Transcript
Darina (0:00)
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Charlie Sykes (2:28)
Welcome to this weekend's episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. Let's get right to it. Let's not dance around the fact that this was a truly ghastly week and if you're feeling it. If you're feeling the weight of it, if you're feeling rattled by it, trust me, you're not alone. And we're going to dive into many of the reasons why I think that feeling is so widespread, not just here, but all around the country. So we're actually going to be doing something a little bit different today. No guests, just me, solo podcast. And your question? We're going to be answering as many questions from readers and listeners as I can. And frankly, I'll be answering some questions that I wish that I had been asked but haven't been asked yet. So we're going to be diving into the murder in Minnesota, the future of ice, the attack on Venezuela, the rise of the new, what is it, the Don Row doctrine, which is basically Trump's new imperial ambitions. Maybe we should call it the Mafia imperium of Donald Trump. We'll talk about the legacy of January 6th. We had the fifth anniversary and of course we saw the historical revisionism there. Donald Trump proposing a $1.5 trillion defense budget. Lots of questions about Barry Weiss and CBS, whether or not the government's going to be shutting down again. Yes, I think it will. The ACA subsidies, the midterms, why I left Ms. Now used to be called msnbc. Lots of questions about all of that and what's going on with Elon Musk. I really hope we talk about that because this was a week when a lot of masks were off. So we have a lot of ground to cover. And I really appreciate you joining me on a podcast after a truly extraordinarily, I'm sorry, awful week. Thanks. All right, where should we begin? Let's start with this question of why this week felt so tough. Garrett Graff, I thought, had a very interesting analysis in his newsletter. You know, he talks about the physical weight of Trumpism. You know, that one of the constants that he hears in conversation and I hear in conversations and you probably don't is that there's kind of this heaviness, this physical and psychological heaviness you feel in Trump's America. And I think a lot of us felt this this week, you know, particularly after a 37 year old mother was shot dead in Minneapolis. And this came just days after we had all the saber rattling in Venezuela, we had the threats against Greenland. You could see that the rest of the world is quite, you know, nervous about all of this, asking who is America? What is happening? What's happening to the soul of America? And this is what he wrote. He said to Me. There's actually a simple explanation for this feeling of heaviness. It's the weight of the shift from zero to non zero. Let me explain. There are so many aspects of our daily life that we never had to weigh before. So many new possible horrors that we have to carry in our minds every day. We forget how much of the basic fabric of our lives have just changed in the last year. How many of our freedoms, things we had taken for granted, are being taken away. So a lot of things that were zero possibility, zero possibility that we would be snatching a country like Greenland or that masked thug agents would be shooting unarmed civilians in the streets of Minneapolis, those used to be zero. Now they are non zero. So let's get right to your questions. Charlie, would you talk about, and who knows where to begin with. We gotta get to the Minnesota story very soon, but can you talk about that crazy interview that Donald Trump had with the New York Times? I will. This is an interesting story. President Trump declares in this Wednesday interview, this very extensive interview with the New York Times, that his power is, as commander in chief is constrained only by his own morality, brushing aside international law and any other checks on his ability to use military might to strike, invade or coerce nations around the world. You see, yeah, there is one thing. My own morality, my, my own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me. Okay, Donald Trump's morality, Donald Trump's mind. That is the only thing that can stop him. Okay, that's terrifying in and of itself because we know a lot about Donald Trump's morality and we know a lot about his mind. But let me give you a contrarian take here. He's not wrong that the only thing that can stop him right now is his own morality. And my contrarian take is that this is a good reminder of why character matters so much, why the mind of our leaders matters so much. This is not just some esoteric question out there, because there's a reason why you want to make sure that the people who are entrusted with the kinds of vast power that we've given the President of the United States are at least modestly decent, intelligent, thoughtful, moral individuals. This is something that we've been arguing for 10 years, and maybe it seemed theoretical 10 years ago when we said, look, you do not want to put this man who has the sort of the moral sensibilities of a nine year old bully on the playground. You don't want to put him in charge of the federal government, the FBI, the irs, the CIA. You don't want to give him access to nuclear weapons. Now, you know, why is that? Well, our founding fathers thought that they had dealt with this question of what happens if an amoral person became the commander in chief. They created a system of checks and balances. They assumed that the Congress of the United States would be willing and able to stand up against a president who was abusing his power. We've seen how that works out. But this is one of those moments where we have to realize, whoa. The fact is that all the talk about international law doesn't mean anything if people are not willing to enforce it. And who right now is able to enforce any international law against Donald Trump? And this is kind of the point that Stephen Miller was making when he was giving his triumph of the will speech when he was asked by Jake Tapper from cnn, this was an extraordinary moment, really, after the invasion of Venezuela. And Stephen Miller's explaining that, yes, we deserv deserve to have Greenland, and we can take Greenland because we are powerful and strong and nobody's going to stop us. Now Jake Tapper is asking, are you ruling out military force to take a territory of one of our allies, a NATO signator? But just remind yourself, Denmark has been our ally for a very long time. They stepped up when we needed it. They sent troops to fight beside American troops in the Middle East. They stood by us after 9, 11. And now we're talking about just stealing their territory. And I wrote about this over the weekend, the explanation that Stephen Miller gave, he said, we live in a world in the real world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time. Benito Mussolini could not have put it better. When we describe Stephen Miller as a fascist, that's not a pejorative. That is now a description of who he is that Mike makes. Right. Law of the jungle. We are the iron fist. The interesting thing about Miller and Trump right now, for those of you who think, well, there's really nothing new here. I mean, didn't. Didn't you know American presidents have been engaging in imperialist ventures for years? That's true. There's no question about that. But in the modern world, they at least claim to care about things like freedom and democracy. They understood the importance of allies, and all of that is gone. All of the masks are taken away. Donald Trump is clearly not interested in democracy or freedom for Venezuela. He's interested in the oil. He wants to take the oil. He told one reporter. The difference between Iraq and Venezuela is we didn't take the oil from Iraq. I'm gonna take the oil. And he's actually talking about now shaking them down as part of the protection racket. And by the way, I think this was David Graham from the Atlantic, who had a great line. He said, you know, Donald Trump pledged we wouldn't be the world's policeman. Well, obviously, we are the world's policeman, but with a twist. We are the policemen who are now running a protection racket, a shakedown. And so Donald Trump is saying, they're gonna give me, you know, billions of gallons of this oil. And I personally, I, Donald J. Trump, will control all of that oil. I'm gonna put it in my own account. What could possibly go wrong? So I think that what we're seeing here is kind of this naked. Whether you want to call it fascist or hubris, that they feel that because they are powerful, they can do absolutely anything they want. And by the way, in my substack newsletter, by the way, those of you that are watching us on YouTube or listening to the podcast, if you have not yet subscribed, I would really appreciate if you would consider doing that, because a lot of the things that we talk about are in the daily newsletter. I put a lot of effort into it. It comes out every day, or certainly close to every single day. It is free, Although we do depend upon the kindness of strangers. So if you would consider supporting us right now at this crucial time, you know, at least. At least think about it, because I think that the independent media, the folks who are asking the tougher questions, are more important than ever, especially when you see what's been happening with the corporate media. But in my newsletter, when I wrote about this the other day, you know, I thought about Stephen Miller's invocation of these iron laws. And I also had a kind of a snarky comment to say that, you know, he could have described his philosophy as the triumph of the will, but that title has already been taken. Those of you who are students of history will recognize what the triumph of the will is. If not, you should Google it. But I did ask the question, what other iron laws are there that are out there? For example, isn't one of the laws of the jungle that the powerful never voluntarily surrender power? That the powerful can take what they want and keep what they have? And what are the implications of that? Okay, I'm sorry. That was a long answer. But I do think we have to acknowledge how tough a week this was. And a lot of it has to do with the story out of Minneapolis. A lot of questions here, including questions about Charlie. What do you think about the new videos that the right wing is circulating showing the incident from the point of view of the ICE officer? Okay, so what we have here is a case in which there was a tremendous rush to judgment, particularly by the administration. I think it's important to understand what we saw there. That and maybe the best way to understand it is to understand what alternative there might have been. Okay, so a woman is shot and killed on the streets of Minneapolis. A normal administration, normal law enforcement universe might have said, hey, you know, we're really, this is a tragic incident. Thoughts and prayers. But let's not say anything until the investigation has been completed. Talk about the investigation, talk about the importance of finding the truth and coming up with something fair. You may have noticed that none of that happened. Instead, we had Kristi Noem come out immediately and label the dead woman before, by the way we labeled her, before she, we even knew her name, before her body was cold, labeled her a domestic terrorist. And then Donald Trump weighed in blaming her for it. And you've seen all of the rest. So the rush to condemn this woman, to whitewash the shooting on the streets of Minneapolis was reflexive. And I think, look, this is not just a one off. This is a logical culmination of a policy based on fear, intimidation and brutality. And this was Kristi Noem's moment, really kind of almost raises the possibility that maybe if you pick somebody to be your secretary of the Department of Homeland Security based on the fact that she had shot her puppy in the face, that maybe bad things would happen. I mean, let's remember why Kristi Noem got this job, what was on her resume. And here we are. Expect more of this. Okay, so we were asked about the videos. Many of you have seen the video, the original video that was analyzed by the news media. And this is the video that has been almost analyzed by like the Zapruder film. You've seen this before and you can see this very clearly what happened. This is not just a he said, she said. We have the video. The claim is that the officer fired in self defense, that he was in fear of his life. He had been dragged previously, apparently six months ago. You're not supposed to get in front of the vehicle, but he was briefly in front of the vehicle. She backs up and then she goes forward. You've seen this over and over and over again. You've probably seen it frame by frame. But the important thing to keep in mind here is that this Video makes it very clear that the officer fired at least two shots when he was in no danger whatsoever, when he was no longer in front of that vehicle, that he was to the side of the vehicle. So when you watch the video, watch his feet, because you can see when his feet are to the side of that vehicle. And so what we have all witnessed, and I think part of the whole horror of this, was that you saw a police killing, you saw a police murder of this woman. Was she engaging in civil disobedience? Yeah, maybe. But that doesn't carry a death penalty. And civil disobedience is not domestic terrorism. These words have consequences. Okay, the question was about this new video. The key thing about this new video is it does not show the actual shooting. And the story is the shooting. And I think the ugliness that we're experiencing here is recognizing that this armed brute squad that has been dropped into our communities, that's supposed to make us safer, in fact poses a deadly threat, not just to the illegal immigrants, the worst of the worst. And by the way, they're obviously not going after them exclusively, but opposes a threat to Americans who are exercising their First Amendment rights, who are protesting against all of this. And it is an ugly moment. It is an ugly moment. And unfortunately, and I have a lot of questions here about the future of ice. My short answer, it's going to get worse. And we know that it's going to get worse because we know the message that is coming from the top. It was just a few weeks ago after there was some, I think, protesters might have vandalized some ICE vehicles. Donald Trump, the President of the United States, issued an order to the Department of Homeland Security telling them to. I think the words were basically use, you know, any force necessary to protect the operation. I think that that order is going to be of historical and legal significance because what it essentially did was to give a green light to anything that they would do, including shooting, shooting people. And I believe, if I'm correct, as of this recording, ICE has shot into something like 10 vehicles, something that most trained law enforcement officials would say is a highly imprudent thing to do and generally are trained not to do this. So what is the future of ICE? Remember, the big beautiful bill allocated something like $150 billion to ICE, which will make them the largest law enfor enforcement agency in the history of the United States. With a budget larger than the budget of the militaries of many of the major countries of the world. It's actually, they will have a budget larger than the military of Israel, of countries like Italy. And they're going to hire something like 10,000 new agents. How do you think they're going to be trained? Where do you think they're going to be coming from? What kinds of people are going to be behind those masks, put on the street and told by Kristi Noeman, Stephen Miller and Donald Trump to eradicate the scum and the vermin and the domestic extremists and terrorists out there. So when I say it's going to get worse, that's not just fear mongering. That is a clear projection of what this administration has told us they are going to do and what we're seeing they do. Where are they recruiting these folks who's signing up for ICE right now? They're going to the gun shows, they're going to MAGA events, they've lowered the qualifications in terms of age, in terms of fitness, they're handing out $50,000 bonuses. So you're going to be getting a lot of true believers, a lot of ideologues in the force. And quite frankly, this is going to be Donald Trump's personal police force. And I'm sorry if that sounds extreme to some of you, but this is what we are living through. Anyone who thinks that the events of the last week or anything approaching normal are not okay. Oh, here's an interesting question. What is with this story that Maria Machado may give her Nobel Peace Prize to Donald Trump? Okay, everybody knows the background of all of this, right? Maria Machado is the leader of the democratic opposition in Venezuela who won the Nobel Peace Prize that Donald Trump coveted so much. Now, given the number of people that Donald Trump is killing, the number of nations he's invading, the number of countries that he is looting or threatening to loot, I'm thinking that the prospects of him winning the Nobel Peace Prize are somewhat slim to none. I could go on on this, but you know what? Jimmy Kimmel had a great take on all of this, including why Donald Trump has turned his back on Maria Machado and the Democrats. Democratic opposition in Venezuela might have something to do with the fact that his feelings are a little bit bruised that she got his Nobel Peace Prize. And there are a lot of reports that she's gonna be going to the Oval Office and she's gonna be saying, here, Mr. Trump, you deserve this. You get the Nobel Prize.