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- [00:00]
Podcast Host (Ad Reader)
Take the exit, turn right into the drive thru.
- [00:03]
Steve Schmidt
Nope, I'm making dinner tonight.
- [00:05]
Podcast Host (Ad Reader)
You don't have time. Josh has practice.
- [00:07]
Sponsor Voice
Oh, that's right.
- [00:08]
Tara Palmeri
I'll just get a salad and fries.
- [00:10]
Steve Schmidt
No, just the salad.
- [00:11]
Podcast Host (Ad Reader)
But salad cancels. Fries.
- [00:13]
Steve Schmidt
Salad only.
- [00:14]
Tara Palmeri
Fries.
- [00:14]
Steve Schmidt
Salad, fries.
- [00:15]
Tara Palmeri
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- [00:22]
Steve Schmidt
Hey, can I get the fries? Salad? Sorry.
- [00:25]
Tara Palmeri
Learn more@joinmochi.com Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists. Results may vary. Welcome back to the Tara Palmieri Show. Picture this Sunday service, but in a bar just a mile from the White House. I'm not talking about a church sanctuary, but an actual bar. And I'm also not talking about just a handful of people. I saw 700 mostly young Republican staffers sitting through three hour long services on Sunday morning at King's Church, the church plant that it's called. It's not just faith, it's infrastructure. It's belonging and NETWORKING rolled into one. A spiritual LinkedIn you could say for a generation desperate for meaning and a place to land. I wrote about this phenomenon for Vanity Fair and for my substack the Red Letter, which you can find@tarapaulmary.com if you sign up and become a paid subscriber. You support my independent journalism. You can also hear about my personal experience with the evangelical movement in my own family. My friend Steve Schmidt and I, we break down why this Matters in the nation's capital, where networks become power fast and why the mixing of faith and political identity can start to uncomfortably look like the early architecture of theocracy. Take a listen. Happy New Year. If you're anything like me, then your intention is to feel more present in your body, to bring more little luxuries into your life, to treat yourself like a queen, to really embrace life. And that's where Cozy Earth comes in their soft bedding, their luxurious pajamas and their towels that feel like a hug. Just a way to enjoy being in the present by upgrading the things around you that your senses, your touch, your smiles. And so that's why I brought Cozy Earth into my life. And there's 100 night sleep trial. You don't love them, return them hassle free. It's also a 10 year warranty because they're betting that this quality will last that long. Start the new year off right and give your home the luxury it deserves and make home the best part of life. Head to coffee cozyearth.com and use my Code Tara. That's T A R A for up to 20% off. And if you get a post purchase survey, be sure to mention that you heard about Cozy Earth right here. Refresh your routines with comfort that makes everyday life feel like new Year.
- [02:46]
Steve Schmidt
And here, this incredible story you did in Vanity Fair and you wrote about it on your sub stack. And I'm just going to set something up culturally because in your substack you talked a little bit about the story, talked a little bit about your parents. He talked about growing up in New Jersey. And the gist of the story is that there's an evangelical maga church that is filled to the rafters in a nightclub on Sunday mornings. And you go inside of it. And one of the things you talked about is this evangelical culture and its impact on you and your family. And you describe your parents who were Catholic and you were raised Catholic and they moved to North Carolina and they get involved with an evangelical church. And I, I just. That had such resonance with me. My parents are visiting right now and my parents are 80, but I. But I have a very distinct memory of being about 11 and 12 years old when I discovered that my father was a Protestant. And. And you're like having grown up and having grown up Catholic. And I. And if you grew up in New Jersey. Right. Where, where I grew up, there were three religions. There were Catholics.
- [04:21]
Tara Palmeri
Yeah.
- [04:22]
Steve Schmidt
There were Jews.
- [04:24]
Tara Palmeri
Yep.
- [04:24]
Steve Schmidt
And I live next to a town that was majority black. And the blacks were Baptists. Those were the religions. And I didn't associate Baptist as Protestant. Right. I associated it with the ethnicity that black people went to the Baptist church. They were Jews, a lot of Jewish friends. They went to the synagogue. And everyone else Irish and Italian. Everyone else was Catholic. And that was life. That was.
- [04:55]
Tara Palmeri
Don't forget the polls.
- [04:57]
Steve Schmidt
Right. And the polls. I had a babci. We share that. We share that in common. Har's mother is Polish. And.
- [05:03]
Tara Palmeri
Yeah.
- [05:04]
Steve Schmidt
And so I wasn't. I didn't meet and experience any of this evangelical stuff until I'm in my late 20s working in Republican politics and I start doing my first couple races in the, in the South. And I'll never forget being in a California state Senate office in 1997 where I was a staffer, where Nicole Wallace and I become friends. That's how far we go back. Nicole and I were working in the California state Senate and I had hair still. And I remember not a lot, it was thinning, but I remember a person telling me as a Catholic that I was not a Christian. And it was just astounding to me. I couldn't. I couldn't process it. And so, so that's the culture that I came up in in New Jersey. A child of the 70s, graduated high school in, in 88. And so your entree to this story is that you're a Catholic who grows up in New Jersey. Your, Your parents give you your first taste of the evangelical church and the fusion of politics. And at any rate, you somehow find your way into this MAGA church filled with congressional staffers in D.C. and that's. That's all I'll say to set it up, but tell us about the story and where people, people can find it again. It's just another amazing piece of piece of writing, and I'm not. I have to read it again to fully wrap my head around it, to be honest with you. Tell us about it.
- [06:59]
Tara Palmeri
Yeah, thanks so much. Yeah, it's. The story is. Is the full piece is in Vanity Fair, and that's like, the full opus of what I experienced, which was something. It was a lot. It was, you know, what, what really kind of, like, piqued my interest was that I had heard that a bunch of, like, Trump officials were meeting at a bar downtown close to the White House every Sunday for church. And I got a tip, and they said, if you want to go there, you can see them. And I'm like, wait, they're meeting at a bar for church? What is going on here? And obviously, there's all of the questions about, like, you know, these theocracy, this, you know, like, what's going on right now. You saw that. You saw the funeral of Charlie Kirk. I mean, it felt like we are there already. And Pete Hegseth now having a national prayer breakfast at the Defense Department. And just like, all the steps we're starting to see of the integration of the church and state and all happening under, weirdly, the administration of Donald Trump. But this group is now like 700 strong young staffers, all under 35. They're recruiting kids from universities, like Liberty University, which is a very Christian church, to come to this church called King's Church that meets in a bar. It meets under disco lights every Sunday. 700 kids. So many of them that there's a group of men that agree to line the walls called King's Church. King's Church. Men stand or something like that. It's in my piece. But they are so, like, we're. They're so eager to go to me. I was just like, in my 20s and as a young journalist in Washington or just even as a young staffer, I don't think I'd be waking up early to go to church. They're all with their mom, their, their coffee cups. They're excited. And the thing that caught my attention while I was there was how big the networking aspect of it was. You know, I, Katie Britt's intern coordinator came, and she brought all of her interns with her. This kid from Marjorie Taylor Greene's office went there with all the other kids in the office, because he said, everybody there goes. It's like there's almost a social pressure to go. I'm, I'm just sitting back in the, in the, in this, my chair, and I'm hearing two kids behind me talking about working at State, and it's like, you're. I felt like I was in the cafeteria maybe of one of these, either on the Hill or in one of the, in one of the department offices. You know, it just felt like I was in the center of the action in Washington. And then, you know, I learned more about the founding pastors. I mean, they're, they. Church planted in Washington, D.C. they said they, these are my kind of people. We want to be around powerful people. I could see in their eyes that they want that. The, one of the founders was like, I would like to be like the, you know, the, the church, the, the, the minister to a president or something like that. I mean, he was talking at one point about moving this to extending to Berlin or Paris. It's like building these churches in the center of power. And I was actually kind of impressed partially by what they had built. Really. I mean, it started with 50 people in a hotel conference room, then they brought it to the spy museum. Only in, only in Washington, right. And then they were at a bar, and now they're looking for space. But, you know, they say, oh, it's not political. It's like, yeah, everything in Washington is political. And from what I had really gathered from these, a lot of the young people, like, they saw the value in it. They had a very, very intense internship program. Like, they have a, they have an internship mentorship program at the church. There's a lot of reason to be a part of it. And afterwards, they were just like, you know, it felt like there was a lot of networking happening at church. So I, I, I, I thought there were so many different angles and just being there. I mean, they were passing around. I couldn't help but, like, point out the irony. They're passing around little shot glasses filled with what would be the Blood of Christ for Catholics. I know Protestants don't call it that. And I was called out on that, but, you know, and I was like, you know, they all took shots of it at the same time. And I was thinking to myself, like, this is like a pious drinking game because we're in a bar. I mean, it was, you could see the bar. It was, it was really, it's really something else, only something you could see in D.C. and I'd be curious to hear what you think about it, Steve. And, like, if these kind of movements concern you, is this like another aspect of Conservative Inc. Where you're kind of. It's like it's funneling people into the conservative world, or is this just, hey, these kids are lonely in D.C. they want a church. There's nothing wrong there. Okay. There's a little bit of networking, and they help each other get jobs. I mean, one of the founders came from the Heritage, and there were a lot of people from Heritage there. I mean, I met a girl who got a job at Heritage through going to the church. You know, it's a bit of a spiritual LinkedIn, you could say.
- [12:07]
Steve Schmidt
Is there any crosses on the wall in the church? Are there posters of Trump? Are there pictures of Trump? Is there.
- [12:18]
Tara Palmeri
No, it's not that overtly, like, it's not overtly political, although Josh Hawley did speak there. But there are no, there are no pictures of Trump. There are no crosses. That was weird to me, too. But in the backdrop of. Yeah, they.
- [12:33]
Steve Schmidt
Do they preach the message of Jesus Christ or is it something else?
- [12:39]
Tara Palmeri
Oh, no, they definitely preach the message of Jesus Christ. And in fact, it's definitely like a. More almost like ancient ritual. They, they say the Nicene Creed. There are no stunts. It's very long and kind of boring. But they've baptized 250 people over eight years. I mean, more than that, actually, at this point. And they see this as their conversion rate, like they're building a real operation. It's, it's kind of impressive. So I, when I was, when I was there, it kind of brought me back to when I was a kid because there was an evangelical church. Even though we grew up in Jersey, there was an evangelical church about a mile or two away, and they had a youth group. And like, that is what the, the convention. The evangelicals, I think, understand that the Catholics don't, because Catholics, it's like, you go to church, you do your thing, you go back home, you run to your car, and then you get it over with. An hour a week done. But evangelicals, like, they make it a part of your life. You become a part of a men's group, a women's group, a Bible study. You know, there's youth groups. There's all sorts of ways to bring people in. And I loved the youth group at. And I was a preteen, and I really wanted to be part of the youth group. I was like, I need to be. I need to be baptized. I found Jesus. 3:16. You have to baptize me. I'm crying. I'm begging my parents, like, please let me go to the church. Please baptize me again. They're like, you've already been baptized. And I'm like, please, please, please. I want to go to the church. It's so much better than Catholics. And I'm in Catholic school. My parents, like, you're Catholic? No. And so they shut it down. And by the time I got over it, I was in high school, and I couldn't care less anymore, you know, but the funny thing to me is that they moved to North Carolina and now they're evangelicals and they got baptized. And they're very, like, they're really into it. I mean, really, really into it. They're part of their men's group and their women's group. And my mom watches the kids and my dad helps people, and I think it's great for them. It's a little different, but there's. There's. You know, when I told my mom about the p. The piece, the first thing she said to me was like, am I going to have to apologize to my pastor for this? And they talk about politics at church. You know, I mean, and. And I. It's sort of like, stuck in my ear. It's like, it's not explicit. They're not telling you what to think. I don't think it's the same way. Some churches really are more open politically, but there's just an implied, like, kind of conservatism to it. There's implied, like, well, you know, you're pro life, so I don't. I don't know. I never. I didn't meet a single Democrat there. Even though they claim that the Democrats went to the church.
- [15:14]
Steve Schmidt
Well, that tells you something about it. It's a partisan church, means it's a political church. And what I would say about this is that I remember early in my career, I did a race in Kentucky, and I was totally fascinated by these rattlesnake handling churches where the. Got the rattlesnakes up. And I went to One and I stood in the back of it. In fact, if you look up on Wikipedia, fatal rattlesnake bites and where they, where they happened, you can, you can read through the decades. You know, Pastor so and so picked up the rattlesnake worship service, bit him in the face, he's dead. Right? And you know, if you live in rattlesnake country, right, best way to avoid getting bit by one is don't touch one, don't with the snake. And so I think that when you have a Handmaid's tale type of theology that Pete Hegseth supports his pastor that says that slavery was a good thing, women shouldn't have the right to vote in Jesus name, that that is blasphemous and that people of faith should do it. I think Pastor Paula, the White House faith Advisor is a 10 star hustler. The insanity, the speaking in tongues. So the greatest invention, I believe in American history was the peaceful transition of power. And hands down, the greatest idea in history is the separation of church and state. And so when you see people overtly trying to say to an incredibly ignorant country that the founders were evangelical Christians who passed, who signed the declaration to be closer to Jesus and people believe it, it's propaganda, it's a lie. And so when you see religion fused to politics, where men proclaiming God's name, we have the power to do A, B and C. Those are the most evil ideologies on earth and they are the deadliest and the bloodiest. And you see that playing out in Iran. And the truth is that we have talked in this country for many, many, many years about extremism through the Islamic lens. But here's the deal, and this is one of my deepest beliefs. A religious nut is a religious nut is a religious nut. There are Christian religious nuts and extremists and there are Jewish religious nuts and extremists and there are Islamic extremist nuts. They're all nuts, they're all crazy, they're all illiberal, they all are an affront to God. But Christian nationalism on the scorecard has killed a lot more people than all of the other extremism. And the truth is that if you go back and you read the letters of Stonewall Jackson or Jefferson Davis or Alexander Stevens, who gave the cornerstone speech of the Confederacy that talked about we are a nation under God, that follows God's commandment, which is to enslave black people. And anytime you hear a politician preaching that God wants them to subjugate one group of people for not Believing the dogma that they're pushing, you know, that you are in the presence of evil. And that's what it is. Now, that church may not be malevolent. I don't know. It may be much closer to the Joel Osteen Church, which I find preposterous. And, and one of the things, one of the things I love about the Osteen church is, is the story about how they're doing a renovation in the giant stadium that he has the church in, and there's a plumber working and he's got to knock out a wall, and he knocks out the wall and a couple million dollars in cash fall out of the wall. And being from New Jersey, you have an appreciation for any story I know of cash falling out of the wall, but when I read that story, I remember it's a fucking miracle, right? You know, the cash falling out of the wall in the Osteen church. So this is all so much of it, like Trump University and everything else, it's all a scam. But I also appreciate that young people, particularly this generation, have had a couple of years, and there have always been awakenings in American life out of eras where there has been a type of cratering of values. Something always comes up, and a faith that teaches you to be humble and to respect all people and to love your neighbor. I think that's a good thing. But I don't necessarily pick that up from your reporting. That's what it is. It seems like it's a networking opportunity for a bunch of kids, but anytime, you know, you have 700 people taking a shot at the same time, you know, I want to, I want to go grab all those young kids and watch the Jim Jones movie with them.
- [21:40]
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- [22:11]
Tara Palmeri
Yeah, yeah, you know, I, I'm like, I don't think it's, like, I, I, I hope it's not nefarious. Like, I don't think it's nefarious. I do think there is a part of it that they are in this, like, hypo algorithm. I think they're a little burnt out on Irony a bit. And I do think that they want something that they feel is real. And I think that's why a lot of these young people are going to church. But I do think that there is in Washington they also see it as a way to kind of climb the pole here. You know, it happens. People network at all the churches in, in D.C. it happens. Right. Like, you know, but the churches in D.C. are pretty empty. I mean the pews are empty and this place is not. And it's become a power center and it's, it's definitely the next gen of leaders in the Republican Party are there. And I mean there's no one there that's a musician or a bartender or. This is a warning shot, right? Yeah. Pulitzer dry polo, you know, dry fit polo shirts. There's a specific type of kid that's showing up and they're going with each other from their jobs. And the fact that they so actively recruit interns, like that's another aspect of it that made me see kind of the blending of the church and state. And interns are lonely. You know, they don't have money either. They're taking them out to Nats games and introducing them to people and they're getting a built in network through the church. Liberals don't have anything this sticky. Liberals don't have anything this sticky. They really don't. Can you think of anything that they have that, that is like this?
- [24:15]
Steve Schmidt
No. Right. This is a huge thing. Right. I've said this for years. I finally heard somebody else make the point. But the Democratic Party of recent years came to be seen by a lot of the country as their corporate HR department. And the appeal of MAGA for many people is that all you have to do to be a good MAGA is acknowledge and accept Trump is the leader. That's it, you're in. And Trump will never, ever, ever judge it. Never. If you watch how Kenny Haynes Miller on the Abby Phillips Scott Jennings show, her point is no, I won't condemn Nick Fuentes. Nick Fuentes has a right to speak. Now, obviously in this country with the First Amendment, very famous case, you had a Jewish ACLU lawyer defend the Nazis right to march in Skokie, Illinois. J.B. pritzker talked about this in a speech before the Illinois legislature. At the very beginning, at the, at the very beginning of the, at the very beginning of the term, MAGA never judges, not the works, not a pedophile, not a racist, nobody. In fact, they have refuted a fundamental concept of conservatism, which was personal responsibility. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps. I hate Illinois Nazis. John H. I love that Blues Brothers reference. There's that. This notion of personal responsibility has been completely rebutted and refuted. It's virtuous to be a victim, that everybody is aggrieved together in a righteous manner. And the Democrats against this fascist disgustingness, as I see it, are the judgment court. Right? I mean, you can't call it a blackboard, right? Because that's racist. Can't call it a whiteboard. You might get called to hr. There are a thousand examples of Democrats judging policing speech. And that judgment, which MAGA never does, explains in part why Donald Trump sits in the White House. And Democrats don't need to be the judgment party. They need to be the join us party. They need to be the American party. They need to be the party that says, we believe in freedom of speech, we believe in freedom of religion, we believe in tolerance, we believe in the Constitution, that our prism is an American prison. That's the tire metaphorically that you're trying to throw the ball through, right? That's what unites people. If I go out and I say, hello, my fellow Western Hemisphere, it has no resonance. I go out and say, my fellow North Americans, it means nothing. Being an American is what unites the most of us through a common affiliation. Democrats have hyphenated that, they've downplayed that and they've tried to put group identity, identitarian politics in front of a national identity. And that has been terribly exploited by not a patriotic party, but by a nationalist party. And nationalism is the enemy of patriotism, and it always has been. So anytime when you have a fusion of religion to politics, anytime you see a church, hey, you got any Democrat members here, Pastor? No. What does the pastor's ambition? What is the pastor's ambition? I mean, you said it. Hey, God, I could be the minister to a president. I mean, I thought if you were a Christian pastor, the purpose of the job was to preach the word of Jesus Christ, the Sermon on the Mount. The blessed are the peacekeepers, right? Not to serve as your own ambition. So I'm not a fan of the prosperity gospel. I'm deeply skeptical of the hypocrisy of the Christian nationalists. And the one thing that I've always been in violent agreement about is with Christopher Hitchens, is anytime I see a Christian nationalist, some right winger talking about gay people or anything else. Hitchens had that famous line, I'm going to butcher it. He sets his watch and counts down. He said, to the story about them on their knees in a latrine with some type of whatever does always seem.
- [29:47]
Tara Palmeri
To be the ones who are dog protect you. My.
- [29:50]
Steve Schmidt
You can set your clock by it. And you know, so, you know, so I always read this stuff with a lot of cynicism, some degree of my own prejudice, but it's, it, but it's an incredible story. Really fascinating. You should be really proud of it. And everybody, everybody should go. Everybody should go and read it. Everybody should go and read it.
- [30:12]
Tara Palmeri
Yeah, I appreciate that. I got.
- [30:18]
Steve Schmidt
Go ahead, Tara. I'm sorry.
- [30:19]
Tara Palmeri
No, I appreciate you saying that. It was, it was eye opening for me. But yeah, I mean churches, we are so divided in so many ways. It's kind of, it's amazing. But yeah, it was, was, it was really eye opening and it actually taught me a lot about the gen. The Gen Z as well and why they are. They've been so conservative and what it is that they are like what, what they want right now. Because I brought my intern with me who's 21 because you know, I thought there's a lot of interns here and you know, I want her to learn. Yeah. To be a reporter and to learn. And she, oh my gosh, her eyes, they were just like, whoa. She was in shock from all of it because she's Catholic. She grew up in D.C. but always was Catholic. And I, I had been around evangelicals before, so I was, I was less shocked by it. But yeah, for her and to even see people her own age just like up early and at the, at church, it was really something to see it through her eyes about how, you know, truly like shocking it was.
- [31:28]
Steve Schmidt
So yeah, let's talk politics. We got, we got, we got 11 minutes left. Poll numbers are cratering for Trump. He lost Minnesota by a point and a half, I think in the last election. Not inconceivable that Republican candidate for president could win Minnesota before all of this. I mean, looks like he's trying to guarantee that whomever is the next Republican nominee and there will be elections. And don't anybody fall for the fear mongering that there won't be, but he may be trying to lose that state by 80%. The American people are in revolt. They are disgusted by what they witnessed. And is there any sense of panic in the White House? Do people get it that there's a revulsion to a Kristi Noem standing behind a podium with a sign on it that says one of ours, all of yours, which was the literal direct translation of Reinhard Heydrich's order in Prague. He was nicknamed the Butcher of Prague, the principal architect of the Holocaust. And that was Nazi policy. If a Nazi got killed, they killed 100 people. And when Reinhardt Heydrich was assassinated, Adolf Hitler personally ordered the liquidation of a village that had no Jews in it. It was called Ladice. And one of the most haunting monuments that I've ever seen is there. And that's. The children of Ladice were all sent to Chelmo and sent into the gas in the ovens. The men were lined up. They were all executed there. The SS offered to let the priest walk away. Priest chose to die with his flock. And all the women were sent off, and they were all killed as well. And then the Germans salted the village, salted the ground, so that nothing would ever grow there again. And the man who came up with that policy, his quote is now on Kristi Noem's podium. Is there anybody there who looks at this? You can look at Trump's response in the Ford factory when someone said pedophile protector. You see how he reacts to the mention of Epstein. But is there anyone around who gets the politics of this right now? Or do they just think that Trump's bureau, that there's no more elections, that we just got to do. As Stephen Miller says, he's the law. Whatever bullshit he says from the podium. Well, like, what's going on there, Steve?
- [34:24]
Tara Palmeri
I think they're betting on the fact that there are more people who are evil and think that this is right, like, or are okay with looking the other. Maybe they're not entirely evil. I hate. I don't. I don't like to say people who support Trump are evil, but maybe they don't understand the historical significance, are looking the other way, are valuing their. What they perceive as maybe their stock portfolio doing better business, you know, whatever it is, taxes, they value something more than that. But, yeah, I mean, ultimately, like, he's on these affordability tours to talk about how he apparently is making life more affordable, which can never shove down people's throat, as we learned in the last administration. But the darkness behind these, These, These symbols that people that don't have your.
- [35:18]
Steve Schmidt
Your.
- [35:18]
Tara Palmeri
Your knowledge of history, I think it's lost on them. Like, they know there's something off, but they can't put their finger on it.
- [35:28]
Steve Schmidt
I mean, they, they. I mean, people can now see the state violence, right? The craziness of all of this, right? It's like. So CBS News, right before we came on, put out a statement saying that Jonathan Ross, the ICE murderer who shot Renee Goode, according to two sources, is recovering from internal bleeding. Bullshit. It's completely not true. And I know it's not true because I watched the video. I watched him move the phone from his shooting hand to his left hand. I watched him unbuckle his weapon. I watched him draw his weapon. I watched him fire his weapon. Then I watched him walk away looking at his phone. And then I saw another videotape where he proclaimed, fucking bitch. He was fine. He doesn't have so much as a splinter. And I don't believe a word on CBS News. They have no credibility. Barry Weiss, News has no credibility, but it's appalling because it's Baghdad Bob level gaslighting. And I tried to say this about Joe Biden and a lot of blue MAGA didn't wanna hear it at the time, but people get it now.
- [36:39]
Tara Palmeri
I.
- [36:41]
Steve Schmidt
Everyone reacts to different stuff, differently. I'm a person who reacts very badly to being told what I just saw isn't what I saw. And then I react even worse when I'm shouted down for saying that I saw it. Right? And so a perfect example of that is Joe Scarborough, right, looking into the camera and basically saying he'd not basically said. He said to his audience, fuck you if you don't believe this is the best Joe Biden ever. He's. He's never been fitter. And obviously that, that was absurd. It was a lie. And, and so, you know, we have a video. The guy doesn't have internal bleeding unless he jumped off of a roof and tried to kill himself after he shot the woman. Right? But he did not get injured in that exchange. And I. How do you process that as a, as a journalist when you're watching something on video and then you see news organizations with anonymous sourcing saying, no, according to law enforcement, which is ice, which is Kristi Noem, which is Pam Bondi, who lied nonstop all day, every day, that in fact he was injured.
- [37:54]
Tara Palmeri
I would say that you can't take a, quote, law enforcement source from ice. Like, you have to say it's an ICE source because people need to know where the information is coming from. You can't just say, I mean, I would almost say, like, background on a story like this is not acceptable. You need to be, you need to give people. Because there's just so much. They won't even conduct an investigation. How can you. You have to know. You have to consider the source. An organization that refuses to do an actual investigation into what happened is saying this and then let people decide. But just law enforcement, it's, it's, it's dishonest. And I think it's like people see what they see. Like, I, I. People want to believe what they want to believe, and they don't. And, and seeing is apparently not believing anymore. So I don't.
- [38:54]
Steve Schmidt
That's a perfect place to. Perfect place to end it. Seeing isn't believing anymore, which, if you read 1984, is the first commandment of the party, not to believe your eyes or your ears, but instead to believe what the party tells you is true. Hey, everybody, let me just say before we leave that character counts and it matters, and so does the truth. And journalism is a really noble process. Journalism is a really noble profession badly practiced by a lot of feckless people. But Tara Palmeri is not one of them. One of the things that all of you can do, because many of you ask, what should I be doing? And a very simple answer is read. Read more and go and find the sources that can be believed and can be trusted. If you read a piece of news that expresses within it a piece of information that does not fit your worldview, it does not mean it is not true. And the truth is under siege. And Tara Palmeri is one of the very best. Thank you, people who is writing about what's happening to our country in this moment. Her substack journalism, one woman network, is the red letter. And every one of you who's on with me, please go and subscribe.
- [41:00]
Tara Palmeri
Thank you.
- [41:00]
Steve Schmidt
I offer opinions, and I have a point of view. Tara reports facts and reveals them to people that help shape the opinions on a factual basis of people like me. She is tough. She is fearless. She is indefatigable. I'm proud to call her my friend. She's one of the best journalists I've ever encountered. And I urge you to subscribe to the red letter. Tara, thank you for your time this afternoon. It's always great to see you.
- [41:36]
Tara Palmeri
Thank you. And Steve, thank you for having me. I'm in awe of everything you do and everything you create and, and frankly, your perspective and your writing is brilliant. And I'm so grateful that, that you having me on your platform and introducing.
- [41:51]
Steve Schmidt
Me to all of you, making me blush. All right. You don't have everybody. Tara Palm. Eric, thank you very much. And, and by the way, go and watch that interview that Tara did with Michael Cohen. It's as good as a Law and Order episode. Put it up on the television and sit back. I promise you it is as suspenseful as I'm telling you it is. And with that, good night, everybody.
- [42:15]
Tara Palmeri
Good night. Thank you. That was another episode of the Tara Palmeri Show. I'm curious to hear what you think about my article. Please like this rate, subscribe, share it with all your friends. That's how you keep me in business. Go to tarapaumieri.com c sign up for my newsletter, the Red Letter and become a paid subscriber to support my independent journalism. I want to thank my producer, Eric Abenate. I want to thank Abby Baker, who does my social media and my booking. I want to thank Adam Stewart on the graphics and Dan Rosen, my manager. See you again soon.
- [42:49]
Podcast Host (Ad Reader)
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