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- [00:05]
Katy Tur
This episode is brought to you by Whoop.
- [00:08]
Alistair Campbell
Whoop is one of my favorite all time products. It's clear we're living through pretty stressful times right now. It's easy to underestimate how much that can affect our sleep and ability to stay focused day to day.
- [00:21]
Katy Tur
Yeah, avoiding burnout can feel like a full time job in and of itself.
- [00:25]
Alistair Campbell
Whoop helps with the bit people miss that shows what actually is going on beneath the surface. Kat, It's a screenless wearable device that monitors your sleep recovery, lifestyle and stress.
- [00:40]
Katy Tur
Yeah, and this matters to me. It even looks very elegant.
- [00:43]
Alistair Campbell
Did you hear that guy's Whoop is so stylish that even catty K will wear the Whoop.
- [00:48]
Katy Tur
It's the little gold clasp. I like that.
- [00:50]
Alistair Campbell
I'm telling you, I had no idea how much my old routine was impacting my health. But since using Whoop and making those small adjustments, I've already started to feel the difference. Better sleep, clearer thinking, even more energy.
- [01:03]
Katy Tur
Head to join.wH-O-Oop.com politics to get started with Whoop today. Welcome to the rest is politics us with me caddy K. Anthony Scaramucci is off making a movie with his son which is super exciting. He's been sending me the photos and he is, thank goodness, playing the villain. He looks like a James Bond vil so I think he's having a good time. But I'm joined instead by former Republican lieutenant governor of Maryland and RNC chair and now co host of the weeknight on msnam Michael Steele. Welcome back to the program by popular demand.
- [01:47]
Michael Steele
Michael, top of the morning. Cheerio. All that good stuff. How you doing? What's up?
- [01:52]
Katy Tur
When the king went before Congress, the best thing he said was, by Jove, Mr. Speaker, I love it, I love it.
- [01:58]
Michael Steele
There were so many good moments with the king in the well of the Congress. First off, again, the history of that, it was just so profound and it's so rich for us in America given our relationship with Great Britain and certainly with the British people and the humor that he brought. But also a little bit of the hey, can I remind you guys why you kind of stepped away from the family in the first place conversation. Thought it was all well done and he was so well received. It was amazing how the American people responded to his being here. There was genuine interest and genuine delight. So thank you for sharing the King for a few days he gave us
- [02:51]
Katy Tur
a little bit of time when both Democrats and Republicans seemed to agree on one thing, which is that they were all slightly Starstruck by monarchy. So, so who knew anyway, long live the king. He is gone. Now we're going to talk about Trump. Trump saying that he doesn't care about American finances. Does the president care about Americans pocketbooks? We're going to be answering that question, looking at also how Pete Hegseth defended the Trump administration's handling of the Iran war. All of this, of course, tied up with very bad economic numbers that have come out that even former Trump officials are getting a bashing for on television. And then in the second half of the program, we're going to get into another dramatic hearing up on Capitol H, which was Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, who is sparring with lawmakers over excessive drinking. I happen to think they should be focusing on the all of the agents who have been fired at the FBI, which may be making Americans less safe. But anyway, we'll get into all of that. So let's start and dive in. Michael, the president of the United States may have just said the quiet part out loud. Here is what he said as he was leaving for China. The only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran, they can't have a nuclear weapon. I don't think about Americans financial situation. I don't think about anybody. And then he got on a plane, flew over to the other side of the world. How many Democratic campaign ads is that clip going to turn up in? I mean, it's just like, here's your gift, Democrats, let's run.
- [04:20]
Michael Steele
Oh, it is. And there's so many over the past year and a half that touch on even before you get into the nuts and bolts of the affordability argument that Democrats have, I say, quite successfully layered up as part of the political conversation. You have the Iran war, you have the immigration issues, the toll that ICE has taken on American streets. You've got all of these things that have in their own way, Kadi presented narratives that can be woven together that can end with that clip. You don't even have to finish it because you could just stop it when he says I don't care about Americans. And that is at the core of it, you don't care about Americans. The thing about Trump, though, is that Trump has been saying this from the very beginning. When you go back to the very beginning, before the war even started, he called his and the Bulwark, our friends over at the Bulwark have a great sort of compilation of Trump sort of stair stepping us through the process of leading up to the war and how he viewed the economy at that time. And he says, I called in Scott Bessen and all of my people, mostly my financial people. And I said, all right, folks, congratulations. We hit the highest price of the stock market in history. Then I said, congratulations. Now I'm going to upset the apple cart for you because we have to take a little journey down to a beautiful country known as Iran. That was the beginning. He understood that while the economy and everything was starting to really begin to find its sea legs and move forward and strengthen that, he was about to take an action that would undermine that. So he knew from the very beginning.
- [06:13]
Katy Tur
So why do that? Why? When. I mean, you've had J.D. vance saying, the great thing about President Trump on record is that he's not going to take us into a war with Iran. He's going to focus on Americans first. You had Tulsi Gabbard, his head of national intelligence, saying something very similar. The great thing about Donald Trump is that he's going to focus on Americans. I mean, that's what the kind of America first wing of MAGA is all about, that you don't. It's where it comes from. It's literally where it comes from. From the George W. Bush escapades into the Middle east that cost Americans so much in blood and treasure. And then along comes somebody and says, we're not going to do that anymore. We are going to focus back home. We're going to bring manufacturing back home. We're going to implement these policies that may, in the short term, do you a little bit of economic harm, but will build America's economy back up again. We can get into that in a second. And then he does this thing that goes into Iran. And now you look at the results. Inflation, 3.8% year on year in April, the highest jump since 2023. The consumer sentiment Index that the University of Michigan releases every year just hit a record low. You've got a new poll out by Atlantis intel that shows by strong majorities, Americans believe that prices are now higher for things like beef and eggs and rent and electricity under Donald Trump than they were under Joe B. Biden. There are no good numbers. You've got Larry Kudlow, the former director of Trump's National Economic Council, quizzing the current director of Trump's National Economic Council saying, these are lousy inflation numbers. So when he knew it, why take that gamble? Why take that gamble if he knew that's what was gonna happen? Michael?
- [07:57]
Michael Steele
Because he saw Iran as Venezuela. He thought he could just go and knock out the leadership, leave whatever remnants were behind. That they would be much more favorable to his plan to grab the oil. It's always been about oil. Donald Trump is an old school backwater guy from the 1950s who believe that the core of the American economic engine rests on things like oil. Well, you and I know that was then, this is now. Our economy is much more diverse. Our resources are very different. We are the leader in oil production in the world. Yes. But we also have a diversification in the energy space that is going to be a part of what leads us into the future. So there are a whole lot of dynamics there. But Donald Trump is stuck like he was. Like he is on tariffs in a 1950s economic model. He believed that he could go in and yippee ki yay his way through Iran like he did Venezuela. His people, from what I understand, were advised by national security types and they advised the President that that was not a realistic scenario. Why? Because Iran has this little thing called the Strait of Hormuz, which, by the
- [09:24]
Katy Tur
way, Zbigniew Brzezinski warned Jimmy Carter back in the 1970s, don't go into Iran, because they will shut the Strait of Hormuz and global economic chaos.
- [09:35]
Michael Steele
There you go, Caddy. There you go. History, damn history. It's amazing what history can tell us, right?
- [09:42]
Katy Tur
Means you have to read it. That's a problem. That is a problem. You'd have to read it.
- [09:46]
Michael Steele
You'd have to read it, you'd have to understand it, and you'd have to connect the dots, which is not a strong suit for Donald Trump. He is in many respects linear in his thinking. And pieces of history and truth and reality for him are fiction. They don't align with the narrative that's in his head. And therefore it's not going to play out in what he executes on. That's Iran. That's even Venezuela. We don't really know what the hell's going on in Venezuela. Donald Trump is the one telling us everything is fun and great and people love him and the world is wonderful. We don't really know. We don't know a lot of things about what's happening around us, because the people who did that in the past are no longer there. They've been fired, they've been removed, their departments have been eliminated. So you have all of these things that Brzezinski and Carter and even we go to Reagan and Iran Contra. You have all of these presidents who had these instruments at his disposal to advise and guide his steps. Donald Trump does not follow any of that. So when you're looking at the economy when you're looking at the strategy, he's not connecting those dots that the strategy will have an impact in the economy and the economy can have an impact on the strategy. They do go hand in hand. You close the straight, you're going to feel it economically. If you decide to take the pressure off the economy, you open the strait. So it's just that for him, doesn't compute. Where that leaves us is where we are. My prediction, Caddy, is that if and when this war ends, sometime this year, we will be where Barack Obama led us.
- [11:44]
Katy Tur
You know, jcpoa.
- [11:46]
Michael Steele
That agreement will be the foundation for what comes next. Why? Because it is the thing Iran has already agreed to and it is the thing Iran is the most familiar with. And it is the thing where Iran felt that not only could it live with it, but its sovereignty, which is important for any nation, stays relatively intact. That's the pressure point.
- [12:14]
Katy Tur
Let's say we end up there, which I think a lot of people are now speculating that we probably will end up somewhere similar to where Barack Obama ended up up. But we also had Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, who was up on the Hill as well. It was a very busy week for people being hauled up in front of the Hill. The news has come out that in its 79th day, this war effort has so far cost America $29 billion. That's up from the $25 billion that Hegseth had told lawmakers two weeks ago. It doesn't account for the damage that Iran has caused to American bases either. We haven't got a number for that, he said. We don't have a number for how much damage has been. And it could end up costing the American taxpayer. Something like, according to the Harvard Kennedy School, about a trillion dollars in total. Meanwhile, of course, America's actual debt soaring as we talk about this. Did those kind of numbers, along with the president's statement that he doesn't care about Americans finances, come back to haunt Republicans and even Donald Trump in some way as the country goes to the polls in November?
- [13:26]
Michael Steele
I mean, it already has. Not just the polls, the results of elections. I mean, Democrats have won, what, 35, 36 of the 37 special elections that have occurred so far.
- [13:40]
Katy Tur
Average move to Democrats, 13 points.
- [13:42]
Michael Steele
It's huge. It's huge. Look, when I was national chairman in 2009 and 2010, that was something I paid attention to is how are we doing in the races that no one is paying attention to right now, that no one's calculating because for me, as someone who's a party official, I know how those stones are laid out to create a pathway towards electoral success down the road. And so they're telltale signs. And I said back in January, February of this year, that the voters are going to reach a point, a tipping point, where they begin to bake in the election. How they feel about Trump, how they feel about the economy, how they feel about a lot of things. The war hadn't even happened at that point. And when they do, there's no going back. You can't get them off of the idea. Ask Joe Biden what the price of eggs did to his administration.
- [14:46]
Katy Tur
Right?
- [14:47]
Michael Steele
Voters made up their mind that the price of eggs was too great for them. There was nothing he could say. And then when they flipped the script to Kamala Harris and she's asked, what would you do differently? Which is the easiest softball question you could be asked as a presidential candidate, what would you do different? This is not about your party, your connection to the president. What would you do? And she said, nothing. What did voters hear? I'm not gonna do anything to change the price of eggs for voters. So when Donald Trump now comes out and says, I don't care about the cost of my war to the American people, what are the American people here?
- [15:34]
Katy Tur
That's his Kamala Harris moment. Cuz I wanted to talk to you about this cuz of your experience because you were chairman of the Republican National Committee in right after the financial crash. The economic malaise might have been a bit more acute then, but basically you ran a midterm election based on the economy. That's what the issue was back in 2009. So what point was it in the year that you realized President Obama was in for his famous shellacking, that he was going to get hit hard in the middle? At what point was it that you say voters bake in their opinions, and after that, you can't really change their minds? Is it. Are opinions decided now? April, May? Does the president have a couple more months? Could he wrap up Iran, hope that gas prices come down by, I don't know, the July 4th holiday? Is there a moment in your mind when the election becomes pretty much predetermined because voters have decided which way to go?
- [16:34]
Michael Steele
I think we're. We're at that moment in. And in some cases, we're past that moment in others. So let's reset for you real quick. 2010 election cycle. That moment for me. Now, remember, we were running on both the economy and health care because the affordable Care act was working its way through the Congress. So I was connecting a dot about the government standing between you and your doctor, which is a big deal for a lot of Americans, for most Americans at that time, and making the case about that and tying it to the overall economic health of the country. I knew we had won the election the day Barack Obama referred to the Affordable Care act as Obamacare. Why? Because now he's speaking my language. He's using the terms that we use to describe what he did, what he was doing. And the way we were talking about it was not good. It wasn't a nice thing.
- [17:43]
Katy Tur
Obamacare was not a compliment.
- [17:44]
Michael Steele
It was not a compliment. And so when he started referring to it that way, and he had to, because that had been baked into the psyche of the American voter, how they felt about that term. And he translated it to everything, and I kind of put a bow on it with fire Pelosi.
- [18:02]
Katy Tur
Right?
- [18:03]
Michael Steele
That was our big push in the fall. If you want to reform this system, then you have to fire Pelosi. Right? In other words, any actor in government who is standing between you and reform, you need to move out of the way. That messaging resonated with voters big. And again, we weren't dealing with a war. We weren't dealing with immigration issues. We were basically dealing with health care, with the subcurrent of the overall health of the economy coming off out of 2008, 2009. But this is different, and this is driving voters harder because unlike healthcare, this is something that you feel every day when you go, when you have to fill up your car twice or three times a week, its impact right there. You pay your health care premium once a month. You do the math, you kind of get it worked and you pay the bill and you move on. And you don't really stress about it until about a week before you have to pay it again a month later. This is something you're living out every week, every day, because I'm filling up my car, because I have to run to soccer practice for the kids. I got to go to work. I got to go got by my parents. So by the time I get to Wednesday, I gotta fill up again.
- [19:25]
Katy Tur
Well, also, Michael, healthcare became much more popular. Obamacare did become much more popular after those 2010 midterms. But healthcare, there was an argument for trying to fix American healthcare to make it better for Americans. We have not had yet the argument from the president about Iran. Now, it's interesting that in that little clip, what he says is, we cannot allow Iran to Have a nuclear weapon. Well, that I think most people would agree with that. I think most Democrats would agree with that. I think most voters would agree with that. But he hasn't connected that and the war. He just hasn't made a very good case. So you've got people looking at the cost of the war, the cost of gas prices, how this war is now. It hit Asia very hard. They were down to four day weeks. It's hitting Europe very hard. Lufthansa's canceling flights this summer. And it is now starting to hit Americans hard without the President having made the case between you're paying this at the pump and we're stopping Iran having a nuclear weapon. But actually, Barack Obama stopped Iran having a nuclear weapon without going to war and driving up the gas prices.
- [20:29]
Michael Steele
That's the point. And Donald Trump is stuck on stupid. I'm sorry, just is because that is not the argument you make, because prior presidents have dealt with Iran without going to war with Iran. And as you just noted, Barack Obama actually landed an agreement that Iran agreed to without going to war with Iran. Yes, it took two years. Yes. It took principled vision of what you wanted the outcome to be. And you moved your negotiators in that direction to achieve that outcome. And they were successful in that. They gave a little bit. They got a lot right. Donald Trump doesn't think that way. Donald Trump runs this economy and this government the way he ran his enterprises. And all of them have largely been running to the ground because Donald Trump is not someone who actually thinks it through. He's unstable in the sense that everything becomes personal and emotional for him. And if it doesn't go its way, then it's a personal affront. And then his response is to lash back, lash out. And so if Iran gets in the room and says, no, we're not going to do that, his next thing is not to have his new go, okay, let's lock this down. His thing is to throw bombs. And so it just doesn't play out that way. It's fundamentally not the way the process is going to allow you to achieve success. Because you have to be honest in evaluating what your opponent has that they can use as their leverage. Back to the Strait of Hormuz, back to drones.
- [22:20]
Katy Tur
Well, I'm back to all of the intelligence reports showing us that actually they still have about 70% of their missiles.
- [22:26]
Michael Steele
Absolutely. And all that enriched uranium. They got stuff on the ground, they got stuff spread out. When you disintegrate the intelligence network, that is to provide you with the latest currency, intelligence currency that you would need. You've done this. You're walking into a negotiation like this, with one eye completely shut. And then you're at the table and the President blinds you in the other eye, in the good eye, right? And so what do you do? If you're sitting there and let's take this thing back, where the hell is the Secretary of State? You're sending two morons to negotiate with Iran. I mean, you're sending your son in law and a business guy to go and sit down with the Iranians. And they're sitting. The Iranians are sitting there going, seriously, this is. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Can I have some more coffee? You know what? They know this isn't. Seriously, you're going to send Jared Kushner. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. So, Jared, how's the wife and the kids? They're good. Okay. That's the negotiation.
- [23:52]
Katy Tur
Give us Wendy Sherman. And by the way, I had an interesting conversation with Jake Sullivan, who was President Biden's former National Security Advisor just this morning, who said to me this, oil prices would even be a lot worse and gas prices would be higher for Americans, except guess what? The Iranians are actually getting out about half of their oil through alternative routes. They're sending out through pipelines, they're trucking oil to Turkey, they're trucking oil to Pak. They're even looking at sending it by train to China. So, in fact, Iran is not suffering as much as we might think they are.
- [24:27]
Michael Steele
In fact, Katie, on top of that reporting, you have reporting that said that with the current situation, with the American blockade. Oh, ooh, blockade. We like that word. Iran can go another four months. They can go another four months. They have a system. They have contingencies and plans for this. This American has been the Great Satan. They've always envisioned and imagined and planned for this kind of a confrontation with the United States under this. Under this regime. Right, under the Khomeini regimes. And so you don't think over 47 years they've not figured out how to get around our bullshit? And now that's all layered out in plain sight because we've got the idiocracy running our foreign policy. We don't have serious people at the table and in the room. We don't. The Secretary of State, that image of him on the couch when Zelensky was there, sitting there like a huddled mass. Shell shocked by what?
- [25:39]
Katy Tur
Get me out of here. Photo.
- [25:40]
Michael Steele
Get me out of here. That's been Marco Rubio. So you can go and do all these Catholic videos and you can go and meet with the Pope and all this stuff and we talk about the fight with the Pope. Talk about dumbass decisions in the midst of a war. Given the intelligence network that the Vatican has. I mean, it's just none of it. None of the dots are connected, Caddy. And you just sit there and you go, why is this man sitting in the Oval Office? What were the American people thinking? I know our friends in Great Britain and the rest of Europe look at us and go, what the hell's wrong with y'? All? What are you doing right now? Do you not understand, by the way?
- [26:25]
Katy Tur
To get us back to where we started. And then we are going to take a break. In much politer language. That was kind of the message that the King delivered to Congress, let's be honest.
- [26:34]
Michael Steele
Yes, yes.
- [26:35]
Katy Tur
Like it was a kind of. What are you all doing? Before we go to a break, don't forget that the general sale for our live tour across North America opens this Friday at 10am Eastern. Head to there estispoliticsus.com to get your tickets. We can't wait to see you out on the road. Okay, let's take a break and then we'll come back and talk about the Trump mobile phone that costs you a hundred dollars for a deposit. But you you may not actually ever get and Kash Patel up in front of Congress.
- [27:10]
Alistair Campbell
This episode is brought to you by NordVPN. You know, Caddy Alistair Campbell taught me how to use NORDVPN on a train from Glasgow to London. I love this product. I want to be connected as soon as I sit down. But speed can come at a cost to security. Most of the time, cyber attacks are not Hollywood style. They're disguised as a fake link, a phishing email or a public network that looks normal. And NORDVPN protects you from all of that.
- [27:41]
Katy Tur
I didn't have my NORDVPN switched on recently and I was the subject of a hacking attack. I got an email that I thought was legitimate. I opened it and now I'm very careful about having my NORDVPN switched on. Using NORDVPN helps protect my privacy and sensitive data, especially as we're often working on the remove or using public wi
- [28:01]
Alistair Campbell
fi with threat protection pro. Malicious websites, ads and trackers and phishing attempts are all blocked before they even reach us.
- [28:12]
Katy Tur
To get the best discount on your NORDVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com tripus. You'll get four extra months free on the two year plan plus a 30 day money back guarantee. The link's in the episode description. Welcome back to the Rest is Politics Us. This podcast is sponsored by Trump Mobile. You can buy the T1 phone if you put down a hundred dollar deposit and are quite happy with the idea that you may never get the phone, it may never be made, and that you have been suckered into handing over money to the Trump Organization, which may mean we need a little bit more money. Okay, I have to fill everybody in. This is the only big story that is going around Washington this week after a young man on TikTok who was very unhappy posted a video saying that he had put down a hundred dollar deposit last summer for not one, not two, not three, but four Trump phones which were announced by the Trump family, by the Trump sons. They said they were going to be proudly made in America in June of 2020 delivery. Michael, don't worry, not very long. If you'd put down a hundred dollars in June of 2025, you would get your phone in September of 2025. I mean, that's fine, right? And it was going to be made in America and it was going to be. Guess what color it was going to be?
- [29:38]
Michael Steele
Red, white and blue.
- [29:40]
Katy Tur
No, nearly. Nearly. You're not thinking Trumpy enough. You're not, you're not Trumpy enough.
- [29:45]
Michael Steele
No, I'm not.
- [29:47]
Katy Tur
No, it really was, it was going to be gold.
- [29:51]
Michael Steele
Gold, yes, gold, of course.
- [29:52]
Katy Tur
And guess what? All of these people, I don't know why, but it wasn't nobody who put money down. Some 600,000 people paid a deposit which netted a nice cool $59 million to the Trump Organization. But they didn't read the small print because in the small print it said a pre order doesn't guarantee that this device will get produced or made available for purchase. I, I don't know about that. You, you buy. I mean, talk to me about this.
- [30:28]
Michael Steele
That is such a summation of everything Trump touches. It's a scam. These guys are nothing but con artists, his sons, him, the things he has done. It's not folks not saying anything out of school. The history on this is legion. Legion. From stakes to universities to this, to sneakers. Gold lame sneakers. All of it is a scam. It is a way to put up cheap crap in front of you, Dangle it, make it gold, because, well, there it is, right? Everybody loves gold. And then the bait and the switch. Oh well, just because you gave me $100 doesn't mean I'm going to give you anything for it how stupid. And the thing about it is, you get people caught up in this whole thing where they want to be a part of what it is you're doing. This is an extension of you to them, and they feel connected to you. And my God, I got a Trump phone. No, you ain't getting crap. You're not getting crap.
- [31:43]
Katy Tur
It's like you bought the Trump Meme coin on the evening of the inauguration, and the Trump family made a whole load of money out of it.
- [31:49]
Michael Steele
60 million bucks.
- [31:51]
Katy Tur
60 million bucks. The people who bought the Meme coin, they made nothing out of it. Oh, and by the way, the other good news about this phone. Donald Trump Jr. Went on television and said that it was going to be built in America because it is time, folks, to bring manufacturing back to America. That is the patriotic thing to do. That language was quickly scrubbed from the website, and now it says the phone is going to be designed with American values in mind. That phone is being made in China.
- [32:22]
Michael Steele
You can't build a phone in America. Come on.
- [32:25]
Katy Tur
You can't build a phone in America.
- [32:27]
Michael Steele
Oh, you know which that phone would cost if we built it? A lot more than $100.
- [32:32]
Katy Tur
Yes. A lot more than $100 is a metaphor for the whole manufacturing campaign. Manufacturing jobs have declined. There has been a net loss in manufacturing jobs in the United States of America since the President was inaugurated.
- [32:44]
Michael Steele
What are we doing?
- [32:45]
Katy Tur
Including the people who might be going to be billed the Trump phone. Okay. I had to get that off my chest because it's just. It's too good. And I feel too bad for the people that put the money down.
- [32:54]
Michael Steele
Oh, I don't.
- [32:55]
Katy Tur
But I also think, why did you do it?
- [32:57]
Michael Steele
I don't feel crap for that. You spent $400 on the phone. Anything, Donald, you better read the fine print. Ask the lawyers. Yeah, I don't feel anything for you. Sorry.
- [33:10]
Katy Tur
He would have done very well as a kind of 1950s salesman. He likes doing a sale.
- [33:15]
Michael Steele
He is Harold Hill. He is a corrupt. He makes Harold hill look like St. Francis. Right. He is a corrupted Harold Hill. He's a PT Barnum, knows a sucker is born every minute. He preys on the suckers out there. He lathers them up in the red, white, and blue, and he lathers them up in their angst about America becoming less white. He gets them all fired up, up about communism and Muslims and this and any other ism out there, and then he takes their cash. There we are.
- [33:52]
Katy Tur
We're going to do a series on that. We're going to do a deep dive on how much money the family has made.
- [33:56]
Michael Steele
Oh, please do.
- [33:57]
Katy Tur
It runs into the billions.
- [34:00]
Michael Steele
One billion just last year.
- [34:02]
Katy Tur
I think it's even more. I think it's even more. Meanwhile, as the Trump Organization is raking in $60 million for a phone that doesn't exist yet, and the purchasers can't even get a reply from the customer service, there is Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, up on Capitol Hill. It's like a cast out of a sort of comedy movie, except that it's not a comedy. There is Kash Patel, who's the former podcast host. Nothing wrong with podcast hosts, of course. He just perhaps shouldn't want to be running up the FBI, who is up on Capitol Hill because lawmakers are unhappy. They want to grill him about a story that came out in the Atlantic. We talked about it, about his episodes of excessive drinking. Reportedly said that his Secret Service detail can't even find him sometimes because he's passed out in his bedroom and won't answer the door because he's hungover. It was a weird spectacle because you had all of these Democrats hammering him on the drinking. You had Chris Van Hollen challenging him to take some kind of a sobriety test.
- [35:06]
Alistair Campbell
Are you willing to take the test? It's called the audit test that members of our active duty military and others take to determine whether they have a drinking problem. I'll take any test you're willing to take. I will take it.
- [35:21]
Katy Tur
Director Pateli.
- [35:22]
Alistair Campbell
I'll take it.
- [35:22]
Katy Tur
You ready to take it?
- [35:23]
Alistair Campbell
Let's go.
- [35:24]
Michael Steele
Yes or no?
- [35:25]
Alistair Campbell
Let's go side by side. I'll take.
- [35:29]
Katy Tur
And then you had them challenging him on what's happening in the FBI that has been reported in multiple outlets in terms of who's been fired and who's had to resign and the character of polygraphs going on at the FBI, the character of recrimination and retribution against journalists. And Kash Patel just denies all of it. It was the weirdest hearing. I don't know what you made of it.
- [35:50]
Michael Steele
Well, I made of what I make of everything about the folks who work for Trump who have to then go before Congress. They go there not to be held accountable for what they're doing or not doing, what their departments are doing, how they're running things. They go there to perform. They go there, as my mama used to say, to show their ass. That's what they do. They go there to perform for Donald Trump. That was a performance for Donald Trump. We saw it with Pam Bondi. We see it down with Cash. We've seen it with others. And to the extent that there's anything that gets answered, it's all gobbledygook. It makes no sense. It doesn't align with the facts. Look, we know the storylines about Cash Patel from when he was a podcaster, just like we know the storylines about Pete Hegseth and his alcoholism before he became secretary.
- [36:46]
Katy Tur
Kash Patel is on video boasting about his drinking.
- [36:49]
Michael Steele
Boasting about his drinking. So the fact that you now have agents, staff, and employees in the department who are concerned about the head of this organization behaving in a manner that is not only possibly putting the organization in disrepute, but making it far less effective than it already is or already has been made by the cuts and the implosion within the FBI, which I
- [37:22]
Katy Tur
think, by the way, is the real story.
- [37:24]
Michael Steele
It's the real story, Katty.
- [37:26]
Katy Tur
Of course Kash Patel's drinking is a problem, but if you look at the number of people who've been fired from both the Justice Department and the FBI or have resigned because they don't feel that they are doing the job that they were brought on to do, they have a real problem now where they are having to promote people who are too junior. They're having to cut training times. They're having to relax the conditions for people to become agents. They've launched a whole social media campaign to try and hire people back again because so many people have either been let go or have decided to let themselves go, all because Donald Trump had it in for the FBI, because the FBI was involved in investigations into him at Mar A Lago and the documents that he took. The FBI was involved in investigating the January 6th insurrection. And the FBI and the Justice. Justice Department were involved also in investigating Russia's ties to Donald Trump.
- [38:18]
Michael Steele
And all of that Caddy was laid out. And we saw the culpability of one person at the center of each of those investigations, and that was Donald Trump. And so the FBI just doesn't, unlike now under Donald Trump, randomly go out and start investigating people. It just doesn't do. It just doesn't go, okay, what are we doing? Why don't we just go and investigate a former president? Okay, why don't we do that? Let's put resources that we need for other things into that. That's not how this works.
- [38:51]
Katy Tur
Well, you mean the FBI under Barack Obama was not doing that about George W. Bush, and under George W. Bush was not doing that about Bill Clinton, and Bill Clinton was not doing that about George H.W. bush?
- [39:00]
Michael Steele
No, it just doesn't work that way, unfortunately. But here we are. So these storylines that are being laid out in front of the American people are real storylines connected to real actions by individuals inside this administration. Cash Patel, Pete Hegseth, et cetera, and the president himself. And so, I'm sorry, don't hate the game. Right. And don't hate the players. It's how you are playing in the game. And if you're the bad actor, you're going to create the kind of attention that the FBI, the Department of justice and other institutions are going to look at what you're doing. So now that you control those things, and this is where the weaponization issue or storylines have been turned on their heads. Donald Trump has always, from the very first time I met him and worked with him, he's always struck me as the guy that will flip the script. He will always project an action that you're doing because it's an action either that he's doing or wants to do. Right. And you're not doing it.
- [40:11]
Katy Tur
Projectional confession.
- [40:13]
Michael Steele
Exactly. And so, look, you know, Kash Patel has got a problem. Now, here's the deal. I said this from the very beginning of the storylines about Cash Patel being on the hook to be fired. Cash Patel's not going anywhere. But why? Because Cash Patel is doing the thing Donald Trump wants done. And what is that? He's investigating the people Donald Trump once investigated. Why did Pam Bondi get in trouble? Because she didn't do the perp walk after the investigations. Remember, our FBI is an investigatory body. It can investigate the ham sandwich on the lawn. Right. Why is that ham sandwich there? Who put that ham sandwich there? What is the ham sandwich doing to disrupt the neighborhood? The Department of Justice is the agency that will come in and handcuff the owner or handcuff the perpetrator of putting the ham sandwich on the lawn. Right. So those two pieces, in Donald Trump's view. All right, Cash, I want you to go out and investigate James Comey. All right, Pam, I want you to go out and give me the perp walk. I want him in handcuffs. Doesn't matter whether or not there's evidence. In fact, that's the problem. Those lawyers then have to go before judges and say, your Honor, here are the facts that have brought James Comey or John Brennan, the former CIA director, to you in handcuffs. And the judge looks at that and goes, what the hell you doing? Get the hell out of here. No, there's nothing. There's no there, there Boom. Right. They don't want that because guess what? On the back end, those lawyers then have to pay for that with their law license. Right now, Caddy, there are a number of lawyers who are standing before their local bars up on charges of bringing false legal action against individuals. And so people are looking at that going, that's why they're, to your earlier point, are resigning, because they don't want that. So when you turn the system on its head and you turn what's left of the system in on itself, this is what it looks like in America with Donald Trump as president. Here is the bottom line, though. It's going to be hard for us to rebuild from this. These institutions have been, I think, irreparably broken. They're not going to be the same. The Institutes of Peace, the usaid, all of these organs that once served a great purpose and did good things, including those institutions like the FBI. They're going to have a future generation of lawmakers are going to have to rethink how to rebuild them. What we had once is gone. That talent, that institutional knowledge is not being passed on to a bunch of idiots who are left to do Donald Trump's bidding. And the people that they are hiring, if you look at the ICE agents who are being hired because they're yippee ki yay, they want to go after black and brown people and put them in handcuffs and beat them up and treat them. Do we know what's going on, actually going on in the detention centers? No, because they won't even let members of Congress inside to look at them,
- [43:26]
Katy Tur
even though the members of Congress are paying for those detention centers. Yeah, I agree. I think it's going to be a real challenge. And for people who don't think this impacts ordinary Americans. Another extraordinary thing came out of the Cash Patel hearing. Just before the war with Iran, Iran started, a dozen counterterrorism agents who were experts in guess which country were fired from the FBI out of here. They were Iran experts. They may have been useful during this time of tension with Iran. Okay, guys. We will be talking in our bonus episode, Guys, which I've recorded with Eugene Daniels about the explosive feud that, that Pete Hegseth had with Senator Mark Kelly, the accusations of leaking classified information, threats against Kelly's military pension, and whether this is all really just about the kind of political revenge that Michael and I were just speaking about. Trust me, you don't want to miss this one. Do sign up@therestispolicsus.com to become a founding member and listen right now. Michael Steele, thank you very much again for joining us. It's always a pleasure to have you on the program. Thank you for making the time. I know you're busy.
- [44:35]
Michael Steele
Thanks for having me on. And tell the Mooch I said hello when he gets back from his Hollywood gig.