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I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. Hey. First of all, I just want to thank all of the subscribers to to the Contrary for filling out the reader survey. Incredible response. We've had thousands of responses. I really appreciate it. And a reminder to those of you that are listening on the podcast or watching on YouTube that if you have not yet considered subscribing to the to the Contrary newsletter, please do. For example, we are taping this, recording this before Donald Trump's speech to in the, in the Oval Office. For my complete a coverage of that, my reaction to what we learned, what we didn't learn, whether we're actually more confused, whether we have more clarity. Go to the newsletter. I will have complete coverage in Thursday's newsletter. And again, we do rely upon the kindness of strangers to keep this going. And I am noticing that. I mean, I do understand that a lot of demands on your time, a lot of demands on your wallet. And unfortunately, what you're seeing is that a lot of the independent journalists who have risen up in the last year are really, really struggling because people saying, you know, I just have too many subscriptions. I can't support them. So just consider that when you're asking yourself, what could we do, support those voices that are standing up for democracy, and that includes independent journalism. Okay, you're stuck with me today because this is the solo podcast and many of you have sent me questions, and they are all over, all over the field. We're gonna be talking about Donald Trump's executive order on mail in balloting. We're gonna get to that. The future of NATO. Kristi Noem's husband. Now, some of you are gonna say, charlie, you're better than that. No, I'm not. We're gonna talk about Kristi Noem's husband, Pete Hegseth, and that flyover with Kid Rock. Somebody said, why did Donald Trump call Tiger woods after his latest drunk driving incident? Interesting question. Will Donald Trump be able to claim victory? And are there really fascists out there? We better get to it today. All right, just a quick reminder. If you want complete cover coverage of Donald Trump's speech from the Oval Office, you're going to have to go to my newsletter, to the Contrary newsletter. Complete coverage. Where should we start? Actually, speaking of the newsletter, yesterday was April 1st, and as a public service announcement, I know that you probably already saw this, but as a public service announcement, I had to say, you might be tempted to think that certain stories in the paper or in the media are April Fool's jokes, and they are not. And the one that I wanted to highlight was the picture of Donald Trump's statue that is going to be in the Donald Trump Presidential Library. And yes, folks, there is going to be a Donald Trump Presidential Library. There'll be a Trump Tower in Miami. This is not an April Fool's joke. And Donald Trump Library is not actually an oxymoron. And so I use this picture in the newsletter. You know, you can see it. And I know that many of you, when you first saw this picture of this gigantic sort of, you know, kitschy Neo or, you know, late stage North Korean Donald Golden Donald Trump with his fist raised in the air, you probably thought that's AI right, it's fake. No, ladies and gentlemen, it is real. It is absolutely real. Let me just read to you from the Hill newspaper a video of the completed library, also shared by Eric Trump. You know, it's going to be good if Eric Trump is involved, right? Shows a skyscraper with Trump emblazoned in gold near the top and a needle that lights up in red, white and blue. The entrance to the library, which features a gold presidential seal, leads to a full sized Air Force One with other military aircraft on the second floor. I'm going to assume that that Air Force One is that the big winged bribe from Qatar. Remember when they gave him the $400 million jet? Maybe it's just going to be sitting right there. We don't really know. Last year, the Trump administration accepted that plane as a gift from the Qatari government, saying that he was going to include it in his library, raising ethical and security related questions, of which there are many. The library will also listen to. This will also include an auditorium featuring, and here it is again. I want to show you again, a giant golden statue of President Trump raising his right fist in the air, a replica of the Oval Office and a ballroom with gold throughout. Well, so for those of you wondering about what Donald Trump is spending his time doing these days, this obsession with putting his name on everything, putting these gold baubles. And the other day he had a very bad day in court. And I wrote about this in my newsletter. He was slapped down in a number of things. And of course, you have the war ongoing. But what was Donald Trump raging about the other day? He was raging about a federal judge who told him to stop work on that 400 billion. I'm sorry, $400 million ballroom. You get these big numbers confused sometime. And you had the federal judge who said, hey, you know what, you're gonna need congressional approval for that, which of course send ketchup flying all across the Oval Office right from Donald Trump because what does he actually care about? This is a man who is, was bored with peace and totally pissed off he didn't get that Nobel Peace bride. Right. But then he became very, very quickly bored with his war of whim, this lost interest in his war of whim. But he has absolutely, totally and completely invested in jazz in that particular ballroom. So that was what really set him off. All right, let's go to some of the questions here. Lots of questions about, about Iran, which I'm not going to be able to thoroughly answer except that whatever the President is going to do, whether he surrenders, retreats, you know, bugs out, but claims victory escalates, puts boots on the ground, whatever, we still have to ask the question, how did this war start? What happened in Donald Trump's mind that he thought this was a good idea? And I want to play a very short clip from Laura Ingraham of all people. This is Fox News and she's raising an awfully interesting question here now. But bear with me because we don't often cite Fox News, but this is one of those rare moments where the criticism is actually seeped into the alternative reality silos of the right. And this is an important point. You have to understand that, and I've made this point before, that one of the problems of our political debate is that we are not just in echo chambers or bubbles, that we are in these hermetically sealed alternative realities where if you are in maga, you may never hear many of the stories that you and I talk about. You know, you'll say, well, when is this going to have, you know, an effect on, on the true believers? Well, the true believers may not have heard it at all. They have a completely different reality. The war in Iran is different because it's penetrated in. So yes, it's people like Alex Jones and it's people like Tucker Carlson, but it's also people like Laura Ingraham on Fox News. Okay, let's just play her big question about how we got into this. Let's just listen to her for a moment.
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Now, knowing what little time we have and how quickly this can spiral out of control, we still have a lot of questions. For instance, was the President fully briefed about the risks of all of this from the beginning? And was he then able to take it all in and understand what the complexity of this, how complex it could actually get and further possibilities of casualties or other damage? The difficulty of dealing with these people, or was he told this would be relatively quick in and out?
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Okay, now she's making two points, raising two questions. Was he given this information? And I think it's safe to say that somebody at some point in the chain of command did in fact try to brief the President. I actually did a livestream last night with Miles Taylor, who used to work in the, in the first Trump administration, and he had an interesting phrase to describe Donald Trump. He said, you have to understand the mind of Donald Trump is like a HEPA filter for good information. If he doesn't want to hear it, he's just not going to hear it. So Laura Ingram asked, you know, was he given this information? You know, how do you not know about the risk? But then she raises a more fundamental question, which I found kind of intriguing. Was he then able to take it all in and understand the complexity? Now this is fundamental question, right? Kind of fundamental that even if he was given the information, does Donald Trump, is he able to process this information? Now that's probably as close to the line of like, what's going on up in that cerebral cortex of Donald Trump? What are those ferrets running around the wheel doing? That's about as close to those questions as you're going to get from someone like Laura Ingraham. But it is interesting, you know, how did we blunder into this war? No, no, we didn't blunder into this war. How did Donald Trump blunder into this war? How could you possibly not have known that the Strait of Hormuz might be closed and the impact that it would have on the price of gasoline and our ability to win this particular war? One other thought, because a lot of you have been asking this question as well about the fallout from the war. And again, I want to give the caveat that I'm recording this before Trump speaks to the nation. But in terms of the long term implications, implications and the effects of this war, this is not something we can just turn off. This is just not something we can end. It's not something that we move on to the next chapter. Because I think the fallout is going to be fundamental. And the fallout I think is going to be the most dramatic in terms of what it has done to the Western alliance, what it has done to NATO. I think that history will look back on this particular moment, the last few months as the end of the post war alliance that had kept the peace since World War II. NATO has been one of our most important allies. It has been one of the fundamental bulwark against aggression against people like Vladimir Putin. And it is dead man walking. Look, a lot of folks thought that it was kind of a joke when Donald Trump started talking about seizing Greenland. People thought it was a troll. We were told to take it maybe seriously, but not literally. But as you look back on that, that was really a turning point where our European allies looked at us and thought, are you serious? Are you serious about actually attacking a NATO ally? And we haven't recovered from that. They haven't recovered from that. I think there was a fundamental shift in the mindset of the NATO allies that not that maybe they had thought that they could appease Donald Trump or they could negotiate with Donald Trump or they could buy Donald Trump off and the recognition is settled in. No, we can't. We can't rely on him. We can't trust him. And we need to go our own way. Now. There will be good consequences that Europe will now step up to defend itself and there will be negative consequences because one of the great deterrents that has prevented war for the last 70 plus years is about to disappear. Donald Trump has all but basically said that he's done with NATO. He's given an interview to a British newspaper. He said he's seriously considering pulling out of NATO. He's been making those noises since Trump 1.0. And I think he's serious about it. And of course he's lying about the fact that NATO was never there when we need it. Canada was there after 9 11. Denmark was there. All of those countries shared their blood and their treasure to stand with the United States after 9 11. Donald Trump either doesn't know that or doesn't care. Just doesn't give a shit. And as a result, he is about to hand, and I mean this quite seriously, he's about to hand Vladimir Putin the greatest geopolitical win that Russia has had since the end of World War II. This is a geopolitical win beyond even Vladimir Putin's dreams of avarice. To have the United States abandon its NATO allies and destroy that Western alliance, we'll have to see what comes in its place. Okay, questions about Charlie. What about the executive order that Trump issued taking over mail in balloting? Okay, a couple of things about this. Everybody knows the details about it. Don't. Again, this is one of those where you have to fight. But don't worry too much about this because it's blatantly unconstitutional. And I think it's interesting that he did this the night before he goes to the U.S. supreme Court. And by the way, Donald Trump did something that no other sitting president has ever done. He went to the Supreme Court argument on birthright citizenship. You know, whether or not if you're born in this country, you become a citizen. This has been a fringe issue until this particular moment. It's only been the really extreme right wing fringe that has questioned what had been settled law, what had been settled law since the 14th Amendment codified by congressional action, that if you are a natural born citizen in person in this country, you are a US Citizen. Donald Trump cares about that so much that he went to the Supreme Court to what, stare down the justices? To try to intimidate his appointees. I mean, the appointees who he's called stupid, the appointees who he has attacked and threatened, he thinks this is going to intimidate them. It's not. He's going to lose that case, too. He's going to lose that case. And I think that the attempt to intimidate the justices is going to backfire. Okay, but back to this executive order, because I've got a lot of questions about this thing is unconstitutional with hair on it. And by the way, the justices are going to know that he's doing this kind of shit. They're going to know this. It's not going to help him. So the Constitution says that gives the President no power to just simply seize the mail in balloting process for the states. That's clear. It's going to be legally challenged. He's going to legally lose that. I don't think he cares about that. I don't think he cares about. When he loses, then he can just rail about the judges. He's showing that he's doing all of this. I'd also just remind people that this is part of the pattern that we're seeing from Donald Trump, who has invested a massive amount of political capital in trying to get the SAVE act through Congress. The SAVE act, which would make it much, much more difficult for many people, including married women, to be able to vote. The U.S. senate spent two weeks debating this. Even though there are the votes. A lot of this is just messaging, but it also shows that in Donald Trump's mind, he is obsessed with doing something about the midterm elections, rigging the midterm elections, which, by the way, should not be a surprise to anyone given the fact that this is the man who has already incited a violent attack on the Capitol to overturn an election. It's kind of weird. Like, this is like one of the great moments of our time and it's kind of Remarkable in how many discussions it seemed to be dropped into the memory hole. Would Donald Trump actually try to rig the election? Would Donald Trump interfere with the election? Is Donald Trump really going to send ICE agents to the polls? Yes, he is going to. We know what he is capable of doing. We know what he's capable of doing. Now, this executive order, again, is not going to go into effect, but it's certainly an insight into, not only into Donald Trump's mind, but the kinds of things that he's preparing the right for, that he has spent a long time cultivating these conspiracy theories and disinformation about the elections on his base, in some ways encouraging this feedback loop where his base is encouraging him and egging him on and pushing him further and further. We know, why did the Senate waste two weeks on the SAVE act, this Vote Suppression Act? And by the way, I am not against voter ID, and I think that's an 80, 20 issue. People say, yeah, we've got voter ID. If Donald Trump was actually, you know, cared about, he probably could have gotten that through. But he wasn't content. So he wanted everything. He wanted this. You know, you have to go in, you have to have your birth certificate. It was never, it was never going anywhere. But again, this is part of that feedback loop where members of Congress go, well, you know, this may be a crazy, stupid, irrational idea, but I have to do it because that's what the base back home wants. Well, what does Donald Trump want the base to want? Well, he wants them to not trust the elections and to be geared up to challenge the results. Unless, of course, the margins are big enough that you can't steal it. Maybe we'll come back to that. Now, this leads me to one other thing before I get back to your questions. So what's going on out there? I want to play you a clip from a conversation between two actually pretty significant influencers on the right. One of them is Eric Metaxas. And by the way, I'm gonna get a headache even thinking about Eric Metaxas. And another guy whose name I don't have written down here, who's also on the right in certain parts of the right, a significant influence. The reason I mentioned this about Eric Metaxas is he's an evangelical Christian and the author of many well regarded books until Donald Trump and MAGA broke his brain. You know, if you want to talk about, if you want anyone to have like a pantheon of people who, like, used to be normal and are now just, you know, batshit crazy, I mean, Eric Metaxas is right up there. But I want you to listen to this conversation between these two right wing influencers. And they have big audiences and they're talking about what they think that Donald Trump should do this year. And I have to play it because if I summarized it, you wouldn't believe me. Let's listen.
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At some point, I think Mr. Trump is going to have to go Abe Lincoln on the Democratic Party. He's going to have to declare some kind of a national emergency. He may have to declare, he may have to declare the Democratic Party as a seditious outlaw organization and do something about it. And it seems to me that circumstances may require, may require Mr. Trump to go to a place where he has to declare certain emergency executive powers to deal with an organization that wants to destroy the country. And, you know, and that means probably taking some people off the game board in a very demonstrative way.
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You have to wonder what that would look like.
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Yeah, well, I think it would probably look something like a civil war.
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Okay, now this is one of those moments where I have to remind you that we are not the crazy ones. Did you just hear that? I mean, yes, this is, this is batshit crazy stuff. But having said that before, you roll your eyes and say, oh, Charlie, why are you talking about this crazy stuff? That's not going to happen. Okay, it is probably not going to happen. I want to reassure you. But on the other hand, how many times have we seen ideas or notions that we thought were batshit crazy come from the far reaches of the fever swamp and become mainstream and sometimes become official government policy? I think we've kind of gotten normalized. How many of the things are in these executive orders were in Project 2025 that actually, if you would have brought, if you would have mentioned them just a few years ago, people would have thought, well, that's crazy, that's nuts. Who actually thinks that? You know, the debate about birthright citizenship go back 4, 5, 6, 7 years. Talk to any legal scholar. Is this a close call? Have we gotten the 14th amendment wrong for all of these years? They would have said, no, no, no, no, no. There's a broad consensus, the US Supreme Court hearing arguments because Donald Trump, as you know, and the administration are pushing to eliminate something that frankly was not seriously questioned until recently. So the reason I'm bringing this up is just to say that sometimes those tiny little clouds on the horizon, you know, become these massive cumulus storms that affect us. Okay, Charlie, would you talk a little bit about. Okay. And by the way, when I wrote about this in my newsletter. I said, yes, they are fascists for people who are like. Like, why do you use the word fascist? These. These guys are. These guys are fascists. Okay. Why did Donald Trump call Tiger Woods? Okay, you know, Tiger woods has got some issues, has another roller rollover accident. Obviously, there was some. Some drugs and alcohol, and the president, United States, who's a busy guy, felt the need to call him. Well, you know, what's going on there now? On one level, I mean, this is. In order to understand Donald Trump, you have to understand that, you know, he engages in. I'm sorry, this is the technical term. This is the technical term. Star fucking. That, you know, he likes to, you know, be around celebrities and famous people, but he really likes be around celebrities and famous people who might need his help, who he can suck up to. And so what he's doing is. And I think that sometimes this is underestimated. There is an aspect of Donald Trump that will put on charm offenses that will, you know, reach out. And if you've ever had something bad happen in your life, you remember the people who were there for you when you were in the bottom. You also remember the people who were not there when you were at the bottom. So this is on the one level you can kind of make fun of it, like, what the hell? On the other hand, it's not, you know, it's not completely irrational. Charlie, talk to me about the insider trading, the grift, the graft, and the report that Pete Hegseth was looking to buy defense stocks right before the beginning of the war. Okay, where do you actually begin with this? Because it's all happening in broad daylight on Earth 2.0. This would be the consuming story. Is it just a coincidence that moments before Donald Trump will put out a bleat about the war, whether he's escalating it or de. Escalating it, that you have massive moves in the marketplace. The. The. We're living in a world right now where this inside information can move trillions of dollars. Are insiders people with ties to the Trump administration exploiting this? Are they profiting from this information? Are they profiting from the war? And the answer is, I think you have to be incredibly naive not to think that's going on. You just look at the charts, and 15 minutes before Trump makes an announcement, there's this massive move in oil prices. Somebody knew something. How did they know something? Why did they think they could get away with that insider trading? And the answers are pretty obvious that right now there is a class of grifters and grafters in and around the Trump administration that thinks, well, you might as well get. While the going is good, they can get away with anything. But let's go back to Pete Hegseth. This report, very credible report that he tried that his. That his broker tried to arrange for the purchase of a very, very significant amount of defense stocks right before the beginning of the war. Now, to put it mildly, the fact that the secretary of defense might be trading to profit from something as grave and fundamental as war and peace would be at the very pinnacle of corrupt things that we would want to prevent in this world. Right. But Pete Hegseth is Pete Hegseth that, like, Donald Trump just doesn't give a shit. I think it was Tom Nichols, who wrote a great piece in the Atlantic, you know, talks about, you know, we know the phrase virtue signaling, where you try to pretend, you know, by saying certain or doing certain things that, you know, you are one of the good guys, virtuous guys. Pete Hegseth has been engaging in vice signaling, you know, like, how much assholery can I get away with? How much? How much just, like, vulgarity and crudity can I get away with? And so he's one of those guys that I think is somewhat out of, out of control and apparently doesn't think that what happened to Kristi Noem is a cautionary tale. I don't know why he thinks that he's in that bubble of immunity, because if we've learned anything, we know that, but Trump's idea of loyalty only goes one direction. Also, a couple of you have asked me about this. Did you see the story about the helicopter? Pete Hegseth in the helicopter. Okay, so you had a couple of guys who were out larking around in a helicopter in the military, and they decided to do a flyover for Kid Rock, who is like super, super, super MAGA with hair on it. And so they take this military plane, which is paid for by the taxpayers, which is on duty, and they do a fly Kid Rock and who videotapes it and everything, because Kid Rock is a buddy of Donald Trump's and a buddy of Pete Hegset. The people, the actual professionals in the military, said this is completely inappropriate. It's completely inappropriate to do this kind of a stunt. It's completely inappropriate to make this kind of a political statement. And so they basically suspended the guys who did this. They took them off of active duty. Pete Hegseth has intervened as the Secretary of Defense and exonerated them, saying that Let me see if I can find, find, find the quote, basically, you know, giving them, hey, yeah, here it goes. Hey. On. On Tuesday abruptly reversed the suspension of army crews that piloted two. I'm sorry, it was two. Two Apache helicopters close to the musician Kid Rock's residence in Nashville over the weekend. Earlier on Tuesday, a spokesman said the crew members had been barred from flight duties a day after the army began an inquiry into videos of the flyover posted on social media. These are the people who actually understand what is appropriate, what is not appropriate. But Hegseth appeared to end both the suspensions and the investigation with a social media post Tuesday night declaring, quote, no punishment period. No investigation period. Carry on, patriots. Now, I wrote, okay, what a retromingent hack. But there's something more serious here other than just simply the juvenile that we're talking about. The politicization of the military continues apace. What Pete Hegseth is saying is I am okay with these demonstrations of partisan politics, and I don't think this is a minor storyline. What Donald Trump is trying to do with the military, the purges in the military, the kinds of things that he is allowing, the kinds of things he is encouraging are dangerous. I talked about this a bit with General Mark Hertling. If you haven't seen that podcast, you definitely should go back and watch that particular podcast. Talked with General Hertling about the dangers of a politicized military. It's again, hard to overstate how strong the tradition had been of keeping the military away from partisan politics. One of the reasons why the military was the most respected institution in American society is the fact that they had a really strong nonpartisan approach. And this is pounded into the officers over and over and over again. This is what Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth and company are trying to dismantle. So, you know, we also talked about what happens if, in fact, we develop this politicized military caste that is separated from American society, that becomes alienated from American society, that has a different set of incentives, different set of values. Again, you go back to the founding of this, this country, this was something that Americans have always had suspicion about, is why we have civilian control of the military. But it's also why we have these concepts of honor and duty and loyalty. Being a good man is important in the military, that you pledge allegiance to the Constitution, not to any person, how important this is. And this is a real concern. And by the way, this is not all Donald Trump's fault. I mean, he's contributing to this in a big way. But in recent years, You've noticed that the demographics of the military have very few Americans. Let me put this way, very few Americans are going into the military. The vast majority of Americans go about their lives when we are often engaging in military action because their family members are not part of all of this. So there has been a alienation, in a sense of the military from the rest of society, which has not really been a problem right now, but it is being exploited. Okay. Christopher Wood asked this question that I think answers itself. Charlie. Why? Why the three enlistment eligible Trump children have not signed to fight in daddy's war. I'm a nobody, and my only daughter enlisted in the Navy at age 19. They, like him, will never be in uniform. He's instilled in them that there is no honor in service or duty to country. He thinks people who sacrifice for anything are losers. But he's a sociopath, though, so there is that. I'm not sure that there was a question there. I think that answers itself. Okay. Going this long without talking about the Christian Noem story, I got a text from somebody who said, I'm a little bit surprised that there's not more schadenfreude out there on social media about all of this. And my response was, just give it a while. I think. I think that people have to process whether it's true or not. I mean, this is one of those stories where if it had been published on April 1, I think I would have thought this is an April Fool's gag. And again, you know, on one level, you might think, boy, you know, maybe we should be feeling sorry for Kristi Noem. No, actually, I'm thinking somewhere there's a little puppet named. In the. There's a little puppy named Cricket who is smiling. There's a. There's a meme out there, you know, with a picture of. Of Cricket. This is the dog she shot in the face to get her job. Remember. Remember that? You know, her resume. Like Donald Trump, I will do anything. You should put me in charge of dhs or you should make me your vice presidential nominee because I am capable of anything, including shooting a little puppy in the face. And, you know, most of the civilized world was repulsed, and Trump looked at her and said, that's the kind of person I won. How has that worked out for them? Really? How has that worked out for them? In any case, Kristi Noem's husband. And again, one of the things that I think you always have to ask on these stories is, why is it a story? Where did it come from who leaked this particular story. And I don't have the, I don't have the answer to that, except there was something that was a little strange about this story, which was that Donald Trump took time out from his busy day to comment on it. So for those of you that have missed this, and again, I hope you've taken your schadenfreude vaccines on all of this, that while Kristi Noem was leading the masked brute squads of ice into places like Minneapolis and lying about the shooting deaths there, while she was spending millions of dollars making ads about, you know, with herself riding around in a big cowboy hat and a horse, that while Kristi Noem was posing in front of, of prisons in El Salvador turning their suffering into a, a photo op, while she was flying around with her boy toy, Corey Lewandowski, her husband was engaging in other activities here. The Daily Mail published details about Brian Gnome, 56, the husband of former Homeland Security Secretary Christine the report. The report included photos which I did not include in my newsletter, but included photos that Brian Gnome sent to fetish porn models online, showing him dressed as a woman with fake breasts made from balloons. You'd think he'd be a little more creative than the balloons. I mean, really. It also described explicit messages and payments of at least $25,000 sent via Cash App and PayPal. So he's into it. Spokesman for Christine Ohm said the family was blindsided by the report and that she was devastated after 34 years of marriage. Well, I'm sure that Brian was devastated about the whole Corey Lewandowski thing and probably devastated by watching how you were making these sort of, you know, porn videos of your own, but not porn videos of you dressed up in something else. But I mean, not dressed up like, like Brian was, but, but her porn videos, where they were, you know, talking about, you know, how brutal they were repelling into, into, into apartment buildings in Chicago. Maybe he was a little bit appalled by that. So then Donald Trump is asked about this. Now, keep in mind, I know we've gotten used to presidents don't have to comment on everything that happens. Now, I suppose that that seems naive in the era of Donald Trump, but. So Donald Trump is asked about this and this is what he says. They confirmed it. Wow. Well, I feel really badly for the family if that's the case. That's too bad. Trump said. And then this sentence, I haven't seen anything. I don't know anything about it. That's too bad, but I just know nothing about it. Well, then what was the wow about. So I know nothing about it. Now, this actually has fueled some speculation that maybe Trump was behind the leak of this particular story. Because one of the things that I think people fear, and again, let's leave aside the kind of the schadenfreude of Kristi Noem that we're sort of learning about, that the entire aura of misfit toys that Donald Trump has gathered around him. Among the things that I think people fear, there's more than just losing elections. There's more than just other forms of retribution. And I don't think that we've talked about this enough. There's a lot of concern if you cross Donald Trump, he's made it clear he's going to come after you and he's going to destroy you. And if he has to go after your family, he'll go after your family. Now, what does that mean? Does that mean lawsuits? Does that mean criminal indictments? Does that mean he's going to come out against you? If you're an elected official in the primaries? Yeah, all of those things are true. But also market is tapped into this vast media network and they can also smear you or share your deepest, darkest secrets. Where does this, I mean, stuff like this does not just fall from the cloud. So I don't know. But I do know that people are, when you ask, you know, why won't they stand up? What exactly are they afraid of? Are they just afraid of losing their job? Yes, some of them are. And you know, I've obviously been very, very critical of them. But there's also this darker thing like, you know, wouldn't it be a shame if we found out about your cross dressing husband? Wouldn't that be embarrassing for you? So this story is real and it is out there and it is ugly. Okay, Charlie, back to your back to your questions. Really, does do no Kings Day rallies really make a political difference? The answer is yes. And I want to keep going back to this. Now, it depends how. If you're talking about are you moving the needle will change elections? No, not necessarily. But I think it is immensely important on at least two grounds. Number one, for the people who participate and look around themselves and go, you know, I'm not alone. There are a lot of people who are like me. And I think this is tremendously important. I think it's one of the reasons why people subscribe to newsletters like mine or listen to podcasts like this is to realize that I'm not the only one who's thinking this is bullshit. This Crazy. This is scary. So I think it's very, very important because. And I think we really felt this last year, in that first year of Trump's return, that the authoritarian project was to convince you that resistance was futile. That authoritarian project was to convince you that this was unstoppable. And when people come out and they see those numbers, I think it's. It encourages. And so that is necessary. It's not sufficient. It's not the same as elections, not the same as anything else, but I think it's very, very important. It's also just as a footnote, these rallies have been dramatic refutations of the Trumpian attempt to say that, well, these are the hate America rallies, or these are. This is antifa. Now, there were a couple of incidents that occurred around the country, but these were overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations, which was immensely important. So we're talking about 8 million people that come out. And I think they're also important for one other point which may not necessarily be obvious, which is the rest of the world is watching us going, america, what the fuck? What has happened to America? And you and I, in our own way, can, you know, say, hey, just so you know, Donald Trump is not America. Donald, what Donald Trump is doing is not representative of America. We are not. Okay? This is not who we are. And I think the rest of the world is very, very skeptical when you see events like that. The rest of the world is saying, okay, there is an America under all of that, an America that is decent and that cares and that is pushing back. So I think it's important. Okay? Christopher writes, I would love for you to expand on the 10th anniversary of Trump's call into your WTMJ show. From what I remember in the before times, this. This must be Wisconsin. What I remember from the before times, the prominent Wisconsin Republicans such as Scott Walker, Paul Ryan and Ron Johnson were not enthusiastic about Trump. I even remember other Milwaukee. Prominent Milwaukee talk show hosts such as Vicky and Mark. You don't need to know that. Being against him. How did everyone but you throw away the beliefs that they held close for 30 years and start parroting anything said by Team Trump? Okay, so, yes, it is true that Ron Johnson, I think, was always kind of tempted by Trump. But, yeah, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, very, very opposed. Actually, everybody in Wisconsin was anti Trump. The reference, for those of you that aren't familiar, was 10 years ago this last weekend, Donald Trump called into my radio show. And in, In. In Wisconsin, in Wisconsin, I was conservative, you know, radio talk show host, and, and he called and I'd gotten a call from my producer the day before that that Hope Hicks was, was, was booking him. And I remember thinking, you know, they're going to spend like 10, 10 seconds on Google and I'm gonna find out. I'm a never Trump guy. He's not gonna call him. So, you know, I, I did my normal prep, but I had been, yeah, I had been telling people exactly what I thought about Donald Trump way back in 2015. I was, I was, I was never Trump from the mo. No, I was never Trump before he came down the golden escalator. And there was no secret about this whatsoever. So it's 8:30, I'm sitting there at my desk and the light goes on. And that was Donald Trump. And if you listen to the discussion, starts off very, very cordially and then becomes very, very contentious. And I basically said he was behaving like a, you know, a nine year old on the playground and he's running for the office once held by Abraham Lincoln. We went on for 17 minutes. At one point I said, do you know that I'm never Trump? And he says, no, I didn't really know that. So you can listen to that. It was really, you know, I thought it was going to be, or the Wisconsin primary was going to be a firewall for Donald Trump. It turned out to be a speed bump. Because of the phenomenon that's now become so common, one after another, people who knew who Donald Trump was, what he represented, they made their peace with that. They rationalized that they cut their deal. They made a Faustian bargain. And it was extraordinary. The other talk show hosts who shared my view of Donald Trump, I understand I was not the only anti Trump talk show host in Wisconsin. One of the reasons why he lost the Wisconsin primary badly to Ted Cruz, and Ted Cruz was not a good fit for Wisconsin. Me, he was just the non Trump option. And he beat Trump by double digits. And one of the reasons was conservative talk radio in Wisconsin was not a safe space for Donald Trump. And you kind of wonder if talk radio had gone in a different direction, if Rush Limbaugh had gone in a different direction, might our entire political history be different? But you know, Donald Trump was not popular here. But going back to the other talk show host, you know, as we've seen all of the business incentivists, you want to stay in conservative media. You had to get on board. You had to decide that this was, you were okay with this. And as time went on and you made one compromise, the next compromise became easier. And Easier and easier. And every one of those other talk show hosts became thoroughly, thoroughly Trumpified. Paul Ryan was eventually, you know, thought that he could make it, you know, cut that Faustian bargain. And we've seen what's happened with him. Scott Walker's gone pretty much full MAGA as far as, as far as I can tell. And you know, this is, this has been the story of our time. And you know, I was reflecting back on that moment, you know, for many of you who kind of remember that, that was, I mean, for me it was, it was kind of a turning point. And I have a certain cynicism about, you know, media coverage of all this. You know, I'd been this host for 20 years, I'd written nine books. And at 8:30 that morning I was this right wing, you know, political squawker who had never been interviewed by the local newspaper. I mean, they were not interested, even though I'd worked there for many years. You know, it was like, we're not ever going to even take these guys seriously. That was at 8:30. By 8:50, I was one of the deepest thinkers in American politics. Why? Because of that interview with Donald Trump. Now I hadn't changed, nothing had changed, but it was a sense of how the media will react to you differently in a different context. And I have to say that for the next 10 years, I don't think I had a single. Well, I had one kind of shitty, you know, but I was interviewed hundreds of times and never misquoted once. And people were actually interested in what I had to say, which when I was a conservative radio host, they were not. So, you know, in terms of like, like, is there a media. Yeah, there, there is one other thought. I'm sorry to go on for so long on this one. I was thinking about that 10 year anniversary and what I thought was going to happen back then. And the fact is that, you know, I, I'll be honest with you. I mean, I'm an only child, so I'm kind of used to being on my own. But for the first time in my life back then, I was part of a community, I was part of a network, I had lots of friends, we was involved in lots of organizations and networks and everything. And I just simply assumed that that was going to continue, that we were going to, you know, that the Trump thing would, would happen and that it would, would pass. What I didn't really anticipate was that, I mean, I knew we would probably be excommunicated a little bit or that we'd be exiled to a desert island, political desert island. But that was okay. That was okay. I didn't expect that it was going to be such a small desert island. So I did have this sense of loss of all the things. And I think there's a lot of people who experience that you have to understand who over the last 10 years, you've not only lost friends, family members and colleagues and all the people that used to be part of your life that have gone in a different direction, but also the disillusionment of thinking that many of the things that you thought and you believed in many of your values, watching them either be exposed or trashed. The conservative movement, which I was very much a part of, turned out not to be at all what I thought it was. And I think that if you experience that kind of disillusionment, it is painful over a long period of time. So I remember back then when people said, well, what is this like watching Donald Trump take over the Republican Party and completely trash the conservative movement? I said, well, you know, it is, it is, it is soul crushing. It is, it is disappointing. But here we are ten years later, and to say that I feel a little vindicated is putting it mildly. I wish it felt better, but there is, there is vindication. Okay, Charlie, we only have a few more minutes here. Why do the markets, why are the markets so responsive to Trump despite his reputation for lying? Boy, I think that is an excellent question. I mean, after, after the first couple of times, I said, well, maybe we're going to pull out. And people, you know, it goes up. And then he goes, yeah, never mind. And it goes down. This is one where I think that as you, as a consumer of the news, also, you know, ought not to focus in on the moment by moment commentary, pull back and realize, you know, what's, what's happening with the big picture. The market has not covered itself with, with, with, with glory. Let's see here. Okay, Charlie, this is a bit of a lighter question, not really. In the next presidential election, will the candidates be willing to state that they will erase all of the effigies to Trump, you know, eg, the ballroom, the Kennedy center, his arch. If that comes to pass, I'm hoping that it will become table stakes for candidates to state that all of this gets torn down beginning in January 2029 as a shorthand to let us know that there will be a lot of much harder work to be done to purge the rot out of our government if the candidates hem and haw about those symbols of our government. Then they worry that they are not serious. You know what? I need to think more about all of that because part of me, look, I certainly understand the, I certainly understand the impulse behind it. In fact, I saw, I think it was Miles Taylor put out a thing. We should have watch parties to watch Trump's name taken off of all the buildings. I mean, I would definitely sign up for that when they remove Trump from the Kennedy Center. So, yeah, I think the Trump's name being taken off things is definitely doable. Tearing down the big buildings. I think maybe you just like rename it, rename it like the, I don't know, Nelson Mandela Ballroom or something. I'm just spitballing, try to find what would the name be? The Michelle Obama Ballroom. Just something like that. You know, one will hope that the, you know, Congress and, and the courts will do something. I have, you know, my, my confidence in Congress is slim enough. And by the way, this ruling about the ballroom from, from Judge Leon, you know, it says that, you know, that, hey, you, you know, you do need congressional approval. I mean, imagine that, that Congress has a role to play in all of this because it's kind of good to be reminded about it. You know, watching the, the zombies of the, of the Republican Congress basically say, you know, what we, what, what me worry. I mean, you just imagine if the, you know, founders of the Constitution had found something for Congress to do. I don't know, maybe if they even wrote like one article, maybe even call it Article 1, that in fact we do have a Congress and it ought to play some particular role. And again, sometimes the obvious needs to be restated. We have gone through this entire fiasco of the war of whim and where has Congress been not merely in authorizing the war, but in any sort of oversight. There is a reason why the powers of Congress are in Article 1 and the presidency is an article too. And I remember talking to somebody who was it. It was, it was maybe somebody from when, when Paul Ryan was Speaker of the House and Donald Trump, I'm not sure, maybe he had been already elected. He probably had already been elected president. And so they were trying to just brief him about some, you know, the constitutional separation of powers or something. And the person came out of the meeting and said, you know, he has no idea. He has no concept of Article 1. He has no concept. And by the way, here we are basically 10 years on and he still has no idea. And I'm hoping that as we're talking right now, Donald Trump is sitting in the Supreme Court and The justices of the Supreme Court know that he's there. I hope that it dawns on them that Donald Trump is probably, I'm not going to say he's the first man to be president who does not understand the Constitution, because I think there's a lot of others who might be in that category, but I hope they understand that Donald Trump represents something that was beyond the worst nightmare of the people who actually wrote that Constitution. A couple of other questions here. Why a Trump library when he's apparently never read a book that answers itself? Charlie, could you comment on Lindsey Graham's weird solo Disney visit it? Okay, do not misunderstand me when I say I do not care because, you know, I'm the guy that that's called, you know, Lindsey Graham, Donald Trump's fluffer. Look it up. If you don't know what that reference is, it's pretty hardcore. It's literally hardcore. And I think that, I think that Lindsey Graham is going through a number of things. I think the guy, it feels like when watching somebody having a nervous breakdown, you know, his incident in Europe, you know, comparing taking Carg island to Iwo Jima. So I have never missed an opportunity to take a cheap shot or a legitimate shot at Lindsey Graham, who deserves everything. On the other hand, the visit to Disney. I'm sorry, others on the profiting. Okay, Charlie, is there any way to undo many of the corrupt pardons from the Trump administration? Okay, this is a really interesting question because again, this is a slightly undercover hybrid story. And by the way, the New York Times, the editorial board did a masterful job, did a flagrant act of journalism. They went through all of the January 6th rioter pardons and all of the people who are now still committing more crimes. Now, a lot of those folks have taken that pardon, put it in their pocket and gone out on a crime spree. It is amazing. There appears to be no secret of the fact that Donald Trump is essentially selling pardons, that if you're a rich person, no matter who you have ripped off in screwed over, if you pay off the right people, Donald Trump will give you a get out of jail free card. The corruption is at a criminal level, and yet this is one of the unchecked powers of the presidency. And I am willing to be corrected on this, but I don't see any way that you're going to be able to reverse that. Now, if a governor sells a pardon, they will go to jail. I believe the governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, went to jail for trying to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat. Donald Trump is doing something like that almost every day. And by the way, one of the pardons, in terms of irony being dead, Donald Trump pardoned Rod Blagojevich for trying to sell the Senate seat. Is Donald Trump ever going to be held accountable for that? Well, this is the ugliness of that Supreme Court ruling on immunity. It's also the most fundamental error that the founding Fathers made, which was to entrust this almost unchecked power to pardon to a president. There were warnings at the time about how it could be abused, what it would mean if in fact that the president could create an entire criminal enterprise around himself by promising that no matter what laws you break, I will pardon you. So is there any way to fix that? I hope the answer is yes. I suspect it is no. But I am way open to any information about statutory changes. Otherwise, will we amend the Constitution? It is possible that the corruption will be so egregious that maybe there will someday be a constitutional amendment. I am skeptical about it because we've seen this in the past. People go, okay, we shouldn't have a president who serves more than two terms. Let's have a constitutional amendment. We shouldn't allow, you know, we're worried about a president who is incapacitated. So we have the 25th Amendment. So again, this is one of the dangers, this is one of the reasons why it was such an act of recklessness for the voters and the Republican Party, but the voters to put Donald Trump back into power. Okay, a couple of questions about the 25th Amendment. It's not going to happen. Really? Seriously, 25th Amendment requires members of the Cabinet to turn against Donald Trump. Have you seen this Cabinet? Do you see who they are? Do you think that there's any chance that those people are ever going to turn on Donald Trump? And if he does, he'll just simply fire them from the cabinet. So it's a complete dead letter. So just stop, don't waste any time on the 25th. As far as cognitive decline, a couple of you wanted me to comment on Donald Trump's cognitive decline. I actually was struck listening to my conversation with Donald Trump from 10 years ago, how much better he sounded back then than he sounds now. There's no question that there's something going on with Donald Trump. However, I'm beginning to lean more on the cognitive decline from the 70 year old, 79 year old man is probably not the worst thing to worry about. Maybe we ought to worry about the fact that he's insane, that maybe he is insane. Jonathan Rauch, who was on this podcast a few days ago, describes the US Government as psychotic. Now, psychotic is different from Alzheimer's. It means that we're dealing with something that's potentially more dangerous and more malevolent. And I do think that when you watch Donald Trump, there are moments of where clearly he's aware of exactly what he's doing. He is conscious of what he is saying and what his decisions are doing. But they are insane. They are crazy. And so I toss that out that we've spent maybe more energy on the cognitive decline than on the absolute insanity. And I apologize once again for not being able to get to all of your questions, but we'll keep doing this. And again, if you want more of this commentary, please consider going to Substack subscribing to to the Contrary. A quick reminder that people who subscribe to to the Contrary, they get the. They get the podcast and they get the YouTube videos without any ads. So again, go to to the Contrary on Substack Considered. Consider subscribing. By the way, it is. It is free. There is no paywall. But. But if you want to support my work, there is the option of becoming a paid subscriber. And none of these substacks exist without people willing to be paid subscribers. But you don't have to, because you cannot defend democracy from behind a pay wall. And once again, thank you so much for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. We do this because, and this is our prime direct, this is our prime mission to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. Thank you.