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Charlie Sykes (2:24)

Am I the only one who thinks that Donald Trump is panicking? Hey, welcome to a new episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We're going to do something a little bit different because it's just going to be me and it's just going to be you. Today I'm going to answer as many questions from subscribers as I can. I cannot promise I'm going to get to all of them. But it's kind of a free fire zone. And frankly, I haven't even decided which ones I'm going to answer yet. So, hey, before I do that, could I just remind viewers of this YouTube video or listeners to the podcast that you can get free ad free versions of all of this by going to my Substack page. And if you have not subscribed. To the Contrary is my daily newsletter through Substack. And it's part of what I think is the increasingly important independent media out there. I am very, very gratified by its growth. I try to keep up with the most important things that are happening every day. I describe it as your daily dose of sanity, your daily reminder that we are not really the crazy one. So if you have not signed up for it, please, please do so. It is completely free. Look, I understand that a lot of the substacks have, have paywalls and I don't have a problem with it. I do not have a paywall. But I do rely upon the kindness of strangers. Right now about, I would say less than 10% of the readers, the daily readers of the Substack actually pay for it, which is kind of an interesting business model when you think about it. And again, I don't have a problem with that because it is free. And you cannot save democracy behind a paywall. What you say you are doing, on the other hand, keeping up with Donald Trump is a full time job. I am committed to doing it and being here for the duration. But in order to do that, you know, those of you who do support my work are incredibly valuable to me. If you think what I do has some value, I certainly appreciate it. And the dogs certainly appreciate it. Okay, so before we get to the questions, let's start with the news of the day. And again, it's hard to keep up with everything that's going on. Except that this was the week that Donald Trump realized that the Epstein files were not going away and we had a kind of a whiff of panic. Look, we've seen cover ups before, but never a cover up that makes the story bigger all the time. You know what the phrase the Streisand effect is? Barbra Streisand actually calling attention to something rather than making it go away. I suppose you could call what's happening happening now the Streisand effect. Cover up. Because Donald Trump, who loves to think of himself as being Teflon, I can do anything. I can. I can sexually abuse women. I can shoot somebody in the middle of the Street, I can try to overthrow the government and I will not lose a vote. And yet there is something about these files that has spooked him. The email dump was not the breaking of the dam, but it was pretty bad. It's not breaking the other day because there's so much more to come, but his name was mentioned more than a thousand times, far more than anybody else. So again, it reminds us of something that we actually have known all along. And I've made this point throughout the week that, look, you know, there's one thing to have evidence in a court of law, you know, that stands up beyond a reasonable doubt. And we don't have evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime. But on the other hand, we also have our eyes and we know a lot of things. We know that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein go way back. We know they share a thing for very, very young women. Why? We have the pictures, we have the videos, we have Donald Trump's own words. So we know that. So the question that I keep asking over and over and over again, if there's nothing to hide, why is he working so hard to hide it? Why is he engaging in this massive cover up? Why is he spending so much political capital on it? And why is forcing every single elected Republican to go along with this cover up? We're going to have a vote in the House of Representatives. It's probably going to be an overwhelming vote. There's going to be what they call a jailbreak of Republicans who are normally very, very pliant to Donald Trump, but they're breaking with him on this. So that may be dozens, maybe as many as 100. It goes to the Senate. Senators also have to take the tough vote. I'm sorry to rain on the parade, but Donald Trump is not going to sign this piece of legislation. He is all in, in making sure that we never see what's in those documents. And again, this is why I call it the Streisand effect cover up. Because instead of making it go away, you go, holy crap. What is it about these files that Donald Trump is willing to go to the wall to cover them up at tremendous political expense? In fact, we have some questions about this. Is it possible that Donald Trump will take the United States of America to war in order to distract attention from what's in those files? And the answer is, damn right he is. Of course he is. The dog has never, ever been wagged as hard as it is about to be wagged by Donald Trump. Now, I talked about his latest gambit in My newsletter yesterday, which. And I'm kind of proud of the art, I called it the Weasel in Winter. You know the movie the lion in Winter? This guy's no lion. He's the weasel in winter. By the way, it does not mean that he's not dangerous because weasels who are cornered can be nasty little sons of bitches, right? But what he did was rather extraordinary. At the same time, he's saying that the whole thing is a hoax. There's nothing to see here. He ordered the Department of Justice to investigate Democrats about their ties with Epstein. Democrats, but not himself. Not any Republican, not any of his sex trafficking cronies, just Democrats. It was not subtle. So two things to say about it. Number one, and I've been on this from the beginning. We cannot be numbed at the raw abuse of the independence of the Justice Department. The New York Times makes this point, talking about the fact that Pam Bondi immediately bowed the knee, immediately appointed a prosecutor in the case. And she said this about Faced by Pam Bondi, as much as any action that she's taken this year demonstrates the near complete breakdown of the Justice Department's traditional independence to prosecute cases based on facts and law as opposed to presidential fiat. And crucially, it could foreclose any further disclosures of the Epstein files. And that's something we can talk about a little bit later, whether or not he's doing this in order to stop the files from being released. But number one, you know, this phrase that I have used over and over again is, you know, for, you know, for my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law, the nakedness with the way he is turning the FBI and the Department of Justice into the Praetorian Guard of retribution is, Is. Is stunning. At the same time, he's handing out pardons like skittles to his cronies, his buddies, his supporters. So he's very. He's. He's not at all being subtle about saying there are two. There are two sets of laws in this country. For my friends, one. For my enemies, something else. My enemies, I am coming after you whether or not the fact of the laws, facts or the laws support it. And as for my. My friends, it really doesn't matter what you can do. Look, my first day in office, I pardoned all the people who attacked the Capitol and beat the sh. Police officers. And I'm the party of law and order. I'm the. We're the back of the Blue party. And my first act was to pardon Seditionist. Insurrect. Seditionist. Insurrectionists, some of whom had tased and beaten cops. Some of those cops did not survive. So the news of the day is that he is launching an Epstein probe against Democrats. So there are going to be Democrats in there. But it's sort of interesting that he's trying to do this at the same time that he's lashing out against his enemies is also lashing out against his friends. One of the amazing things this weekend has been the fact that just one of the, another one of the MAGA romances has come to an end. I mean, we saw what happened with Elon Musk, but this Marjorie Taylor Greene thing is amazing. Marjorie Taylor Greene has broken with Donald Trump on the Epstein case. And over the weekend, he put out absolutely demented, long stream of consciousness attacks against Marjorie Taylor Greene. I mean, remember, we're talking about Marjorie Taylor Greene here, the MAGA superstar, the Jewish space lady, you know, laser lady. And now Donald Trump is essentially now calling her Marjorie Traitor Greene. And he's saying that he's not going to support her anymore. And she's pushing back, saying, yep, this guy's a liar. And as a result of his attacks on me, I may have to get personal security. So, you know, what's going on there? Look, let's not get ahead of ourselves. The cult is still intact, but there's a disturbance in the force. There's a disturbance in this cult, and you are beginning to see it. And also, it is interesting again for those of us who've been at this a very long time to watch people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie and others looking around and going, you know, this guy is actually a little bit crazy. This guy is kind of a liar. When that comes from them. It's, yeah, everything in the world is completely upside down. Okay, so should we get to your questions? Because there's, there's so much, there's so much going on. We can talk about the Epstein files. We can talk about a lot of other things. So again, in no particular order, and again, I apologize in advance the fact that I'm not going to be able to get to all of these, of these, these questions. Here's one that came in on, on the substack chat. Is it possible that this Texas redistricting may mean more seats going to the Democrats if the swing against Republicans continues? Okay, probably not, but this is a really interesting question. I've talked about this on some of the other podcasts. The assumption that the Texas Republicans made when they were gerrymandering the district on Donald Trump's waters to create more Republican seats was that Hispanic voters, particularly in southern Texas, were moving toward the Republicans. And if they kept doing that, you're going to pick up some Republican seats. Now what if that's not true? What if, in fact, Hispanics are looking at what's going on in Trump 2.0 and saying, you know, no, this is not what we are signed up for. You know, we are second class citizens and we're being told we're second class citizens every single day. I mean, they see these videos of the ICE thugs, and we saw this in Virginia and in New Jersey in the elections, the Hispanic vote moved hard against the Republicans. So it turns out that the Trumpist Republicans were renting those votes. Okay, so which takes us back to this. If in fact the Hispanic Latino vote is being alienated by Trump, that's going to have an effect throughout the country, and especially in Texas, where they were too clever by half and they drew these, these lines. I don't know that Democrats will pick up seats. I think that's extremely unlikely. But it may mean that when all of this redistricting, back and forth, retaliatory redistricting, California, et cetera, when it all settles down, it may be a wash. And if it's a wash, that's very bad news for Republicans because, well, you know, they look at Trump's approval ratings, they can see it, but they can't break with him or they're reluctant to break with him, except on things like Epstein. So, again, you know, that's we're at here. Okay, so another question, Charlie. If the Democrats do win big in the midterms, are there enough votes to do the 25th amendment or impeach? Okay, let's just stop right there. We're getting way ahead of ourselves. And number one on the 25th Amendment. No, doesn't matter what members of Congress do about that. That's just not gonna happen. That means it's just not. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this. It is not going to happen. Will there be enough votes to impeach? I think that there will be enough votes to impeach, and I think that's likely to happen. And everybody understands this. Okay, so here's another one, Charlie. Why are so many people afraid of Donald Trump? And then it goes through. You know, it talks about the universities and law firms and everything. Okay, this is an interesting question because I think it's completely understandable why people are afraid. In fact, I saw something and I'm sorry. To digress here, somebody, you know, said that they're tired of seeing that slogan be not afraid. This is, we're all afraid. We're afraid of being sued, we're afraid of being smeared, we're afraid of getting sick. So the key is not, you know, be not afraid, but, but to do it anyway. Even if you are afraid, do it afraid. And I think that's, that's going to be where I'm going here. So let me just tell you just a very brief, brief story. You know, very early in the Trump presidency, I got a letter in the mail from a big time law firm threatening to sue me for something. And it's not important what it was, but, you know, I hope you don't think that the people who get letters like this are not freaked out about it. When you're faced with the possibility of litigation, when you have to hire a lawyer, even if the lawsuit is completely bogus, even if it is in bad faith, you lose the moment that that lawsuit is filed. And I think this is part of the psychology that Trump has tapped into, which he understands that, you know what, even the people who rattle the sabers and say, you know, I am never afraid, I'm never afra anything at all. The reality is that everybody has a certain vulnerability. And as he's found out, and again, you have to give him credit for his reptilian insight here, that he figured that even the billionaires and the oligarchs and the huge corporations were vulnerable, would be afraid because they had more to lose. So the key point is have sympathy for the people who are under attack is, I don't care how brave they sound on YouTube videos or podcasts, they're worried. They wake up at 3 in the morning. They have to explain it to their, to their spouse and to their, their, their, their children. And you know, I would like to say when I got that letter, you know, in the first week of the Trump administration, given my age and the fact that I was unemployed at the time, that, that I might be, you know, you know, have to spend massive amounts of money. I, I, but basically kind of caved in a little bit. Now, this is not a subset thing. This has nothing to do with Donald Trump. But I understand the psychology and I think people need to appreciate it. Okay, Charlie, I get a lot of questions like this one. Charlie, is Trump losing his mind? Now? I appreciate the way that you put that because of course, that's my book, you know, how the right Lost its Mind. And there's a lot of speculation about his cognitive decline. I am not a doctor and I'm not going to do this. However, obviously one of the biggest stories of the last four or five years was the question about the cognitive condition of the President of the United States. It's kind of an irony that now we have two consecutive presidencies where we have to wonder, is the President really all there is, our extremely elderly president, is he losing it? And I think, obviously, I think that's a big story, and I don't think that there ought to be any cover ups on it. But I think that with Donald Trump, the question of is, you know, has he lost his mind? Is not as interesting to me, believe it or not, as my ongoing question, has America lost its mind? When I wrote the book how the Right Lost its Mind, I didn't just mean, you know, has it gone crazy. I'm also talking about the loss of the intellectual coherence of the American conservative movement. And one of the things that, as I was writing that book, I'm thinking, okay, you know, if you just take the frame away from looking right at Donald Trump, because Donald Trump is Donald Trump. He's not. He's always been the same guy. You know, he's living his dream. Turn it on. The people who are looking at him, what's going on with them? How do you look at Donald Trump and go, yes, this is the person that I want as my leader. Yes, this is the person that I believe should be the role model for America. This is what, this is the person that I want to entrust with the absolute power of the presidency. What's going on with their minds now? It started off with the conservative movement, morphed out to the entire Republican Party. Originally, it was kind of transactional. And then after a certain point, it became more and more cult light. And then, of course, you know, we get to the 2024 election where he actually wins the. Wins the presidency. So my question is, yeah, we can talk about, you know, Donald Trump lost his mind. His mind. Although, you know, he's doing what he wants to do now, may not be politically smart, but he's doing what he wants to do. But what about the rest of the country? Is this a country that was what I believe, founded on an idea? What is the status of that idea right now? And I think part of the crazy making aspect of the last few years, when you think about it, is not the fact you look at Donald Trump and go, donald Trump has done something crazy. The crazy making part is, is when you see his flamboyant dishonesty, cruelty, brutality, criminality, the grift in broad daylight. And then you look around and you're expecting that everybody else is going to react the way you do. What the hell? And then when you see people going, no, I like that, that's when you begin to sort of think, hey, the world is being rocked on its axis. So when I say to you, we are not the crazy ones, you're not crazy. When you are the person standing, looking at the naked emperor, saying, he's naked. Everybody else is, no, this is how America becomes great again. This is a great leader. This is Abraham Lincoln reborn. So I am still more concerned about the mind of the GOP because he keeps testing them and they keep failing over and over again. By the way, what happened with the Heritage Foundation, I could have devoted half the book to what's happened to the right wing think tanks. When you have think tanks that frankly are clearly not thinking anymore. Right. When you have the head of the Heritage foundation going, yeah, this guy Nick Fuentes, why would we want to cancel him? Look, if you can't draw a line between, you know, neo Nazis and the rest of the movement, you are, you're, you're, you're pretty, you're, you're pretty screwed. Okay, this next question goes perfectly along line. Charlie, whatever happened to Megyn Kelly? And it goes on. Okay, excellent question. Everybody understands the context of it. If you haven't, you can go back to my newsletter. Yesterday she was on, on Friday and sort of, you know, musing openly about, well, you know, Jeffrey Epstein's really a pedophile because he liked, you know, 15 year old girls, not 8 year old girls. And you know, big difference between a 5 year old and a 15 year old. As if, okay, you know, this is the thing that we're going to debate, the difference between raping a 5 year old and raping a 15 year old. As if that's what we should be talking about right now. And again, you know, Megyn Kelly is, you know, I mean, I'm old enough to remember when she actually did some serious work at Fox and when she challenged Donald Trump, remember, at the one debate, she goes over to NBC News. I was actually interviewed by her once there. And now she's out there on her own. Listen, she's, she's, you don't have to have a bake sale for her. As she walked out, you know, I think she walked out of NBC with tens of millions of dollars in her pocket. But any case, she's in this weird, you know, Right wing, right wing vortex where she's defending Tucker Carlson, who is battier, bat shittier almost by the day. She refuses to denounce Candace Owens, who has become kind of this Nazi adjacent conspiracy theory person out there. I mean, honestly, if you spent 10 minutes talking to Candace Owen, you would go, I can't decide whether I need to call 911 or just take a shower. This one. Those kinds of things. So what is going on with Megyn Kelly? Well, I get asked this question all the time. Is it because people are just simply chasing the herd? It varies. It varies. The incentive structure right now is that the more extreme, the more outrageous you are, the more clicks you get, the more attention you get. That's why you see so much cosplay out there, by the way. Don't give me this. I get accused of the both sides, but you see this, this is actually a media phenomenon, not a left. Right? So, you know, people get dressed up, you know, to do podcasts like Charlie, why do you wear a suit? Why do you wear a tie? Well, okay, I mean, I could wear a news ring, right? But I'm not sure what the point of that would be. In any case, there are these ideological nose rings out there where the more extreme and bizarre, the more attention you get. So. And a lot of these folks keep looking over their shoulder and they don't want to be outflanked on the right. They don't want somebody younger and crazier out there. So you have this, this constant step toward the extremes. And Megyn Kelly, who knows, something got broken there when she was fired by NBC for not getting. And by the way, the thing she doesn't get, she doesn't get what's, what's the problem with blackface? Okay, you know, we have to explain that. I don't think she should have been fired for it, but maybe it was kind of an indicator. And then it's like, what's wrong with having sex with 15 year old girls? Okay, Megan, clearly you need to have someone sit down and explain some of these things and why they are controversial. But then again, when controversy becomes your dopamine, be. Don't be that. That surprised. Okay? Lots of qu. Lots of questions here on, on Epstein. Oh, yes. Do you think maybe I've answered this already? Is there a possibility that Donald Trump could go to war with Venezuela in order to distract attention? The answer is yes. Can the Pentagon, Charlie, independent of the Department of Justice, hold accountable the chain of command committing war crimes in the Caribbean using the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That's just not going to happen. I mean, the Pentagon is. Pete Hegseth. But, you know, let's just talk about this for a moment. The dilemma that we have now with the military, if you are a general, general officer in the military. And by the way, I'm kind of going off something, a conversation I had with Mark Hertling when we were in Gettysburg the other day, said the generals take an oath to the Constitution, not to the person of the president. Enlisted people basically take an oath saying that they will follow the commands of the commander in chief, but the general officers are pounded into them that they have to obey the civilian authority when the civilian authority issues lawful orders. And so the question is, what happens when an unlawful order is given down the chain of command? Happens when someone says, I want you to commit a war crime. Now, the theory is that at some point the general officer will say, I'm sorry, that is an unlawful order. I'm not going to follow that. And I am either going to resign, retire, or I, I don't know what the third options are. Be, be arrested. And you know, the, the, there is still an assumption that, that, that holds, right? Except, and this is the question that I think we ought to have on our minds because people think, well, at some point, right, the military is going to tell Donald Trump, no, I'm not going to follow your, your unconstitutional order. Well, have they so far now, the admiral who was in charge of the blowing up the boats has retired. I think it's a very, very big deal. But let's keep in mind somebody is issuing the order, kill those people and somebody is pulling the trigger. So there seems to be a universal consensus, right, that this is illegal, that you just cannot blow people up in the streets or in the water without any due process, particularly if you have the ability to interdict them. I mean, it would be as if, and I not trying to, well, I, I mean, I, I wish I, I had asked some, some legal experts. I'm not sure what the legal theory here is that, you know, we see you, we don't have to identify you, we don't have to warn you, we just will kill you. Well, imagine that domestically. Imagine a police state in which somebody says, I see a van going down the street. I believe that there are drugs in that van. I'm, I'm not going to check, I'm not going to warn them. We're not going to try to pull the van over. We're just going to blow it up and kill everybody in there. Would that be considered acceptable. Now, I understand there's a certain Rambo style, dirty, hairy approach to law and order that has a visceral attraction on the right. But I also think that there's also a residual sense of, like, wait, there are limits to what we want the police to be able to do. There are limits to the kinds of rights that we're willing to give up. Okay, so back to this question about the military. Will anybody be held accountable for it? I don't know. And again, I would throw out the question. If you commit a war crime based on unlawful orders, are you immune? Now, the court has said that Donald Trump, as the president, is pretty much immune. I think that the court, in effect, has said that he could order Seal Team 6 to kill somebody and he would be immune from prosecution. Actually, remember, the question was, what if he ordered SEAL Team 6 to murder a political opponent? The justices have kind of said, yeah, but is the person who commits the crime? Are they? I bring this up because there's a new movie out which I have not yet seen. I'm interested in getting people's reaction. The new Russell Crowe movie about the Nuremberg war crimes. I grew up hearing and reading about the Nuremberg war crimes of all the Nazi criminals after World War II and knowing that their defense was. I was just following orders. This was the entire heart of the German Nazi war crime defense, which was, okay, these terrible things happened, but I was a mere soldier and I was following orders at the lower ranks. Maybe that was acceptable, but the whole point of the Nuremberg war crimes trial was that other people were responsible. You knew what you were doing. You knew that it was wrong. You knew that it was a crime. So anyway, okay, here's a tougher one. This may be too esoteric, but how do we accept or respond to freedom of speech when the topic becomes Nazis and Holocaust denial? Yes, you have the freedom to say and think, yet I have the freedom to disagree. Does that work? Is it enough? It is close to enough. This is the whole point of freedom of speech that you answer speech you don't like, not by censoring it or shutting it down, but by answering it. And this used to be the argument that many of us on the center right made when there was increasing intolerance on university campuses. Right now there, there's kind of like little bit of amnesia. Like, boy, did that actually happen? Did we actually have speech codes where people told that they were not allowed to say certain things? Yeah, that that actually happened. But, you know, in a free speech environment, you know, you respond and you try to refute the false speech. Now, there are those who say that's naive, that we no longer have a working marketplace of ideas. But this is at the heart of the First Amendment and it's the heart of the free speech culture. Now, having said that, this person says, well, how do I accept, respond to freedom of speech when the topic becomes Nazi and Holocaust denial? Well, again, I'm not this, you know, under the First Amendment, the government should take no action against the speech. On the other hand, no one has to platform them or pretend that they are not as deplorable as they are. This is the key. You know, simply because you have the right to say something doesn't mean that I have to feature you. I don't have to have you on my podcast, I don't have to let you write for my publication, and if I interview you, I don't have to sit and listen to, to your complete rank bullshit and go, hmm, that's interesting. You're just answering questions. So in many ways, freedom of speech confers the obligation on us, not just the obligation of tolerance, but the obligation of judgment, to say, you know, when we are going to platform, feature these, you know, bigoted, false things and whether we're going to push back against them, if we're going to allow this kind of speech, then we have the obligation right to, to point them out, to call them. To call them, you know, exactly. By, you know, what, what they. What they are. Okay, so, bunch of questions here. Charlie, do you think that if a graphic and compromising photo of Trump with an underage girl were to come to light, he would have to resign? Every person I have asked cynically believes he could survive even that. What say you? I am also a cynic. The Overton window is on roller skates in terms of what is acceptable. If you are MAGA for Donald Trump, it would be bad for Donald Trump. Would he resign? Donald Trump is never going to resign. First of all, you know, in order to resign, you have to do something voluntarily. Donald Trump does not have that. You know, up until Donald Trump, we would say, you know, the, the, the most dishonest president ever was Richard Nixon. Right? Richard Nixon had enough of a sense of shame to know when to go. Now, you may think I'm giving him too much credit. Maybe he just simply was told he didn't have the votes, but he understood a reality that meant that he could no longer govern, that it was no longer in the national interest, or that it was no longer feasible. Do you think Donald Trump even thinks in those terms, does Donald Trump. Would Donald Trump leave office because he thought it was in the national interest? People, have you been paying any fucking attention at all? No. What if he was told, well, Mr. President, you're just simply not. It's not feasible for you to continue to govern? Do you think that would dissuade him? So he's never going to resign, he's never going to be forced out. Would Republicans break with him? No, they wouldn't. And we learned that on October 7, 2016. Yeah, this is the same date as the attack on Israel. But I, it seared in my mind October 7, 2016, because remember what, what happened that day? That was when the, the Access Hollywood tape was released. And no, Donald Trump is bragging about trying to, you know, f. His, his friends, wives, you know, the grab women by the people. You, you know, the, you know, the whole story. And for about 24 hours, it looked like, oh, of course Republicans are going to bail on him. And some did, including people like Paul Ryan, who was then the speaker. And what happened? Well, I look back on that data as kind of a pivot point because that was the moment when Republicans could have moved on and they chose not to and they chose to swallow it. And what's happened since then, every time you accept an outrage, it becomes harder to say, well, no, this is the line. Okay, so he's found liable by a federal jury for sexually assaulting, sexually abusing a woman. That was not even a blip. People have accepted that he incited a mob to attack the Capitol. They've accepted that. It goes on and on and on. And so what does Donald Trump do? And I was going to mention this before. Do you remember the week after the Access Hollywood tape came out? There was a debate. He had a debate with Hillary Clinton. And of course, all the smart people were thinking he wasn't going to show up or it was going to be terrible. He showed up. And you remember what he did? He brought along all of the women who had accused Bill Clinton of abusing them. Paula Jones was there a bunch of, you know, again, so what he did was he changed the subject. And it was cynical, but it obviously worked. And by the way, I was reminded of that this weekend he's faced with all the Epstein stuff coming out about his involvement with the sex trafficker. What does he do? He changes the subject by going after the Democrats. I think that that's going through in his head. So no, compromising pictures are not going to be enough. Okay, Charlie. It was, it was nice to Watch the video from the US Bishops criticizing mass deportations. Where, where does JD Vance go from here? Okay, this is extremely. This whole, this whole story. I'm gonna get to J.D. vance in a moment because J.D. vance is not going to blink on all of this. It's, it's not going to be. There's not even an inch. But I, and I have written about this, and I apologize if you think I'm repeating myself, but I think this is an undercovered story because, you know, Donald Trump is facing something that no American president has ever faced. Let's start with the fact that you have an American Pope who is familiar with American politics, who speaks English, who is intensely interested in domestic American politics. So none of those things have ever happened before. Now, Donald Trump and J.D. vance have wrapped themselves in the garb of Christianity, right? They are the defenders of Christendom. J.D. vance is, you know, the probably the most prominent Catholic convert in the country. And here comes the Pope, the American Pope, who's basically saying, your theology is bullshit and your policies are deeply unchristian. Now it's easy to sort of brush them off. And I'm guessing that, you know, secular listeners might not fully understand the impact of this for other Christians. Now, I know, don't get me wrong, Protestants are Protestants for a reason. Right? They're not necessarily going to be influenced by the Pope. On the other hand, you do have some MAGA adjacent conservative Catholics. You do have people in the pro life movement, and you do have Hispanic families who are going to hear what the Pope is saying, because the hope, because the Pope is also calling all of the Catholic Church in the United States to arms, and they are following him. So they're going to hear this. And it goes right at Donald Trump's main pillar, which is that I am the upholder of traditional Christian virtues. The Pope says, no, you are violating them. And I am the champion of the pro life movement. And the Pope has really gone out of his way to specifically say, to redefine the term pro life. The Pope explicitly and in English is saying, it is not enough to simply be against abortion to be pro life. You also have to support the dignity of the human life. You have to support other kinds of the right to life other than simply that. And he said that pretty much word for word. I don't have it right in front of me. So what he's basically saying to pro life voters, okay, you know, I am not asking you to change your values or abandon your values or stop being pro life. I want you to Be more pro life. I want you to lean into this value. I want you to understand that if you are pro life, you cannot support the kind of brutality and cruelty that you're seeing being committed to your neighbors. I think that is potent. Now, the other thing, I go back to the question here. The US Conference of Bishops issued a very rare statement over the last week condemning the Trump administration's policies on all of this. And this is not usual from them. There are many, many conservatives there, but they are united behind what Pope Leo is asking. And Pope Leo again has made it very clear he's been pushing the American bishops speak out, be more, you know, outspoken on all of this. So in every Catholic church in America, I think between now and, well, you know, in the next few years, you know, they're going to be hearing this, they're going to be hearing this message. Okay, one other point on this, and I'm sorry to spend so much time on, on, on, on, on this one. Do you know Trump could pivot away from some of the worst abuses? Right. The election results, and I mentioned this earlier, would suggest that, you know, they are losing Republican, they're losing Hispanic votes, they're being alienated. What a, what a, what a shock that is. So a normal president might say, hey, between now and the midterms, maybe let's dial it down. Trump's not going to do that. Stephen Miller is not going to do that. J.D. vance is not going to do that. Tom Holman, Kristi Noem, they are not going to do that. We're not going to be seeing fewer massed ICE brute squad incidents out there. We're going to see more. We know this because they're hiring thousands more ICE agents. And you know, who are the kinds of people that are frankly, signing up to be ICE agents right now who are responding to the Kristi Noem ads right now? What kind of training are they receiving? There are billions of dollars being pushed into ice. So what's going to happen is that this army, which is aimed at people in this country, is going to grow exponentially larger. So my guess is the Pope gets louder, the bishops get louder, and there are people who are going to be influenced by this. I think it's a huge story with real potential. All right, Charlie, what do you think the chances are for a win for the Affordable Care act or the like Care act or the like in the House and the Senate now? This, of course, talks about the shutdown, which now seems like a really long time ago. You know, the Democrats, well, reopened the Government. I don't want to relitigate that right now, but they didn't get anything except, you know, this promise that we'll get a vote on restoring the subsidies for the Obamacare premiums. You all know about that. That was less than a mess of pottage, people. It was nothing. There are lots of folks out there that are about to experience massive, massive increase in their cost. In fact, they already are. And there was some hope that the Democrats were going to fight to keep those premiums from rising. I mean, the federal government was closed for, what, 43 days, and this was their bottom. So you figured that they would at least hold out for that. They didn't. Instead, they got a promise that there'll be a vote, a vote on this later. All right, I'm, I'm sorry to throw cold water, but, you know, the chances of that passing are slim and none. This is, this is Donald Trump's Republican Party. I don't think they are going to do it. And by the way, I think that does hurt the Republicans going into the midterm. Okay, Charlie, if hopefully Donald Trump is out of office at the end of 2026. See, I'm glad that you see, you just understand that nothing is a given here. Can he then be prosecuted for crimes committed as a civilian? All right, yes, in theory, if the statute of limitations has not run. But I think that it's unlikely that he'll be held legally accountable for much that he did while he was president. On the other hand, this raises a much bigger question. It's like, okay, what would a truth and reconciliation agenda look like? What would have to happen? Should they go after Donald Trump and his cronies for their corruption or for the war crimes and all of that? You know, my inclination is yes, but I also think we need to understand exactly what's about to happen. Donald Trump is going to claim absolute immunity for everything he does, and then he will extend that immunity to everybody in his circle via the pardon power. I mean, we have seen what he is willing to do. This should not take anyone by surprise. He pardoned the January 6th rioters just this last week. He continued his attempt to whitewash history by preemptively pardoning all of the other major players for the big lie. And you know that either implicitly or explicitly, he's told all the folks from ice, all the folks that are, you know, in that Stephen Miller, you know, weird Clay Clavin, coven, coven that, you know, he's got their backs, that as long as they stay loyal to him, that he will pardon them. So it's going to be very difficult, I think, to hold them accountable. He's made it also clear that he will extend the pardon privileges, the pardon, his pardon power to protect his business cronies, his crypto buddies. So I would expect that there would be thousands, if not tens of thousands of pardons that will make it very, very difficult to go after these folks again. That doesn't mean that there's not a lot that can't be undone. I look forward to the vigorous debate on whether we continue to circulate the Donald Trump coins, what happens to the Donald J. Trump ballroom, whether or not the arc to Trump that he is building will be, you know, renamed or removed. This is a debate. I try not to dwell too much on the failure of the Merrick Garland era Department of justice in moving more expeditiously. There's a new book out that I'd like to feature on this podcast at some point that talks about the decision that they made in the Biden years to slow walk the prosecution of Donald Trump. That's, you know, in retrospect, it seems like a pretty naive move, but you didn't, it didn't require, it doesn't require retrospective. I mean, you know, you know, it doesn't require that because even at the time, I think there was an understanding that, look, if we're going to restore the rule of law, we need to hold the president who just incited an insurrection accountable. We just can't let that go. So among the great frustrations and one of the lessons that I think that folks I would hope would have learned is that look at number one, if you shoot at the king, make sure you get the king. But also that if you are going to uphold the rule of law, you better damn uphold the rule of law. It's going to be difficult, but I'm glad that people are talking about. Do I have time for, for one more question here? Okay, Charlie. I think there's too little attention paid to Epstein and his ties to the espionage communities in several countries. The FBI, the sweetheart deal in Florida, Mossad. Is there possibly ties to Putin? Who was this guy? And how much dirt did this filth have? Well, of course, this is again, one of the really intriguing questions. Why, you know, how did Epstein have the kind of access that he had? Why did he have the kind of immunity that he had? Why did he get one sweetheart deal after another? Did he provide information to the Russians? Which, by the way, don't you love it? You know, when the plot lines begin to come together that in fact he was offering information to the Russian. Is that one of the reasons why there is so much reluctance to release this? Because if it all comes out, we find out that a lot of people, you know, had had ties to Jeffrey Epstein that would be deeply embarrassing to other countries and to the intelligence agencies of others. We just don't know this. What is interesting is, for example, that mentions MI6. The Brits have had no problem holding very powerful people to account for this, haven't they? Having just stripped Prince Andrew of his royal titles because of this and firing the British ambassador to the United States. So. So at least from the Brits point of view, they don't have the reluctance to go back and hold people accountable that the United States does. So again, we don't know. And I am not. Look, if we were ever going to see those FBI files, all of those files, we would have seen them by now. I think that we have to understand that we're going to learn a lot about Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein and Jeffrey Epstein and a lot of other folks, but we will not see those records as long as Donald Trump is in the White House. And if we do, the plan B would be whatever the Donald Trump Justice Department releases, I think needs to be dealt, treated with a good deal of skepticism because the redactions, the missing pages. Let's just say that I no longer think that it's reasonable to extend the benefit of the doubt to these folks. Hey, thank all of you for all of your questions and I apologize that I was not able to get to more of them. Maybe we can do this again. Please, if you have not yet subscribed to to the Contrary newsletter, please do. And you can, you know, be able to subscribe to, to this and some of the other things that I'm planning to do right here on YouTube and, and thank you for your time. Thank you for your attention to this matter and for listening to to the Contrary podcast. You know why we do this, why I'm doing this today, why we're going to continue to do this next week and the week after that and the week after that. Because we live in an era where we have to constantly remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. Thank you.