3590 - Trump Fatigue Setting in?; Voters Beg Democrats to Grow a Spine w/ Heather 'Digby' Parton

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Episode 3590 – "Trump Fatigue Setting in?; Voters Beg Democrats to Grow a Spine" (with Heather 'Digby' Parton)

Date: February 27, 2026
Host: Sam Seder
Main Guest: Heather ‘Digby’ Parton (Salon columnist, Hullabaloo blog)

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Overview

In this episode, Sam Seder and the Majority Report crew are joined by Heather 'Digby' Parton for an in-depth discussion of the mounting "Trump fatigue," the Democratic Party’s internal crisis of weakness, and the shifting political energy among progressive activists and voters. They analyze the aftermath of Trump’s State of the Union, critiques of both major parties' leadership, the implications of escalating poverty in the U.S., and significant grassroots electoral races. The episode also covers the global rise of far-right movements, political betrayals in Democratic Party strategies, and a litany of civil rights, economic, and foreign policy issues shaping 2026.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Political Landscape: Trump, State of the Union, and Fatigue Setting In

• Trump’s Fatigue Factor & State of the Union Dissection (27:28–39:00):
  • Trump’s latest State of the Union was panned as “incredibly boring,” the longest ever, and marked by self-indulgent pageantry rather than substantive policy. Only 28 million watched, a new low.
    • “It felt like an awards banquet at some trade meeting.” — Sam Seder (29:50)
    • Heather Digby Parton notes the contrast with past presidents like Bill Clinton, who at least used long speeches to persuade or inform. Trump’s spectacle, complete with sports teams and self-congratulation, angered even casual viewers.
    • The Republicans in the audience were described as "at a wrestling match, chanting and clapping and cheering over just utter nonsense.” (30:31)
  • The panel dissects how focus group dials plunged in real time as Trump launched into his “we are winning so much” shtick, signaling that even much of the public has grown weary and creeped out by his dominance-messaging.
    • “His shtick is so tired. Every time he did one of his patented moments...the dial would go down.” — Digby (35:19)
    • The episode frames this as evidence that Trump’s appeal is now limited almost solely to his MAGA base, while alienating the broader public.

2. Democratic Party Weakness and “Grow a Spine” Critique

• Internal Democratic Frustrations & Leadership Shortcomings (41:48–46:31):
  • The Democratic response to Trump is sharply criticized for being excessively decorous, process-driven, and lacking firm, relatable language.
    • Corey Robin and Rick Perlstein’s critiques are cited; Spanberger’s response speech is dissected for passive voice and polite hedging rather than direct confrontation:
      • “We did not hear the truth from the president.” (vs. a simple ‘he lied’)
      • “This is the soft bigotry of low expectations.” — Rick Perlstein (45:19)
    • Digby notes AOC as a model for direct, relatable communication; contrasts with messaging from lawyer-heavy, cautious Democratic leadership.
  • Chuck Schumer's reliance on “process arguments” in response to war policy is blasted as not only weak but yet another vestige of a stale, fearful Democratic establishment (53:14–56:52):
    • "[Democrats] have this kind of idea...they looked like losers...that's the memory muscle." — Digby (55:08)

3. Poverty and Economic Suffering in Richest Country in the World

• C-SPAN Caller "Sharon" Clip (11:55–15:58):
  • The show includes a moving segment where a legally blind, 65-year-old woman details barely surviving on meager SNAP benefits, highlighting both Biden-era improvements and Trump-era brutal cuts (“$12.50 a month”).
  • She laments: “Why is it always the poor people that are helping the poor people?” (12:57)
  • Hosts and panelists use this as a jumping off point to expose both parties’ failures—but especially Republicans’ aggressive gutting of social safety nets, even as corporate profits soar.
    • “We’re starving grandmothers.” — Brian (16:40)
  • Progressives on the show demand a real sacrificial contribution from the ultra-wealthy, with New York’s Governor Hochul and California’s Governor Newsom called out for fighting against taxing the rich, even as vulnerable populations suffer.

4. Progressive Surge and Organizing Momentum

• Election Highlights & Grassroots Energy (7:26–9:49, 58:10–62:00):
  • Ongoing progressive upsets in Democratic primaries (e.g., North Carolina and Texas) underscore a growing appetite for candidates who challenge the party’s status quo, including unconditional support for Israel, and who campaign on transformative policy.
    • “Organizing is becoming more and more of...the carrying cry. Not just about policies, but the organizing—come do stuff now.” — Sam Seder (39:09)
  • Example: Zoramdani’s massive housing plan pushes Trump to face real progressive demands.
    • “Trump calls him a communist but then calls him a nice guy…can’t help it.” — Brian (76:03)
  • Evidence of “Overton window” shift: Centrists moving left on some policies and tactics with progressives energetically filling the void not tackled by national leadership.

5. Authoritarianism, Foreign Policy, and War Talk

• Iran, Netanyahu, and Process Over Substance (46:31–58:10):
  • The panel excoriates the Trump administration’s maximalist war-adjacent policies toward Iran—rooted in bravado and transactional motives (e.g., oil), rather than genuine strategic or moral goals.
    • “This is a completely evacuous, you know, emergency that he's created here...What does this mean, other than Netanyahu sees an opening?” — Digby (47:47)
    • “He believes that he can make the world bend to his will...Megalomania is the word.” — Digby (48:45)
  • The discussion calls out Democratic complicity, especially via Schumer’s refusal to firmly oppose escalation, reiterating that process criticism enables war by avoiding standing on substance.

6. Extreme GOP vs. ‘Weak’ Democrats — Public Perceptions

• Polling Data and Public Sentiment (50:25–52:10):
  • New polling data shows Republicans seen as “cruel, extreme, cynical,” while Democrats are “empathetic but weak.” The biggest issue for Democrats is not being out of touch, but being seen as lacking backbone and fight.
    • “Democrats are perceived as empathetic but also as weak…there is a concern that Democrats don’t fight.” — Sam Seder (51:21)

7. Civil Rights Abuses and Administrative Cruelty

• ICE/DHS Atrocities and Refugee Deaths (77:32–113:15):
  • The show details horrifying instances of ICE/DHS deception and abuse: kidnapping students, lying to bypass due process (“pretending they were searching for a missing child”), and ultimately contributing to the death of a blind Rohingya refugee after he’s dropped—alone, at night, with no support—at a Buffalo parking lot in winter.
    • “This could have all been avoided...This is why we talk about policing reform…The blood is on their hands.” — Brian (110:24)
  • Repeated calls for sanctuary city policies and reforms to break the pipeline between local police and federal deportation agents.
• Discussion of anti-LGBT policies, moral panics, and new ‘wellness grifters’ like Trump’s potential Surgeon General pick Casey Means (116:16–124:00).

8. Media, Messaging, and the Lawyer Problem

• Analysis on why lawyers dominating politics breeds caution, process, and bureaucracy over clarity and popular connection.
  • “Lawyers and their psychology…they are institutionalists in every sense of the word.” — Brian (65:01)
  • The UK’s political earthquakes, the rise of the Green Party vs. Labour, and parallels to U.S. progressive energy (67:14–73:32).

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• Trump State of the Union, Fatigue, and Spectacle

  • “He’s completely lost the ability to read the room…it was more like a pageant of some sort.” — Digby (28:26)
  • “Every time he did one of his patented shtick moments...the dial would go down.” — Digby (35:19)

• On Democratic Messaging

  • “I don’t think he [Gavin Newsom]...knows what normal people sound like anymore.” — Digby (42:44)
  • “The soft bigotry of low expectations.” — Rick Perlstein, cited by Digby (45:19)
  • “The response I’m measuring...there’s some holding pattern happening with the Democratic response.” — Sam (45:19)

• On Poverty in America

  • “I lost the 28 pounds because I cannot afford to eat anymore under Biden...I’d like somebody to explain to me, why is it always the poor people that are helping the poor people?” — C-SPAN Caller Sharon (12:54)
  • “We're starving grandmothers.” — Brian (16:40)

• On Refusing to Tax Wealth

  • “Who needs to make the sacrifice now? We need to dictate to rich people that they make the sacrifice.” — Emma (17:31)

• On Process Arguments (War Powers)

  • “This is a process-based argument about war crimes.” — Brian (53:14)
  • “This is a long-standing Democratic problem...using the process critique.” — Digby (53:47)

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Important Segments & Timestamps

| Segment | Description | Timestamps | |---------|-------------|------------| | Opening & Top Stories Recap | Sam runs through news and key stories | 00:00–09:44 | | C-SPAN Caller Sharon on Poverty | Gutting, real-life impact of policies | 11:55–15:58 | | State of the Union Recap | Trump fatigue, spectacle v. substance | 27:24–39:00 | | Dems' Messaging and ‘Grow a Spine’ Critique | Weakness, process arguments, passive voice | 41:48–46:31 | | Trump, Iran, and Failure of Democratic Resistance | War talk, weak opposition | 46:31–58:10 | | Polling on Party Perceptions | Out of touch vs. weak, public sentiment | 50:25–52:10 | | ICE/DHS Abuses & Refugee Death | Abuse of immigrants, policy horror stories | 77:32–113:15 | | Green Party UK Win—Comparisons | Global left surge, anti-racist politics | 67:14–73:32 | | Texas & North Carolina Primaries | Grassroots surge, APAC/DCCC hypocrisy | 7:26–9:49, 93:56–99:38, 138:43–142:05 |

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Notable International/Policy Segments

• Green Party surge in UK: First Green MP in North England, connecting anti-Islamophobia and working-class politics (68:07–71:26)
• North Carolina’s pivotal Dem race: AIPAC money laundering, Hakeem Jeffries’ duplicity exposed (93:56–99:38)
• Texas Democratic turnout surge: Evidence of significant engagement—possible bellwether (138:43–142:05)

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Tone & Language

The episode is anchored by frankness, humor, and exasperation—often irreverent, blunt, and passionate. The panel brings policy to the human level while not shying from scathing or sardonic commentary, especially regarding political cowardice, hypocrisy, and elite cynicism.

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Conclusion/Takeaways

• “Trump fatigue” is real, and his schtick is losing wider resonance—but he still dominates the GOP.
• Democratic leaders are still hamstrung by process, lawyerly decorum, and fear—while their base is demanding a fighting spirit and direct action, as seen in grassroots organizing and the emergent primary left.
• Real suffering from policy choices—exposed by stories like Sharon’s and ICE atrocities—calls for direct language and urgent action, not procedural dithering.
• Progressive organizing power is growing, pushing both the Overton window and the Democratic Party—sometimes in the face of internal sabotage.
• The episode ultimately echoes the need for unapologetic, morally clear leadership and the importance of continuing a bottom-up progressive movement.

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For more information and links to stories discussed, visit Majority.FM.

Transcript

[Sam Cedar]

Hi folks. Today's episode is brought to you by sunsetlakesebae.com use the code. Left is best for 20% off. Oh my gosh, have I been hitting this hard as of late I've been enjoying some of the the Sunset Lake seven day gummies, some of the sunset like Sabade with T gummies. I was on vacation last week and also had a couple of days of snowboarding and when you get to be my age, you're just basically happy that you didn't break anything. But there's a lot of soreness and my Sunset Lake Seba Day arnica rub did the trick. But they've got all sorts of other things. Lotions, coffee, chocolate, all infused with Sabade. They've got some Sabade like I said, gummies with some teh say they've got lifted tea. Also something that I indulged in over the course of vacation. All sorts of great products all grown without pesticides. They use integrated pest management. They also use regenerative farming practices that they developed in conjunction with the University of Vermont. They have great business practices. They're Mostly employee owned, $20 minimum wage when they do their harvest. Also, they are movement partners. They've donated tens of thousands of dollars to things like refugee resettlement, Planned Parenthood, carceral reform. They've been involved in mutual aid. Just an all around great, great company, great, great product and longtime fans of the show Left is best gets you 20% off@sunsetlake sebade.com and speaking of the show, let's start it the Majority Report with Sam Cedar. Where every day casual Friday. That means Monday is casual. Monday, Tuesday, casual Tuesday, Wednesday, casual hump day, Thursday casual Thirs, that's what we call it. And Friday casual Shabbat. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Friday, February 27, 2026. My name is Sam Ceder. 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, Heather Digby Parton, contributing writer to Salon and the proprietor of the uber blog Hullabaloo. Also on the program today, no deal after Yesterday's Iran talks. J.D. vance claims, however, we will not be in a protracted war. Epstein files contain an explicit but unsubstantiated claim that Trump abused a minor. However, the bottom line is Dojo still supposed to release it. Netflix drops out of bidding. Paramount wins its bidding war for Time Warner, meaning they will own just about everything. However, at the very least, the California AG Bonta has some serious antitrust concerns and is beginning his investigation. There's going to be a lot more state investigations as well on this. This is not a done deal. Good unions tell Chuck Schumer stay out of Maine, specifically the Senate primary. But probably also don't go to Maine. There's enough New Yorkers up there anyway. We're good. Democratic leadership reverses. Speaking of Chuck Schumer will push for votes on war powers resolution on Iran.

[Brian]

That's gotta have been hard for him.

[Sam Cedar]

No side deals. DHS admits it deported more than 80 DACA recipients. That's just what they admit. Denver authorizes police to protect anti ICE protesters. Top federal judge in Minnesota threatens criminal contempt charges versus Trump's ICE officials. And it sounds like this time they mean it. Mean it. Mamdani secures a release of a Columbia student from ICE abduction. Pitches Trump on a $21 billion affordable housing build in New York City. Anthropic says Pentagon's so called final offer still unacceptable. Anthropic still supposedly insisting on human safeguards for drones and surveillance. Pakistan and Afghanistan in near open war. Bill Clinton to testify by in front of the House committee investigating. Epstein. Epstein today. Hillary Clinton went there yesterday. And the British Green Party wins big over labor in a by election in northern in a northern England member of Parliament race. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome ladies and gentlemen. Thanks so much for joining us.

[Brian]

It is casual Friday.

[Sam Cedar]

Casual Friday. I'm not even wearing a collar. That's how casual it is.

[Brian]

Wow.

[Emma Vigeland]

Say this is as casual as Sam's ever been on Friday.

[Sam Cedar]

No, I've, I, I've, I've actually I have a rotation of like three or four shirts in the winter.

[Brian]

And I mean maybe the Thanos tank top was the most casual.

[Emma Vigeland]

How could I forget?

[Brian]

Do you know that that's your contact photo in my phone? So when you call me, that's the picture that shows up.

[Sam Cedar]

That's, that's the one I hand out on my, that's my LinkedIn, my LinkedIn profile that I give to people as well. Yeah. No, that's not the headshot you provide diners when you autograph it and ask them to hang it up. Actually that is really something I should do. But now my, my other shirt is. I got screwed up because of vacation with laundry and so my other shirt. So you know, but this could be the norm. I could, I could start going colorless on Fridays because everybody getting more casual. The brakes. Let's not get too Crazy.

[Brian]

Or you could just go the complete opposite way and do the saga and jetty and wear like a three piece suit for every broadcast.

[Sam Cedar]

Wears a suit in the sauna. Yeah, I, that that is highly unlikely.

[Brian]

I think so too.

[Sam Cedar]

I would have to then go get a suit. I have one suit.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'd be concerned.

[Brian]

Yes. Sam's reverse fettermaning

[Sam Cedar]

we should say on Tuesday there's some big primaries that you should be aware of obviously in Texas. Also in North Carolina, Emma spoke to

[Brian]

and really, really significant race against an APAC funded candidate. She says she swore off aipac, but Hakeem Jeffries and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has been funneling AIPAC money to her kind of secretly surprise, surprise. So Nita Alarm in North Carolina's fourth. If you're in North Carolina, please go out and vote for her. Yes.

[Sam Cedar]

That is, it's going to be huge. I mean that this is another. I mean we keep seeing more and more indications that and we'll talk about this with Digby about the critiques of the Democratic Party coming from Democrats and the perspective of Democrats, at least in terms of those who come out and vote for a primary, the people who take the most ownership of the party really. I mean that's what when we talk about coming out for off your election primary, that's what we're talking about. Right. I mean the people that are most engaged with the, with the party and increasingly we are seeing them look for more progressive candidates, candidates that are on top of being sort of like progressive in a whole host of issues and in terms of where their support comes also rejecting the unconditional or any support of the Israeli government in the wake of, and really we're not even fully out of the wake frankly of the genocide in Gaza and what they're doing in west bank, et cetera, et cetera. So super, super important to get out and vote. Those are the biggest races I guess in Texas and in North Carolina. But we'll see how we're going to cover that on, on Tuesday. But yes, check that out. And that is a huge story that I think it was drop site. Right.

[Brian]

That it was sludge, actually.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, sludge, right. Those guys are great as well.

[Brian]

Yep.

[Heather Digby Parton]

This,

[Sam Cedar]

you know, the. We hear it's very difficult. I just saw like a clip of Ken Hassett on with Kudlow talking about how they cut 300,000 federal workers and has anybody seen a difference in services? He said. And of course Kudlow and Hassett haven't because to the extent that they interact with government services it's things like the IRS and all they get is like we have more breathing room to, to cheat essentially because of the way that the IRS has been decimated. They don't care about the functioning of government in any way whatsoever. And both from an ideological standpoint and also where they're positioned in society. All they know is that they're paying less in taxes and they got more room to cheat on it. But the fact is, even though it's difficult, and this is why things like getting rid of the filibuster becomes even more and more important, is it sometimes is very hard to know what the implications are of what the Republicans do or for that matter, what the Democrats do, both good and bad. And. But here is a moment on that C Span call in program which just brings it home, what the implications are. Very easy to be sitting back and going like, oh, people are going to get dumped from Medicaid or there's going to be like tens of dollars cut for each person on food stamps. That doesn't mean anything. Watch this clip. I went, had my annual physical yesterday. I'm, I'm 65 years old. I'm legally blind. I'm on disability. I went to my doc and I lost 28 pounds in the last year. I did not need to lose 28 pounds. I did not try to lose 28 pounds. I lost the 28 pounds because I cannot afford to eat anymore under Biden. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Under Biden, I was able to put $100 a month away for food along with my snap. And I did okay. I could get fresh fruits, fresh vegetables and meat. It is just me. But now with grocery prices so high, propane, electricity, out of this world, I now only allow myself $65 a month for food.

[Brian]

Sharon, are you, are you on SNAP benefits?

[Sam Cedar]

Let me tell you, under Joe Biden, I received $80 a month for SNAP. That was taken away from me. Under Donald Trump, he took it away. He gave me $24 a month. I did receive that for a couple of months. Then he took it down to 12 $12.50 a month. I said, screw you. So I'm not doing that no more. So Now I get $65 a month, Mimi. And for them people out there, all them, so all these Republicans that are doing so flipping well right now, I have three potatoes, I have a half a tomato, I have three bananas, one apple, one can of soup, a half a loaf of bread, one egg and one can of green beans. I do not get paid until The I am disability blind. I cannot drive a car. I'm 15 miles out of town. So I am not able to just, oh, trot my butt down to the food shelf. I used to volunteer at the food shelf. I can't even do that anymore. I don't understand. I'd like somebody to explain to me, why is it always the poor people that are helping the poor people? I don't understand. But what I want to say, Mimi, is that it's really close. Coming like that man said. The end is coming near and it can't be any more true for me. I mean, there are probably tens, if not hundreds, even arguably millions of stories like this in one fashion or another. I mean, and I guess easily millions when you expand it out from things of directly in terms of like food assistance. You know, somebody's talking about how they've lost Medicaid and they've, they're permanently disabled because of it, or they, someone they know has died because of it because they can't afford whatever. And these stories are happening every day and it's very rare we get an opportunity to hear them. And these are the implications on a daily basis of, I mean, even just what we're seeing at HHS in terms of like, spreading the vaccine skepticism. There are parents out there who've lost their children. They made the decision not to, to get the vaccine because they didn't feel like their kids needed it or, you know, they've been told or, and. And soon it's gonna be harder for people to get vaccines because of the way that HHS is scheduling them and providing access to them. And there's just gonna be all of these sort of atomized stories of people suffering in one form or another. And that's the implications of this.

[Brian]

I mean, this is the economy that we're living in right now. The corporate profits are at a record high, higher than they've ever been. But wages are stagnating. Credit card debt has hit a record high. It keeps hitting highs over and over again. Subprime auto delinquencies keep hitting their highest levels and breaking records on that front. And the Trump administration and the Republicans cut food stamps to the bone. They cut Medicaid health care for low income people to the bone. They destroyed the expanded Affordable Care act subsidies so that people who are buying their health care are now going to be paying double or dropping their health care or not having any health care at all. I mean, she's like, that's what that caller was saying, like $12 a month. You know what one? Well, it's insulting. It's, it's. And why is it always poor people helping poor people? I like what really got me was when she talked about how she volunteered at the. At previously to help feed people in her community. And now she's the one who has to kind of rely on some of these services. Like, this is the richest country in the history of the world. Of the world. And we're starving grandmothers.

[Emma Vigeland]

Is Kathy Hochul hear this about this whole tax to rich people.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

Because like, I do appreciate the difference that she stresses under Biden and Trump. We're having this conversation right now. And the only the solutions that Zoram pointed out is like property taxes and taxing the rich. The other solution is to cut more services. Who needs to make the sacrifice now? We need to dictate to rich people that they make the sacrifice for the foreseeable future.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

And honestly, what kind of sacrifice are we talking about here? I mean, let's hear them. It is not. I mean, it is not. I mean, it's honestly like the, the,

[Brian]

the two Gavin Newsom too, by the way, fighting this billionaire tax. But yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

And let's be clear here. When Trump during the State of the Union address talks about how he's lifted people off of food stamps, this is what they mean.

[Brian]

Yeah, brag about it.

[Sam Cedar]

People can lift themselves out of food stamps if they have the opportunity, more money. But if, if there's a policy change and food stamps is cut. Nobody's being lifted out of food stamps. People are being dropped out of food stamps. Let's be clear on that. All right, we all. We'll have more to talk about this with Digby in a moment. The, that Gavin Newsome stuff, incidentally, has sat with me very poorly over the past couple of days. Like I just. His 976 on his SATs. And I, you know, I've been. Times not been culturally normal. Like I was way out there with gay marriage.

[Brian]

But as, but as we're saying, as he's fighting a bill trying to tax the rich so that his. So people in California don't feel the implications of this gutting of Medicaid. That's what he's doing right now in Democratic states. This is where. This is the test.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, but to be fair, he said culturally normal, not. Not non culturally normal. That's why he.

[Brian]

Okay, well, that's what I'm concerned about.

[Sam Cedar]

We were talking about taxing rich people. That's not culturally normal.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's.

[Sam Cedar]

Come on, come on. I'M just one of the guys.

[Brian]

Yeah. He cannot be our nominee.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah. Couple of words from our sponsors before we talk to Digby about this stuff and more. She's in California. I wonder what she thinks of Gavin Newsom. Folks, spring is it. I mean, it is like we have broken 40 degrees around here and it is going to be. It is like it's suntan weather. But you know what that means? It means that it's spring and it's time soon to plant. Do you know that Fast Growing Trees is America's largest and most trusted online nursery with thousands of trees and plants and over 2 million happy customers? Did you know that I was one of those 2 million happy customers? Did you know that I was one of those 2 million happy customers? Probably back when there was only a million happy customers. Because I've been shopping from Fast Growing Trees for years and years, way before they started become a sponsor here. They have all the plants your yard or home needs. Massive catalog, including fruit trees, apple trees. They've got a huge variety of apples. I'm not going to get into it too much, but yes. That's. Yeah, I don't. If I. Yeah. Privacy trees, flowering trees. I get distracted. Shrubs, house plants, all grown with care and guaranteed to arrive healthy. I found the other day like a, like a little card that gives you all the pollination times for different apple trees.

[Emma Vigeland]

So.

[Sam Cedar]

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Get up to 55% off your Babel subscription at babel.com majority that's 55% [e-mail] majority spelled B A B B E L B A b b e l.com Majority rules and restrictions apply. Quick break. When we come back, we'll be talking to Heather Digby Parton. We are back. Sam cedar, emma vigland on the majority report. Matt Johnny on the spot with the famed Digby theme song. Yes, of course it is. Heather Parton, a [e-mail] or you may know her as Digby, the proprietor of the Uber blog Hullabaloo. Hi, Digby.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Hey there, Sam. Hi, Emma.

[Brian]

Hey, Heather.

[Sam Cedar]

So here we are again. It is another state of the union. We've probably talked about, I don't know, 15, 20 state of the unions in the past, probably this one was uniquely, it was the longest at least of this century and maybe at longest one ever that was televised. And I have to say, hard to top this in terms of boringness. He's just sort of like lost his luster. Only 28 million people watched it, which is a lot unless you compare it to like every other one in the past 10 years. It's less than like 8 million less than the least watched one over the course of the past 10 years. Broadly. What was your thinking about this? I mean, I know the state of the union is not that much of a big deal, but it is sort of like an interesting snapshot of in time.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Yeah, it is. I, I agree with you. It was incredibly boring. And I, you know, I feel for all of you who had to sit through it, I think all of us probably did. And it was pretty, pretty hard. But, you know, it's interesting that it was the longest, because the second longest was a speech by Bill Clinton back in the 90s, and you may remember it, Sam. And he was known for long windedness, too, like Trump. But when he came out on the other end of those speeches, having actually persuaded vast numbers of people on policy, he had a unique ability to go on and on and on. But it was a speech, it was an actual speech where he would talk about policies and express why he thought it was a good idea to do certain things, I mean, agree with him or not on what those policies were. He was very, very at that particular thing. And people would, you know, the next day go, boy, that was long. But geez, he's good. You know, they'd always, he'd always get a little bump and, you know, it was, it was a thing. Trump is the opposite. The more he goes on, the more people are put off by him. He's completely lost the ability to read the room. And in truth, this was not really a speech, was it? It was more like a pageant of some sort. I mean, I don't know how much of the time that was spent in it was talking about policy, but it was very little compared to the awards ceremony.

[Sam Cedar]

It felt like an awards banquet at trade, like some trade meeting.

[Brian]

Exactly. When they tried out the hockey team, as a fan of that sport, it was incredibly difficult to watch, but it was like he spent, it was a little bit of policy. Then he'd do the weave and then a bunch of lies. Then hockey team, which they're, they're so desperate to capture the one whitest sport in the country that, like, is somewhat sympathetic to them because they have to enclose around culture, then some policy issue and a bunch of lies. Then, oh, Melania is a movie star. And that's what it felt like. The entire thing was, it was, it

[Heather Digby Parton]

was just one after the other. And, you know, it was also, you know, it was, I felt like it was just disrespectful to some of those people. I mean, some of it, like, you know, the old guy at the end who got the Congressional Medal of Honor, I assume he deserved to get that and to put him on there at the, at the end of Trump's. Yeah. So he could bask in this sort of stolen valor of this guy who deserved to have his own ceremony. I mean, those, those Medal of Honor ceremonies are kind of a big deal for the people who, who get them. And, you know, they're very solemn. They take place in the White House. They invite the whole family and everybody get. They get a big speech about, you know, what it was they did. And, you know, I mean, to put him up there, you know, as part of Trump's pageant, as part of his, you know, wwe, you know, extravaganza. The spectacle, it just seemed, I mean, I felt kind of creepy about that, too. And certainly the USA chants and the. And then, you know, we have to. Let's talk about the Republicans because they really. I'm sorry. And we can talk about the Democrats, too. I mean, I personally felt like none of them should go, but I do believe that if they were going to go and Trump turned to them, pointed at them and said, these people are crazy and they're the reason that everything's going wrong in this country. They should have all stood up en masse and just walked out in a very dignified manner. Just walked out of the thing. They didn't have to say anything. They didn't have to scream anything, just go. That was so beyond the pale. And meanwhile, the Republicans, they're doing close ups of the Secretary of War, Pete Hagg said, cheering like a, you know, like a Reese's Monkey over the whole thing. And just that it was sickening watching those Republicans jump up out of their seats. They were like. It was like they were at a wrestling match, chanting and clapping and cheering over just utter nonsense, you know, the whole thing. It was very, very difficult to watch. And he seemed angry through the whole thing. I mean, did you think that.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, yeah, I, There, there's a couple of things. First off, that point you make about when he would turn to. Because he did that a lot, like, oh, you guys are. How could you not stand for that? You're crazy. Jeffrey's whole thing that he told the caucus was like no reaction. And ostensibly it's right, because we want to show that we're dignified and we're above this. But your, Your, your suggestion that at one point they all get up in a very dignified manner and leave would. Would have isolated the. His behavior and made people pay more attention to his behavior and would have communicated the same thing, but in a more cohesive way and would have made them look better. We'll talk more about this, but let's. I want to play this clip because this one is the only clip I think we played the day after on Wednesday. It seems like years ago now, Wednesday. And. But now we can see that there were focus testing on this, and this was the creepiest moment I thought, throughout the whole thing. And it really captured that dynamic between Republicans and the president and sort of like who he thinks his audience is. And I think he's right, but I think that's a very, very narrow band of people. This is a focus test on that sort of, that moment where he's talking about winning and he's getting all sort of like creepy and it, and it's, it's almost like, it's almost I, I, I, I. Rapey is too strong of a word. But there is like a quality of like dominance and yes, like for sure whipping your ass with a belt, you know. Pete Hegson, you are loving it. Watch this. People are asking me, please, please, please, Mr. President, we're winning too much. We can't take it anymore. We're not used to winning in our country until you came along with just always losing. But now we're winning too much. And I say, no, no, no, you're going to win again. You're going to win big. You're going to win bigger than ever. People are asking, you can see, I mean, yeah, scroll right through that one more time, Matt. Just scroll through it. Don't put it back up. You can see how it drops like a rock as he starts to do that. Because, and you know, that's encouraging. It's, it's a sign to me that, that, you know, the, we only have 25% of those right wing authoritarians and only 25% of them were on the dials and they were the ones who were enjoying it, but the rest of the people were like, this is creepy.

[Brian]

And they're sick of, they're sick of the way he talks that in that manner, I think too, like the winning thing. It's just people are like, I'm a decade of this. Yeah, exactly.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Yeah, yeah. It's, it's tired. It is so tired. His shtick is so tired. And in fact, when you looked at that, that was the Navigator research people that did that, that dial up thing every time he did one of his patented shtick moments, you know, the golden age and winning and all this kind of crap. Even a lot of the immigration stuff, which, you know, he talking about the, you know, the ugliness. I mean, it was a real snuff porn, you know, aspect of this thing too. That's the, the lurid, bloodthirsty, you know, stuff that he was talking about. I mean, it was really kind of turning my stomach. Whenever that would happen, the dial would go down. This is no longer playing to anybody but his most hardcore mega base. And by the way, the Republicans in the audience who were cheering madly for that stuff, they loved it. Did you see JD and, and Johnson sitting behind him just chuckling? That's just so. Yeah, it was just, you know, I mean, those two are really real pieces of work too. And, and you know, seeing those three up there, Johnson and J.D. vance and Trump just kind of, you know, running through the shtick. It was, it was really pretty disgusting. And apparently, I mean, it did not play, it didn't play with, with people in the audience. It didn't play with, you know, with anyone who, you know, the, the, the snap polls that came out afterwards. He got nothing out of this. And that's of the people who actually watched it. And as you point out, it was not, well, you know, well attended by the American people. They don't want to hear him anymore, I don't think.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, I agree. And this is most relevant. I mean, most, most State of the Union addresses are not, again, terribly relevant in terms of, like, the fortunes. But, you know, Biden at one point, I think, like, helped himself at least, you know, probably to our detriment, frankly, in indicating that he could deliver a speech in his last State of the Union address. I mean, he looked lucid during that one. But really, I think Trump could have, too.

[Heather Digby Parton]

If he'd have come out there and given a normal speech, people would have been so relieved and gone, oh, my God, you know, okay, well, maybe he's got a point. I mean, if he had just acted against type. He can't do that. Of course it's impossible for him. But if he had, if he had, you know, made the, the strategic decision to say, okay, I need to, you know, do something here to try and turn these poll numbers around, maybe, you know, try something different, but he can't do it. But had he done it, I think people would have been shut, stunned. Van Jones would have immediately said that

[Sam Cedar]

this is the day he became president. Exactly. That's exactly what I was thinking. But this is the point. The value of the State of the Union, in my mind, at least for our purposes, is to get a sense of where the different players and parties think they are, and Donald Trump thinks he's in decent shape or at the very least that he doesn't have to. Like, there is no indication from the Republican Party. It is literally like they may be aware that the bridge is out down the road, but they are pedal to the metal. I mean, they have other plans and we'll talk about this in a second because you've written about this. But I want to go to the Democrats, too, because, you know, I saw Summer Lee's speech from the wfp, and she's sort of representing the progressive. Not necessarily the Progressive Caucus specifically, but the progressives in general. And hers was very much about organizing and very much about getting, you know, involved and get off your couch and come do stuff. And, you know, we can do stuff.

[Brian]

Background, too.

[Sam Cedar]

And that's her background. But it gives you a sense of, like, where the progressives are at this point. It's not just about, what do we do?

[Heather Digby Parton]

Yeah, what do we. What do we do? We need to do something about this. That's very inspiring to hear somebody say, okay, here's the plan.

[Sam Cedar]

You know, and it recognizes, like, progressives realize there's a hunger to do this. There has been like, you know, like Mamdani's campaign has been. Was. Was sort of like huge in terms of involvement. I mean, you had, like, literally, like one eighth of the electorate was volunteering for him. It was insane. And Platner's run up in Maine has gotten. A lot of. People are involved in Maine. Maine's not a big state, but it's gotten a lot of volunteers. And this is, you know, the organizing is becoming more and more of a. Of like, sort of the carrying cry. Not just about policies, but the organizing, like, come do stuff now. Spanberger gave a speech in, you know, I had very low expectations for it, and she. I would say she. She exceeded them. I mean, she seemed to, like, she just come off. But there was no call to action. There was. And Corey Robin had a really fascinating critique that I think, you know, Gavin Newsom this week went on some show and said, we need to not be. We need to be culturally normal. And he had said on. On that thing, culturally abnormal to him sounds like, you know, supporting trans rights or supporting even marriage equality. It sounded like he felt was, like, sort of abnormal. So he's been there, whatever. And being normal is, you know, not being able to read well or to get bad scores on your SATs. And apparently being normal is also remembering what your SAT scores were 40 years after you've taken it or whatever. But be that as it may, Corey Robin had a piece where he's talking about the way that she spoke and how so much of what the Republicans are doing was put in the passive voice. And there was like, this sense of trying to, like, maintain decorum. And, you know, it was. She chose Colonial Williamsburg, which is A pretend place and with, like, sort of like, values that, you know, it was from 1920 and. But it was also sort of like, you know, like, sort of like maintaining some type of, like, institutional decorum. And she spoke this way, and it was very strange. Like, you know, he points out just a couple of things. It's not even ideological. It is like. It is, like, what you're focusing on tonight. As we watched our nation's lawmakers gather for a joint session of Congress, we did not hear the truth from the president. And he's just like, why can't you just say at the State of the Union, the President lied or he didn't.

[Heather Digby Parton]

He's a lying sack of shit. That's, you know, why not just say it?

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

Or the president didn't tell the truth. She said something to the effect of like. She asked a question. Is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family? It's like, this is a second order thing. He's not making your life affordable.

[Brian]

Right.

[Sam Cedar]

Just say that. Why do we have to guess what he's doing? Why do we have to allow wiggle room here?

[Brian]

Yes, tell us what he's doing.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Well, I think, you know, it's funny because I'll cop to the fact that I wrote afterwards, I was actually, you know, relieved and, you know, mildly impressed with her speech. Not because of that, but because of the fact that she didn't frame it all around nothing but kitchen table issues

[Brian]

and, you know, that kind of thing.

[Heather Digby Parton]

I was worried that it was mentioned

[Sam Cedar]

ice, which I thought was really important in Minnesota. Yes.

[Heather Digby Parton]

And she talked about, you know, she talked about democracy, and, you know, she. She tried to frame it all as part of the. Part of a. A whole, you know, sort of in a holistic way, which I appreciated because I'm really afraid that Democrats are so hooked on the. On the affordability concept, which of course, is, you know, vital and extremely important, but that they're. They're not. They're going to miss the zeitgeist. Which is not just about that. It's about the chaos and the. To everything kind of coming apart. So I wrote that, and then, you know, I got. I got a note from my friend Rick Pearlstein, a historian, who, you know, he reads my stuff and he writes and he goes, what's wrong with you? He didn't say it like that, but it was sort of like, you know, this was terrible. He sent me the Corey Robin piece, and I was persuaded by it. You know, I said, well, I'm open to that criticism and the idea of speaking like a normal person, not in the Gavin Newsom sense of it, because I don't even understand what he's talking about. I don't think he. Maybe he doesn't know what normal people sound like anymore. I agree, but, you know. But in this case, you know, I felt like Robin had a good point, and I asked Rick, I said, well, who do you think does this the best? You know, who does this? Who could I look to to see who is speaking in normal terms? And he said, two people, one of which I agree with and the other one I don't. The one that I don't agree with. He said he used Bernie as an example. And I think Bernie does a good job of talking about issues, but I don't think he sounds like a normal person. I think he's kind of a, you know, a hectoring old guy who's kind of giving a. You know, lecturing people about, you know, why don't you understand what's going on here? You know, And I don't know that that's that effective with the broad spectrum that. That maybe that's just me. The other person that he mentioned was aoc, who I think is brilliant in this way. And the minute I read that, I went, well, of course, she's the one who does this the best. She's the one.

[Brian]

Mom.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Donnie does it, too. These are people who know how to speak in a way that sounds like, you know, well, like a normal person and are also able to speak in, you know, complex terms about important issues. This is extremely important. And just going back to Bill Clinton, say what you will like will about him. He also had that ability to sort of reach people on this sort of normal person, you know, level. And I, you know, more people. I don't know if that's an innate talent. I don't know if it's something that can be learned, but I know it's something that's vital that we have to have. And I think, you know, I take the criticism of my, you know, criticism to heart about Spanberger, because what Rick was saying to me was, you know, this is the soft bigotry of low expectations.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, well, that's what I was saying. Expectations are pretty low. But I'm, you know, I increasingly. I'm looking for that other. The response to the, you know, the third response is really sort of like the response I'm measuring, and there's some type of, like, holding pattern happening with the Democratic response. But, yes, as. I mean, just look the idea that you have two CIA past CIA agents in a row, the slotnik did it the year before. I mean, this is Chuck Schumer's pick. Chuck Schumer is the leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate. So, you know, until we get rid of him, we're going to get these people who are sort of religiously afraid of like actually addressing things head on. And, and you know, we're seeing in the context of Iran too, just to pivot to that for a moment and then we can get back a little bit to the Democrats. Donald Trump is out there, you know, talking all blustery. You and I went through this with Iraq. Although there was like a three year buildup to the invasion of Iraq.

[Heather Digby Parton]

They tried at least they lied. They had, had the, the, you know, it had enough respect for the American people that they actually created a reason, you know, for doing it. Trump isn't even trying that. There is no reason for, for this. This is, this is completely evacuous, you know, emergency that he's created here. There's not what he said, he obliterated the nuclear capability. And now we're back and Steve Witkoff says last week, oh, they'll be, they'll be up and running in a week if we let them. What, you know, how is that have anything? What is the reason for this? I mean, do you have any idea? Because I don't, I don't have any idea why this, why now, why this? What is it? What does this mean other than Netanyahu sees an opening he wants to have, he wants to take this opportunity, I guess, to wipe out the Iranian leadership, which seems short sighted to me too because all the experts say, well, you know, be careful what you wish for because the people who were standing in line to come next are not exactly great. And all the protesters are out there. This is an absolute note, nightmare for them. They're killing them in vast numbers in Iran. This is not going to help it, it there, there's absolutely no way it's going to help.

[Sam Cedar]

It's unclear to me. I mean my, my sense is that he just is afraid to say no. And I don't think he has any interest in getting in a protracted war. I also just think that he's too weak to say no. So I think he wants a Venezuela

[Heather Digby Parton]

is what he wants. Get it. Get her done.

[Brian]

Yeah, exactly. His theory of foreign policy is a maximalist like punch in the face and then we can negotiate. Now he's talking about how Delsey Rodriguez is just so wonderful and working with him.

[Sam Cedar]

Yes. I mean, I think it's all basically there's probably one thing he wants from the Iranian regime that has to do with somebody's oil contracts somewhat where that somebody has, you know, and that's what they'll get. And then they'll pretend like we won, we won, we did it and that's,

[Heather Digby Parton]

he'll get the Nobel Peace Prize and that's, that's, you know, that's somehow or another that's how, where that all is going to end up. You're right, it is. I think his, his idea, you know, he has two things. He, he, that he believes that he can make the world bend to his will. He tariffs got a little bit pushed back on that, but he's not giving up. He's going to continue on that road. And, and the US Military and those two things. I mean he's threatening Greenland. He's, he's threatening, you know, half the world with this stuff. He showed what we can do in Venezuela. So now he wants to do it in Iran too or something like that. You know, the, the Iran version of Venezuela. He doesn't, he doesn't want to really have to do anything. He doesn't want to have to actually take any positive or negative action that going to put him at risk. And he's under the impression that he can get away with it. I mean, you know, look, megalomania, that is the word to, to describe him these days. He had no longer has any restraint and he believes that he can do all these things that he has these economic and military tools at his disposal with no restraint whatsoever, you know, by Americans or anybody else to stop him. And it's, I find this terrifying, to be honest with you. I mean, this kind of thing going, doing this thing with Iran, maybe he can just go and you know, and blow up a few things and you know, call it, call it a day. I don't know. But this kind of stuff go, can go sideways like that. You, you know, you start playing around with this and you don't know where it's going to go. And he's fiddling in the Middle East. It's one thing to take out, you know, Maduro, go in and kidnap Maduro in Venezuela. It's another thing to be messing around in the Middle east with massive military might. We've been there, you know.

[Sam Cedar]

Yes, indeed. And let's, I mean, let's talk about those sort of like the, the, you know, we've mentioned this sort of polling that shows that Democrats are, that Republicans are considered extreme and out of touch and that Democrats are considered out of touch only because. And Brian, put this up there if you can. Just put this up there if you can.

[Brian]

About the extreme.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, this graph. The Republicans are considered cruel, extreme and cynical. Democrats, not so much. But Democrats are considered weak by. All right, you don't need to put it up. We got Matt.

[Brian]

No, he's got it. He's got it. This is from G. Elliot Morris. This is a really good polling subsection that people should check out.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Everybody should get that. It's, it's vital, actually.

[Brian]

Strength in numbers. Yes.

[Sam Cedar]

Democrats are perceived as being empathetic. They're, they're, but, but they're also, and the funny thing is like, they're also perceived as weak. You know, as weak. They're perceived as somewhat, both competent and ineffective.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

And principled, but weak. And so, you know, there's a lot of, it's, there's a lot of like cross currents here. But when, when they are said to be out of touch, it's not because, I mean, if you're empathetic, you're, you're in touch. It's, it is there, there is a concern that Democrats don't fight. And I think like this example of Chuck Schumer. Let's play this. It's, it's in the, in the.

[Brian]

Yes. This is just incredible. I mean, now that we're on the subject of Iran, I sent this to, to Sam with it.

[Sam Cedar]

We played this the other day. But, and, and, and because of the pushback from this, we're seeing that Schumer and Jeffries have agreed to sort of like not prevent the War Powers act resolution from coming for a vote as hard as. They're very big of them. But listen to this. Like, you know, now I know Chuck Schumer is desperate to attack Iran. He has telegraphed that for ages. He voted against Obama's nuke deal. He doesn't want side deals. He doesn't want tough talk. You know. Yes. I mean, he's doing this because the Netanyahu has told him that that's what they want. But this comes off as incredibly weak. Play this clip, right. Closed door briefings are fine, but the administration has to make its case to the American people as something as important as this.

[Brian]

That was his statement on the potential of Iran strike. So, so this is, this is where I lose my mind. This is a process based argument about war crimes. He is not talking about the substance of strikes on Iran. He's talking about the fact that Trump's all over the lot. That's what he said last summer when we went through this over and over again. It's just like Trump's character. It's the way he's doing it, not the substance of striking Iran and maybe getting us into another war in the Middle East. That's apparently our leader in the Senate.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Well, can, I hate to, I hate to break the news, but this is a long standing Democratic problem. This idea of using the process critique. It goes, I mean, I'm remembering having flashbacks, painful flashbacks of the Iraq war resolution and going up to that, the run up to that. I mean, granted the, the, you know, George Bush and Jake Cheney did try to make a, you know, give a rationale for what they were doing and they lied and made up a bunch of stuff, you know, about WMD and the rest. But the Democratic response to that over and over again was, well, you know, the problem is, is that he needs to go to the UN and if the UN has to approve it and if they approve it, well, then maybe, you know, but then he's got to come to the Senate and we have to have a debate and he needs to persuade the American people. And went on and on like that and we're all just standing there screaming for a year, you know, no, I don't care who he gets the approval of. It's wrong. And no, this is ridiculous and they're lying. And this is something they come to over and over again, particularly in these war situations. And I'll take even back further than the Iraq war in 2003, back to 1992, that scarred these old guys. It's one of the reasons why we need to get rid of all the old guys because they have too much muscle memory about this kind of stuff. In 1992 they did stand up to it. And they were up until the very final days, the first Gulf War, the very final days the Democrats were not there, barely eked out an agreement for the authorization to go in. And I mean, it was people like all the presidential candidate people were all kind of wringing their hands, should I or shouldn't I? As per usual, and gosh, I just don't want to. And they ended up approving it barely, after a big sturm and drong about whether it was wise to go in. And the war was absolute, you know, crushing success, right? They went in, they went in and out. They went in, they defeated, you know, they got the Saddam out of Kuwait. They, they did it. So thing, of course it ended up being just a prelude to the next Iraq war. But at the time it was triumphant, George Bush senior was marching around, you know, strutting around. They had done this thing, and the Democrats really felt like they'd been duped and that they had been. That they had lost the argument and that they looked like losers and everything. And that was the memory muscle, the muscle memory that they took into the. In 10 years later, when George Bush Jr. Wanted to go into Iraq again. So this is what happens. You know, they've got this kind of idea. And I don't. I, I don't think it's so much with the younger ones. I don't see this right. As much with the younger. With the younger, you know, representatives and senators, where they're not sitting, they're sitting. They're not making those same arguments about process. I mean, some are. You know, that's just their temperament.

[Sam Cedar]

But here's the thing. My sense is that there were two types of animals at that time. One who were using the process as a way of avoiding the question, and one who was actually thinking like, oh, this is. We've got to maintain the institution and the balance of power and the checks and balances. And so these process things are important, important. I feel like that latter group, if they are savvy, they. Now they're done with that. They understand you can't go out there and argue process. You've got to argue what. That's not the ends. That's a means. And. And you've got to argue what the ends are, which is, we can't go into Iran. When Schumer is talking about process, he's doing it to avoid having to own his desire to attack Iran. And he knows that. That his base is against that. And I think that's. That's the difference between now and 20 years ago, when, you know, if Russ Feingold was still in the Senate, he would not be as institutionalist, I think, as he was then, because he genuinely believed in the institution. But I think he was also the type of guy who would have a sense of, like, that we need to talk about ends.

[Heather Digby Parton]

It'd be a Chris Murphy, you know, one of those guys who were up there going, no, we're not doing.

[Sam Cedar]

Probably more sincere, but. But be that as it may, okay, But I mean, I think that's. I don't know. I. I'm looking at, like, what Mamdani was able to do this week with Trump. I'm looking at Mamdani's poll numbers and what we're seeing, you know, North Carolina, that. That Nida Alam race is going to be really huge to give us a sense of, like, is this another. Another example of the Democratic base understanding that they've got to get more aggressive across the board in terms of, like, policy positions and the way that we articulate these things?

[Brian]

Because, well, even if you look at

[Heather Digby Parton]

the Spanberger thing, you know, as. As, you know, maybe disappointing as we might have found it, at least me, in retrospect, the policy shift is pretty profound for. For someone like her, for the centrists. The centrists are, you know, have. Have moved. And, you know, granted, it's not enough, but if you believe in the Overton window and whatever, it's wide open right now. I mean, it really seems to me like this is one of the best opportunities for progressives to make a case. People are listening. They're open to it. Donald Trump has inadvertently sort of. Sort of, you know, given a. Given an opening for. For the progressives to just boldly lay out their own agenda and say, look, it doesn't have to be like this. I mean, you know, and that's actually new, I think, in the second term of Trump, because up to now, we've been in total defensive posture where we've just been going, God help us, you know. You know, and we are in a defensive posture, don't get me wrong. I mean, this is a fascist, authoritarian attempt, and we have to be, you know, very careful not to. To go too far. But one of the things that I think is. Is very interesting is that the. The woke critique that was just rampant. I mean, you remember the. The Ron DeSantis campaign, which was woke, woke, woke, woke, woke, every other word. I don't. That's. Not that it has lost its salience. I just do not feel that, you know, Trump said the other night he's going on about how, you know, this whole transgender thing. I mean, I don't even. Do you know what that. That was about, that one person.

[Sam Cedar]

My understanding is that states can't kidnap people and take them across into other states.

[Heather Digby Parton]

I don't think that was a big thing that was happening. I really don't think that that's been happening. But regardless, that stuff is just. It does not have the same salience that it had fairly recently because of what. What he's done. It's like, open up, wait a minute. You know, now we're talking about things in much bigger, more profound, you know, principle terms about values. And, you know, look, we're not those. We're not, you know, people are kind of waking up. Wake. Excuse the vernacular. Waking up to the idea that, you know, we're not a people or we shouldn't be a people that just loves to, you know, torture vulnerable others. I mean, that's just one of those things. And you see that in the streets of Minneapolis. You see it around the country where actual nor, you know, regular normies are kind of going, wait, no, that was. I didn't see. You know, we're not. We're not going to do that. And that's a huge opportunity for progressives. It really is. I mean, hopefully, you know, they walk into it and use the opportunity wisely because of the tendency to be, you know, to be kind of stupid too.

[Brian]

Let's not.

[Sam Cedar]

Let's face it, Digby, from your mouth to whatever entity could make it possible. Heather Parton, always a pleasure. Thank you so much. Of course. We will link to your salon pieces and to the Uber blog. I don't know how people wouldn't have that link already. Digby's blog. Thank you so much.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Really appreciate it so much. Have a great weekend, everybody.

[Sam Cedar]

Bye bye.

[Brian]

You too.

[Sam Cedar]

All right, folks, we're gonna take a quick break. We're gonna go into the fun half. I think so. Right, and are you going to. Well, I am going to have to skedaddle. I've got to run, but just. I've got to go to a slacker convention. Just remember, it's your memberships that keep this show surviving and thriving. Become a member. Join themjorityreport.com Emma, driving the ship and promos and I don't know if you want to do a freebie Friday. It's. It's up to you. It's your call. It's all on Emma. All right, I will say, how the am I being supposed to sell this property? Bye.

[Emma Vigeland]

Bye, Sam.

[Brian]

Bye. Have a good weekend. I think I am going to do a freebie Friday with all of the.

[Emma Vigeland]

What you are seeing is actually a display of estrogen.

[Brian]

Yes. Can't you see? Can't you see the estrogen emanating from me into the screen?

[Emma Vigeland]

The estrogen takeover commence.

[Brian]

I still need to fix my soundboard. I need the thunder drop.

[Sam Cedar]

I had a lot of estrogen before I was kidnapped by the state and brought over to another place to have been transgendered.

[Brian]

And aren't you grateful for that forcible kidnapping? It made you the person you are today.

[Sam Cedar]

Trans.

[Emma Vigeland]

And everybody, look, never mind that your aunt is hungry. They're transient. Everyone, including the basketball playing teenagers.

[Brian]

I don't know how AOC is going to win in 2028 with her platform of having her version of secret police kidnapping children and transing them without their parents knowledge. Making that.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, kidnapping and putting a bag over their head and say, you accept different pronouns.

[Brian]

Now we are going to have to work around some of. Some of that and brand it effectively or read some IMs and then we'll get into some clips here. Jesus says the most normal sounding politician was Jamal Bowman. I. I agree that Jamal Bowman sounds normal. We were actually. He just came up this morning because he had a pretty righteous rant about Lamar Jackson on. On Instagram. Doku Pilled says it's no accident that the multilingual AOC and Mamdani are simple communicators. They bounce between languages at times. Yeah, that was a great. A video that they did jointly explaining in Spanish. AOC joined Mamdani about the eligibility for universal childcare in the city. And you know, I mean, also I think Zoran is such a phenomenal speaker because he's a rapper too. Like, like part of it is.

[Emma Vigeland]

And you know, no offense to people from his background, but they're not lawyers. Yeah, like that for so long my entire life. Like you needed to go be a lawyer to be a politician and now people are sick of that.

[Brian]

Right. And lawyers and we've talked about lawyers and their psychology and what the institution rewards. They're institutionalists in like every sense of the word. That's literally what case law functions as. It. I mean, that's stare decisis as like you have to take in the culmination of precedent to make your decisions. It's like quite, it's institutional.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. And I would say this is the same thing that's going on in the UK with the Green Party versus Keir Starmer, who is the embodiment of that sort of like 2000s professional class liberal that has no connection with real people that they just go to like fancy meetings and suits and get like driven everywhere. And you know, they, they meet with leaders of trade unions out of some legacy, but they don't have any connection to the actual workers.

[Brian]

Kamala Harris Lawyer. Barack Obama lawyer. Hillary Clinton. Right. Lawyer, lawyer.

[Emma Vigeland]

Corporations.

[Brian]

Yeah, it's.

[Emma Vigeland]

Which is not to say that like, you know, of course there's probably even some very good candidates we support who have like a law background. But like, you need to be. Generally speaking, what Emma said is about these sort of status quo type mentality and the fealty to something that is, I mean, being driven. Trump is doing like, donuts like an ATV over law for the past like 10 years.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah. LX H Pinky says the Dems are using British keep calm and carry on attitude now that we're, we're here. Just because Matt brought it up, this is pretty significant. And I want to get a guest on who's a little bit more familiar with British politics to talk about this. I also want to kind of like correct myself because we had had an IM months ago about like Corbyn's party and, and people basically saying that the Green Party was more of a promising vehicle for left wing politics in the UK right now. And I think I maybe was a little too dismissive of that. So whoever I am doing about that, you were right. I was, I was wrong and maybe wasn't paying enough attention. So there you go.

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean I 100% concur. Like I would much more prefer your party and Corbyn and Sultana to have gotten their act together. They have messed it up massively and it's a huge, huge shame. I think it would be better to have a more socialist, explicitly socialist party develop. But they don't have it together. And I have a lot of respect for Polanski and the Greens for capitalizing on this moment because it's go time now with especially reform doing as well as they have been and the Labor Party collapsing because it was taken over by corporate Zionists.

[Brian]

So the. Yesterday the UK's Green Party won in this parliamentary by election in Gorton and Denton. This is, I guess those are places. I wrote it down.

[Sam Cedar]

It's the Manchester area from what I understand. Okay, Manchester.

[Brian]

Thank you, Brian. I've only been to London, so I don't know too much. But, but Keir Starmer's Labor Party, which is just, you know, after excommunicating Corbyn and other leftists, purging them essentially from the party they had held that seat for years and they ended up finishing in third behind the Greens. And then the far right Reform UK Party, which is led by Nigel Farage. Stop me if you've heard this before. The centrist party is neoliberal party is falling out of favor and you have the rise of the far right in the uk. And so Keir Starmer I think is at historic unpopularity right now. But here is a clip from the. The victory of. What number is this here? I don't have it in front of me. Oh, here it is. Here is a clip of Hannah Spencer speaking after this victory and talking about how they will support the Muslim community in the uk to our Muslim communities who this week suffered an attempted attack during Ramadan. Whilst I was being welcomed by women at a mosque in Long Site, someone just down the road walked into a mosque carrying an axe. And whilst we were gathered and eating together, an act of terror could easily have taken place. And I can and won't accept this victory tonight without calling out the politicians and divisive figures who constantly scapegoat and blame our communities for all the problems in society. My Muslim friends and neighbors are just like me, human. And of course to our white working class communities, the background that I have become so proud to to be from. We know how it feels to be looked down on. Maybe because we didn't do well at school, maybe because we do dirty manual jobs, because we are shut out of places we should be in. To people here in Gorton and Denton who feel left behind and isolated. I see you and I will fight for you. Because whilst our communities may sometimes be labeled in different ways, the thing everyone seems to have underestimated here, especially over the last few weeks, is how similar we all actually are. How we have common ground, how we get along, how we stand up for each other. The cracks that we're starting to show can be healed. And I believe that it's through offering people hope and a chance to do things differently and do things better. So she's the first ever Green Party MP in the north of England. She entered politics just two or three years ago and was a plumber. When she's speaking about her job there, so very much a working class centered campaign and her standing up for her Muslim neighbors there is obviously really needed and she has taken out stake in a claim on the genocide in Gaza and had a moral stance on that as well. So it's really great news. Not a claim staking out a position, I should say.

[Emma Vigeland]

There's a right wing, global, basically fascist propaganda campaign about the Other in society. Whether Steve Bannon in America, who is by the way a fucking banker who wanted to be a Hollywood elite, blaming all of society's problems, which are caused by people like him on immigrants, or Nigel Farage, who's also a banker. I think both are tied to Goldman Sachs. I could be wrong about Farage. Both, both from the class of people who have actually destroyed these communities. They are weaponizing it against the other in society. And it is really, really vital that we have people like Polanski and Hannah Spencer in the UK or people like Zoramadani Ilhan, Omar Talib, aoc, like speaking against that now because it is, it's, it's very potent if there's nothing against standing against it. And unfortunately, in the leadership of the Labour Party and the leadership of the Democratic Party, they're bought off by pro Israel money, which necessitates and demands Islamophobia. And so, yes, this is really important. And I am very happy that she took time out of her speech to go at that head on instead of avoiding it or like trying to like, coddle that bigotry something. Because that's something that, that's something that people do from the lawyer class. Oh, how can I relate to these people that I don't have anything against? I know it's the, I'll just feed into bigotry and.

[Brian]

Well, that's, it's a very, very elitist Newsom's doing. Yeah, exactly.

[Emma Vigeland]

How can I, how can I appeal to these hogs?

[Brian]

Well, I'll.

[Emma Vigeland]

In their minds. Well, let's just, let's just feed into the bigotry. But like, that exists in everybody. It would also exist in everybody is a desire for a better, a world that's not based on hierarchies. And I think we're seeing now across these, whether it's in America, like the Taylor remit down in Texas, like, people, people see through this and they want a better vision that people can fight toward.

[Brian]

Well said. Well said. Let's, let's cover because we kind of talked about it for a little bit. I want to cover the Zoron meeting. So Zoran Mandani had a previously scheduled meeting with Donald Trump yesterday. It was going to be centered around Zoran's request for $21 billion to help with affordable housing in Sunnyside. And I think it would be like 12,000 affordable apartments. This would be a really significant win for the construction of affordable housing. Yeah, go to. I think it's the image here. 3 and 4. So he had already had this meeting scheduled, but earlier this week there was, let's just put it up. I mean, like, so Zoran smiles all the time, but he makes a point not to with Trump, but he brought him prop Daily news fake articles, which we know that Trump has fake Time magazines with his face on it at these golf courses, being man of the year. So he loves a fake newspaper that inflates his ego.

[Emma Vigeland]

He can only see himself through the press.

[Brian]

Yes.

[Emma Vigeland]

Making fake newspapers that flatter him is like, that gets directly to his heart.

[Brian]

I mean, that's amazing. So it's like a, it's a, it's a Play on an old article here.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. Fortitude City. Drop dead. There's a book called Fear City that goes into the budget standoff by Kim Phillips. Fine. That people should read about if they want to hear about that period of time. But yeah. Zoran explicitly countering Trump with Ford. Like, you don't want to be a loser like Ford.

[Brian]

Right, right, right, exactly. Look, look. And giving him like a child, a visual contrast.

[Emma Vigeland]

And look at the picture they chose for him, too. It's like he's all big and strong.

[Brian]

That's. I think that's his. Maybe his presidential portrait or his main headshot. Oh, yeah, yeah. He loves that one. He loves, like, leaning into his villain aesthetic. It's not difficult. Yes. Badass.

[Emma Vigeland]

And I'm saving New York. I'm like Gerald Ford.

[Sam Cedar]

I don't want to be like Gerald Ford.

[Heather Digby Parton]

He.

[Brian]

I mean, he really. He looks like a child holding up the present that he got for Christmas,

[Emma Vigeland]

brand new at N64 in 1996.

[Brian]

So I. We don't know what the status of that request is. It seems like even in the State of the Union, I was laughing because he calls him a communist, but then he calls him a nice guy immediately. And you see J.D. vance behind him and just. You can tell in his mind, God, I wish he would off the cuff, say something nice about me like that. Because he can't even help it. He can't even help it. And so we'll see if Zoron's able to secure funding for this significant project. But within hours of this meeting, he was able to secure the release of an Azerbaijan Baijani undergraduate student who was taken into ICE custody and like, basically disappeared. Let's play a little bit of the Columbia president here, Claire Shipman. Claire Shipman, who explained what happened because ICE entered the premises under false pretenses. They pretended that they were looking for a missing child and kidnapped this student who is like, I think in a. In a part of Columbia that's more geared towards older students. I believe she's 29 years old. It's like the general studies department. So she had previously been at Columbia, then is had re enrolled and she had her visa revoked because she ended up. She was not at Columbia during that time.

[Emma Vigeland]

She wasn't any classes in 2016. So that.

[Sam Cedar]

It.

[Brian]

Yeah, but she's married. Yeah. So that was the premise as to why they were kidnapping.

[Emma Vigeland]

So better send in Department of Homeland Security. Security.

[Brian]

Exactly. She restarted her education and they lie to the people on Columbia's campus and go in and take her and Zoran got her out immediately after meeting with Trump. Just to show Democrats like this is possible. You can, you can try to actually make a change here. But here is the explanation from Colombia. Good evening. We are all so relieved that our student Elia Gajeva has been released from federal custody. Let me give you some details about what happened this morning. Shortly after 6am, five federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security without any kind of warrant, entered an off campus Columbia residential building. The agents gained entry by stating they were police searching for for a missing child. They made their way to the apartment of the student they were targeting with the same story. Our security cameras captured the agents in the hallway showing pictures of the alleged missing child. Once inside the apartment, it became clear they had misrepresented themselves. A public safety officer arrived, asked multiple times for a warrant which was not produced, and asked for time to call his boss, which was not given. The agents took our student. This was a frightening and fast moving situation and utterly unacceptable for our students and staff. We started work immediately to gain her release. We are so grateful for the help and support we got from the mayor and the governor. Let me be clear. Misrepresenting identity and other facts to gain access to to a residential building is a breach of protocol. All law enforcement agencies are obligated to follow established legal ethical standards. Can you pause it? We don't really need to hear too much more because that's actually not true of ice. ICE can lie to you and they continue to lie that they claim that they have. Like they can just use these administrative warrants which are nothing. They are ICE permission slips to themselves to enter these residences. That's. That's where it's true. That is not. It's a fourth Amendment violation. This is going to need to be hashed out in the courts. But on its face, it's a clear fourth Amendment violation. But ICE does use the tactic of lying repeatedly to get into people's homes to access folks who they can kidnap. So I guess we can let this run if there's anything more.

[Emma Vigeland]

But I just want to make a note.

[Sam Cedar]

No.

[Emma Vigeland]

Obviously ISIS doing all this. This is Department of Homeland Security. These were DHS agents. Not even ICE agents.

[Brian]

Right? Right. In our administration has ever provided any assistance to DHS or ICE as regards arresting or taking any of our students. Quite the opposite. We have labored, often intensively behind the scenes to see them supported. We understand the fear and anger this situation has caused. We've shared additional guidance and resources with students, faculty and staff and will continue to Do. So thank you all for your support of this institution and the people who make Columbia what it is. And I know our thoughts are with. Yeah, so they did take the student. And within a few hours of that meeting, as I mentioned, Zoran Mamdani was able to get her out of custody.

[Emma Vigeland]

Here's a little more from Mandani. At the press conference. Talking about this just today.

[Sam Cedar]

We also discussed the immigration cases I know are front of mind for so many New Yorkers. I shared my concern with the president about ICE's detention of Columbia student Elmina Agaeva yesterday morning, as well as the detention of four additional New Yorkers in relation to the university.

[Brian]

Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, Yunseo Chang and Naka Kordia.

[Sam Cedar]

I asked that their cases be dropped. I'm grateful that shortly after our meeting, the President called me to inform me that Elmina would be imminently released. And indeed she was.

[Brian]

He's grateful to the President. That's all I needed to hear. I want him so badly. He's so charming. He queens out with the hottest mayor in the country. He's good looking guy too. I like women though. There. There it is. Amazing stuff. Amazing stuff by Zoram Mandani.

[Sam Cedar]

Whatever. I still see some snow on the side.

[Brian]

Definitely not. Cameron, is misrepresenting yourself, including ICE as police, a breach of protocol? Or was it what we plebeians call a crime? Well, technically it's just a breach of protocol for them because they are a DHS is not beholden by the rules of traditional law enforcement. I mean that's the systemic problem that we're speaking about here. By the my time.

[Emma Vigeland]

They lie. They dropped ICE agents, dropped the blind guy off. He fucking died. And they said that they, they. They just lied about how they dropped him off. They said they dropped him off at a. At a coffee shop that was warm.

[Brian]

We're gonna get that to that.

[Sam Cedar]

It's murder. These are murders.

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean that's the thing.

[Brian]

Just.

[Emma Vigeland]

Just to. People need to step back a little bit. Where we are in this country. The clip we opened the show with that is happening the. The starvation of our. Of elderly people and poor people in general is happening in this country every day. So you think these. The political class that would allow that and, and not have any kind of urgency about that? You don't think, you think that they're going to limit themselves to like the age of consent?

[Brian]

Yeah. Saturn girl. Don't forget Mercury. Mercury in retrograde right now. Which means bad news deceptive announcements, delayed messages, and people from your past coming back to bother you. Luckily for me, it's boosting my aura. I'm totally Saturn maxing and mommy mogging right now.

[Emma Vigeland]

Great block party song.

[Brian]

Also Mercury go off Saturn girl Benny from Jersey. Did you see Anna K. Unironically talking about the goyim waking up? She's so far gone. Yeah, we're getting. We're getting like a ton of IMs about it. I mean, I did see that it is.

[Emma Vigeland]

And then immediately citing. Oh, I got. I like my. I get my foreign policy Glenn Greenwald.

[Brian]

And I mean, well, I. Let's just put this up because you know, why this show started covering Dave Rubin was because. And why she was quite critical about this at the time was. Was because he was representing himself as the last liberal and representing himself as a part of the left, but saying really right wing things and you know, giving a permission structure for certain ideas, ideas that was undercutting solidarity, undercutting leftist movements and also just like genuinely really dumb. And this obvious grift that is oriented towards money that this show wanted to call out and you know, you see that she is still being presented as a progressive, but saying things that are just like genuinely anti Semitic. We didn't cover this. But the meme of doing the anti Semitic meme on air, I also saw that and it's like, okay, perhaps she was ignorant about that kind of thing. But you see something like this and it's clearly not the case. This is just straight up anti Semitism. She said in the original. Just the original tweet here, like, this is in defense of Tucker Carlson.

[Emma Vigeland]

So it starts off with a tweet from Joe Berry. Notice the left isn't attacking Tucker or Candace. It's interesting Anna considers this a part of the left, given who she cites about her foreign policy stuff later. But we'll get to that. And she responds to this, make the goem unwake up. No, I know it's not. I'm telling the story about how this goes. So she said. So she responds to that with two crying face emojis and then goes back and forth. But I would say, like, make the goyim wake up. That's not phrasing I would use because I would recognize that as anti Semitic just for folks following along at home. So they go back and forth for a little bit. And this person says, and here Anne is replying to obvious anti Semite. I would agree about the goam waking up. Only anti Semites talk like that. Hey, the Goam are waking the up. Deal with it. Anna says. And then she says, I do not regret this comment. I don't apologize. Israel is evil, genocidal and has destroyed our country. They're about to drag us into another war and all we hear from Israelis and their brain dead supporters is anti Semite. If you disagree with Israel's agenda, they smear you and silence you. Blah blah blah. We get it. Jasper Nathaniel's response to this, which is like none of that is terribly apposite to saying the goyer waking up.

[Brian]

Yeah, I mean I think that it is genuinely harmful that she has built up a multi decade at this point career of being associated with the progressive movement and with the left and is now espousing talking points that are anti Semitic. Talking about the, the goyim waking up is just explicitly. I mean it sounds like Candace Owens. It sounds like Tucker Carlson maxing. Yeah, and and it also is anti Semitic because when you say that non Jews essentially, I'm not going to use that term anymore, are waking up, what does that mean? The implication of that is that it is Jewish people that are behind the genocidal policy of the Israeli government. That is an anti Semitic conflation. And it fits in with the previous statement that we had covered from her on the I've had It podcast where she said that she doesn't believe that Tucker Carlson is anti Semitic because he previously supported Zionism. So in her mind she truly seems to associate Zionism with Judaism. Now we have repeatedly on this program tried to make that distinction because we know what this was going to lead to as Israel's genocide continued unabated, which is the complete overlap in people's minds of Judaism, which is an old religion that a beautiful religion that is a peaceful religion, just like Islamic is a peaceful religion when practiced the right way and not with fundamentalism. It is one that obscures the reality that Israel functions as America's colony. Even in that apology. Can we just go back to it? About how Israel's evil, genocidal and has destroyed our country is a fundamental misunderstanding of the dynamic here, which is that Israel began as a British colony and then in the wake of World War II, as the United States kind of became the superpower, we took over that responsibility and the expansionist aims of the Israeli government fit into our colonial ambitions and we funded Israel over and over again. We gave them diplomatic coverage and it has become an outpost for the United States. It's not controlling us. We are responsible here for Israel's crimes and the construction of it being the reverse is why we talk about anti Semitism on the right all the time is because what Tucker Carlson and what Candace Owens want you to think is that it's a small group of Jews that are controlling our foreign policy in this manner when we know that Israel is an outgrowth of American empire and not. And nationalist.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's Christian and Jewish nationalist.

[Brian]

Exactly.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's what Zionists are.

[Brian]

Exactly. So, I mean, I just want to

[Emma Vigeland]

zero in on this thing she says later, which I think is especially embarrassing from somebody who was given a show on Jackson been to talk about things like foreign policy, to say here's some to just trot this out. Jeffrey Sachs, Norm Finkelstein, Glenn Greenwald, Dave Smith, all Jewish Americans. I admire on foreign policy. Now, look, I like a lot of Norm Finkelson's books. I think Glenn Greenwell's done good work. I don't know why you're saying Dave Smith. Dave Smith, the guy who said fucking Trump is going to be anti war. Dave Smith's a fucking moron. That he has some kind of clarity about Israel being bad and happens to be Jewish. Israel enough to cite as somebody you admire on foreign policy. I think that's somebody just grasping for Jewish figures to hide behind after you said the word goyim. Do any of those. I would be interested that any of those people. What do they explicitly say about you saying the goyim are waking up? That's an. That's a anti Semitic phrase. You should apologize for it. And you're not helping Palestinians. Well, that's the thing jumping in and make. And honestly. And honestly, here's the big problem with Anna. Anna made a pivot in the past couple years away. And that's why she's not citing anyone really left wing in that she's made a pivot away from the actual left. And she didn't do it because Kamal Harris supported a genocide, which is what she says now. She did it because of trans people and immigrants. And that's fucking disgraceful. So now she's rehabilitating herself on a issue like this and then immediately like frankly doing damage to it by this sort of dumb, undisciplined bullshit.

[Sam Cedar]

I don't think she should.

[Brian]

Well, yeah, I don't care if she does damage. She can do damage to her own career if she wants to do so. But the reality is that she's doing damage to the pro Palestine movement by a. So by the. The having that track record of being associated with the left and now engaging in anti Semitism Even if she can cite Jewish people that she likes, the reality is, is that she's at best being incredibly careless with her language and doing damage to the credibility of the pro Palestine movement, the effort to liberate Palestinians from the Israeli apartheid, the genocide, etc. By not being careful with language like that. And this is, I'm giving like the best faith interpretation here. It is, it gives an opening for the right for Zionists to attack the movement for Palestinian liberation as anti Semitic.

[Emma Vigeland]

They can't wait for it. I mean, dsa, there was an event for Tax the Rich. And David Lurie, who's 46th mayor of City council of San Francisco, said at this event a group of individuals were trying to tax who were chanting tax the rich. Began to shout tax the Jews. Now those people were immediately challenged by the actual people in that group. They were there to disrupt it. What Anna's doing is the exact same people that went into the tax the rich DSA thing and started sending started chanting tax the Jews. It's the same thing. It's the same gift to people who want to discredit the left broadly. What, what she's. She basically just did that.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah, I saw, I literally. I saw Jake Tapper. I saw. The reason I saw it on my feed is because Jake Tapper, who's a massive Zionist was retweeting. I think it was actually jeet accurately calling it anti Semitic. Yeah, but, but, but the, the fact that that can be given to Tapper, the fact that a guy like Tapper can use that as another like as a, as a piece of information to discredit the left and say it's. It's just this anti. Semitism is a major problem among the anti Zionist left. Because of that being her brand is. I know she's not paid opposition, but that's what someone who would be paid opposition would do.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's a massive gift designers to do this sort of shit.

[Brian]

Let's, let's actually quickly talk about this is really important, this race in, in North Carolina. Just wanted to mention this because it's on Tuesday. What number are we at here? Yeah, I think this is 11. Let's do 11 and 12. So we had Nita Alam on this show a few weeks ago, a week or so ago. And she is running in North Carolina's 4th district. She's primary a Democrat who had received a bunch of APAC support previously. This race by the way, is on Tuesday. So get out and vote everybody if you're in North Carolina. But the incumbent is representative Valerie Fouche. And she was bullied really into saying that she will no longer take any more money from aipac. But we have this really great report from Sludge showing that Hakeem Jeffries and the dccc, which is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, it is the arm, the fundraising arm of the House Democrats, is funneling money to Fouche from just like the same sources, but not calling it aipac. Let's just read the first few paragraphs of this article here. Scroll down, please. A mysterious super PAC tied to a billionaire APAC donor has popped up in the high profile house Democratic primary, North Carolina's 4th district, to support Representative Valerie Fouche, a past beneficiary of millions of dollars in APAC spending. The PAC called Article 1 PAC has only disclosed one donor, an obscure nonprofit named the Guzman foundation that gives its address as a nonprofit tax firm in Virginia. But it is also linked in FEC records to Robert Granier Granieri, whoever, the reclusive co founder of the trading firm Jane Street Capital and a major donor to APAC's super PAC, United Democracy Project. Granny Area is once again another front for aipac. The idea that this is legal, that you can create pop up super PACs that hide that it's APAC money. Well, I mean this, I know this is a little bit different, but there's just no sunsight and disclosure here. Can you scroll up a little? It's my. It's blocking. Yeah, Granny Aries lists the sole donor to article one's affiliate way I lost my place here. Only disclose one donor. Oh, here it is. Okay. On February 24th, the new super PAC spent $600,000 on media supporting Fouche joining a race that has already been flooded with outside spending by the AI industry, a David Hog run PAC and more. So this is, this is basically Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats having a PAC money go into this race without it being called apac, which is to say

[Emma Vigeland]

Republican money, which is to say the leadership of the party is working against the desires of its base in a conspiratorial fashion.

[Brian]

And then you also have this poll from Gallup which is really significant just to show how politically toxic Israel support is becoming. Look at this graph. American sympathies with the Middle east situation. This is the first time in the history of Gallup polling on this issue that Palestinians are now the more sympathetic group in the eyes of the American public. I don't know why they did the green line for Israel and the blue line for Palestinians, because it really should be the. That's just not good color coordination. Gallop. Now you have 41% say that they are more sympathetic with the Palestinians and 36% say Israelis.

[Emma Vigeland]

And that's not even splitting out through Democrats or Republicans.

[Brian]

Well, we can do that if you want to scroll down. Independents. This is, I mean this is really important. This is the cohort, the growing political constituency in this country. More and more people are associating as or identifying as independents over Democrat or Republican. There you go. That's an 11 point gap for independent sympathies with Palestinians winning out there. Of course, Democrats, 65% sympathize with Palestinians more than the Israelis, 17% sympathize with the Israelis. They should leave the Democratic Party.

[Emma Vigeland]

The Republicans, people need to demand that.

[Brian]

Look at that.

[Emma Vigeland]

I was really happy that.

[Brian]

Look at that. Sorry, I just want to quickly, quickly point out the Republicans before you jump in that. But like the Republicans are dipping a little bit. But again, it's so overstated. Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are really making a difference there with their anti Semitism. That's they're disguising as anti Zionism. Go on that.

[Emma Vigeland]

Sorry, I forgot what I was going to say.

[Brian]

My bad. I apologize. Well, by age group we don't need to show it, but I have it written down here. So it's like plus 48 for Democrats for Palestinians, plus 11 for independence with Palestinians. The cohort of 18 to 34 year olds. Palestinians are plus 30 with sympathies, 35 to 54. Palestinians are plus 18. It's all being driven by senior citizens who love Israel. And yeah, so the New Yorker had

[Emma Vigeland]

Ben Shapiro on their radio hour a week ago or two ago. Two weeks ago, I should say, because. And I know that because over the two weeks, despite having Ben Shapiro on the cool kids philosopher, they've only got 39,000 views about it. And it's about the split in the right and how Ben Shapiro is trying to keep the right not anti Semitic, but what they mean is pro Israel. And what I think people like Zionists, liberal Zionists who read the New Yorker need to hear is that it's over. The support for Israel is over in both parties. It's coming to an end. So if the main priority, if your main priority is anti Semitism, there is no time to waste trying to prop up fucking Israel. And shame on the world for deciding that the solution to anti Semitism in Christian Europe was a settler colonial project in the Middle East. It was always a bad idea. We are living with the consequences of it now and enough is enough and the people have seen enough is enough. And there can, this can go two ways. And the Candace Owens Tucker Carlson way of saying that it's all just because anti Semitism is back, like it's the 1930s in Europe is going to self perpetuate that. Or we can have an actual view of the world that isn't hierarchical, that doesn't depend on maintaining borders with guns and taking land and throwing over international law, whether it's stuff the UN decided like hey, you can't take land in conquest. Some we try to get Russia for now because they're doing the same thing. But we've never enforced enforced on Israel or hey, this law we have on the books that says if a country is doing war crimes, you can't continue fucking arming them. That doesn't say anything about offensive versus defensive weapons. People need to get serious about the type of world that we're allowing to unspool in front of our fucking eyes.

[Brian]

Well, now that we're in the depressing part, we let's just cover this, this story and then we'll move on to fun things, okay? I promise you guys. So Border patrol agents left this man, this mostly blind refugee basically in a parking lot in Buffalo. And they left him on February 19th and five days later he was found dead. This is a thread, a very helpful thread by Evan Hill of the Washington Post, who I just got to say has been is one of the reporters you should be following. He also has done some really good forensics in the genocide in Gaza. He, he goes through a timeline of all of the evidence here of what happened in this instance. So scroll to the top and we'll go through it. How he explains we obtain footage showing a man who appeared to be a refuge to be refugee Nurul Amin Shah Alamo being dropped off by border patrol outside a Buffalo coffee shop after 8pm the shop locks its door at 7pm he never made it inside and was found dead five days later. So and he goes into the background on this story. We don't need to watch this really. But you can see that there is now like footage of him being dropped.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's him there walking through an after hours drive through.

[Brian]

And this is Buffalo, New York. So the amount, how cold it must be up there can't be overstated. This. Let's go to the next tweet. This video. You can see him here trying to get into the Tim Hortons. But the, it had, it had closed and it'd been closed for over an Hour. But this is where he hard to

[Sam Cedar]

see, but he's in one of the window reflections on the right right now.

[Brian]

Next tweet here from Evan Hill. Shawl on pace for a few minutes outside the Tim Hortons after being dropped off. And then around five minutes after border patrol left him, he leaves and walks slowly across the parking lot towards the family Dollar where he disappears from view. So that's the last that was seen of him. Now keep going. Yes.

[Sam Cedar]

Winter, and it's night.

[Brian]

So we will play. Let's play this footage here. A little bit, a minute of it. Now, this is disturbing. I just want people to. To be prepared for this. But the reason he was even in custody was because of this arrest. This arrest happened around two months after he came into the United States. So a little bit of background on him. Shah Alam entered the United States as a refugee fleeing a genocide in December 2024.

[Sam Cedar]

The Rohingya Muslim in mind from Myanmar where.

[Brian]

Right?

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah.

[Brian]

And he is mostly blind, as I mentioned, he didn't speak English. Two months later, he walks into a backyard wanders. Once again, he is visually impaired. He's using curtain rods as walking sticks in this clip, he doesn't speak English. Police will tase him in this video. And as he's convulsing, he bites them. And you know what they did? They charged him with a felony. Here's that clip.

[Sam Cedar]

Hey, what are you doing? Drop it.

[Brian]

Drop it. Drop it.

[Sam Cedar]

Put it down. Put it down.

[Heather Digby Parton]

You're gonna get tased.

[Sam Cedar]

Put it down. Put it down. Put it down.

[Brian]

Down on the ground.

[Sam Cedar]

Put it in the snow.

[Brian]

In the snow. You're gonna get taste, okay? You're gonna get taste. I'm gonna tell you one more time. I'm gonna tell you one more time.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm gonna tell you one more time.

[Heather Digby Parton]

I'm gonna shoot you, dude. Put it down.

[Brian]

Put it down. Delta 280 radio, give me more cars. Yeah. Put it down. Okay, so he's. He's freaking out. I don't want to play the rest of the footage. People kind of get it, right? He's tased. He speaks.

[Sam Cedar]

This fucking cop not understand that he doesn't speak English.

[Brian]

And by the way, I just want to return to. I was reminded of Haley Stevens when we played that clip of her saying that we need more female ICE agents. These are female cops. And there's no difference. He was carrying curtain rods to help him walk because he's blind. And apparently in this footage. Let's go to Evan's next tweet in the Footage Shah alam can be heard speaking in rohingya and malay. He asked for God's help and tries to explain to the uncomprehending officers that he lives nearby and was going to the store. He pleads with the officers not to throw away his phone. Shah alam was booked on a felony and six misdemeanors, which a grand jury then indicted as felony assault, burglary and criminal mistreatment charges. And he was arraigned in june. Border patrol issued a detainer on him on the grounds that he was deportable.

[Emma Vigeland]

Good reason to not skip jury duty, folks. Shame on that jury.

[Brian]

I'll weigh in after this. Per ipost news reporting, Shalom's family opted not to bail him out of the erie county jail for fear he would be immediately deported upon his release. Eventually, the erie county d. A. Offered to. Agreed to offer shalom a reduced plea to misdemeanor weapons possession and trespass. Let's pause for a sec here and just reflect on that mist. They. They gave him a plea deal. They offered him a plea deal. He was holding curtain rods, and they were claiming that that was a weapon. This is how plea deals are used to further the poverty to prison pipeline. Over 90% of convictions in this country are plea deals. It's because of things like pretrial detention and bail where you can't get out if you don't have the money to pay it. And it forces people into plea deals for things that. If that went to trial, do you think that, that, that. That shalom, that perhaps the jury would have had some reasonable doubt about that situation given what we just saw?

[Emma Vigeland]

Lock up the blind guy?

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think so. But we put people in who are impoverished, who are refugees, who. English isn't their. Their first language into a cycle of incarceration and poverty and over and over and over again. And the erie county police there, they had an option they didn't need to cooperate with the federal government here. That's why you have things like. Like zoron going out there and talking about sanctuary city policies and how important they are. That's why every city should have a sanctuary city policy because it prevents the ICE gestapo from coming in and essentially kidnapping their citizenry. But basically, what the erie county police dig was like, it's all right. So when you have the federal government and the Trump administration begging for more collaboration with ICE and even chuck schumer saying that that should be the case, this is what they're talking about here. All right, let's Put this thread back up. So he got a reduced. He took a plea deal. So he pled guilty because he needed. He wanted to get out of detention, but also because they were concerned here, as Evan explains, Shah Alam sentencing was set for March 24, and his family posted bond on February 19. Rather than being transferred to ICE and then released. As his attorney reportedly expected, the Erie County Sheriff's Office released Shah Alam to Border Patrol, per his original detainer. There you go. That's the police collaborating. After taking custody of Shah Alam, Border Patrol appears to have decided or realized that as a Rohingya refugee whose immigration to the US Was not. Was facilitated by Jewish Family Services of Western New York, he was not amenable to removal. So then next tweet, that's when they drop him off. Border Patrol didn't notify Shah Alam's family or attorney, and he no longer lived anywhere close to the Tim Hortons where they left him. He lived with his wife and kids more than six miles away. Now he was alone, without proper shoes and in 37 degree weather. What happened to Shalom between the night of February 19 and the evening of February 24 is still not known. And including how and why he ended up on the street nearly six miles away outside. So there you go.

[Emma Vigeland]

We don't he murder those cops and ice.

[Brian]

He, he obviously was blind. He obviously had a hard time getting home. Did he have a phone? Did he have the ability to contact anybody? I mean, you know, it's just his life already was so difficult that he had a disability that he had to come to the United States to flee a genocide. And this is how our country treated him. And the blood is on their hands. And I'm, you know, you see like Kathy Hochul's demanding an investigation. That stuff is really good. But this is. This is incredibly shameful. This is incredibly shameful. And I mean, and like the charges initially, you guys saw the. I mean, this could have all been avoided. This could have all been avoided. This is why we talk about policing reform and don't just. Just, you know, kneel in kente cloth. There needs to be something that changes here. The fact that, like, they can make a claim that he had a weapon because he was using curtain rods to walk. There needs to be more. There needs to be more of, like a community safety response so that you don't have a situation where cops, cops are coming up to this man who can't speak English and who has a disability hurting him. And then when he has a reaction, convulsing And I guess bites them. They put him into the like prison industrial complex and it's resulted in his death. So it is just a about 15

[Sam Cedar]

people that need a homicide charge.

[Brian]

Yes. Yeah, and this is a tactic that they were using in Minnesota to dropping off people after detaining them many miles from their home with no ability to get home. It's, it's sadistic. Cat Lack says they dumped him like that intentionally hoping he would die. Yeah, I don't think they intentionally did anything.

[Sam Cedar]

I think they just don't give a fuck.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah. Angela from Alberta sounds like they were taking notes from the Winnipeg police who did Starlight tours. Indigenous people usually mail for supposed drunkenness or disorderly behavior, but sometimes without cause were taken outside the city and left often to die in freezing conditions. Yep. Chicago leather carrier F these pigs. Future reactionary. I was going to go to the soccer convention but I don't know, I just don't feel like it anymore. Sam with lasers. I'm in full agreement on the segment about Anna, but you don't need to carry so much water for any Abrahamic religion. Slavery is still condoned, prescribed and encouraged in the Old Testament of the Bible. Yeah, I mean, but I, I, I,

[Sam Cedar]

I, it's funny to say slavery is still condoned by the Old Testament.

[Brian]

I mean, yeah, they didn't do any revisions. They haven't had a biblical amendment that's been proposed yet. I mean like I, I don't believe in God. I'm not trying to, you know, justify it. I just, I think that it's important to point out peaceful traditions in like, I'm not going to really make that case about Christianity right now because it is like the dominant, because it's a different power dynamic here. Islam is demonized. Judaism is also now, you know, demonized. There's a return to that and it's important, I think, to emphasize the more peaceful traditions in those religions in these times of, you know, hatred. So I, I hear your point, but Carl Dem Sach, the ceaseman caller apologizing for crying because she's being starved by a narcissistic pedo rapist billionaire, moronic wannabe monarch is heart wrenching. I hate how we have to be conditioned to think we can't express emotions in the society that seems ever less caring. Surprise, surprise, Saturn girl. Why does Matt have to cuss so much? I, I'm sorry. You know, we'll, we'll, we'll do some bleeping.

[Sam Cedar]

Maybe I'll tell him to cut the shit.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah. Now it's just Brian and I. Matt had to run to an appointment. So what are we going to do? Go crazy?

[Sam Cedar]

Do we go into some of these women's issues?

[Brian]

Oh, yes.

[Sam Cedar]

Casey Means.

[Brian]

Oh, yes, yes, let's do that. So this is absolutely insane. Trump's pick for Surgeon General is this woman named Casey Means. I'm not going to put the doctor in front of her name like she likes to do, because she's not supposed to have it in front of her name. She graduated, graduated. We talked about her before, and I forgot about this. This is the woman that she graduated from the Stanford School of Medicine, but she had dropped out of her residency and is still using the doctor term, even though she's been. She doesn't have an active medical license, so she is not authorized to practice medicine. She's not authorized to, you know, prescribe you anything. But she is now Trump's pick to be the literal top doctor in the country. That is what the Surgeon General is. So I saw, I was reading this morning, an AP article about this, and they described her as wellness influencer, author and entrepreneur. And I think the entrepreneur part is the most operative piece here. Like, she comes out of the Maha rfk, you know, school, and they are just snake oil salesmen, just straight up. One chapter in her book is apparently entitled, trust yourself, not your doctor.

[Sam Cedar]

Wow.

[Brian]

So here she is trying to be the top doctor in the country that is just going to be somebody who is like, just shrugs for three more years. I'm not sure. Oh, and I should set this up. This is Tim K. There you go. Tim Kaine. There was a Senate confirmation hearing, and it doesn't seem like, as of right now, she has the votes because you have Murkowski and Collins being very concerned. But that coward, Bill Cassidy, who's a doctor who confirmed RFK and now says he regrets it, won't comment on what he's going to do here. I bet you're a coward again, buddy. I bet you're a coward again. Yeah, right. I mean, like, the regret is, oh, I regret this later on is somehow worse than being perpetually concerned like Collins and Murkowski. It's, it's, it's, it's honestly more cowardly. But here is Tim Kaine questioning her about the flu vaccine.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm going to, I'm going to set the quote aside. I'll introduce for the record an article, CBS News RFK Jr. Says it may be better if fewer children receive the the flu vaccine, dated January 7, 2026.

[Emma Vigeland]

Without objection.

[Sam Cedar]

Let me set Aside the quote and set aside Secretary Kennedy and set aside the article. Do you believe that there is evidence that the flu vaccine prevents serious disease and prevents hospitalization or deaths in children?

[Brian]

I believe that all patients should talk to their doctors.

[Sam Cedar]

And so do I. And that's not what I'm asking you. Your qualifications have been much discussed. There is a mountain of evidence about this. Do you believe that there's no evidence that there's. The flu vaccine has efficacy in reducing serious injury or hospitalization? This is an Easy one, doctor. This is an easy one.

[Brian]

Reboot CDC's guidance on the flu vaccine. And I will always be working with the cdc, ACIP and the.

[Sam Cedar]

So you believe it is an efficacious vaccine to reduce hospitalization?

[Brian]

Is or is not?

[Sam Cedar]

Is. You believe it is.

[Brian]

As I said, I support the CDC's guidance on the flu vaccine.

[Sam Cedar]

Let me just say, do you think the flu vaccine reduces the risk of hospitalization or serious injury?

[Brian]

I've said you're a doctor. I believe vaccines save lives. A public health strategy.

[Sam Cedar]

Flu vaccine, does it reduce the risk of injury or hospitality at the population level?

[Brian]

I certainly think that it does.

[Sam Cedar]

Let me introduce, for the record, If I can, Mr. Chair, CDC seasonal flu vaccine effectiveness studies dated May 30, 2025 from the CDC that goes into this in some detail without objection.

[Brian]

All right, let's. Let's pull that up. Actually, I sent that CDC efficacy stuff because she's deferring to it, but she does not want to be on the record and endorsing it as Brian pulls this up. Did I send this? I could just read it here from the CDC site. Here it is. Flu vaccine effectiveness for children and older adults. I'll just read it. 2022 study showed that flu vaccine vaccination reduced children's risk of severe life threatening influenza by 75%. A 2020 study found that flu vaccination reduced flu related hospitalization by 41% and flu related emergency department visits by half among children. Then 2017 study in the journal Pediatrics showing that the flu vaccination also significantly reduced children's risk of dying from FL flu. The study, which looked at data for FL for flu seasons between 2010 and 2014 found that flu vaccination reduced the risk of flu associated death by half among children with underlying higher risk medical conditions and by nearly 2/3, 65% among healthy children. These are comprehensive studies. There are across multiple time frames from different journals, from different doctors, from different scientists, all concluding obviously that the flu vaccine is highly effective for older adults. For children, preventing hospitalization, preventing death. It is established fact.

[Sam Cedar]

I feel like the reason why she's saying I will always stand by the CDC is she anticipates the CDC is just going to be reducing vaccine schedules and getting rid of flu vaccination recommendations.

[Brian]

Right.

[Sam Cedar]

And then that'll look like she told me the truth.

[Brian]

Exactly. She doesn't want to be on the record endorsing it because they want the flexibility to deny to take down this site that I'm reading from and be like, cross that with a big X. Just kidding. Maybe some more testosterone replacement is going to help. And on that point, this is her for, on Joe Rogan from this, this quack. A clip of her that's being recirculated from around a year ago speaking about birth control pills. This is her opinion on women who use birth control. We've got a huge percentage of American women on birth control pills. That's of course post, hopefully post puberty. But we're, we're putting women on exogenous estrogens for acne, for pcos, for menstrual irregularity, sometimes of course, for actual birth control. But it's like, it's, it's very ubiquitous now in the environment. And it's like when you kind of know this stuff, you're like, how are we allowing this to happen? And then of course, it's affecting boys too. Right.

[Heather Digby Parton]

You know, and so how kind of

[Brian]

just think about this world we're living.

[Sam Cedar]

His audience engaged.

[Brian]

Not like there's a bunch of exogenous testosterone. Right. It's not like the Plastics are all right, you're involved too.

[Sam Cedar]

Blah, blah, blah, blah. Boys are affected. Oh,

[Brian]

I'm still a totally a boy spiritually.

[Sam Cedar]

I may be probably falling asleep on

[Brian]

the other side, girls. So when she says hopefully post puberty, I mean, the reason I got on birth control pills was because that was really loose now. It was because. I was, when I was teenager, I was, it was, I got ovarian cysts and it was immensely painful. And you know what helped going on a low level of birth control. There are a bunch of different uses for birth control pills that are important for women and girls health there. But you can see how the anti trans agenda fits into what they're talking about here. I wonder if she is as adamant about puberty blockers that are used for CIS children as she probably is for puberty blockers and hormones that are used for trans kids. They never talk about how oftentimes there are situations where there are kids that are entering into Puberty too quickly and doctors say, hey, this is better for their long term health if we slow it down and we use puberty blockers. Cis kids are prescribed that all the time. But of course it's the over focus on trans people that they're fixated on. And the idea that there's. It's a major problem that women are on birth control for other reasons is not supported by any evidence. It's just like a general vibe that you should be only eating leaves and I don't know any. Something that they deem as natural. I still don't think that like the, the testosterone that RFK is injecting into himself is like, I guess that's different because men do it and he's an adult and a senior citizen and it's

[Sam Cedar]

a man being more manly.

[Brian]

Yes, Right. Where all of the birth control, it's making you a little bit too womanly. But like Maha, it rebrands itself as something that's separate from the conservative fundamentalist agenda. But they literally have the exact same goals. To reduce contraception that women have control over or people who can get pregnant. They're obsessed with the birth control pill, they're obsessed with IUDs, they're obsessed with the morning after pill because that is where women have more agency about whether or not they can get pregnant. They can control that the other stuff is kind of on the men. And you could maybe hide things from your husband if God forbid, you like want to take a morning after pill because you're not ready to get pregnant. These influencers and snake oil salesmen are just making the same case without the religious undertones. They're just using it as moral panic to say hormones inside of you. Scary, scary, scary. So it's very, it's very silly. But we'll see if she gets confirmed. This non doctor to be the top doctor, non practicing doctor.

[Sam Cedar]

I am enjoying the bottom of the barrel for all these nominees. Remember that white national. This bag of cafeteria milk couldn't get nominated. I mean, they are really scraping the bottom of the bed.

[Brian]

I know. I mean, and they, but they led in with such characters too. Like Cash Patel is the FBI director. Sometimes I think about that and, and it just freaks me out. But yeah, they don't have a big talent pool to begin with. Yeah. Either way, total nutcase. Total nutcase. Dump Trump Dems need to start building legal cases against these fascists. Yes. Sym1 thanks for making me cry, y'.

[Sam Cedar]

All.

[Brian]

That poor man. I got it out before the show. Haunting Specter Anna Kasparian's post yesterday was shocking. But unfortunately over the past year on social media I've been seeing an increase in trend of Marxists using slurs to insult fascists like Nick Fuentes. I've even seen an alarming amount of self proclaimed communists openly calling both Nick Fuentes and Adolf Hitler the f slur. Has anyone else noticed this? I have not. Apparently the audio clip was a little quiet by the way.

[Sam Cedar]

Gonna have to deal with that. Matt Gone.

[Brian]

Yeah, I'll do my best. Well, we'll fix that in post. Glenn Beck ate. My dad says we women are viewed as nothing more than a vessel for birthing children. Yes. Gulf coast grit. Emma, that's twice this week you've caught me off guard with these sly jokes. I can't tell if the birth control joke ranks above the blue balls comment, but it's damn close. I'm glad that those are the competing instances.

[Sam Cedar]

Shock jock.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

Emma Stern, always.

[Brian]

Yeah, right. Always going blue. That's what they say about me. Saw that socialist. Great job on Doom scroll, Emma. Thank you. Yeah, people check. Check that out if you would like.

[Sam Cedar]

What should we get to your girl? Caitlin Collins Grill and JD Vance on Iran.

[Brian]

Oh yeah. Yeah. Let's do that. Let's do that. So I had one more thing I want to get to, but maybe let me know. Let's just do that. So Trump has been openly musing about bombing Iran for what feels like three weeks. We already did this last year and the administration claimed that they had obliterated their nuclear enrichment program. So if they had done so, how can they make the claim right now that they're just minutes away from having a nuclear weapon, which Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israel lobby and the defense industry or guess defense industry associated elected leaders have been saying he's there minutes away from a nuclear bomb for like 30 years.

[Sam Cedar]

The day after the Oppenheimer tested his bomb. Yeah, they were just like, like a week away.

[Brian]

How can we channel this energy? Yeah. Also interesting, you know Oppenheimer's views on. On I think Zionism were. I might be misremembering it. I don't want to go down a tangent regardless. So here's Kaitlan Collins asking J.D. vance about that. That, that very question on that and secondly on Iran. While you're here, can you explain to the American people why the United States would need to strike Iran to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon if the United States obliterated their enrichment program last summer?

[Sam Cedar]

Well, I'm not going to make any news on Iran today. Caitlin. I'll let the President make those announcements. As you know, he is sending two of his best negotiators to Geneva tomorrow in order to continue to try to strike the best deal possible for the American people.

[Emma Vigeland]

But the principle is very simple.

[Sam Cedar]

Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. If they try to rebuild a nuclear weapon, that's. That causes problems for us. In fact, we've seen evidence that they have tried to do exactly that. So the President sending those negotiators to

[Emma Vigeland]

try to address that problem. As the President has said repeatedly, he

[Sam Cedar]

wants to address that problem diplomatically.

[Emma Vigeland]

But of course, the President has other

[Sam Cedar]

options as well on that.

[Brian]

So. Didn't answer the question at all. Now maybe Mark Wayne Mullen, Senator will answer. Also asked here by Collins. This is just a good, a good question. As Brian's pulling it up. It's, it's so farcical here. Here she is with, you know, similar line of questioning with, with Mullen

[Sam Cedar]

Arabia out of uae, out of Kuwait.

[Brian]

I think people see the risks for sure. Obviously nuclear armed Iran. I think it's just hard sometimes to get your head around that. We were told last summer it was obliterated and now we're saying a strike might be necessary if the talks don't.

[Sam Cedar]

But obliterating is much different than the rebuilding it. They are perfectly trying to rebuild it.

[Brian]

Why do you think, how can you rebuild it obliterated.

[Sam Cedar]

But I'm saying. But why do you think China and Russia is.

[Brian]

How can you rebuild it if it was obliterated?

[Sam Cedar]

Yes, I've already explained that. How do you rebuild your legs after you shatter them? How do you rebuild a house after it's been locked down by a tornado or hurricane? You can rebuild things. The, the foundation may still be there. You can build a lot back on a foundation once the top of is removed. And so the structure, the, if the, if the structure of the foundation is there, they can start rebuilding.

[Brian]

Yeah, we'll see what the President decides. I do want to ask because. All right, so then, then I don't think you should use the term obliterated. If they were able to rebuild it in less than a year.

[Sam Cedar]

I obliterated my leg.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

Would need a fake leg.

[Brian]

Yes.

[Sam Cedar]

There's no rebuilding my. Obliterated.

[Brian]

Right, right. Does he mean broken in many places. Okay, then you would need a cast or something to bring it back. Like they know that they have to work backwards from Trump's, Trump's braggadociousness about the efficacy of those strikes. Hey, guys, if you wanted to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. All Trump had to do, he didn't just have to send Witkoff and his son in law, you know, one of his two best negotiators, as J.D. vance put it, to Geneva to have these talks. You could have just stayed in the jcpoa. The Iran deal, which was Obama's best foreign policy achievement, in my opinion. And we've spoken about it positively on this show, especially when we look at it with hindsight and we see how the Israel lobby has so effectively gotten, you know, Chuck Schumer. From Chuck Schumer to, to the, the entire Republican Party, you know, many like captured leadership of both parties on this issue. Obama's and John Kerry and that foreign policy team did something that the Israel lobby really hated, which was the peace deal with Iran, which was essentially we lifted certain restrictions on them, we unfroze assets that we had taken from them and, and in exchange for them agreeing to a United nations monitor to go in and make sure that they weren't building a nuclear weapon. That was what it was. That was diplomacy at its finest and it was working really well. But Trump came in also with a bunch of Zionist money on his side after Obama's second term and just scrapped it. Scrapped it for more militarism. So when we hear about how Trump is so anti war. Please, please. I mean war, perhaps like he doesn't want boots on the ground, but he's as bloodthirsty as anybody. And what's better than being anti war is being pro diplomacy, pro international cooperation. That is not his thing. His version of diplomacy is kidnapping heads of state, bombing countries, bombing fishing boats in the Caribbean and thinking that if he can inflict enough damage that they'll come to him with terms that are amenable to him. But he doesn't have the object permanence, the stamina, nor like the vision to see anything through in that regard. So it's really just sadism for sadism's sake because you know, Trump be like big thing go boom.

[Sam Cedar]

He has no patience. And that's the best thing about him is that he goes through eos instead of legislation.

[Brian]

Right.

[Sam Cedar]

It'd be the best way to undo his damage.

[Brian]

Yes.

[Sam Cedar]

He can't. He doesn't have the patience for legislation.

[Brian]

Exactly right, Cat. Like Caitlin Collins has an unmatched year full of shit expression. It's great. You know, she is very, very talented. She's really good. And we didn't even touch on this part. But the. I wonder how this impacts CNN this. If this goes Through Paramount. Paramount acquiring Time or sorry, Warner Brothers, which. It's not a done deal. California's attorney general still has something to say about it. But like that is a huge problem when you have CBS being gobbled up by the Ellisons and then like the top news nation news station in this country, 24 hour news station being bought by them too. If that ends up happening, I doubt I'll get invited on and in that situation anymore.

[Sam Cedar]

The whole media landscape will just be AM radio. It'll all, it'll all just be am.

[Brian]

I mean a part of me also is just like, are they accelerating their own irrelevance? Like, who cares about CBS anymore? The Zionists have nothing left except to go whale hunting and to acquire existing large media conglomerates to neutralize them. Because the truth, they've lost the argument. So I mean, if they've already lost the argument and you can't like brute force your conversation or like the propaganda that you want. I mean, they bought TikTok too. I should say. Like, I just, I wonder if, you know, it just, it accelerates their own irrelevance in the eyes of the public. Like who's going to even pay attention? Who watches CBS with Tony Docker Paul and the Whiskey Fridays, like seriously

[Sam Cedar]

good for this show.

[Brian]

Yeah, right, Right. But that is where people are turning. And I, and you, and you notice that I talked about this on Doom scroll too. There are still those elements of people that want to buy up influence. It's just a lot cheaper if you're buying up individual content creators on the Internet that are supposedly independent than it is to, you know, buy or launch large scale media companies like the Daily Wire or purchase Warner Brothers. So Kentucky leftist says silver lining to Paramount buying Warner Brothers. Mr. Will get massive boosts in views and subs. I don't know about massive, but we'll, we'll see about that. Yeah, yeah. All the CBS diehards that we have so much overlap with, but I mean, from your mouth to God's ears, Sparko Mark Wayne has watched too many $6 million man episodes. I don't know what that means. Where we're everywhere says the bones are the money, the world are the their dollars. Bones are their money, the world are their dollars. Okay.

[Sam Cedar]

Is money not dollars.

[Brian]

I don't know what's referencing.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm sure you're right. Whoever wrote that.

[Brian]

Yes, I'm just an airhead. I, I don't get it either. Bonzo beans. We mean, we meant completely obliterated except for the foundation. Winky face Got him. Granite counter tabletop issues says I watch Annihilation the other night with Natalie Portman. Financed by Skydance. After audience tested scores, David Ellison decided it was too nerdy and needed a new ending and re editing to make it more audience friendly. The director had final cut approval in his contract so they couldn't force him. They released it in cinemas for a week and then straight to streaming. The these guys would rather sink their own project than not get their way. I didn't know that backstory about that film.

[Sam Cedar]

I didn't know that either.

[Brian]

I had heard that director has gone on to do other things. I was thinking about that's it came up. Oh no, that was.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Gosh.

[Brian]

That was Alex Garland. Wow. That was Alex Garland. Other things. Alex Garland has made like like three dozen films. But yeah that's. That says it all right.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, there's nothing worse than an executive giving notes.

[Brian]

It's.

[Sam Cedar]

I wish Sam was here because I'm sure he's got a million stories about.

[Brian]

I'm sure he does. I'm sure he does.

[Sam Cedar]

They want to be the artist and the CEO. Disgusting.

[Brian]

That's what Jeremy Boring was all about at the Daily Wire. All right, do we have one more clip here or what should we get to.

[Sam Cedar]

I pulled up this Texas primary thing if we played this year.

[Brian]

Oh no we haven't. So this like there's something happening in Texas right now in terms of voter enthusiasm. It can't be a bad thing. At the very least it means that there is an an engaged population that is going to raise the floor of Democrats chances to have an upset and defeat Cornyn in the fall. Still quite a long shot. My viewpoint is is. Is that Jasmine Crockett is not the best candidate to go up against Cornyn. I've. She's done some very bizarre things recently including kicking out an Atlantic reporter from covering her event. She didn't have an issues page on her website for many months. She has been like focusing on almost like twittery beefs with advisors that are associated with Talarico. It's just. It's quite self serving and I don't think Talarico is a perfect candidate but I think his message is potent in a place like Texas. So I am hopeful that this enthusiasm is is about Talarico campaign. He's been campaigning for a while and he's been also kind of borrowing some of the better parts of what better o' Rourke did which is is that going to multiple going all across the state that Colin Allred, the candidate for Senate last Time around was much more of like an establishment Democrat micro targeting guy, just going, let's do the least amount of work possible going to the districts that our data shows are going to be most beneficial to us. That is not how you create turnout enthusiasm. I like the Talarico approach a lot more and it seems to be having an impact. Here's our friend Harry Entin in his wonderfully theatrical fashion explaining how this is going.

[Sam Cedar]

Mind blown to quote the show Blossom Joey.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Whoa.

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean look at this.

[Brian]

I love it.

[Sam Cedar]

Sheriff of Texas midterm primary ballots at this point in the cycle cast in Democratic primaries or Republican primaries. In 2022, the last midterm, overwhelmingly the votes are being cast in Republican primaries. 62%. But look at what's going on now in the 2026 cycle. More votes are being cast on the Democratic side. What a shift from where we were four years ago at this point. More people in Texas picking up the Democratic ballot. More Democrats are voting in Texas than Republicans. I mean how unusual is that? Just how unusual? Well, you see the massive shift from 2022, but look at history. Go all the way back. When was the last time that more people actually picked up a Democratic ballot cast about in a Democratic primary in Texas in the midterm. You have to go all the way back to 2002. So this could break, this could break in over 20 years. Stretch my goodness gracious, whereby more people are actually voting in the Democratic side. And I will note it really hasn't even been close since 2002, overwhelmingly more people have been voting on the Republican side in Texas and this year so far more people are voting on the Democratic side.

[Brian]

This is so that is really important as we keep saying here. I mean the. I saw Greg Cassar pointed this out that Trump's big ugly ass bill, the pro billionaire pro millionaire tax cut bill cut 4 million Texans health care just completely like obliterated it, let alone the Latino population in Texas. Where if we are to see the swings that we have seen with in Latino areas across the country replicated even, Even, you know, 80%, 70% of what we've seen in like 50 point swings in New Jersey, for example, in the governor's race in very Latino areas, like if we are going to see that kind of shift to vote against Republicans, like this is really in play here because as we continuously mention the Republicans gerrymander effort that redrew lines in the state based on Trump's 2024 victory, which included an overperformance with Latino voters, there were many people who were dissatisfied with the economy. And there was depressed turnout for the Democrats because of, like, you know, the whole genocide thing because of the way Kamala Harris ran a, ran the campaign because of the economy as well. And so the, There is a, they made these districts maybe like less deep red and deep blue, more pink districts. So red leaning pink, er, but still having some, like, Democratic advantages there. And if Latinos are going to move over to the Democrats and actually vote, you know, with, with enthusiasm like these numbers indicate, there's a lot of more, more House seats in play that you might, than you might think in Texas. Now. I think Talarico is a good candidate in the fall. The crop beneath him of people running against Republicans is not good. We were just talking, I was just talking about this with David Griscom. So the, the Democrats here are not going to be our favorites. But I, it. Taking back the Senate in a year that is not favorable for the Democrats on paper would be an enormous step in curbing the Trump administration from the worst authoritarian abuses that it's been engaging in. So there have been other graphs showing that, like, even the reddest counties are seeing massive Democratic turnout in Texas. There's a lot of enthusiasm, backlash to Trump. But I don't think. It's just that. I do think that Talarico's strategy and also how high profile this race has been is gonna play a significant role. So. All right, guys, we're gonna read some items and get out of here. Appalachian leftist, let's go. Southern progressives. If we can get a bunch of progressive Dems in the south, we can push the Dem party left. Main Postman. I've always felt weird about Jasmine Crockett since that Butchbody MTG comment. Don't get me wrong, MTG is a ghoul, but something about the verbiage there turned me off. Verbiage there turned me off and made me look at her a little different. I, I hear you. It's, it's. I still think that might be funny in my mind, but I would say that's her strength.

[Sam Cedar]

I wish we could elect her to just, you know, the way she handled Pam Bondi.

[Brian]

Right.

[Sam Cedar]

Just put her in hearings. She, she's unbelievable there.

[Brian]

Well, I mean, she's like, I, I, I, the Texas redistricting thing screwed her, but she is like, you know, I don't know, seems to want to abandon public service altogether if this doesn't work out. Like, I could see her going into media and she would probably be decent at that because she's good at the theatrics of, of the hearings and stuff. And she was good in the hearings. I think she is a lawyer too. So she has like, like that's where that one skill of being a lawyer as a Democrat is good. It's like the only thing I think Kamala Harris shined at as a sender was when she was in hearings because they're, they know how to like prosecute things obviously and make arguments, Protect or protector of frogs. The purchase and cobble up is not just for news. Paramount and Warner Brothers own the largest ip. The goal will be to control culture. My point is like, good luck, Genova. Witness says I could be watching Tony two cuts right now. Carly Chirk. Abby Martin is doing a tour across the country with her new documentary Earth's Greatest Enemy. Everyone should watch this film. It played in New Orleans last night and I went with the local org no ship and watched her give a Q A afterwards. It was amazing. And she needs the help to get off the ground and make it more widely available. Please, please screen it if you can. Well, we had Abby on to talk about it a few months ago, so I'm happy to see that you went to see it. Slut for justice said, modern cardio weight regimes are not really natural either. There are many. There are many recorded instances of people getting heart attacks or having other health issues because of working out and working out in too restrictive diets. They literally named a new type of eating disorder for people who are too obsessed with perfect health. Taking that to the extreme. Maha is the opposite of health. And that's before looking at the largely unregulated supplement market and all the harms that it has caused. Yes, that's absolutely correct. J. Tingle. Sarah Silverman had a gag. I'm taking birth control pills because I'm doing a lot of. Yes, I remember that from Jesus's magic, I believe. Yes, it was. That was one of my. That was. I. I had that purchased on itunes and I must have watched that special as a kid, like 20 times. Big Sarah Silverman fan. Don't look up when she came on the show and I got really, really red and I said something that she didn't think was funny. And I. I'll think about it for the rest of my days. So. Glenn Beck, 8. My dad says birth control was the only thing that controlled my acne in my early 20s. Yes, that's a common thing. Ramona Frankenstein. Emma, I can't believe you're taking down another woman on this bad bitch Freebie Friday. Not Very girls girl of you real women stick up for the anti vax dipshits among us. All right, five more majority report Peace prize Don't let Republican Senator John Barrasso off the hook. He too is a physician Voted to confirm RFK. Sunset Lake PBD says cautionary tale for self serving Democratic electeds in 1976 Minnesota Governor Wendell needed some someone to take Walter Mondale Senate seat He made an arrangement with his lieutenant governor when where Anderson would resign lieutenant Governor would become Governor and name Anderson to the Senate in the next election the DFL lost governorship both Senate seats and I think 99 people in the statehouse it was called the Minnesota Massacre how bizarre. By OMC says are you guys planning to have anyone on from any of the postal unions about their contract expiring this year?

[Sam Cedar]

Yes.

[Brian]

Yes.

[Sam Cedar]

Been talking to Sam about it already.

[Brian]

Yes Giga Biologist I know you know but I must say the camera you all use is absolutely awful. Thank you. We know. I know at least and the final IM of the week.

[Sam Cedar]

No cue for it. I forgot.

[Brian]

Yeah Kentucky leftist this is why I admire Mr. Kyle Kalinsky, Hassan and other like minded leftist media figures. Even though the consolidation of media to be more Zionist and right wing will probably help your numbers. You guys would all rather see a good unbiased media because you want what's best for humanity, not what's best for you. Personally. That's a nice compliment. I just want to say that like I just don't even think it's that it might help. Genuinely I don't know how much it's going to help us but we're just going to do what we keep doing. Appreciate you all. Thank you so so much. Have a wonderful weekend. We will See you tomorrow. I mean Monday.

[Sam Cedar]

It might take all the strength I got to get to where I want but I know somehow I'm gonna get

[Brian]

there

[Sam Cedar]

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

[Brian]

light bar the F Finding out won't

[Sam Cedar]

make me feel any better

[Brian]

yeah I know the clock is ticking but the meds are gonna kick in and my P.