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- [00:00]
A
What do you think makes the perfect snack?
- [00:02]
B
Hmm. It's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.
- [00:06]
A
Could you be more specific?
- [00:07]
B
When it's cravinient.
- [00:08]
C
Okay.
- [00:09]
B
Like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter, available right down the street at am pm. Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at a.m. pM.
- [00:16]
A
I'm seeing a pattern here.
- [00:18]
B
Well, yeah, we're talking about what I.
- [00:19]
A
Crave, which is anything from AM pm.
- [00:21]
B
What more could you want? Stop by AM PM where the snacks and drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient. That's cravenience. AM PM Too much. Good stuff.
- [00:30]
C
Hey guys, it's JVL with Sarah. Hey, I didn't even have to tell you to say hi.
- [00:35]
A
No, I know. You always have to tell me.
- [00:37]
C
So guys, tnl family, we have a very brief but I think pretty tight, pretty good show this week. Talk about Dick Cheney's funeral, Donald Trump's death threats. Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein. Not, not death threats to Donald Trump. The ones he's making against Democratic senators. Right, here's the show. Hello everyone. This is JVL here with my best friend Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark. And Sarah, you just recorded a day or two ago, I think a focus group with Senator Alyssa Slotkin. And shortly after that recording, the President of the United States said that she should be put to death.
- [01:21]
A
Yeah.
- [01:22]
C
So specifically that she should be put like, not a generic, like, oh, Democrats are the enemy of the people. But like these, these Democratic senators made a video. Right. It was Liza Slotkin. And who else was in was like.
- [01:39]
A
Well, it was all, it was basically all the Dem Ex service people. So Marc, Mark, Kelly, I don't remember everybody who was in it, but you know, there was a, it was like eight of them and they all. So this is where he didn't call for specifically Slotkin. He basically called them. So he tweeted a couple in the video, all the people in the video. And here's what, here's the thing. So she was coming on focus group pod and I was. My plan was to play her the sound of all the angry voters on the Democrats caving on the shutdown. Right. I was just going to be like, hey, like here's how people feel about it. And I did do that, but first I played. They had just dropped this video and so I had played the video and we talked about why they made it. And everybody should go listen to the episode because it's good. But just as a preview matter. And now because it's differently relevant. I didn't necessarily think that it was going to be what it was at the. They put out this video that was like, hey, we're all military members or service members, and we just want to let people know that you do not have to follow illegal orders if given that. That it's, it's, it's not like an illegal order is not something you have to obey. Right? No. Code Reds. Jvl. They don't have to follow a Code Red.
- [03:00]
C
It says so right there in the oath they take.
- [03:02]
A
Yeah, right, right. So, and, and so I was like, but why did you guys make this video? Like, what it feels like it. I mean, broadly speaking, it makes total sense. Why one might want to remind, since Trump is basically saying the opposite everywhere he goes to the military. But I wondered if there was something specific that had caused them to make this, and it was that they're hearing from all kinds of people in the military and other members of the armed services, like, hey, I'm so freaked out. I'm so, you know, I don't know what to do. How do I handle this? Should I resign? Should I quit? Should I not be here? Right? So people who are, are wigged out by Trump's deployment of the National Guard. And as you can imagine, there's a lot of people. And she personally, because she was in the, in the service, like, encourages people to join. You know, she, like, knows a lot of people who, she's saying, oh, you should go do this. It's a great way to serve your country. And those people are coming back to her being like, oh, no, like, what do I do?
- [04:06]
C
Advice, bro.
- [04:07]
A
So she. And she wants people to continue to join. So she was. That's why they did it, to kind of say, like, we got your back. There's other people here. And like, let us tell you that you do not have to do this. Like, okay. And at that point, Jason Miller had already come out and said, this is an insurrection. And so, you know, we clowned on him a little bit for that because I. The extent to which they have tried to recode insurrection to mean anything, they don't like anybody saying something about the president that they don't like is just. It's a very obvious sort of thing that they're doing. But it was after that, when we were done taping, that Trump was bleeding out over on Truth Social. And maybe I should just. I don't want to get it wrong, but also, I think I'm almost verbatim right where he Basically said, anyone who's a traitor should be put to death. And then right after it, he retweeted somebody who was calling for those Democrats to be hanged. So not a lot of ambiguity. It's not like a misunderstanding. Go ahead. What do you have it? Right there.
- [05:24]
C
Seditious behavior. All caps. Punishable by death.
- [05:28]
A
All cap.
- [05:28]
C
All caps. He shared a different post written by another person that said, hang them. George Washington Wood. Double exclamation mark.
- [05:38]
A
Yeah. So do we. Do we have to parse this? It's like, I think. I think we cracked your code. You. You're saying you want them dead, right? Pretty straightforward.
- [05:50]
C
Yeah. Yeah. Again, imagine if Barack Obama, George W. Bush, anyone. Bill Clinton. I mean, just literally pick any president, I don't know, like, John F. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Like, either party. Any president, either party. And this is just like.
- [06:11]
A
It'd be weird if Eisenhower had been tweeting.
- [06:12]
C
That's just the way he talks, you know? Like, he's. He's a. He. He is. He's a straight shooter, and he. You know, he communicates directly with the American people, and he tells them how he feels, and people understand what he means by that.
- [06:23]
A
Yeah, well, they understand it so well. The White House had to put out a statement last night that said, trump does not want to hang Democratic officials. Like, so normal. It's like one of these all caps headline, Trump does not want Democratic officials executed. Oh, okay.
- [06:44]
C
Probably.
- [06:46]
A
And it is one of these things where it's like, the only reason this is how we all get frog boiled. Right. Is the only reason that this is not immediate 25th amendment. Immediately get this guy out of here immediately. Impeach him. Is because we've been slow walked into the insanity to the point of us being like, oh, look, now he's calling for the death of senators. It's Thursday.
- [07:10]
C
Yeah. So I. Our buddy Nick Kattaggio wrote a fantastic piece about this yesterday. See, our buddy, I've never actually met him or spoken to him.
- [07:20]
A
I've spoken to him once.
- [07:21]
C
I think we traded. We traded emails twice, maybe. But he noted in all of this that two things. First of all, that it is not clear that the message that the Democratic senators were sending is. Is correct in the sense that if you disobey illegal orders, you'll be okay. We've got your back. In fact, because of what Hegseth has done to the JAG Corps and because of the President's use of the pardon power, if you are, say, a Navy captain down by Venezuela and you're given an Illegal order to blow up a boat for which there is no legal authority allowing for such an attack, you are in much worse shape. You're much better off complying with it than not complying with it. If you don't comply with it, under this president and this Secretary of War, you know, you could wind up in jail. And if you do comply with it and there's trouble later on, first of all, nobody's going to prosecute you later down the line. And secondly, if somebody tried to, the president will pardon you like they, he, he loves war criminals.
- [08:38]
A
Yeah, that's true.
- [08:38]
C
The president loves him some war criminals. But the second thing is that we are at the moment where the rule of law itself is now a partisan issue and one party is in favor of it and the other party is openly against it. Right. I mean this is what, what the, the president Republican position is, is that it is not okay to disobey illegal orders and that you must obey all orders issued by the God King. Yeah, I mean, right, that's, that's their position.
- [09:15]
A
Well, it is. And I actually, it's, it's interesting to me. I've been kind of going back and forth on this. I don't know what you think he, his wigging out over this is a little strange because this is kind of one he could have let go by and it would have just been one of these Democratic super cut videos that you know is fine but doesn't necessarily move the needle. But now, now this is a central conversation and I, I gotta say, just as a tactical matter, when I've talked about offense before, I do want to say like, this is kind of what it looks like. It's like they didn't have to put that out, but they did. And as a result it changed the conversation. Now it partly changed the conversation because Trump is Streisand affecting it. And I can't tell if he's doing that because he was. The other conversation we were having is, hey, he seems to have be all over these emails with this pedophile as they're coming out and there's more and more connections to him and he sure doesn't like that conversation. That's why he called a reporter who asked him about it, Miss Piggy. Like, like an absolute psycho lunatic who also has the thinnest skin imaginable. Oh, oh, are you feeling cornered? So you lash out at a woman's physical appearance. What a specific piece of this guy. Jbl, this guy. Anyway, so I was like, is he distracting from that? Like, does he like, ooh, here's an exam. Here's an opportunity for Move that. To move this conversation on. Because that is a, that is a particular genius of his. Like, remember when he changed the conversation.
- [10:50]
C
Pants in the, the debate against Kamala Harris?
- [10:54]
A
What? No, I don't.
- [10:55]
C
He went in front of the Society of Black Women Journalists. Oh. He said, Kamal Harris isn't black. I mean, it was insane.
- [11:01]
A
But that is, that is what he does, right? And he does it. He sort of doesn't mind courting additional controversy as long as it gets him out of the thing he really doesn't want to talk about, which is in some way he's embarrassed or something. So. But, but then also I was like, he, he really did step in it a second time. I mean, calling for the actual hanging of a bunch of Democratic senators. I mean, yes, the Trump apologists are gonna, you know, jump it there. And they are, you know, Mike Lee and Lindsey Graham are out there being like, how dare these senators do this? I was a, I was a jag, you know, lawyer and whatever Lindsey Graham was. And this is just unacceptable. And it's like, and Mike Lee, I actually appreciated this about Mike Lee. He asked the open ended question, what, what illegal orders is he giving? And he's just like, everyone's like, I don't know, maybe bombing boats off of Venezuela when none of it's authorized. Like, I don't know, there seems like a lot of things hiding, maybe maybe shredding documents, so who knows?
- [12:10]
C
So I think part of it is, yes, he wants to change the conversation, but another part of it is a long running fixation he has had with the idea that the people with guns will obey him no matter what he says. And you remember there was, I think it was a Republican primary presidential debate in 2016 where he talked about, with terrorists, you know, he would kill the families of terrorists too.
- [12:41]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [12:42]
C
And somebody, again, I don't remember who it is, I'm sorry. Said. Yeah, well, actually that's not something that the US Military would do because that's illegal. And you know, our, our soldiers have a duty to refuse illegal orders. And Trump's response, and I'm gonna, this is not almost exactly, but it was very close. Was like, believe me, they'll do it when I tell them they'll do it. Believe me, this is, I'm sorry, you'll have to Google these ad. But it was some, like, he has been literally since the very opening moves of the campaign, fixated with the idea that if you put him in charge, the Guys with guns will do what he tells them to do because he's the final word, not the law. And, like, that's just never wavered for him. And again, I. Not to sound like a crazy person, the reason to have that fixation is because you think that you might have to call on those guys to protect you domestically.
- [13:45]
A
I do, you know, sometimes accuse you of being a crazy person. And we both, you know, have our moments. Thanks. It's okay. In this case, I do. This is sort of what I was getting at is his reaction to this, I feel like, is not just him trying to distract. I think he is genuinely RIP shit over the idea that his orders might not be followed under any circumstances. Because in all the ways, whether it's the election in 2026, whether it's something in 2028, whether it's what the Nash deploying the National Guard to these cities, he is. He wants to make sure everybody are going to follow his orders no matter what. I think that's right. And so I do think he wants to push back on this idea. He does not like this idea that somebody might be putting out there. Just a reminder, you don't have to follow his orders if they're illegal, and most of his orders are going to be illegal.
- [14:41]
C
Yeah. Okay. I want to talk about the Epstein stuff, because you and I, I think, are of the same mind on this, which is that I think it was yesterday. I think it was Thursday. We had a. Oh, we have ongoing investigations in the Southern District of New York. So you don't say, you know, a lot of this material is related to those ongoing investigations, and we can't release it just yet.
- [15:09]
A
So this is important. The important part is, is that people were suddenly Trump. You know, it's like Trump suddenly gives the House permission because he was already going to lose that vote. Then the Senate passes it really fast, no changes, and Trump signs it immediately. Now, that is not because Trump had a change of heart. It's because Trump had a change of strategy. Right. They basically said this is going to happen in the House. Like, we can't keep. If we keep fighting it, we're just prolonging, like this. This part where we look defensive and, like, we're actively not releasing it. So I got to. I got to jump in front of the mob, right? When you're being run out of town, jump in front and call it a parade. So he says, no, no, no, I want to get these out super fast. And then he's like, and we're going to find a Different way to gum this up outside of Congress, because I got Nancy Mace yelling at me and I got Marjorie Taylor Greene yelling at me, and this isn't going well.
- [16:06]
C
Do you think it works? Do you think this, like, can he get away with that?
- [16:12]
A
So this is the thing. I don't know. I talked about this on. We talked about this on Next Level, but I, I do feel like another thing that's pressuring them that they hadn't quite counted on before. Like, he was like, I got this locked up with bonding and cash. Mike Johnson's gonna keep it at bay in Congress. This is fine. And then the stuff started to come out from Epstein's estate, right. And they were like, well, we don't know exactly what's in there. And my guess is, is that the DOJ has subpoenaed a lot of that or has seen it or whatever at parts of the investigation, but somebody else has it. Like, it's not all with doj, because the. They released. Or even if DOJ has it, the estate has it too, Right? So that trove of emails that they released came from the estate, and the estate gave them to Democrats. And so I don't, I think that's when they went, oh, no, we don't have our. We don't have, like a tightest grip on this as possible. And so, you know, obviously none of us know what they have. But he's trying to get it back into the control of bonding cash, which means they're in charge of what's redacted, they're in charge of what's released. They're in charge of trying to also kick up distractions with, you know, the other people who are in there, who, by the way, go ahead, please release all of it. Like, this is such a funny one for Republicans where they keep being like, well, you know, there's going to be Democrats in there.
- [17:36]
C
Like, great, we should know who they are.
- [17:38]
A
Yeah, tell us. We don't care.
- [17:41]
C
If there are Democrats in there. They should be running a town on a rail. So let's have it, please.
- [17:46]
A
Which also, this part also, I think answered the question of why Biden, everybody? Because again, Republicans assume if there was something damning in their. Democrats would of course released it because that's what they would do. That's what Republicans would do. It would never occur to them that they. That he might not do it just because he doesn't want to tear the country apart. He doesn't want to relitigate things. They thought Trump was gone. No need to drag this stuff back up. But actually, that's even. Not even why they did it. They. It seemed. It looks like they didn't because of the ongoing investigation with Ghislaine Maxwell. Right. They were prosecuting her, and so they weren't putting this stuff out. So that's why the Biden administration wasn't doing it. That's all done now. Trump, by the way, didn't need Congress to put this out.
- [18:33]
C
Could have just. He could have. Could have just released it anytime he wanted.
- [18:36]
A
He's doing everything else unilaterally, but not that one.
- [18:38]
C
That's why, you know, I mean, he's really got a. The separation of power is very important to him, Sarah. And you got to do things the right way.
- [18:45]
A
You gotta let Congress exercise their power.
- [18:48]
C
Yeah. Yeah. All right. We got to talk about. We got to talk about Dick Cheney's funeral, because I have. You were there, and I have questions, but we got to do it on the other side. So, guys, tnl fam everybody else listening to this, come join Bulwark plus, be with us.
- [19:13]
A
Sa.