← To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
Olivia Troye: The Enemy Within, Shutdowns, and Jane Goodall
00:48:38
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- [00:02]
A
Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.
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Hey there. If you've ever felt your confidence slip at work, you're not alone. The good news, Confidence isn't a fixed trait. It's a skill. And like any skill, you can build it with the right tools and practice. I'm Ann Morris, CEO and bestselling author, and together with my wife, Frances Frey, a professor at Harvard Business School, we host the TED podcast Fixable. This season, we're zeroing in on confidence, what it really is, how to strengthen it, and how to help others see you as the leader you already are. So if you're ready to show up with more conviction, to get promoted, to lead with clarity, to do the best work of your career, join us on Fixable. Wherever you get your podcasts.
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A
ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com well, somehow we made it to October 2025. Hey, I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome to a new edition of to the Contrary podcast, joined by our good friend Olivia Troy. Welcome back, Olivia. Welcome to October.
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C
Hi, Charlie. I like the opening. We somehow made it.
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A
We somehow made it. I have to say that my newsletter on Thursday starts off with something a little bit different. It starts off with an apology. You know, usually. Usually I don't think of myself as terribly naive. I've been doing this for so long. I mean, it's really been a decade. In fact, the other day, I had to go back and do a search of things that I wrote back in 2015, 2015, about Donald Trump. And the amazing thing about it is, and I'm not trying to say that I was prescient or anything.
- [02:05]
C
Well, you were. In many ways.
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A
There was no mystery who Donald Trump was. I mean, Donald Trump is always the guy. And so these things actually hold up. But. So I don't think that I'm naive about Donald Trump. We've been to this rodeo so many times. But this is my confession. When I first saw the pictures of his meeting in the Oval Office with Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, there's a picture of him sitting, you know, behind the desk, and there's these two hats, Trump 2028, on the desk, and he's trolling them. And in my naivete, and this is what I'm apologizing for, I thought, no, that's not real. That's an AI generated picture. Because even that, even the snickering chodes in the White House, you know, wouldn't. Wouldn't do that wouldn't, you know, brag about being. Taking an unconstitutional action in front of congressional leaders of now. Right. I mean, even, even the mouth breathing knuckle draggers would probably, you know, go and, you know, they would, you know, high five each other. Like, wouldn't that be fun if we did it? But this is the Oval Office. I mean, this is the desk. I mean, think of the history that took place on that desk. Right? I mean, that, that is where Elon Musk's kid wiped his booger. I mean, come on, this is like an historic sacred site here. So. But it turns out that that picture is absolutely real. He actually did put those hats out there. TRUMP 2028. And I have to say that this is one of those moments where, you know, are we not entertained? Because of course it's a joke, right, Olivia? I mean, right? It's a joke. Don't we get the joke? Right?
- [03:49]
C
Yes. Just like that AI video. It was just funny.
- [03:54]
A
Well, the thing about Trump is it's always a joke until it's not until. Until suddenly. And Michael will go, don't you guys get the joke? You're not in on the joke. Of course he's not going to do that. Well, maybe he's going to do that. Well, maybe it's a good idea. Of course it's a good idea. Everybody has to get on board. So it was out there. It's real. You can I have the picture in my newsletter, along with a reminder of other historic moments from the Oval Office. And I did ask. I was. I did a live stream last night with Katie Couric, and I asked a question, and I'm gonna ask you the same question. You know, I'm not predicting that he's gonna do this. Okay. That's not my prediction. But let's exercise our imagination just a little bit. And Trump says, screw it. I am the greatest president ever. America needs me. I have to stick around. I am going for a third term. You know, if it was good enough for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it's good enough for me. I want a Nobel Prize and I want a third term. If he says this, name one Republican in office now who would stand up against him and say no. Name one. Anybody? Bueller? Anyone?
- [05:06]
C
Do you have the Jeopardy. Theme going? Because this is going to take me a second.
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A
I should.
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C
Yeah, yeah, I'm saying it for you.
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A
Yeah. No, no. Liz Cheney's Anymore.
- [05:17]
C
No. MIKE pants no, that's exactly what I was thinking. I was like, okay, that person's gone.
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A
They're gone. Jeff Lake on Everybody's leaving.
- [05:26]
C
Anyone who's left is now leaving. Right? I mean, I want to say Lisa Murkowski until somebody shows up at a door and threatens her. Maybe, Maybe that is the one.
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A
Okay, but, but see, the fact, the fact is that we're going to end up with like four fingers left on our hands after all of this because you know how it's going to go. We've seen this, we have seen this play over and over and over again. So I just, I throw that out and, and I'm, I am prepared, you know, if people want to correct me, if people say no. Okay, you know, calm down, Charlie. This is not going to happen. You know, there's going to be a, you know, smooth transition. And by the way, here's, here's another thing. I wanted to bounce this off you as well. The, all the speculation about, you know, the succession wars taking place behind the scenes is Pete HEGSETH Maneuvering is J.D. vance. You know, might it be Marco Rubio? Okay, My short take on this, my hot take, there's no succession battle at all. You know, it's going to be Donald Trump sitting on the golden toilet, saying it's either me or it's the person I pick. That's it. That is the entire process. Okay.
- [06:40]
C
You know, it's interesting you mentioned that because I actually, I did watch the Charlie Kirk Memorial, that, that, that whole all day event. And when I was watching it, I was actually watching it through that lens. I was like, these are auditions. These are the auditions for the movement of who is next. And that is actually what I thought of was it actually doesn't matter whatever is happening here, because it will be whoever he directly picks. So I just, I, you know, and it's interesting that you mentioned Marco, Marco Rubio, because I think that he is hanging on, compromising everything that he has ever stood for, thinking that he stands a chance and that it's going to be him. Every part of his being.
- [07:26]
A
Well, that is a tale as old as the Trump presidency. Right? People sacrificing every last ounce of, of dignity and pride, figuring that, you know, at some point, you know, it's going to be me or something, and it never happens. So can we do something a little bit different today? Do you mind? I want, I want, I want to talk about the shit show at Quantico. I want to talk about the shutdown briefly, because these. Want to talk about the indictment of Jim Comey, all these things. I want to talk about Donald Trump saying that, yes, Americans might die for Qatar in case people miss that particular story. So, you know, Qatar gives them an airplane and in return they get an Article 5, like, security agreement that we will come to the defense of Qatar. This is a security agreement that we don't even have with Israel. So. But before we do that on his.
- [08:21]
C
Own, but we'll get into that.
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A
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
- [08:24]
C
Consultation with anyone.
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A
But anyway, right, who needs Congress? What is the point of Congress or any sort of deliberative function? It's just like he's sitting there going, you know, I just gotta, I gotta do a solid for my ERA buddies. Okay. Before we do any of that, though, you had a magnificent piece in your newsletter about Jane Goodall. And I think that every once in a while we need to step back and talk about people who actually are inspirations, people who really did make a difference. And I was, you know, I read your piece and I thought, okay, we're going to get to all this other stuff, but talk to me about why you chose to write about Jane Goodall.
- [09:07]
C
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I was thinking, you know, obviously I'm watching the government shutdown. I have so many. I have family members, I have friends, neighbors, you know, I'm still in the D.C. area. So it is definitely hitting hard here in many ways that, you know, people are planning on, like, how long is this going to last? And I think people will say, you know, oh, well, people are going to get paid back for it. And yeah, but it doesn't mean that people living paycheck to paycheck right now are okay. And I was thinking about it through that lens and I was going to write about my experience during the shutdown and what happened. And then I just kind of paused. And it was just because I was seeing the nonstop headlines and the nonstop coverage day and night. Right. And the lead up to it. And when I saw the news about Jane Goodall's passing, I stopped and I had paused and I reflected on her because it just brought me back to a much more saner, I would say time, perhaps, or somewhat normal time of being in college. And I just remember taking my first anthropology class. And that's when I first, actually believe it or not, learned about Jane. And I really started to learn about her, read her work, and I just found her to be inspiring. And as I saw that, I was just like, well, what lessons can Jane? What does she teach us? Or what lessons can we learn from her about how she approached her research, her life and her passion for just Learning about a completely different species and how she pushed the boundaries and the courage that she showed on science. And maybe there's something that we can learn from her that can help us sort of process the events that we're living through today and what it looks like to have courage. And just looking at, you know, in an age where science is being questioned on the daily, when budget cuts are affecting science, what does that look like going forward? And maybe we can draw some inspiration from her.
- [11:10]
A
Yeah. You know, my wife was also a big fan and also wrote about Jane Goodall. And we were actually talking about this last night, you know, and the contributions she made to science was to let us understand that animals can be individuals, that they are sentient beings, that they have emotions, they have personalities. And she really cut against the grain of a lot of us scientists who said, you know, you shouldn't be naming them. You know, you're anthropomorphizing them. You're Disneyizing them by treating them as if they are, you know, people, when in fact they should all have numbers. And she developed emotional bonds with them. And, you know, I was thinking about it actually, not in the. In the context of her work with the chimpanzees, but just living with dogs. And at a certain point, you realize that, of course, if you spend time with them, you know, they are creatures who are sentient. They think, they plan, they have emotions, they get happy, they get sad. They have specific needs. And this is an important insight into the complexity of the world and the complexity of nature. And the interesting thing about Jane Goodall is she was also a woman of faith. And I think that we have a book. We have a book upstairs that I actually put next to my bed because I actually want to read. It's called Reason for Hope. I'm pretty sure that's the title of it. And Lord knows we need some reasons for hope. And so, you know, Gene Goodall is one of those people who is good, decent, thoughtful, puts, you know, puts in the work and actually changes the world in a positive. In a positive way. One person has that kind of an effect. And I think it's. It's kind of important that moments like this to remind ourselves of that. Right?
- [12:59]
C
Yes. Yes. And I think that's where I was having sort of a moment of self reflection. They're about hoping that maybe we can draw on her courage and it can inspire us to figure out how we make a difference, even if it's in one small thing. And it's interesting that you mentioned your Dogs. Because I thought, as I was thinking about the piece and reflecting on what she did and her work and her science and how she really saw these animals as individuals. I was looking at my dogs. I have two dogs. I talk about them sometimes. I was thinking about Ringo and Stevie and just how they react to situations. You know, I, I'm pretty sure that Ringo and Stevie think they're human. I don't think they see themselves any differently. Yeah, they definitely rule the household. And, and also just the way they react, I can tell you that, like, on days when the Comey indictment hit, or on the days when John Bolton's house was getting raided and I was really stressed, I, I, I saw the way they interacted with me. I saw Ringo. He followed me around the house a lot more. He sat next to me. He knew, he knew that I was stressed. He knew that I was, I was, you know, he could feel the emotion that I was having. And I think that just really speaks volumes about just, you know, what, what she did in her work and how we've learned about how we interact with animals and really what they are like.
- [14:24]
A
Yeah, so have you seen that famous. It's a viral video where they're releasing a chimpanzee back into the wild. And, and he sort of goes, you know, out of the cage, you know, a few feet, and then he comes back and he gets up on the cage and he puts his arms and he hugs her. I mean, it's really, it's an extraordinary moment. And, you know, it's funny, we were having the same thought process because, you know, you know, it's when, you know, our dog, they're German shepherds, and so they're very, very intelligent, and they're very bonded to the person, and they really want to make eye contact all the time. And, you know, they look in your eyes and you realize there's something going on in there. I don't know what's going on in there necessarily, but, but is there? And, and they definitely. They think they're human beings. There's no question about it. Okay, so let's, let's get to it. So talk to me a little bit about your reaction when you were saying you had an emotional reaction when John Bolton's house was raided and Jimmy Comb and Jim Comey was indicted. So you have been part of this. You, I think, you know, listeners know that you were part of the administration. You were a national security advisor to Vice President Mike Pence. You were part of this world. You know, all of these guys, what what was your reaction? Was it about them? Was it about thinking if they're coming after them, they're coming after you?
- [15:45]
C
Yeah, you know, I think it was a mix, certainly. I feel like I'm swimming in the deep end now, and the sharks are circling around me, and it's getting closer and closer. And, you know, I. Yes, to be very honest, that's what it kind of feels like sometimes. And when they're back in power and I, you know, but. And also, I just have a lot of. Just. I felt a lot of empathy and also just feelings for James Comey and for John Bolton, because I can only imagine what the stress and what their families are feeling, because I. I've actually been thinking about that for my family as these things start to happen. And I'm, you know, I was always one of those people that I didn't believe that it was a matter of, like, if Trump would do something like this. I believed it was a matter of when. I believe his retribution talk is real, and I know that that is his personality. He doesn't let things go. And I've thought about that. What does it mean for my family should this happen? How do I ensure that everyone stays safe? How do I make sure that they. How do I keep them calm? I watch. When I think we saw an image of John Bolton's wife, I was thinking about what she must have felt like when she was opening the door. And I know he wasn't home at the time. And so I've actually now, believe it or not, laid out a plan to figure out how do I make sure that I take care of my family, because that's the first thing that comes to mind, including my dogs, by the way, just to make sure that they're safe in that situation, because I know that they're going to be so confused. So should it happen to me, what does it look like? And so these are, you know, it sounds a little bit like out of the realm of possibility, because this is the United States of America. And now you have a former Homeland Security advisor to the vice president back in the day saying to you, I'm actually making accommodations should this happen to me.
- [17:42]
A
It seems rational to me to do that. And again, we've said this before, but I think it's really important to continually remind people know that the fear is the point. And Gary Kasparov has made this point that it's the. The goal is not necessarily to lock everybody up. He doesn't have to send, you know, the. The jackpot jack booted Thugs to your door. He doesn't have to actually put you in prison. He can just ruin your life. He can ruin your life by inducing that kind of fear, by making you have to lawyer up. You know, once you hire the lawyers, the bill starts, you know, running the anxiety it has on your family. So let's take the Jim Comey indictment. The more we find out about the Jim Comey indictment, the flimsier it looks like, you know, thrown together by this utterly unqualified, you know, acting U.S. attorney, this Lindsey Halligan, who clearly didn't know what she was doing, you know, gets the indictment. Most legal experts, including the people who write for National Review magazine, are saying this thing is absolutely absurd. It's not going to survive. And Comey is pushing back. And, you know, I thought his video was pretty solid, you know, that he's not going to live on his knees. But again, on one level, Donald Trump wants him to go to jail. I mean, there's no question about it. I mean, he wants the retribution, but I think he's perfectly happy with whatever happens because he's messed up his life and the impact this has on human beings. I used to make this point and back in the before times, that people need to remember that the people we're talking about are. The people we're talking about are actually people that they're human beings. They have mothers, they have fathers, they have kids. There's this sometimes a tendency to think of people as entities, as symbols or as institutions. No, they are people who wake up at three in the morning and going, holy crap, what's going to happen? Who's like, what am I going to tell my mom? And so all of this process, all of this fear, all of this anxiety has the effect that I think Donald Trump wants, which is to destroy people's lives. And that's also part of authoritarianism. You can't have a cop on every street corner. You can't arrest everybody. But if you get inside everyone's head at the same time, you win. And I think that's what's happening right now.
- [19:59]
C
Yeah, and I think you're absolutely correct. I mean, you don't have to go after everybody. You just go after a few, especially targeted few, and you make an example of them. And I think when it comes to people like James Comey, too, I think that's sending a chilling message to others that are still in government, even national security leaders, of saying, like, you are loyal to me, and if you step out of line, let these people be an example first and foremost and then the second piece of it. And I'm so glad that you're talking about the human aspect about it, because I think you can have different differences on politics with people. I mean, John Bolton, always labeled a war hawk, I knew him back in the Bush administration. But I'm still concerned about how this is impacting his family. And I'll tell you, like, there are times when I hear a noise in the middle of the night and it's really hard not to be like, what is that? Are there people on my porch? Should I be preparing what's happening? And to give you a color of it, like, my mom is 82 years old. If something like that would have happened to me, what is it going to look like for her to sit there and like, wake up or, or see this and see her only child go through this? In the moment, my biggest concern is that she would have a heart attack and there's no way to get, come back from that. And I, and that may sound like hyperbole.
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A
No.
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C
But these are the things that keep me up at night. Yeah. Because it's a normal human reaction to see your child going through that. Right. I mean, she doesn't know what's happening. And I can sit here and say, mom, I've done nothing wrong. I am 100% confident of that, that I have done nothing wrong. And I'm not worried about how this potentially will play out. But that doesn't mean that living and going through it, which I'm going through the lawsuits right now, by the way. So lawfare has come for me already. It doesn't mean that that's not already a stressful scenario to go through. And that's what I think about when it comes to just another person that gets mentioned. I'm thinking about Chris Wray, like, what's going to happen to him next because Trump has dropped his name. So is that foreshadowing of what's to come?
- [22:12]
A
Well, and also you, you have people who have devoted their life to public service, you know, middle class people who don't want to be thrown in jail, don't want to have, I mean, imagine being somebody who devoted your entire life to law enforcement and now facing the possibility you might be criminally indicted. I mean, it's just, you know, you, you, you mentioned your anxieties and, you know, look, I don't think they're ever going to come here. I don't, I hope that I'm not being naive once again, but one of my concerns, going back to a previous Conversation is I have two very, very large German shepherds. And you know, as you watch the videos of, of these brute squads and the way that they behave, they come to my door and there's these barking dogs who are doing their job, what might happen to them. My wife worries about that all the time. Okay, so part of what I think was the shock externally and internally of the Comey indictment, which shouldn't have come as a shock to anybody since Donald Trump had been saying he was going to do this, is the utter and complete destruction of the independence of the Department of Justice. It's not destruction in progress. It is done. There's no question about it. All of those guardrails, all of those norms completely obliterated and trashed. And we've seen Donald Trump march through these institutions, march through the FBI, march through Department of Justice and all of the, all the, you know, the grown ups that were supposed to stand in the way of all of this, they're either gone or they are silent. And that brings us to what happened in Quantico earlier this week, where here's Donald Trump, who clearly is intending to, you know, co op the military for his agenda. And I wanted to get your reaction. I mean, you had that absolutely absurd redemption, ridiculous self parody by Pete Hegseth where he's talking about, you know, you know, his biceps and his pull ups and I mean, you know what A Trump, however, was worse, wandering, meandering, the usual kind of. But there was a clear message that he was trying. He was telling them, you are going to be part of the war within. You are going to be part of waging war within America's borders, in American cities against other Americans. And so the question is, having destroyed all of the norms and the independence of these other agencies, he's clearly intending to do that with the military. I don't know whether he's going to succeed. The generals and the admirals sat there silently, but he is the commander in chief and there are very, very few limits on the power of the commander in chief. So your thoughts about that and what you saw in Quantico?
- [24:58]
C
Yeah, in the lead up to this, I had been very nervous about what was to come. I had been talking to people that are still inside the government, who work at DOD or who are in that establishment still in the military. And I kept thinking about my time that I spent in the Pentagon, how I would have reacted if they would have told me that we were going to call my boss at the time or whoever I was working for in I'd been mentored by admirals along the way. I mean, you're talking to someone who worked for Tom Rumsville directly back in the day. That was one of my first assignments in the Pentagon. So I kept thinking, like this, first of all, completely unprecedented, right? I mean, this, this was something that we've never seen before. And quite frankly, I think you. We. People have talked about this, about the fact that it really could have been a secure video conference. Those have been done before. That would be normal, 100%. But I think they wanted the images. When I look at that photo that was taken with all of the generals and all the brass in the room, right, I was thinking that is the image that they wanted. And I think that that was what Trump and Pete Hegset were looking for. They wanted that image because they wanted to be seen in the image of someone like the president of China.
- [26:19]
A
It was the power where they wanted to have that.
- [26:21]
C
It's the power and it's the message that it's sending not only the American people, but to the world, right? That this is, this is my military, is what that really conveyed. And so when he shifted to the enemy from within, which is that phrase, by the way, every time I hear it, really, it's very chilling to me because I haven't seen, yes, having seen back in 2020, Trump's obsession with wanting to use the military during the summer of 2020 against Americans, when he would say things like, we want to shoot the protesters. When I go back to that and I hear the antifa narrative get pushed again, where he wanted us to downplay anything else that was happening in the space and elevate that. This was Antifa. That is 100% true, Charlie. I was there for those meetings. I've seen it. Others have talked about this as well, publicly, that this was a thing back then. And then I see it come around again with these executive orders that have come out with the antifa designation, even though it is not a group. And I see the memorandum that was put out about how they're going to look at terrorism domestically and how basically to me is that they're criminalizing dissent. And so when combined with that, right before he does, this meeting with the generals in the room, to me spoke volumes about the narratives and the strategic messaging that this group is doing. Now, Trump may get up there he goes off the there it is off script mate looks off his rocker, but there is a school of thought here on what they're doing. And there are others that have really planned this out and looked at it, and they know what they're doing and they know what they're conveying.
- [28:12]
A
This is really an important point. Yes. I mean, there's a real agenda. It is very, very clear, and there is a coherence to what they are doing. I mean, it may be a malign coherence, but it's there. It's also consistent with what Donald Trump has wanted for years. And I think that this is the point that you're making going back to 2020. You know, he's given speeches over the years, and I think we got numbed. We became normalized because he says this over and over again that we don't need to worry about. You know, our enemy isn't Russia. Isn't Vladimir Putin our enemy? You know, the radical leftists, you know, in, you know, within this country, the enemy is other Americans. He has said that over and over again. Now, let's go back to 2020. That summer, there were riots in city streets. He was itching to, you know, put active military on the. On the streets to shoot protesters. Why did that not happen? This is kind of important to go back again. He's wanted to do this now for at least half a decade. He almost did it in 2020. So tell me why it didn't happen.
- [29:15]
C
Well, and that's the key point, is that there were people in his circle at the time, in positions of power, in his cabinet, who stood and said, no, you cannot and should not do that. And that is not what the military is for. And it was people like General Billy. It was Milley. It was people like former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. It was people who showed up, actually, to a meeting. And I'll tell this little story because I can always. I already see what's coming. Probably Chris Wray's way is I remember that he was summoned to the White House to a meeting. And normally the FBI director, to be very clear, this is the lanes and the road separation that we're talking about, where you talked about. There's a blurring of the lines to the Department of Justice now, where there's no independence. Yeah, I saw him in the lobby of the West Wing. I remember walking in, and he sees me and he knows that I set the agendas for the task force meetings and things like that for the Situation Room. And he walks up to me and he says, hi, and he's like, you're Olivia? And I said, yes, yes, sir. How are you doing? You're here for the meeting? And he said to me, why am.
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A
I Here, the FBI director said, why are you here? To you?
- [30:34]
C
Yeah. And he said, why am I here? And I looked at him and I. I was trying to figure out how to diplomatically say something. One, that wouldn't get me fired, two, that would sort of warn him about what he was walking into. Because that's actually what I was known for with the doctors and others that I would. I was always very upfront and honest about, like, this is what's about to happen. I can only tell you, this is what I know. And so when you walk into that room, I hope that you're prepared for how you're going to navigate this situation. And all I looked at him and said was antifa. And he looked at me and he just stood there with this look. And I said, yep. And I was like, I'm going to go in and start setting up for the meeting. And he said, very well, see you there. And I could tell that he was processing what I was saying, because by that point, we had already been in the meetings of playing up the narratives, the military wanting to use the Insurrection Act. I mean, so I say this because we all were aware of what was about to happen, and we were about to go around the corner. Horn again, to be like, okay, who's going to be the one that's going to tell him this time? No, I don't know that there's that type of conversation happening right now.
- [32:04]
A
See, that was. My next question is, okay, so that's 2020. Now it's 2025. Let's say you had that same meeting and you go around the table. Is there anyone at that table who is prepared to tell Donald Trump no? I can't think of anybody or anybody that would say no that would have their job a day from now.
- [32:26]
C
Correct.
- [32:27]
A
So, by the way, people are going to be shocked. It seems to me inevitable that Donald Trump. Look, if Donald Trump has said he's going to do something, he wants to do something, he's going to do it. In Trump 2.0, he's going to invoke the Insurrection act, isn't he?
- [32:44]
C
Yes, I think that's.
- [32:45]
A
I mean, that's going to come as a big shock.
- [32:47]
C
I mean, I don't have any doubt that that is going to happen.
- [32:50]
A
Yeah, I think people really need to understand that whatever's happening now, and, you know, and part of it is, you know, he's softening, softening, normalizing, normalizing, normalizing. And that is. And the problem with the Insurrection act is there are very few ways of stopping him from doing it. It was one of those. Was one of the doors that should have been closed when there was an opportunity to close it. And I think at some point we'll have a seminar, we'll sit down at the University of Chicago and we'll go through all the things that the Democrats should have done during that four years. You know, maybe, you know, you know, batten down the hatches a little bit. But the failure to fix the Insurrection Act, I think, is going to come back to bite us in the ass big time. Okay, so since we've mentioned Antifa a couple times, let's can we just very briefly talk about what antifa is and what it isn't. It is not complete. It is not a real organization, but it's not completely fictitious. I mean, it is a thing. If you were watching what happened in Portland, Oregon, in, in 2020, you see these black block guys with, with masks, not ICE agents back then. It used to be the, the other side who, you know, looked, looked dangerous and were extreme and may have called themselves. So. So what is antifa and what is it not?
- [34:08]
C
Yeah, so I think Donald Trump and this group do a very good job of labeling groups that they don't like as the. As terrorists. And there has been this obsession with Antifa since 2020 that they were going to label it, but I want to be very clear that that label was used for anyone at times that was either protesting or that's what they wanted to use. So they were looking at it from the label of, let's label anybody that's out there. Any protester, any. I mean, the Democrats, you're hearing them say it now. I mean, they're calling. Democrats are saying that they're antifa. Anyone on the left.
- [34:53]
A
They'Re Trump's Goldstein. Right. Okay. For reference, literary reference. In Orwell's 1984, they decide that the enemy is Goldstein, and everything that happens is Goldstein. And so it's now just like substitute Goldstein for antifa. I'm sorry, go on.
- [35:08]
C
Yes. No, that's exactly it. And I would say that. So antifa is not. The thing is, like, when we look at terrorist groups, you know, we've looked at Al Qaeda along the way. I was there for, you know, when you look at Hezbollah in groups like that, I was there for the designation of the process for, like, for example, for groups like Al Shabaab in Africa. And so there is, yeah, there's a whole. There's a whole process that actually goes into that, a policy process, an analysis with the department of state with the intelligence community on how you look at this. The thing with Antifa is that this is not a group. There's no figurehead, there's no. It is, I would say that it's maybe sort of it, I guess for. We call it a movement. Right. People are like, well, what does that mean? It's a movement. There's no center. I would say coordinator. Although I will say that in 2020 they tried to conflate and say it was Antifa and Black Lives Matter. And if you care about that issue, you're the same thing. And I'm saying that because this is what is happening here right now. And so now they have conflated and essentially, basically Donald Trump is creating, is what I would say a terrorist group in his head and he's labeled it.
- [36:26]
A
Antifa stands for anti fascist. Right. I mean, yeah, it's antifascist.
- [36:31]
C
Like it's anti government. You can look at it from many different angles of what it is. And really. And so that's what it is. It's, you know, anti government views. It's being suspect, but it's not what they're trying to claim.
- [36:50]
A
There are people out there who are, think that they are antifa. Right. I mean, as the radicals, I mean.
- [36:56]
C
Yeah, well, look, I mean, I talked to some, I'll say this, I've talked to some 20 year old and they're like, I'm a communist.
- [37:03]
A
Yeah, great, that's wonderful.
- [37:05]
C
Like, oh, really?
- [37:06]
A
Hey, so you know what I mean?
- [37:07]
C
And then you ask him about it and it's like, come on. Yeah, go ahead.
- [37:12]
A
It's sort of like going after the, you know, the great enemy of America are the incels. Well, okay, there are incels out there. They're not organized. There's not a headquarters, there's not a. The president of the incels. There's not a central committee. It's just Antifa feels like it's just sort of amorphous like that. But yeah, it is going to be the, it will be the pretext that he will use to invoke the Insurrection Act. So, okay, in the few minutes we have left that we mentioned earlier, the shutdown. Yeah. You know, I actually don't want to get into the punditry of who's going to win, what the tactics are going to be. But there's no question about it, we are in a dangerous moment. Trump has made it very, very clear that he is going to inflict the maximum amount of pain. The New York Times is noting this morning that he's cutting off billions of dollars of congressionally approved programs for blue states. He's specifically targeting Democratic areas for punishment. He's talking about mass firings, mass layoffs. So give me your thoughts about this, because there's a school of thought here that even though the Democratic base really wanted this shutdown, it gives Trump what he wants. I don't necessarily agree with that, but clearly we're in a moment of political danger. Maybe it's necessary. But where do you come down on this?
- [38:36]
C
Yeah, look, I take Russ vote at his word. And he is now running omb. And I would say that Russ, this is his dream come true. And so I think that this paves a way for him to continue to enact what first started out with Doge. What they view is to push this agenda. So when the reporting surface that they had kind of laid out plans on additional firings, I was not surprised by that at all. And I think that this is right. No. And it is a plan that they have thought about. And when you look at people like Russell, he is all in and committed to doing this. And so I think that this in terms of Trump, I think Trump really wanted this fight and I think that they are using it to their advantage. How the Americans react to it is what I'm curious about. Like what are the repercussions, how does this land with the American public when these things start to happen? And I, you know, they have, Donald Trump has a history of targeting blue states. Right. With funding or whether it was in the aftermath of natural disasters, whether it was California wildfires. So it doesn't sort of surprise me that this is the plan of what they're doing right now. But I am worried that we have walked into a situation where we have given them the opportunity to enable them to do some additional things like what they're going to do. And I just wonder how that's reflected. Personally, I think that the Republicans are winning the messaging game right now. You do when it comes to this? I do. I think they're running circles around the Democrats, I think, because, you know, they have their talking points down in such a manner that is simplistic, that translates to people in the way they receive information, whereas I think, I don't disagree with what the Democrats are trying to do here and understand that they're trying to hold and they're trying to talk about healthcare and real issues that are going to impact Americans and they're trying to explain this. But I don't think that that translates as easily to something that People really kind of understand and resonate with. Right. I mean, so I. That's just me. I don't know.
- [40:57]
A
Well, I worry that you're right about all of that. Now, you know, I have perhaps contradictory opinions about this. Number one, I think the Democrats really, frankly, the leadership had no choice other than to do this because, of course, their base demanded. It's also, you just cannot continue to fund Donald Trump's government, you know, with one outrage after another. I mean, they have very, very few levers of power. This is one of them. If they don't exercise this level of, you know, lever of power, then they might as well go home. Having said that, you know, you don't, you know, start something like this unless you know how it will end. And so I know I've become kind of tedious about this, but, you know, what is your end game? What is your exit strategy? You know, how does the government reopen? You know, who is going to blink? I don't think. I don't think the Trumpists are going to blink. They're enjoying this too much. So how did the Democrats back out of this? There's also an inherent contradiction in their message. It's not just a messaging problem. There's kind of an inherent contradiction, because on one level, they're saying this is about health care, it's about restoring the Obamacare subsidies, which is one thing. But if they, let's say they got that, are they going to reopen the government and say, yeah, we don't care about all these other existential threats to democracy. So on the one hand, they're saying it's about health care. On the other hand, they're saying it's about the existential threat to our constitutional order and all of this other stuff, which I think is legitimate. But you can't have it both ways. You can't say, okay, if we get what we want on Obamacare, we're going to be okay with this other stuff. And if you're not okay with the other stuff, how does this ever end? So this is why I'm not a tactician. This is why no one would put me in elected office. This is why I am not a pundit. It's the liberty of talking heads, which can have two ideas in their heads at the same time that may be mutually contradictory. So this is ugly. It's going to get uglier. I think that what Democrats need to constantly come back to is that this is Donald Trump's government. Donald Trump owns everything that happens that doesn't happen. And I think they need to keep pushing that, pushing that, pushing that. Okay, one last question for you. Since you were very much involved in Homeland security. I, I find it breathtaking, the transformation of ICE into this brute squad and what it has become and what it is becoming. I remember a few years ago, you know, somebody who took the position abolish ICE was, was pretty far on the left, was kind of a radical position. It was not a political winner. And now it's like, holy crap, you know, ICE is going to be the symbol of, of much of this authoritarian overreach for a very, very long time. What do you think most people make of these scenes of these masked thugs throwing grandmas to the ground, throwing reporters, putting them in the hospital? There's a level of arrogance, of lack of accountability, of almost self conscious brutality that's kind of breathtaking and they're loving it. But, but is this a case of overreach that will backfire? What do you think?
- [44:16]
C
Well, what I mean, it's definitely overreach, right? And my biggest concern is that given the hiring fairs that we're seeing and the level of standard of what they're doing here when it comes to these law enforcement agencies, I worry about the type of individuals that are out there being recruited who are going to have no problem continuing to do this type of thing and mission. And I think that we can sit back and say that they're targeting immigrants right now, but when we look at what is happening here in terms of the freezing and the performative theatrics that we just saw down at Quantico in front of the military, I worry that those images and those actions are going to expand and become broader of what America looks like in the coming months, coming years.
- [45:15]
A
I could not agree with you more. In fact, the phrase that comes to mind is mission creep. You know, once they feel that, okay, we've run out of migrants to hassle, what are we going to do? Big agencies with that much money and that many people are just not going to sit around and go, okay, we're done, you know, let's play Parcheesi. There will be mission creep. And to your point about how they're growing, and keep in mind that the legislation that was passed, the ICE will be bigger than the Marine Corps. It has tens of billions of dollars coming its way. There will be what, 10,000 new employees? Who is, who are they recruiting? Who is applying for jobs at those job fairs? If you're a young man, you're sitting around and you're watching those videos of these masked men chasing bike messengers down the street. And you go, you know what? I want to do that. That's what I want to be. This is inspiring me. Those are the kinds of people who are watching what ICE has become, saying, I want to be part of that. So that alone, I think, is a, I'm sorry to say, kind of a horrifying, terrifying thought. Do we end on that note? Can we go back to something more hopeful?
- [46:31]
C
Well, I mean, brewers are in the place. Terrify you even more.
- [46:36]
A
You have something more terrifying than that.
- [46:38]
C
We just saw Stephen Miller say, you know, you can unleash your guns. That. Did you see that? Where there's a clip of him saying that, and he's talking to the workforce and he's directing that at the Department of Homeland Security. And so I think that that pretty much summarizes it right there.
- [47:00]
A
No, they want. I mean, guys like Stephen Miller, I mean, clearly just lust for blood. I mean, look, Stephen Miller, I feel quite confident in saying, no man is a fascist, right down to his, you know, as I said, the last follicle of hair on his head. And there's no question, I mean, his rhetoric, boy, him, the speech that he gave at the Charlie Kirk Memorial. I mean, you could translate that in German, drop that into any rally in the 1930s, and it would have been absolutely seamless. And the problem is, is that Trump is not only unleashing the guns, is not only. And Pete Hegseth up there telling the military, you are liberated because your job is to kill people and break things, which, by the way, the military job is a lot more than that. But that's their vision. And they're also saying, and if you do, you're going to be like us, immunized from any accountability. Donald, they know that you know, that Donald Trump will pardon them, that he is immune, thanks to the Supreme Court, from criminal accountability. And because of the unlimited pardonability powers that he has, he can basically say, you go out and kill anybody you want. And you know what? You don't have to worry. It's time, because. And he will do it. This is a man who, on day one, pardoned all the January 6th riders. Does anyone think that he will not issue blanket pardons to everybody in ice, everybody in law enforcement that might be engaging in this? So if you're thinking about what would it look like to live in a country in which the rule of law has been substituted for the rule of one man? This is the breaking news. It's already happened. We are living in that world right now in real time. I wanted to end on a brighter note. Go Brewers. America's team. Team of destiny in the playoffs. You know, there are these moments where you go, thank God the NFL season has started. Thank God we have playoff baseball. Olivia Troy, thank you so much for a pretty wide ranging, interesting and absolutely terrifying conversation. I appreciate it.
- [49:06]
C
That was a lot of doom and gloom, wasn't it? We did talk about dogs and change. God.
- [49:13]
A
See, I tried. I really, I made a good faith effort by starting off with Jane Goodall. And then we did. Here we are. Well, thank you all for listening to this episode to the Contrary podcast. We're doing this because, well, we're all in this together. This is real life. This is not a drill. And we need to keep reminding ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. So thank you. Say hello to Mia.
- [49:42]
C
Hey there.
- [49:43]
A
Mia runs a pet grooming service in Chicago. But getting new clients was rough until.
- [49:47]
C
I started using Acast. I recorded my ad targeted pet owners in the area and let Acast do the rest. Now people all over the city know about my grooming services.
- [49:56]
A
Mia's business is looking sharp. What's your secret for happy pets and happy clients?
- [50:00]
C
A fresh cut, a friendly vibe, and a well placed podcast ad.
- [50:04]
A
Get the word out about your business through Acast. Visit go.acast.com advertise to get started. Hey listeners, Meet Russell. Hey. Russell just launched a fitness app and he needed to get the word out to busy professionals looking to stay fit. So I turned to acast. I used their Smart Recommendations feature to easily find shows that talk about health and fitness. Booking sponsorships through their platform was a breeze, and just like that, my app was in their ears during their morning run. Sounds like a smart move, Russell. How's business looking now? Sweat is pouring and so are the installs. Spread the word about your business with podcast ads on Acast. Start today at go.acast.com advertise. Don't raise your voice to prove you're right. Focus your mind with every word of irrefutable fact you can find. Because conviction is the calm that comes when you know that you really do know. People who read the Financial Times know that they can shape their own perspectives with confidence because their viewpoints are informed by genuinely unbiased journalism, clarity and conviction. Source FT subscribe to the Financial Times@ft.comSourceFT Sometimes an identity threat is a ring of professional hackers, and sometimes it's an overworked accountant who forgot to encrypt their connection while sending bank details. I need a coffee and you need Lifelock because your info is an endless places. It only takes one mistake to expose you to identity theft. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second. If your identity is stolen, we'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year@lifelock.com specialoffer terms apply. Acast powers the world's best podcasts here's a show that we recommend.
- [52:16]
B
Hey there. If you've ever felt your confidence slip at work, you're not alone. The good news? Confidence isn't a fixed trait. It's a skill. And like any skill, you can build it with the right tools and practice. I'm Ann Morris, CEO and bestselling author, and together with my wife, Frances Fry, a professor at Harvard Business School, we host the TED podcast Fixable. This season, we're zeroing in on confidence, what it really is, how to strengthen it, and how to help others see you as the leader you already are. So if you're ready to show up with more conviction, to get promoted, to lead with clarity, to do the best work of your career, join us on Fixable. Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [53:01]
A
ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.