we will. We will track as closely as we can how that funding gets used and what it will look like in terms of arrests across America.
- [34:20]
Emma Vigeland
So let's pull up this dashboard now. We just, again, people can go to enforcementdashboard.com to see. But you have tracked 291,668 total arrests starting in September 2023 onward. But there's also. You show this by state, monthly arrest. This is also helpful because you can see how much is escalating under the Donald Trump administration. And keep going down there. There, that's. That's monthly arrests. I mean, what. It hit its peak in around June or May, Austin.
- [35:03]
Austin Coker
Yeah, that's right, in June. It went down a little bit in July, mostly. That isn't because of the good graces of ice, you know.
- [35:12]
Emma Vigeland
Right.
- [35:13]
Austin Coker
They're causing. It's actually from lawsuits. It's judges restricting what judges have said is unconstitutional, unlawful approaches to enforcement. That has been overruled. So we expect that arrest will go back up. But that's part of the dip, is because of lawsuits.
- [35:30]
Emma Vigeland
And you see how in terms of state arrests, they're targeting. Clearly, if we could just put up the graph of the map of the US down there, you can see that they're targeting the most populous states. I guess it would be interesting to see, too, you know, proportionally, but population wise. But there it is. California. I mean, Texas. Texas is deportation central right now.
- [35:58]
Austin Coker
Yes, that's right. And there's a lot happening in Texas, certainly a lot happening in Florida as well. So. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there is a sense in which the administration is selectively targeting what it views as Democratic centers. So Chicago, Los Angeles, other places. But in reality, when we look at the Full scope of the data. ICE really has the most cooperation in places like Texas and Florida. So in some ways that's naturally where they're going to be able to facilitate the most arrests.
- [36:32]
Emma Vigeland
So what does that cooperation look like versus, say, Pritzker or Hochul or even Newsom? Their responses, and how have they been able to throw some sand in the gears if not? Obviously it's difficult because they are federal law enforcement.
- [36:53]
Austin Coker
Sure. I mean, it's a complex legal landscape when it comes to what you can and can't do in terms of restricting immigration enforcement. And conservative legal activists have been more proactive than ever in trying to challenge some of those state and local laws under grounds of unconstitutionality, which is interesting. But states like Texas and Florida, ICE has tremendous leverage because there's so many counties and police departments who have signed on to what I know that you are aware of the 287 agreements.
- [37:27]
Emma Vigeland
Well, we had you on to talk about that, but maybe if folks missed that part of the interview, you wouldn't mind expanding.
- [37:32]
Austin Coker
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's always worth reiterating because it's such a technical sounding term. So 287 agreement is a policy where local law enforcement agencies can sign an agreement with the federal government, with ice, basically, and get the authority to do certain kinds of immigration enforcement. Basically, it means that your local cop, your local sheriff, the school safety officer at your high school could actually have the authority to do immigration enforcement enforcement. It's not just ICE officers anymore. Now, I've studied this particular program for my entire career. It's part of why I got into this work back in 2009, 2010, and we've never had more than 140, 150, 287 agreements in the country. We now have today, middle of September, a thousand. We actually have a little bit more than 1,287 agreements across the country. Massive meteoric rise in these 287 agreements. And now half of them, 500 of these, are the most aggressive type, which is called a task force model. Basically, it means that it's not just in the jails where people are booked into jails. Cops can actually do this kind of enforcement on the street. So there's 500 of those. This was a task force that was actually so controversial that there was an investigation into Maricopa county sheriff several years ago. Joe Arpaio, who was notorious. Sheriff Joe. Yeah. He's the one that basically abused the program so badly they terminated it. Well, this administration has brought it back with a vengeance.
- [39:10]
Emma Vigeland
It is in many ways very controversial because your local police department should be, and we know that it is not the case, but in an ideal world, a source of trust and community service. So if you are an undocumented person, you are very unlikely to, to seek out police help. And that's a real problem for a community because you are in fear that they will just deport you.
- [39:37]
Austin Coker
Yeah, absolutely. And I saw this talking to police officers in North Carolina and Georgia, Ohio, over the years. There's police officers who, they do see themselves as the front line of providing protection and service and community relations. I talked to a female officer in Raleigh, North Carolina several years ago who, you know, her whole job was working with victims of domestic violence. And she said, you know, it's really hard. She was at the time in a 287 county. She said, you know, it's hard to get people to work with me and talk with me so that we can take appropriate action for these women when they're terrified that them or even their partners are going to be arrested, detained and deported. You know, these are working class people who can't afford to have, you know, their whole income taken away just because of someone's civil violation from 20 years ago.
- [40:31]
Emma Vigeland
You also have been tracking ICE detainment and treatment of pregnant women, including this horrible case that you wrote about about a woman named Iris Diana Montereso Lemus. I'm sorry, I'm not a good Spanish speaker, but she miscarried in ICE custody. And she's not the only one, if you don't mind just telling her story and speaking a little bit about this complete epidemic. Pregnant woman being women being mistreated, malnourished, given no medical care and ICE detention.
- [41:06]
Austin Coker
Yes. You know, it's a consequence of this rapid escalation in immigrant detention combined with the total evisceration of oversight and accountability. What it means is that, you know, ICE is arresting more people, arresting more people indiscriminately. And that just means that there's more women who are pregnant, a postpartum or lactating who are in ICE custody. And these are women who are obviously extremely vulnerable as well as if they're pregnant, you know, their baby could also be vulnerable. So Iris is just one example of many, several cases already this year of pregnant women who have been arrested. They're not supposed to be kept in detention. There's policies in place that require the agency to consider releasing these women. There's also requirements in case in place that ICE report to Congress on how many pregnant women they're detaining, they've refused to follow that. They've stopped releasing those reports. And so in partnership with the Women's Refugee Commission and Zane Lakhani there, who runs that program, there's a real need to understand, with the lack of data from the federal government, there's a real need to say, hey, look, if you're an attorney, if you're a medical professional, if you're an advocate, if you're a clergy member and you are aware of someone, if a woman or someone is pregnant, postpartum or lactating, that's the legal, the three sort of legal parts of that, please let us know, please go to detentionpregnancytracker.com and submit a confidential report so we can understand how many people are affected and decide hopefully what the next best actions are to take. But it just shows you when we talk about detention numbers being at historic highs, arrests being at historic highs. And I'm a numbers person, but I'm also well aware that the numbers in some cases sort of lead us to be sort of ethically blind in some ways. Well, it's 60,000, it's 70,000. You kind of lose track of the humanity. But within those numbers, there's every single one of those people, they're a person with a story. And there's a lot of vulnerable groups. And pregnant women are definitely at the top of that.
- [43:14]
Emma Vigeland
And Iris is one of those stories, obviously. I mean, her, her father, the baby's father, was forced to relocate to Guatemala, and they didn't even basically tell him about her whereabouts, and they just sent her there and she miscarried. And he found out afterwards he was supposed to have a boy.
- [43:39]
Austin Coker
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. He didn't even find out until, you know, he thought he was going to have a son. And by the time he got that information, his son, his partner, had miscarried and his son had passed away in detention. And for Iris, like so many others Iris story, it's not because they didn't know she was pregnant. They knew she was pregnant. And she complained to the guards, she complained to the medical staff and said, look, this isn't right. And this is a mother who has other children. She knows what her body is telling her. And it's a good example of how we don't listen to women when they raise concerns about their bodies and about.
- [44:14]
Emma Vigeland
Their pregnancies, especially if they're not white women.
- [44:17]
Austin Coker
Especially if they're not. Exactly. And that's. And that's Iris's story. And so sadly, she. Yeah, she miscarried. It's. You know, I'm not a medical professional, so I. You know, I don't know this for sure, but, you know, I'd like to think that with proper medical care, that miscarry, you know, that miscarriage could have been prevented and that family could have been a family. And as you say, you know, as if that's not tragic enough, Iris was deported and her husband, a US Citizen, has left the country. And I can tell you, because I'm in conversation with a lot of spouses of immigrants these days because I've been doing some work with American Families United. Ashley Acevedo, who runs that organization, they work with the spouses of immigrants and try to help provide support for them. And working with them has meant. I've heard so many more stories. In some ways, I had no idea just how big of a problem this is, just how many US Citizens are being harmed right now and are saying, look, either our family is going to be separated or me and. Or my children now we have to relocate to another country so that we can have a family. So, you know, one thing that I've really learned, Emma, is that, you know, in so many of these cases of deportation, we're not just deporting immigrants, we are deporting US Citizens as well. Not because we're putting US Citizens on planes all the time, although we have probably done that. We're also forcing US Citizens to make a decision about where to live in an unfair way because there's no other path to citizenship. And a lot of people out there, I know that you've probably heard this as well as I have, a lot of people think if you marry a US Citizen, you automatically get citizenship, and that's just not the case.
- [46:02]
Emma Vigeland
I mean, they're explicitly, you know, targeting people on that basis. Although I would like Donald Trump to remember that he still has a wife who came from a different country and married a U.S. citizen. But I don't think they talk that much. Just gotta make a little bit of a joke because of how upsetting this all is. You wrote you are also doing great work kind of tracking spikes in detention in terms of population at a variety of these different camps, prison camps across the country, including this Fort Bliss ICE detention facility that is particularly frightening. Can you speak a little bit about what's happening at Fort Bliss?
- [46:58]
Austin Coker
Yeah, certainly. So Fort Bliss is a military base. It was one of the sites of Japanese internment, by the way. Just an important historic note back in the 40s. And many people would say it's become that again. So Fort Bliss, it's one of the first cases of a military base being used to house immigrant detainees. I think many of us have suspected that the administration would go this route for a while, and now they have. One of the things about hidden data, by the way, Emma, is that the administration. Well, ICE does put out detention data, but they don't actually tell you the total population in individual facilities. My colleague Adam Sawyer came up with a really clever way of figuring out actually what that data looks like using the weird calculations that ICE provides the public. We have that other project at detentionreports.com that allows us to say, okay, really, what are the populations like at these facilities? Fort Bliss has just exploded to obviously not having anyone, to having well over 1100 now, I believe, and we're probably going to see that continue to grow. One thing I would just say, I know it feels like I'm naming a lot of websites, Emma, that we have for these different projects, but what I would say is that we're at a place right now. It's September 2025. We're, you know, nine months into the Trump administration. You know, what I've really tried to do and what I really try to work with other partners on is figure out we can't just always be reactive. Right. We have to be creative. We have to find ways to expose what's going on. We have to find new data or we have to find creative uses of data. And that's really what we're trying to do with all these projects, is not create projects for project's sake, but try to find ways to narrate what's going on to the public and make things more legible to people. So that's what we tried to do, and Fort Bliss is absolutely an example of that. I think, you know, with the funding coming down the line, we'll need to continue to track what's going on in these facilities so that we know what's going on.
- [49:01]
Emma Vigeland
Can you speak about what you anticipate with this massive increase in funding for immigration enforcement? It is going to be. They're going to get $45 billion for immigrant detention alone. I think that the big ugly bill had it at, what, 10 times? Did it increase by tenfold the ICE budget?
- [49:25]
Austin Coker
Yes.
- [49:26]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah. Okay. So insanity. I mean, it's dwarfing the FBI, for example, just to give people a sense, like, what is your prediction about what that increase in funding is gonna mean on the ground?
- [49:43]
Dan O'Sullivan
Yeah.
- [49:43]
Austin Coker
So one of the major logistical challenges for the Trump administration achieving this mass deportation project, and you know, I've written about this before, is it's not that they it's not a lack of desire for, you know, detaining and deporting people. It's all of these logistical barriers. They don't have enough bed space to meet what they want to do. They don't have. They don't feel like they have enough officers and enough people to do everything. This budget basically gives them everything they want. And so with that amount of funding, they won't necessarily, probably, they won't necessarily build new facilities from scratch because that takes too much time permitting, zoning, all of that contracts, all of that stuff. Instead, what they'll do is they'll take that money to reappropriate existing facilities across the country, whether it's National Guard centers, that they can build tent facilities very quickly. It might be prisons. We've actually had a decline in our national prison population. So there are some facilities that have available beds. So they may well start putting people into prisons designed for people with criminal rather than civil convictions and probably finding creative new agreements with county sheriffs across the country. In the past, it's not just this administration. They've turned things like old Kmarts into, you know, into temporary, temporary facilities for holding immigrants. They could do that as well. And, you know, we're probably going to see places like Texas, Louisiana, Florida, you know, places where the governors and the politics there are favorable. We're probably going to see even more of these facilities.
- [51:26]
Emma Vigeland
And I would imagine lots of private contracts, too.
- [51:29]
Austin Coker
Lots of private contracts, very lucrative private contracts that will go to folks, organizations, companies that people like Tom Homan have served on the boards of and been advisors to and been paid by. So it's yeah, I think there's a lot of stories still yet to be written about the kind of racket that this represents.
- [51:50]
Emma Vigeland
Austin Coker, political legal geographer studying immigration enforcement, assistant research professor at Syracuse University. You can follow the substack. Also check out the Deportation Data Project and all of the other tools that Austin spoke about throughout our conversation. Thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.
- [52:12]
Austin Coker
Thanks for having me, Anna.
- [52:13]
Emma Vigeland
Of course. And we'll put a link to that down below, wherever people are listening to or watching this quick break. And when we come back, we'll be talking to Dan o'. Sullivan. And back we are back. And we are joined now by Dan o', Sullivan, co host of the Outfit, a podcast about how organized crime explains America. Dan, thanks so much for coming on the show today.
- [53:45]
Dan O'Sullivan
Thank you so much for having me. Emma, love the show.
- [53:48]
Emma Vigeland
Appreciate it. Thank you. I am fascinated right now. I've been thinking a little bit about the FBI, the CIA, somewhat to the Mafia in history, to mobsters, their roles in trying to pull them into assassination plots against Castro, and also just generally the McCarthy era, given what we are living through right now, how in your kind of study of some of these mobsters, do you see some shadings of history repeating itself in the current moment, if at all?
- [54:27]
Dan O'Sullivan
I mean, it's a great question and we can really, it's interesting how many aspects of mob history we can sort of pick and choose from to talk about the current moment with Donald Trump. I mean, we have Trump the builder and his father, who are literally, you know, were built up with the Mafia, construction rackets, partnered with them in New York going back to the early 50s. Then we have the modern day sort of gangsterism with Trump. The crypto deals, you know, the shady money flowing in from overseas into places like Panama and Germany, where Trump is part of this really modern kind of global criminal financial market. But you hit upon a quite irrelevant one now in terms of. Well, for a long time, J. Edgar Hoover said there was no Mafia in America. Right. And instead was focusing his energies on suspected communists. And I think we're seeing some similar things happen where just the most venal types of corruption and crime are obviously completely ignored in favor of going after what some college student said about Gaza.
- [55:44]
Austin Coker
Or.
- [55:47]
Dan O'Sullivan
Obviously what comedians are saying on television. Right. And interestingly, even though there's definitely precedent for that and how the FBI and authorities approach things, I also see a lot of reminiscent behavior of extortion of protection, obviously, on those tactics.
- [56:08]
Emma Vigeland
Roy Cohn was his mentor. Like, if we're Talking about the McCarthy era, Roy Cohn is. And there's a. There was a piece in Rolling Stone that I covered yesterday about Stephen Miller and how much of a role he plays in the administration. And he's been referred to as Trump's Roy Cohn. I think Trump, in the article, I may be misremembering, may have said he's my Roy Cohn or something like that, or people around him. I'm paraphrasing either way, the parallels are clear. And Cohn's connections as a Mafia lawyer are fascinating when you tease this out. And obviously a virulent anti communist McCarthyite who bragged about executing the Rosenbergs.
- [56:55]
Dan O'Sullivan
Yeah. So, I mean, this is a fascinating thing. So obviously, Roy Cohn was chief counsel to the Senate subcommittee of Joseph McCarthy that was responsible for a Lot of the red scare. He was chief counsel on the the Army McCarthy hearings. But he also, in later life, as was depicted in the movie the Apprentice, was not just Donald Trump's lawyer, but lawyer to, depending on the source, either two or three of the bosses of the five families of the Mafia in New York. And this was not just a casual relationship. Roy Cohn was an emissary from the underworld to these more respectable figures, whether that's George Steinbrenner who owns the Yankees, or Donald Trump, who. Much has been made of the fact that Donald Trump built Trump Tower entirely out of concrete without a steel frame. And that may not sound interesting or significant, except for the fact that concrete at that time in New York was controlled by a fixed bid club called the Concrete Club, sort of orchestrated by the five families, particularly by Fat Tony Salerno, street boss of the Genovese family, who the journalist Wayne Barrett, his sources insisted Trump met with Salerno to work out the concrete buys for that project at Roy Cohn's townhouse. So we're talking about direct links between the Mafia and Donald Trump. And this goes back to Fred Trump, his father. I mean, journalists like Michael d' Antonio and Wayne Barrett wrote about this, that the Mafia was partnered on some of the outer borough projects that Fred Trump built in the 50s. So interestingly, the victim in that was the Federal Housing Authority, which they soaked for overcharges. So we were left holding the bag on that one.
- [58:46]
Emma Vigeland
You know, that seems so out of character for the Trumps.
- [58:50]
Dan O'Sullivan
Right?
- [58:51]
Emma Vigeland
I mean, that's amazing. I did not know that that was the case and how direct that link was. It also sheds new light, I think, on some of Trump's connections to figures like Felix Sater, to Russian, like criminal operations. And in a sense, his admiration of Vladimir Putin or kind of enjoyment of him can be explained in that way as well. Going back that far to Russian money connections, or at the very least, maybe they didn't know each other at the time, but they're swimming in the same waters, basically.
- [59:32]
Dan O'Sullivan
Well, that's right. And I think a crucial connection point there, besides, you know, many of the things you could talk about from the Mueller report and all that. But something I find really interesting is the bank that Donald Trump turned to in the 90s was Deutsche bank, which is, you know, I mean, I don't say this lightly. Maybe one of the most nefarious banks on earth.
- [59:57]
Emma Vigeland
They take anybody's money, basically. That's their reputation. And they've been caught doing illegal things on criminals behalf of.
- [60:07]
Dan O'Sullivan
There's a great book about it, I think, called Dark Towers by a former New York Times editor on Deutsche bank and how they do this. There was a great investigation on WNYC about this. And really the issue here, not that it's ever been proved conclusively, is that it sure seems like Deutsche bank, which has I believe continues to have a presence in Moscow, which is rare among Western banks, was aiding Russian gangsters and oligarchs in getting their money out of Russia, which they want to do for a variety of reasons. So while that is happening with Deutsche bank, you also have Donald Trump relying on Deutsche bank for these really mind boggling loans which he defaults on, which he should not be getting right to overpay for the Durrell golf course in Florida, you know, to finance these projects that are never going to be profitable, including with guys like Felix Sater, who's a former mob associated boiler room operator who turns snitch on them. Can we prove that it's Russian money being laundered through these projects? Not in those cases. They can though, in Panama of all places, where there's another deal, Donald Trump builds a project there. It's really doesn't build it actually. He's just licensing his name for it. It's going to be something for Ivanka to build or manage. She commits fraud. I mean it's just like definitive. She's lying about his wife or his.
- [61:43]
Emma Vigeland
Daughter.
- [61:44]
Dan O'Sullivan
It's easy to get confused on that point with her. But it is the daughter, okay? And it's going to be her little project to run. And that one you can prove that there are Brazilian and Colombian partners involved in clearly in the drug trade and in laundering drug profits involved in that. And Russian gangsters also laundering money in that project. And Reuters did a really good investigation of it. So you name it. I mean this is, you know, from cradle to grave. Donald Trump's been involved in these kinds of international gangster activities.
- [62:18]
Emma Vigeland
That brings me to this curious comment from Mike Johnson a few weeks ago at this point in regard to the Epstein files. He walked this back. But I my theory on this is what we call a limited hangout because this could, it may not be true in the Epstein case, but maybe what he said here is true in the case of what you're talking about here, Russian money laundering and Felix Sater, just a theory, but here is what Mike Johnson said a few weeks ago.
- [62:51]
Dan O'Sullivan
He's not saying that what Epstein did is a hoax. It's a terrible, unspeakable evil. He believes that himself when he first Heard the rumor he kicked him out of Mar a Lago. He was an FBI informant.
- [63:00]
Emma Vigeland
What? He tried to sneak that in there? He was an FBI informant.
- [63:05]
Matt Binder
Dan, I'm curious your reaction, but also, if you can just tell people the type of person that is typically becomes an FBI informant, like, is it because you win a patriotism contest?
- [63:14]
Emma Vigeland
It's when you were a boy Scout, you get that's the top badge that you can earn.
- [63:18]
Dan O'Sullivan
I mean, let's look at it this way. An FBI informant of this sort is the lowest person in the underworld, right? So you're the. You're kind of the bad guy to the other bad guys, you know, and it's because you got caught for something. Right? Look, I don't know if Donald Trump ever informed on anyone to the FBI. All I know is until relatively recently, he was never a convicted felon, 100%.
- [63:46]
Emma Vigeland
And you just laid out all of the illegal activities that he was participating in. It would make sense.
- [63:53]
Dan O'Sullivan
So, I mean, look, we do have a culture of impunity. I know that we never punish any rich guys, but, you know, I mean, Wayne Barrett had him on mail and wire fraud, I think, like in the 70s or 80s on this property on the west side of Manhattan. So anyone who wanted to prosecute him could have and should have years ago. I think it's probably a mix of influence and just inertia that these guys never seem to go to prison.
- [64:23]
Emma Vigeland
It is just interesting, though, I mean, because when we're talking about the Mafia and the mob, that was a very common practice of creating FBI informants, I believe. Although you're the expert here, Dan, I should maybe ask that as a question, because that would be a part of the theme here.
- [64:42]
Dan O'Sullivan
Peter Thiel is, I believe, confirmed to have been an FBI informant. So this is not. It is not implausible by any means. And I will say another thing, you know, to take an example from Boston of Whitey Bulger. You know, Whitey Bulger, the Boston mob boss, Irish mob boss, revealed to be an FBI informant for decades. I mean, why did he do that? He did that to get rid of the Cosa Nostra in Boston and Providence. He did that to eliminate his rivals who were going to eliminate him eventually. Is that really above Donald Trump? I'm speculating here, but. But, you know, I would not be shocked, you know, that he shopped other rivals.
- [65:26]
Emma Vigeland
Absolutely. So when you're looking at, like, this new kind of criminal economy in the modern age involving a lot of crypto involving shady money from overseas, what stands out to you as like a unique feature of it. And like, in keeping with the theme of Trump kind of using and absorbing Mafioso tactics, I mean, the tariffs are a number one thing that we could also, like, talk about in his presidency. He's using that like a shakedown.
- [66:01]
Dan O'Sullivan
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's so true. And the one that's been on my mind, you know, the most recently that I think is really interesting, is what he's been doing to the colleges and universities and now TV networks. Right. Which is a protection racket. And, you know, what is the logic of a protection racket? Everyone knows, all right, you pay the gangsters such and such money or we throw a brick through your window. Right. But I think it's actually more complicated than that. The best definition I've heard of a mafia is an organization that sells protection that is essentially like a state within a state and its own kind of government. And what I find so interesting about Trump, not just with the tariffs, you know, but also with the universities and stuff, he's often doing it in that way. He's not using the full power of the state. He's almost using his own personal power to do this. It's interesting, considering he's the president, that he wouldn't appeal to that rather than his own sort of loyalty and acolytes. And I find that very mob like. Right. And that what he's doing to these universities is doing essentially a protection racket, where if you pay the racket, you're not just paying the money, that's half of it. You're also conceding the idea he has the right to ask that from you. And I think that is even more valuable in a sense, because he doesn't have the right to ask that. But he does if you grant it. You know, this is so unprecedented. And because you've conceded that you're never getting out. Now, the guys who paid the deal with extortion like this is once you pay, you're never getting out. You think you can escape now? It's not happening. The guys who don't pay whatever short term costs they bear are worth it to not be in that guy's pocket.
- [67:56]
Emma Vigeland
And he's doing it with corporations in the United States, too. And he rewards them. Like in this, we open the show speaking about the TV conglomerate, the local TV conglomerate, nexstar, making this call on Jimmy Kimmel, right, as almost like a tribute to the mafia don president, a show of faith. And in turn, basically, they are rewarding them by reportedly changing obliterating like FCC anti monopoly guidelines to allow for this merger with their biggest rival. And then it would comprise a monopolistic takeover of 80% of local TV stations.
- [68:43]
Dan O'Sullivan
I mean this is, it just is so clear what's happening here, which is, you know, there is in a big premise of our podcast is there is no line between legitimate and illegitimate business. Right. And it's just this Merck. And if we look at, you know, the kind of countries that mafias thrive best in are sort of partial democracies. They're not full on autocracies, they're not very healthy clean democracies. They're ones with a mix of those characters, you know, characteristics. And so I think we're in one of those. It sure seems like, because the awarding of government contracts and of the goodies to a favored few. This is just a much larger version of that concrete club in New York I was talking about where it's just eight concrete contractors. That's who you have to buy from. Those are the only guys you can buy from. And by the way, you're going to pay an inflated cost for low quality stuff, but you have no other choice.
- [69:51]
Emma Vigeland
And I mean it also incentivize, you know, this monopoly stuff. And like taking his hands off the wheel of anti monopoly law is also too about consolidating power in the hands of people that are nice to him and suck up to him. Well, it's the only show in town.
- [70:09]
Dan O'Sullivan
Who'S getting TikTok, right? It is David Sachs, Marc Andreessen, like, I mean these are double dealing guys who are just his cronies. This is just the modern day version of, you know, Mayor Daley steering all the insurance business in the city to his son's firms. You know, this is, well, and we could talk about Don Jr. And Eric, I mean playing an important role in this too.
- [70:34]
Emma Vigeland
We didn't even get to the cryptocurrency piece of this racket.
- [70:37]
Dan O'Sullivan
Right? I mean again, I mean literally it reminds me of that, that scam from Mayor Daley or Senator Al d' Amato of New York, all business would go through his brother. Like again, this is a common tactic in corrupt mob, corrupted politicians. But now we're just doing it with whoever wants to dump money in the coffers of the Trump family, in this case I think the United Arab Emirates. There was that great story in the New York Times about 2 billion in cryptocurrency purchases going straight to these Trump companies in exchange for these AI chips. I mean that's just as clear a Pay to play as you could find.
- [71:18]
Emma Vigeland
You know, how do you view the, like kind of new. The tech Mafia. So types and comparing that to, you know, the golden age of the Mafia when they were at their heights.
- [71:34]
Dan O'Sullivan
A lot less cool. No.
- [71:37]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah. They're not going to be making, you know, movies or shows like the Sopranos way less fashionable. Yeah. Although they are making the Social Network too. And I saw Ike Barinholtz is, I believe, playing Elon Musk. I think that was him, maybe not. And he. It's going to work. I think he kind of looks and sounds like him, but.
- [71:56]
Dan O'Sullivan
No, that's. That's great casting. Listen, they. In all seriousness, at least the Mafia would tip a lot when they go out. I don't think these guys are glad handing everyone with a. With a 50 when they walk around. You know, I think in all seriousness, it, you know, look, I despise the Mafia. I do think with organized crime back in those days, there was an expectation at least that if you're in that life, there's a strong probability you're going to be killed or go to prison. And that did color a lot of their behavior, like, in how they had to live. What's really scary about these guys to me is I think that they think that there will never be any repercussions for anything they do and that they're close to getting it to a place where they're running everything, you know, where there is this kind of tech autocracy that maybe isn't so outlandish to imagine happening, you know, and that's really scary. But, you know, but we can also take heart from, you know, Italy of a few decades ago was really, really, really, you know, racked by violence. And the Cosa Nostra seemed just an implacable fact of life. And it was dismantled in large part. Now there are other problems in Italy still, other mafias that are powerful in Italy still. But the Cosa Nostra is a shell of itself in Sicily. And as one of the main prosecutors on that said, you know, the Mafia has a beginning, it has a middle, it can have an end. So I try to turn to that when I feel really despairing about underscores.
- [73:35]
Emma Vigeland
Why we need to prosecute. I mean, we need to prosecute these Trump people. We need to, I mean, once, God help us if we get power back. This is a result of impunity. And it's impunity, in my view, that started with the Iraq war, with letting those guys off the hook, with letting Wall street off the hook. I Mean, when you talk about there being not as much of a distinction as people would like to think between organized crime and just like regular capitalism, that's a prime example of it for me. It incentivizes criminal behavior from the top down.
- [74:11]
Dan O'Sullivan
I think it's why things like prosecuting insider trading or these relatively minor crimes are so important because they are kind of speed bumps on worse behavior. And the fact that Donald Trump never had any of those is an outrage and is directly linked to what we have now. I mean, again, Al Capone, famously, they got him on tax evasion charges, Right. It turned out you had to pay taxes on illegally earned income, which is kind of funny, you know. And that actually brings us to another important point, I think, which is taxation is a really important part of this, of solving this dilemma, that these guys need to pay a lot more in taxes for a lot of democratic reasons, not even criminal ones, you know.
- [75:01]
Emma Vigeland
Exactly. And I guess could you shed light on, like, the dynamic of the organized crime, you know, kind of these informal economies that are created and they were, you know, the Irish Mafia too. I mean, there was also Jewish mafias, like newer immigrant groups that came into the United States more at the start of the 20th century, were subjected to, you know, racist immigration laws as well and were discriminated against. And then they. So you create these informal economies almost like, I mean, in many ways it's hard not to view, like Israel, a little bit as an outgrowth of a little bit of a, you know, a group that got empowered in many ways by the military industrial complex here in the United States. And we built that up. But you also have the Italian mob and the Irish mob that like, that is the natural kind of, it seems like outgrowth of gatekeeping capital and the economy for racist ends. That always is going to be the case. And you could see that in gang activity or whatever in the United States with other groups that are discriminated against.
- [76:27]
Dan O'Sullivan
Yeah, I mean, look, I essentially view, you know, the signers of the framers of the Constitution as, you know, the first mob summit. Really. I mean, this is all the big shots from each area of the country coming together. Like in the Godfather where they, you know, they're all assembled there. Later, immigrant groups will scramble to get the best things that are available to them. Right. Because they're locked out of that Boston Brahmin high level control of things. Right. So the Irish, you know, obviously, the fam. I mean, I'm o'. Sullivan. This is where I come from. And my, my grandparents came relatively late in the 1950s, but a century before they're coming to escape the famine. And what do they get? They get the urban political machines. They get basically the next best thing. Right. They get the civil service of cities. And that brings immense amounts of power. And they are essentially gangsters. Right. Jews increase, increasingly emigrate to the US after the assassination of the czar in like 1880 or 81. And they get some of the next best things. Obviously, anti Semitism, extremely strong. And then Italians, by the time they come in more towards the turn of the century, what's, you know, there's not as much left for Jews and Italians. And, you know, you have cases of extortion within the Italian community that's called the Black hand. Commonly, you know, you have this criminality that is hard to penetrate, and it eventually metastasizes into this marriage of the Cosa Nostra and some of the other mafias from Italy and American business. Right. I mean, this is explicitly what Lucky Luciano and what his mentors modeled themselves on. Guys like Andrew Carnegie and, and JP Morgan, you know, running it like a business. And that's how they built it.
- [78:24]
Emma Vigeland
I mean, bring up Lucky Luciano. We have an im. Matty Moron says the Meyer Lansky organized criminal syndicate was also instrumental in the early wars of Zionist conquest during the founding of Israel, which I had kind of forgotten about.
- [78:37]
Dan O'Sullivan
Yeah, that's an interesting thing too. Yeah. Mickey Cohen, the mob boss in Los Angeles, also, you know, sent money to the Yeshua in Israel. So that, you know, I mean, you know, Israel today is interesting. A lot of. Definitely. I mean, that's an understatement of the year. But, you know, a lot of Russian language criminals with partial Jewish heritage have used the right of return to get an Israeli passport, sometimes live there. And so, you know, it's a great, you know, great way to move through these international circuits, you know, with. With some latitude.
- [79:20]
Emma Vigeland
Well, really fascinating stuff. Dan, thank you so much for coming on the show. And I can't wait to check out more of your show, the Outfit podcast about organized crime and how it explains America even more after our interview. I hope everybody checks it out and we will put a link to it down below wherever people are listening to or watching this. Dan, thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.
- [79:43]
Dan O'Sullivan
Oh, thank you so much for having me. It was great fun.
- [79:45]
Matt Binder
And it's on YouTube too, right, Dan?
- [79:47]
Dan O'Sullivan
It is on YouTube as well. And anywhere. Anywhere podcasts are found, in fact.
- [79:51]
Emma Vigeland
Very nice. All right, thanks, Dan.
- [79:54]
Dan O'Sullivan
Thanks, guys.
- [79:56]
Emma Vigeland
With that, we are going to wrap up the free part of the show and head into the fun part of the show. Although that was a pretty fun interview, at least by my estimation.
- [80:06]
Matt Binder
Really, it's fun to learn about our leaders.
- [80:08]
Emma Vigeland
It is. As a reminder, this show relies on your support, so if you can please go to jointhemajorityreport.com you can become a member and then you can im the show and maybe your ims will be read, including this funny one from JR in Philly. I just think Mike Johnson was confused by Trump's female body inspector T shirt when he said he might have been an FBI informant. I mean, he was wearing the tee. Do we have Brandon? But while we're pulling it up, Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning?
- [80:43]
Matt Binder
Yeah, Left Reckoning. We had a giant show talk with Brian Mir about Bolsonaro getting put into prison. We had three guests and now I always blank in the moment to plug it. But go check it out. A huge, huge show. Oh, Tom Nishi, John Tucker, professor who is Venezuela.
- [81:02]
Dan O'Sullivan
Oh, yes.
- [81:02]
Matt Binder
And actually I do really need to plug this on YouTube. Our most recent video on Left Reckon, which is by the way, very close to 50,000 subscribers on YouTube. Our most recent video is. Thank you, Brandon. With, with Professor Tom Alter. And this is a really on, on sort of theme today, but people should go check this out, especially if you're in Texas. Professor fired for socialism. Talked about Tom Alter here who was speaking on a socialism conference on Zoom and some nutcase Carlin Barsenko who is like a Ruben guest but like especially lunatic one who said like Hitler went to heaven, real psycho, clipped part of his speech and got him fired even though he's a tenured professor. Got him fired for basically saying the Democrats are capitalist party. Absolutely ridiculous. Had nothing to do with Charlie Kirk, by the way. It's just, you know, the McCarthyite period we're in right now. I mean we need to stop talking about Joseph McCarthy. This is the Stephen Miller Trump bite red scare as opposed to, you know, the, even the McCarthy one wasn't the first red scare in this country, but we're in it again, folks.
- [82:16]
Emma Vigeland
Well, check that out. We have Binder with us. But first, Brandon, what's happening on the discourse?
- [82:21]
Brandon
Well, we've been going strong basically every morning, Emma, and so, so yeah, I'm, I'm just honored to have such a lovely audience that chooses to spend their am or if they are in other parts of the world, perhaps PM with me. And so yeah, yet this morning we took a look at Cash's performance in front of Congress you know, much I love alliteration. I think he did a great job. I think he's very convincing. And frankly, if I ever needed someone to lie that say about my inclusion in some sort of international criminal organization, I would choose Cash Patel because I.
- [83:00]
Emma Vigeland
You like that Brett Kavanaugh frantic, angry delivery, hair trigger temper thing? That's, that's, that's what you want?
- [83:07]
Brandon
Yeah, I like the. I like the evasive way in which he asked. He answered questions by like speaking around the answer in very obvious ways, refusing to say certain words. Sort of hunched over the desk, like with the Green Goblin. Like, I like that.
- [83:24]
Matt Binder
Yeah, I would get Tim Robinson first, but then I would go Cash Patel.
- [83:27]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah, yeah, fair enough. All right. Check out the discourse, everybody. Hello, Matt Bender. What's happening on your end? Hello.
- [83:37]
Matt Bender
Check out Leftist mafia tonight@YouTube.com mattbinder and we'll be talking about a lot of things, I'm sure.
- [83:45]
Austin Coker
So there you go.
- [83:47]
Emma Vigeland
I'm sure. And your newsletter. I.
- [83:50]
Matt Bender
The other reminder, disruptionist.com I'm gonna be.
- [83:52]
Emma Vigeland
Writing in there more.
- [83:53]
Matt Bender
I just been. It's been, it's been busy. It's been.
- [83:55]
Emma Vigeland
Yes, you are father of three, so everybody's got to give Matt Bender a lot of grace.
- [84:01]
Matt Bender
I didn't get to do a show last night like I usually do because I took my kids to see NYCFC play at Yankee Stadium. So, yeah, it was a great game, by the way. So I have no idea what's going on with Jimmy Kimmel because I was at the game when that all happened.
- [84:17]
Emma Vigeland
You go to. Have you seen Zoron's attempt to try to get FIFA to refuse to use dynamic ticket pricing and set aside some tickets for locals because they're not doing that, even though they've done that everywhere else in the country.
- [84:34]
Matt Bender
I did. And I think it's. I think it's fantastic. I think, I think people who have poo pooed the idea don't understand how much really for any big event, not just the World cup, but especially for the world, something like the World cup, how local communities are impacted by this. So the least they should get is the ability to attend the event that's impacting their life and their neighborhood and their community so that they could partake in what it's bringing to their hometown.
- [85:01]
Emma Vigeland
It's insane. I mean, the way ticket prices and Ticketmaster. I wish we had Lina Khan to keep going after them. The way it's gotten out of control, like the greed is just so insane. And it's because, like these events have become luxury items for wealthy people to pretend like they have some sort of culture and personality. I mean, that's what concerts are now. That's what sports are now.
- [85:26]
Matt Binder
And it's the inequality. This is the broad economy. Like, the spending is all upper middle class and above rich people. Everyone else is fucked right now. And that's so all the economy is going to reflect that, and it's going to appeal for the people who actually have money to spend.
- [85:45]
Emma Vigeland
Right.
- [85:45]
Matt Bender
Yeah. I mean, you used to be able to get good ticket, good seats to a WWE show for, like, 100 bucks. Even like. Like front row for 100 bucks, which means even higher up is super cheap. And then UFC's ownership formed TKO with WWE and bought it from the McMahon family. And then just this past week, the TKO leadership was saying, and I can't believe they said something that made Vince McMahon of People sound good. And that was. They on the record said, yeah, we're raising our ticket prices. So, like. Like. Like front row seats would now be, like, thousands of dollars, and like, the. The noise bleeds would be hundreds of dollars. And that's because we can make that much. Vince McMahon was leaving money on the table because he was too concerned at pricing it for families. They made Vince McMahon sound good. If you're making Vince McMahon sound good, you are. You are beyond.
- [86:39]
Emma Vigeland
Yep. Beyond evil. All right, well, we'll talk about these kinds of topics and more in the fun half. See you on the other. See you in the fun half.
- [86:53]
Sam Cedar
Okay, Emma, please.
- [86:55]
Emma Vigeland
Well, I just. I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report. Wait, whoa.
- [87:00]
Brandon
Look, Sam is unpopular.
- [87:02]
Sam Cedar
I do deserve a vacation location at Disney World, so. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show.
- [87:07]
Emma Vigeland
It is Thursday.
- [87:11]
Dan O'Sullivan
Yes, please.
- [87:12]
Sam Cedar
No, no, no.
- [87:13]
Dan O'Sullivan
I'm gonna. I'm gonna.
- [87:13]
Sam Cedar
I'm gonna pause you right there.
- [87:14]
Emma Vigeland
Wait, what?
- [87:15]
Sam Cedar
You can't encourage Emma to live like this, and I'll tell you why. Who was offered a tour? Sushi and poker with the boys. Tour sushi and poker. Boys. Who was offered a tour? Yeah, sushi and poker with the boys.
- [87:30]
Emma Vigeland
What?
- [87:30]
Sam Cedar
Twerk sushi and poker.
- [87:33]
Emma Vigeland
Tim's upset.
- [87:34]
Sam Cedar
Twerk, sushi and poker with the boys was offered with. Twerk, sushi and. That's what we call biz. Twerk, sushi, and poker with three boys.
- [87:44]
Emma Vigeland
Right?
- [87:44]
Sam Cedar
Twerk, sushi, and poker.
- [87:46]
Emma Vigeland
We're going to get demonetized.
- [87:48]
Sam Cedar
I just think that what you did to Tim pool was mean.
- [87:51]
Emma Vigeland
Free speech.
- [87:52]
Sam Cedar
That's not what we're about here. Look at how Sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about him. I think you're responsible.
- [87:59]
Emma Vigeland
I. I probably am in a certain way. But let's get to the meltdown here.
- [88:03]
Sam Cedar
Twerk, sushi and poker with the boys. Oh, my God.
- [88:07]
Dan O'Sullivan
Wow.
- [88:07]
Sam Cedar
Sushi. I'm sorry. I'm losing my mind. Someone's offered with twerk. Sushi and poker with the boys. Logic. Twerk, sushi, and poker with boys. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a kid. Twerk. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Add this debate 7,000 times. A little kid. Think I'm like a little kid. A little kid. Think I'm like a dick. I'm losing my mind.
- [88:29]
Matt Binder
Some people just don't understand.
- [88:31]
Sam Cedar
So I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but, like, I absolutely think the US should be providing me with a wife and kids.
- [88:39]
Emma Vigeland
That's not what we're talking about here, all right?
- [88:43]
Sam Cedar
It's not a fun job.
- [88:44]
Dan O'Sullivan
Twerk.
- [88:45]
Sam Cedar
That's a real thing. That's real thing. Real thing. Willy Walker. Twerk. That's a real thing. Real. That's a real thing. That's real thing. That's a real thing. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan has done it again. That's a real thing. Oh, I think he might be blowing it out of proportion. Real thing. That's offered to. That's a real thing. Let's go, Joey. Sushi and poker with the boy. Take it easy. Don't worry. Sushi and poker. Things have really gotten out of hand. Sushi and poker with the boys. You don't have a clue as to what's going on live YouTube.
- [89:27]
Emma Vigeland
Sam has the weight of the world on his shoulders. Sam doesn't want to do this show anymore.
- [89:32]
Sam Cedar
Anymore.
- [89:32]
Emma Vigeland
It was so much easier when the majority report was just you.
- [89:37]
Sam Cedar
Let's change the subject.
- [89:39]
Matt Bender
Rangers and Nicks are doing great.
- [89:41]
Austin Coker
Shut it up.
- [89:42]
Emma Vigeland
Don't want people saying reckless things on your program.
- [89:44]
Sam Cedar
That's one of the most difficult parts about this show.
- [89:47]
Emma Vigeland
This is a pro killing podcast.
- [89:49]
Sam Cedar
I'm thinking maybe it's time we bury the hatchet.
- [89:51]
Emma Vigeland
Left his best Violet Twerk.
- [89:53]
Sam Cedar
Don't be foolish and don't tweet at me.
- [89:55]
Austin Coker
And don't. The way Emma has cucked all of.
- [89:58]
Sam Cedar
These people love it.
- [90:00]
Emma Vigeland
That's where my heart is. So I wrote my honors thesis about it. This.
- [90:08]
Austin Coker
I guess I should hand the main.
- [90:09]
Sam Cedar
Mic to you now. You are to the right of the unformed policy.
- [90:12]
Emma Vigeland
We already formed Israel, dude. Are you against us?
- [90:15]
Sam Cedar
That's a tougher question. I have an answer to. Incredible theme song.
- [90:23]
Emma Vigeland
Hi, Bumbler.
- [90:24]
Sam Cedar
Emma Viand. Absolutely one of my favorite people, actually.
- [90:27]
Austin Coker
Not just in the game, like, period.