Anthony (4:29)

And he called them weaklings.

Ron (4:31)

Weaklings, stupid.

Anthony (4:33)

So he's basically turned on his own base over this without realizing how important this is to them. This is part of the reason why they elected him is because they wanted all this stuff out.

Ron (4:46)

And the absurdity of his comments to them were not only did he call them stupid and weaklings, he said the reason why they are stupid and weak is because they're being suckered by Democrats. Meanwhile, these people know better. Like Democrats. When this all first broke last week, I mean, Democrats who don't follow MAGA closely, we're sort, I think we're sort of taken aback and mystified. So is the media. I mean, it's been sort of funny to watch mainstream media and Democratic politicians sort of take a crash course on this subject over the last week, you know, because I think a lot of them, they didn't see this coming either. I saw it. We've been talking about this building for weeks, for months, really. But they, I think a lot of them were sort of caught off guard. So. So the absurdity of Trump to say it's, this is all the Democrats who are behind the Democrats had nothing to do with this. The media had nothing to do with this. This was completely 100% generated by right Wing podcasters and influencers.

Anthony (5:51)

And as you say, you know, people like Pam Bondi are so inexperienced with handling the bass and knowing what to say and she made that mistake of saying it' my desk and I'm gonna get to it. I don't think she realized what she was biting off there. And you know, Trump then gives her all the support. He loves her because she's blonde and good looking and to him that's, you know, the, that's the requirement for being a good attorney general. And, and also Florida, and she's from Florida. I'm gonna, I'm gonna read the tweet that he posted or the, the truth that he posted, which is the untruth that he posted on Truth Social. That kind of really leans into his base. The radical left Democrats have hit pay dirt again. Just like with the fake and fully discredited Steele Dossier, the lying 51 intelligence agents, the laptop from hell which the Dems swore had come from Russia. No, it came from Hunter Biden's bathroom. And even Russia, Russia, Russia scam itself. A totally fake and made up story used in order to hide crooked Hillary Clinton's big loss in the 2016 presidential election. These scams and hoaxes are all the Democrats are good at. It's all they have. And there's no good. They are no good at governing, no good at policy, no good at picking winning candidates. Also unlike Republicans, they stick together like glue. Their new scam is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax. And my past supporters have brought in have bought into this bullshit hook, line and sinker. They haven't learned their lesson and probably never will in even after being conned by the lunatic left for eight long years. I've had more success in six months than perhaps any president in our country's history. And all these people want to talk about with strong prodding by the fake news and the success starved Dems is the Jeffrey Epstein hoax. Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work. Don't even think about talking of our own, of our, of our incredible and unprecedented success because I don't want their support anymore. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Make America great again. I mean this is. Should we look at the timestamp? Was that a middle of the night job? Because you know, he is famous.

Ron (8:06)

Oh, I don't, I don't even remember. No, that was early this morning.

Anthony (8:10)

That was early this morning. I mean he, you know, any psychiatrist would look at that rant, whether it be, you know, verbally spoken as I read it or whether it be him typing it. I have a feeling he might have dictated that because, you know, there's no capital letters and the punctuation's quite good. So I guess that was a dictation. But, you know, this is the rantings of a madman run.

Ron (8:35)

You know, and the people who he's calling stupid weaklings who are being, who are being taken advantage of and doing the bidding of the Democrats are Charlie Kirk, Laura Loomer, you know, Ben Shapiro, Alex Jones, all his allies, all of his biggest supporters and influencers online. Donald Trump Jr. Was the one saying this.

Anthony (8:54)

Right.

Ron (8:55)

Although he's gone, of course, surprisingly silent. Not surprisingly, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, we could go on and on and on. These are the ones who have been pushing this. This has nothing to do with the media. That, that is what this is. And they know this because they're gullible, but they're, they're not stupid. A lot of these people, you know, they, they know, they know for sure. This did not. This was not pushed on them by cnn. This was not pushed on them by the woke left. It was not pushed on them by me. Now, now, yes, we are fanning the flames. We are throwing gasoline on the fire. Don't get me wrong. I mean, I'm always in there doing that because all those people that I just mentioned, they all follow me on social media, the, all the influencers on the right. And so I love sort of pouring gasoline on their fire. So, sure, we're antagonizing it and the press is sort of antagonizing it by starting to ask Trump about it, which is nice, and that's getting him aggravated. But prior to this week, there were zero Democrats talking about this. It was all his own supporters. So, you know, again, like, it was kind of weird because last night a lot of them were posting like, I think Trump is saying that we're stupid. Is Trump calling us stupid? They were sort of puzzled. And then this morning he just came right out and said, you're stupid.

Anthony (10:18)

Yep, yep. Alex Jones isn't happy about it either. Let's see how he reacts.

Alex Jones (10:23)

I'm getting really concerned here at this point because the flip flopping and the 180 and then going back and going back is just the biggest train wreck I've ever seen. And it's not in character for you to be acting like this. So we want your agenda to succeed. I've done deep research ever saw you involved with FTSTE criminal activity. So why are you acting like this. You made a deal with the establishment to leave you alone. Have they rolled over U. S. Intelligence we know is involved, Mossad, CIA, MI6, we already know that. But instead you just continue to say nothing to see here. Move along though. Go ahead and release information. But there's no information. Release contradiction. The contradiction. Flip flopping, flip flopping. 180s on 180s on 180s. Jesus, I'm on a roller coaster here. And then, oh, it's only fake. News is concerned. Oh, like MTG and Tucker Carlson and myself and Joe Rogan and the American people. This is something that finally got our attention. People finally woke up to this. People finally understand, you know, a window in the deep state with all this. And so you signing on to this and flip flopping is just self harming. I mean, please, President Trump, stop. If you want it to go away, just be quiet. It's like there's a gun to his head saying, you better come out and say none of this exists or we'll release it. It's bad, it's getting worse by the minute. And I support you, but we built the movement you wrote in on. You're not the movement. You just surfed in on it. And I'm telling you, man, the Democrats we know are pure evil. My God, they promote pedophilia and everything openly. So why the hell are you acting like this? Please stop now.

Anthony (12:00)

It's so interesting seeing them. It's like lord of the flies, isn't it? They're kind of, you know, they're just turning on each other. They'll be eating each other at this rate. Do you think that? You know, because obviously we're always looking idealistically for this movement to implode of its own accord without having to be helped. Do you think that this is the start? Are the cracks in the pavement beginning to appear?

Ron (12:28)

Yeah, you know, I, I always hear from Democrats when this sort of stuff happens, like they'll always come back to Trump, they'll always stand by Trump. And it's like, yeah, I mean, like there is that 30 per 30. I think the polls now showed that 36% of the of Republicans think that Trump is handling Epstein. Well, that's pretty much like your hardcore Trump cultist. So, yeah, so yeah, you're right. Those people are probably very few of them are ever going to abandon Trump. But there's another 64% in there that that could and, and could tune him out. Stop listening to him, especially when he tells him to show up for the midterms. But you know, there's also two interesting things in Alex's statement that he made right there that I found interesting. And, and they're, and they're, they're typical of what you hear. First is you, you see there, he's trying to rationalize why Trump is not, why Trump is blocking these files. And he doesn't want to say it's because there's incriminating things in there about Trump. He can't say that. Right. He doesn't want us, he won't cross that line. So what he's saying is that there are some deep state actors that have made some kind of sinister deal or put pressure on Trump that is causing him to behave this way. So they still, magus still will not cross the line into saying that the reason why he won't let this out is because he's in them. Okay, they won't do that. It won't go that far. They're trying to find other ways to justify this. That's number one. Number two, where he talked about, you know, the movement control made you, you didn't make the movement. See, I have, this is interesting because this is something I have always said for many years upon studying, being a student of maga, going to their rallies, talking to the people, watching their podcasts. I have always said that I believe this is a bottom up movement more than a top down movement.

Anthony (14:27)

Yeah.

Ron (14:27)

That they, the influence always more controlled Trump more than Trump controls them. They're sort of like a wild animal. Now. He can sort of point them in the right direction or nudge them certain ways or move them, move the needle a little bit here and there, but for the most part, this is a monster that, that he, he, he got on the, the tiger's back and he doesn't always control the tiger.

Anthony (14:53)

I also feel like he's run out of energy to fight this stuff because all he wanted was to win the election at whatever cost so he didn't get put in jail. Right. With all those indictments and all of those legal cases against him, he had to win the election. And so that is now done. Right. He's got the presidency, he's redecorated the Oval Office, he's sitting comfortable. This is why he's spending two thirds of his time playing golf. Because as far as he's concerned, he got over the line. He can't run again. Although, you know, we'll see how that plays out. But from his perspective, it's done from the Project 2025 perspective, a lot of that has been Done. You know, they've managed to sign off on a lot of that stuff within the first 100 days as they had planned to militarizing the, you know, the National Guard or, sorry, federalizing the National Guard and all of this stuff. You know, it's all happened. It's all happening. They've got the money to build this immigration army, this $150 billion, all of this crazy stuff, and of course, the tax cuts, most importantly. So really, he's kind of done now. I don't really see what he's sticking around for. He has no interest in Ukraine. He just wants out.

Ron (16:13)

He said that in with the post that you read. You know, he said, I've accomplished more in six months. I mean, that's what he's talking about. He's talking about all the things that you just said that he, He' basically saying, like all these things I really wanted to accomplish are pretty much done. Yeah. And, and, and you're right. So it is inconceivable that before the election he would have ever said anything like that to his people. Right. So you're right. And how much does Trump really care about the midterms? I think he only cares about the midterms in terms of he wants to make sure that the House doesn't fall to Democrats because that's going to lead to, like, tons of oversight hearings and investigations into his administration, and it will really make his life hell the last two years. So I think he's definitely trying to avoid that. He wants Mike Johnson to be running the show and running cover for him on all of his different scams, whether it's crypto or anything else. So I think that he cares about it to that extent. But as far as like really caring that much, as much as he cared about getting himself elected, no. So this is a problem right now for rank and file elected Republicans in Congress who need these people that Trump is pissing off to show up in 2026 when he's not on the ballot, when they are very pissed off. So the biggest loser in all this is honestly not going to be Donald Trump. It's going to be Republicans in Congress.

Anthony (17:45)

Just as an aside, I mean, there's a chance that he's not very well. I mean, he looks like shit half the time. And there was this photograph that was posted of his hand. And if you zoom in as they, as the, as the media did, this is before departing to Pittsburgh, Trump spoke with the reporters, then TV pooler zoomed in on his hand. Now, I had a really good. Look at this photograph. To me, that is where he's had a lining on his hand that. The shape of that is the. Is the kind of sticker that goes over the, The. The line when they put it in to either give you medication. I mean, it wouldn't be to draw blood. It would be to give you medication or give you something to get a line into the vein. But it's been covered in thick makeup, and that's what the color difference is there. That's. That's makeup on top of a probably a very bruised hand, where it's. He's flesh, I think they call it, where it's tissued, where effectively, you know, it goes black. Do you think that's the case?

Ron (18:52)

Yeah. So we started noticing this about a year ago. Yeah, during the middle of the campaign when not the makeup, but very discolored, you know, black and blue. Looked like bruising on his hands a lot. From time, you know, time to time wasn't constant, but it was here and there. It would show up. And, you know, a politician can't hide that. He can't wear gloves. I mean, it's very difficult for him to hide. And so people kept catching that, blowing it up. And. And of course, did the media ever ask about it? No, as the media ever asked. So this is, you know, this is my big. We're all out here speculating. I posted that online, got, I don't know, 2, 000 replies last night from all kinds of doctors and emergency room people and specialists all weighing in on various medical theories. But, you know, there could be any number of things. You can read the replies under my post, and there's about 50 doctors in there weighing in. Right. But the point, My point is, what about the press? The press sees this. They're in the same room with him.

Anthony (19:52)

Yes.

Ron (19:53)

How is it possible with all this stuff that we've heard from the media about Joe Biden and his cognitive ability and them scrutinizing his shoes and his walk and everything else? How is it that not one reporter has ever asked him about what's going on with his hand? You know, what is that? What. What is going on there? And I, I know one time he tried to offer an explanation that it was from shaking hands. Or maybe Caroline Levitt said that. Come on, man, we're not stupid. We can see that this is not from handshakes. This is. This is right where the vein is on your hand. So what's going on? Is he getting medical treatment? What is it for? What is it but you know, I guess like the media is like afraid to ask him that question. I don't know.

Anthony (20:38)

Well, you just answered the question. They are afraid. And the reason that they were able to criticize Joe Biden is because Joe Biden wasn't a dictator and wouldn't have banned them from the press room if they asked a question like that. And I think that's the difference, isn't it, that what we're dealing with here is an autocrat and somebody who, to the media certainly, and most of the media, let's remember that press pool now is 90% made up of right wing and far right publications. There's a few mainstream operators in there. But so he's controlling the narrative. He's hand choosing who's going to be in the press pool. And invariably there are people that are not going to ask these types of questions. You know, this is what an authoritarian dictator does. They control the media narrative. And so it's of no surprise to me certainly as to why no one is asking these questions. And it's just, you know, I was getting very, I was thinking about Jake Tapper this morning as I was driving my kids, and I was just thinking, it makes me so angry that, you know, he's focusing in, on, on, on Biden writing, you know, making money, writing a book on Biden. And I wanted to say to him, what does, what did Biden ever do to this country that you have such a problem with? That he, he's, his mental health was such an issue, according to you, that, you know, America under Joe Biden maintained its standing in the world, was economically sound, was, you know, on the up and up. So why would you go for that when you've got this guy who is literally about to set fire to the whole world or has set fire to the whole world in terms of tariffs and acts of war? I mean, it's so frustrating that members of the media are just on the wrong side of history over this stuff.

Ron (22:28)

Yeah, I mean, like, look, I, I said throughout the campaign that I thought that when Joe Biden was running that, you know, he, he was losing the step. You know, he was, didn't have it completely like he did three, four years ago. You know, he's slurring his words a little more, he's getting older, he's showing signs of age. But Trump equally was doing it, if not worse.

Anthony (22:49)

Yeah.

Ron (22:50)

And we documented that, we showed all the gaffes, all the mistakes, all the mispronunciations. But the difference between the two is Biden was showing the natural signs of being 80 years old. TRUMP was showing the natural signs of being three years younger than that. But at the same time, a malevolence and a. An insanity and a narcissism and a malignancy that makes the cognitive decline 10 times worse and more dangerous. And so why, yes, why Jake Tapper would focus on, you know, an outgoing retired president who, Who. Yes, he. He was showing signs of age, but not in a malicious, vindictive, mean way.

Anthony (23:39)

He brought us out of COVID for goodness sake. He regrew the economy and. And nothing. And it's like, it just, you know, but I've come to the conclusion that there are just people in this world who are just really terrible, terrible, terrible people. And, you know, and Tapper, for me, I just don't get it with that guy.

Ron (23:59)

Anyway, like, how many segments has Tapper done on Donald Trump's gaffes, his mistakes, his constant getting names wrong and countries wrong and, and people wrong and dates wrong and places wrong. I mean, it happens every single day.

Anthony (24:14)

But it's also intentional lying from Donald Trump. You know, Biden was not a lot. Not a liar. He might have got someone's name wrong and then corrected himself, but he was.

Ron (24:25)

Not a serial liar.

Anthony (24:27)

He wasn't a serial liar. He wasn't misleading anybody. And the thing is, you know, we all have.

Ron (24:32)

He wasn't out there Saying gas is $90 a gallon.

Anthony (24:35)

Exactly. Completely different type of human being. You know, one is a lifelong public servant, public defender, vice president, senator, all of these things. And the other is a used car salesman. I mean, pick. Pick your favorite. Let's just look at Mike Johnson for a second. You mentioned him earlier as doing Trump's bidding. It's gone to a whole new level now where Johnson is. It's like they've run out of things to kind of prop Trump up with, so now they're going to the. To the divine. Let's take a look.

Ron (25:08)

Social media platforms removed his ability to communicate with his supporters. Armed FBI agents raided his home. Democrat judges and prosecutors bent the law to arrest him. And multiple assassins tried to try to kill him. But God miraculously spared the president's life. I think it's undeniable. And he did it for an obvious purpose. And his presidency and his life are the fruits of divine providence. And he points that out obviously now all the time, and he's right to do so, as President. Trump has lived since with the acknowledgement every day since. He has acknowledged that each new day isn't guaranteed to us.

Anthony (25:44)

It isn't to any of us.

Ron (25:46)

And that's why we're not wasting any time. It's why he remains so strong and resilient. It's why we have such a sense of urgency. President Trump took a bullet to his head. He got up shortly thereafter. He pleaded with the crowd to fight, and then he went on to win a historic election Less than four months later. America's changed because he survived that day.

Anthony (26:07)

Took a bullet to his head.

Ron (26:08)

Took a bullet to his head.

Anthony (26:10)

Yeah.

Ron (26:10)

Just like John Kennedy, right? Yeah. Totally ridiculous. You know, I mean, first of all, there's a lot of makeup in that picture right there between the three of them. Jimmy Petronas, Florida congressman on the left, who took over Matt Gaetz's spot in Congress. Scalise on the right, all three of them, like caked in makeup, just like a blow dried out, you know, Unbelievable. Anyway, you know, alpha males, right?

Anthony (26:33)

So.

Ron (26:34)

But, you know, this is just, this is. We hear this constantly. They're putting this out from the White House constantly from the White House faith office. We hear this at the Trump rallies. We have for months about how this is God's, you know, God, savior. Right. You know, we've heard this, that, that God intervened and, and because what they're saying to their people, to their cult, is God wants Donald Trump to be president and he saved him to do what he's doing right now. Therefore, if you oppose Trump and if you disagree with Trump, you are disagreeing with God, you're opposing God, you're going against Jesus.

Anthony (27:15)

Yeah.

Ron (27:15)

And that's a sin. Right? This is the message that they're saying. As if, like, I mean, some random nuts, young kid, Republican went out there and wanted to be famous and go out in a blaze of glory and took a shot at the president. Kill presidential candidate, killed a firefighter.

Anthony (27:34)

Yes.

Ron (27:35)

And so it's just a random, senseless act that hap. That, like, happens in our country almost daily. Some fool, some clown does a random, senseless act to try and be famous. And this happens all the time. It's not God. It's just people being nuts and they are turning this into some sort of biblical prophecy that he's like the Messiah, as if God wanted the firefighter to die instead of Trump. That's what they're saying. It's just, it's gross. It's disgusting. And the fact that pastors and faith leaders and the speaker of the House is putting this crap out there to people and they believe it, it's just gross. I mean, me as a, as a Christian, I find it deeply offensive and disgusting.

Anthony (28:20)

It's also to anybody who has access to critical thought, it's so obviously fraudulent, the stuff that they're saying. You know, it's like obviously people, you can call it different things, critical thinking, a great radar or detector. It's just total garbage, gibberish. And yet, you know, they say it with a straight face, with the makeup on, this very kind of earnest version. And people buy into that. And you know, for those of us who live in reality, it's not just him, obviously. Everything that Trump says, we've become so used to translating the bullshit and knowing that it's just lie after lie after lie. And Trump is able to do this because he has people like Mike Johnson and Caroline Levitt. I mean, did you notice when he walked out with Caroline Levitt to do this, this kind of presser, this impromptu presser under the sound of a helicopter, he, he kind of pointed to Levitt and he goes, here's our star. And I was thinking, you know, this is, this is just Trump all over. He needs these people who look the part. Central casting. It's all he cares about, the visual. You know, Caroline Levitt can barely string a sentence together. She's so obviously lying all the time, covering for him, and yet to him, because she's good looking and she's got blonde hair and she, you know, wears dresses. Well, it's like him, it's perfect.

Ron (29:49)

And praises him as if he praises God, like figure. Yeah, I mean, that's all. Yeah. I mean, you look at his cabinet, Christy Gnome, Pete Hegseth, you know, it's the transportation guy, Duffy. I mean, they're all like these blow dried makeup, you know, surgically.

Donald Trump (30:06)

Right.

Ron (30:06)

Formed faces, you know, they, they all, they all sort of look, but that's.

Anthony (30:11)

What'S important to him. And when, you know, I just made a video about eugenics and I showed this clip of, of Trump kind of referring to, was it. That's right, the rich people in the room. It was at the fate, it was at the faith luncheon. And he goes, you know, it was just awful what he was saying about how, you know, these rich ugly men have got these good looking wives and if he didn't pass the tax bill, they would leave, you know, the men because they wouldn't last three weeks. And he was just saying, you know, look at you good looking people, you know, you're so good looking. And I just like, man, you know, this obsession with being white, being wealthy, being male and being, you know, and just this kind of eugenicist view of America from these white supremacists. This is underpins everything that we are experiencing.

Ron (30:59)

But one thing you'll notice is the people who, when he really in positions that he really wants like them to do things.

Anthony (31:07)

Yeah.

Ron (31:07)

Like actually do the dirty work. He will wave those like Stephen Miller, you know, or Russ Vaugh. He'll, he'll, he doesn't care what they look like. You know, like his lawyers, his accountants. He doesn't care what they look like. The ones who he, you know, when he, he, there's certain things he really wants done. He will get, you know, the worst possible ruthless people to do it. But like things like dhs, Secretary of Education, you know, all those kind of Secretary of Defense even he doesn't really care about those positions.

Anthony (31:39)

No.

Ron (31:40)

So those are the ones he puts the Fox.

Anthony (31:43)

It's a production, the whole thing is a, is a production secretary. Right. And so you have your leading actors at the top. You know, you have Trump starring Donald Trump featuring Pete Hegseth. And you know, so you have these kind of.

Ron (31:56)

But the producers behind the producers.

Anthony (31:59)

Right.

Ron (31:59)

They don't even behind the scenes don't have to fit central casting.

Anthony (32:03)

They can make more money with a flop than a hit run. You see, this is, this is where it's coming from. I want to talk about the, you mentioned earlier about the midterms and Trump not really caring. But the, and I agree with that. But I also recognize that there is an awful lot of voter suppression work going on behind the scenes to make this work. And one controversy which I also made a film about about the other day is, is Texas redistricting and actually taking advantage of the floods to kind of push through legislation at the same time as as supposedly bringing in changes for early warning systems and everything else. So they're crowbarring in legislation that didn't pass previously in a, in a big beautiful bill as they might, as they might call it. Can you just explain this to me? Because this is again is about, it's again, it's a kind of racist move. It's about drawing the brown, the brown and black people out of the district so that they hopefully get more votes from white people.

Ron (33:04)

Yeah. So I mean we do our census every 10 years. Right. And that's when it's decided who gets how many House seats. And some states gain some and some states lose some and so they have to redraw the district lines. And so it happens once every 10 years. It happens usually the year after the census and it happened in Texas and every other state in 2021.

Anthony (33:27)

Yeah.

Ron (33:29)

But now, yeah, Abbott, what Abbott wants to do is go back mid, mid decade and redraw it again to try and get rid of some of the Democrats in some of these seats. And you know, this is a, this is a two edged sword because what he wants to do is he wants to take some Republicans and move them, you know, slices of them and move them into Democratic districts to sort of give Republican challengers a little bit more of an advantage. But at the same time, while doing that, he's going to weaken some safe Republican seats if he, if he goes ahead with this, in this survives court challenges and all of that. So this is a very dangerous move by his part because it will pay off if it's a, if it's a Republican year, if it's a good Republican year next year electorally, like the economy's doing well. Everything Trump said was going to happen, happened. Inflation is down, unemployment's down, economic growth is up and it's a Republican year. This will benefit them tremendously if they pull this off, off. If it's not, if it's a, it's, it's a blue wave year, this could backfire on them spectacularly because they could lose a lot of those seats that are currently held by Republicans that, where they're moving Republican voters out of them into Democratic districts. So and the other problem you have, in addition to legal challenges and all that, you have two other problems. Number one is Hakeem Jeffries and DNC Chair Ken Martin are telling Democrats in the Texas legislature do not show up for the special session on this because they have to have a quorum. They have to have a certain number of people show up. The other issue is there's a lot of moderate Republicans in Texas who do not want to do this. So you have Democrats who don't want to do it, you have some moderate Republicans. So it's very unclear whether Abbott is even going to be able to pull this off. Okay. But it's also a law that if a governor calls us, Texas has some quirky laws. If the governor calls a special session, you have to show up as a legislature by, as a legislator, by law. And we have seen in the past Democrats try to boycott these special sessions. And, and we've seen him send out state patrol, state officers to drag them in and arrest them or threaten them with arrests.

Anthony (35:59)

And that's what they're doing now again here.

Ron (36:00)

Right Problem where now you have people like Gavin Newsom in states like California. We're saying, okay, if you're going to do that, then we're going to do it too. You could have Democratic states retaliating. And so this could end up being a complete mess, all caused by Donald Trump, who is directing this behind the scenes, and Greg Abbott.

Anthony (36:23)

Let's look at this post by Ken Paxton, who is issuing this threat to Democrats who are, you know, threatening to boycott this. He basically says if Democrats ignore their duty to their constituents by breaking quorum, they should be found and arrested no matter where they go. The people of Texas elected them to do a job, not run away and hide like cowards. Lawmakers must answer the special session call and pass the important priorities that the governor has put forward. My office stands ready to assist local, state and federal authorities in hunting down and compelling the attendance of anyone who abandons their office and their constituents for cheap political theater. I mean, it's interesting how they kind of turn it on on its head because the cheap political theater is the fact that they're even calling this in the first place. They shouldn't even be allowed to do this at this point, as you say in, you know, this mid cycle, this mid cycle vote. So I don't know, I just feel like maybe Republicans a little overconfident about Donald Trump's popularity and are trying to kind of shore up the midterms and as you say, it might backfire.

Ron (37:37)

Yeah, they're worried. They're very worried about the midterms. They don't want to lose the House. And so they're gonna, like, like we've talked about, they're not gonna cancel elections. I hear Democrats. Oh, you're gonna cancel the election? No, they're going to try and rig it in a lot of ways like this.

Anthony (37:52)

Yes.

Ron (37:53)

Through sinister, different ways. You know, cleansing the voter rolls, voter suppression tactics. That's what they're gonna do.

Anthony (38:00)

Yeah.

Ron (38:01)

And, and this is unprecedented. I don't know that this has ever happened before. And you know where any state has tried mid decade to redraw their lines, unless it was ordered by a court where their original lines were illegal under, like the Civil Rights Act.

Anthony (38:17)

Sure.

Ron (38:17)

The Voting Rights Act. Then, then, okay, then it's happened on a few rare occasions, but never have we had like a governor go, we want more seats. And Trump flat out said, we are doing this because we think we can add five more seats in Texas if we, if we draw these lines very strategically. Well, they could have done that in 2021 when they drew them back then, but they didn't. So now what they're doing is they're looking at the new map and they're going, okay, we think we can move this county or this neighborhood into this district and we can wrangle five more seats. Well, you got 49 other states out there that theoretically could do the exact same thing. They could do it every single year. This could lead to complete chaos where, you know, Republican states, Democratic states are retaliating and redrawing lines constantly and nobody knows what district they represent. And Democrats damn well better do that. Now, I know in California it's a problem because California has an independent bipartisan commission that draws the line. And you know, so, and that was done passed by voter referendum. So in theory, if California, if Newsom wants to retaliate, as he said he, he would do, I think they would have to repeal that referendum. They would have to have like a special election really quick to repeal that. So it just leads us, I mean, New York could do the same thing. So much chaos this is going to cause and it's just disgusting. There's no reason to do this. There's no policy or constitutional region. It is just a naked power grab by.

Anthony (39:52)

Yeah, it's fraud. It's fraud and corruption. And Trump says the quiet parts out loud. Here's the clip on Texas.

Donald Trump (40:00)

How many more seats do you want the Republicans to draw? 5. And then what if California, New York, Illinois and other blue states? 2, but 5 as it we get 5. And there could be some other states, we're going to get another three or four or five. In addition, Texas would be the biggest one.

Ron (40:20)

Are you calling them for a complete.

Donald Trump (40:21)

Redrawing of the congressional map? Just a very simple redrawing. We pick up five seats. We have a couple of other states where we'll pick up seats. Also.

Anthony (40:33)

This is like when you try and get grandpa to kind of keep a secret. You know, it's like he's, he's been told like off the record, behind the scenes meeting that, you know, that they might get five seats out of it. But this is, and because, you know, he's in front of the cameras and he's asked the question, I mean, I would have thought that they'd want to play this down and, and you know, five seats might appear by magic, but they're just going for it. They're not even, they're not even hiding what they're doing now.

Ron (40:59)

So, I mean, look at this like an athletic contest. All right, So a football game, a baseball game, soccer game, whatever, basketball game. So if you want to win the game next year, win the championship next year. There are, I guess there's two approaches you could take. You could train harder, train smarter, work harder, lift more weights, run more, practice more, you know, put a better team on the field, or you can change the rules, you know, and so you can, you can rig the game. And so rather than like, hey, we're going to field strong candidates, better candidates, we're going to have a great message. We're going to sell success to the voters and we're going to flip these seats. It's no, we're not confident that we're going to be able to do any of that. So we need to rig it. We need to, we need to start redrawing lines and monkeying around with the districts mid decade. And, and you're, and you notice what he said? Well, Texas is the biggest one that'll give us the most seats, but there's still two or three other states that we're looking at that we want to do that. Keep an eye on Florida, by the way, which is they've already gerrymandered the hell. Ron DeSantis already gerrymandered the hell out of Florida, which cost Democrats probably three seats in the last, last election because of DeSantis monkeying around with the districts. And you also have the other problem that, you know, Democrats are so goddamn old and they keep dying in office. You know, we have three, three that have died in office in the last six months. Yeah, we just filled one with this, with the special election. But, you know, we've been down votes and we still, we still have the most members over 80, so. And they won't leave. So, you know, we have multiple problems here. We have people that keep dying in office, and we have Republicans that keep drawing the lines.

Anthony (42:44)

Dianne Feinstein was coming to work even after she died, as far as I can remember. Let's take a look at what Jasmine Crockett had to say about this, because, you know, there is a serious side to this, which, again, is the marginalization of the black and brown communities. It's been going on for decades. And she kind of explains it very well. Happen if they gerrymander.

Ron (43:05)

Can you talk on that? Thank you.

Kristine Dahl (43:07)

Yeah.

FEMA Official (43:07)

So first of all, it hasn't quite been said clearly that Texas has always been found to be intentionally discriminatory. And so I want y' all to understand the makeup of my state. The state is a majority minority state. And what this legislature historically has done is what they plan to do again is to dilute the voices of people of color. In order to make sure that they can get to where they're trying to go. We saw this Department of Justice decided to put out a letter and what did they do? We only have four seats that are represented by black folk, where the vast majority of the people that get to decide who they have represent them are black. They decided to attack three of the four seats that we have in the state. They decided to go after a Latina. They are specifically deciding to splinter the communities of common interest as well as just blatantly say we are going to dilute minority voices. So we know that the courts, ever since we've had a Voting Rights act, have always found this state to be intentionally discriminatory. That is what they are going to do. So I need people of color to understand that the scheme of the Republicans has consistently been to make sure that they mute our voices so that they can go ahead and have an oversized say in this. So I fully anticipate that's exactly where they're going with this map. It's the only way to do it. We didn't understand how we got to the map that they gave us last year time because that state was grown by 95% people of color. They went out of their way to make sure that we got zero new seats for people of color. So that's exactly what they're going to do this time.

Anthony (44:56)

It's a theme of this administration to erase and eradicate people of color from society. And there's more and more evidence of that all the time. Not least the, the indiscriminate abducting and snatching of, of people of color from the streets and now sending them to countries that I haven't even heard of. Do you know what I mean? It's becoming the, you know, people are referring to the kind of Gestapo style tactics. To me, it is pure ethnic cleansing. It is, it is this kind of white supremacy movement. They don't say it like that, but there are all sorts of ways to do it and to, if they're not removing actual humans, they're preventing them from voting, preventing them from speaking up and just pushing the marginalized aside. Trump hates people of color. He hates immigrants. He hates anybody who does not look like Pam Bondi and Caroline Levitt. It's as simple as that.

Ron (45:52)

Yeah. And this is why Jasmine Crockett is such a valuable member of the Democratic Party, very important voice in the party, because. Yeah, I mean, while the rest of us be included, we're focused on the RD issue, you know, and how this is going to affect the balance of power in the House between the two parties. She's focused on the fact that justifiably so and kind of opened my eyes a little bit like, hey, you know what? She's absolutely right. I didn't really think about it that way because I'm a white guy, you know, but she, of course, the first thing that came to her mind is, is, is what she said, which is a great point. Which is, you know, the Texas population, the minority population is now a majority. You know, the number of black and Hispanic people outnumber white people. And, and yet the Republic, the white white people dominate the legislature.

Anthony (46:48)

But this is the same across the South. It's the same across the South.

Ron (46:52)

Right.

Anthony (46:52)

Alabama, Mississippi. It's because this is how it is.

Ron (46:56)

Creatively redrawn these lines to sort of, I mean, they, what they, what they do is they like pack every black person in a region into one district.

Anthony (47:08)

Yes.

Ron (47:08)

You know, and so it's like, you know, an 80% black district instead of like if you split them in half and have them like 40% black. 40, you get two, you probably get two minority representatives, but instead you pack them all into one by drawing these long squiggly lines and you only get one instead of two. And so this is, this is what they do. So when you have all these Hispanic and black people in Texas and yet the Texas legislature is like 70% white and so is their congressional delegation and their Senate delegation. You know, that's what she's saying. She's saying they're coming for me and they are, they're coming for her seat and they're coming for, for other, other seats as well, the Latinos. And that's, that's really, that's part of it too. It's not just a Republican Democrat, it's also a black, white, black, Hispanic thing. And I wish, you know, as more and more of the Latino vote goes Republican as it has in the last couple cycles, I hope they're waking up. Like, not only are they seeing friends and family members deported, but look at what they're doing to your representation. Yes.

Anthony (48:18)

Well, it's, it's actually the deportations and you know, the, the spread of those images on social media and TikTok and Instagram where, you know, you're seeing the, these horrific scenes of these ICE agents being so heavy handed, smashing car windows with mallets and dragging women by their hair. You know, it is those images that I truly believe are going to be the, the, the defining moment at which people wake up because, you know, humanity is more powerful than politics, I would like to think. And, and a lot of MAGA people, whether they be Latino or, or, or white, as we're seeing with some of these kind of MAGA podcasters, they're saying, I didn't vote for this. And, and, and that is going to have a huge effect on the midterms. And, and so they're trying to rig the midterms because they know this. They know that their policies are unpopular. They know that tax cuts are going to do nothing for regular working people and everything for the millionaires and billionaires.

Ron (49:21)

Because when Latino voters heard Donald Trump say, we are going to deport the violent criminals, the rapists, the murderers, they all said, well, that's fine.

Anthony (49:33)

Yeah.

Ron (49:33)

You know, like, they had no problem with that. They're like, yeah, sure. But they didn't. I don't think it fully registered with them that that wasn't what Stephen Miller was saying he was going to do. That's not what Tom Holman was saying. That's not what the MAGA base was saying. They were saying deport everybody, including children born to migrant parents who are not U.S. citizens.

Anthony (49:59)

Well, what changed?

Ron (50:00)

Latino voters did not hear that. No intent.

Anthony (50:04)

No. And it's not their fault. It's not their fault because they were lied to. This is the thing, you know.

Ron (50:10)

Yeah.

Anthony (50:10)

And, and Trump, you know, has controlled the information narrative. Even, you know, the, the, the right wing were buying up Latino radio stations and so that, you know, the, the, just this flow of information has been tightly controlled. And, you know, it's the only thing Republicans are good at that, you know, it's a shame the Democrats can't employ the Republicans to do their PR because they really know how to do this stuff. They just. Because they have no conscience, they just go for it and.

Ron (50:42)

Ruthless.

Anthony (50:43)

Very, very ruthless. And it's very worrying because I do honestly believe.

Ron (50:47)

And Democrats are, are not. They, they are, they don't have that same, like, ruthless killer instinct.

Anthony (50:53)

Well, because the moment you add empathy into the equation, it changes the way people behave. Yeah. And without empathy, the Republicans can do anything.

Ron (51:02)

Yeah. They have no conscience about it yet. So, yeah. Where you hear, like, you know, we saw with the storm. Right. You know, you know, Democrats who criticized the storm response got a lot of pushback from other Democrats, including me. You know, they, they, they were like, don't politicize this. These poor children, you know, have died. And of course they did, but they, it should have never happened. There were so many mistakes made by Republican officials. But you know, for Democrats, we're like, not allowed to say things like that. Right. Or we, we get pushed back from our own side.

Alex Jones (51:38)

Yeah.

Ron (51:38)

Whereas Republicans, as we've seen many, many times, are ruthless about taking advantage of natural disasters and blaming them on Democrats.

Anthony (51:48)

We're going to look at that next because we have some very interesting clips of Kristi Noem trying to kind of, you know, circumnavigate these, these questions. So we'll look at Texas. We'll look at fema, the future of FEMA and the floods and all that. We'll do that next here on Uncovered. From the gym to a night out or summer adventures, you want clothes that feel comfortable anywhere. Mack Weldon has breathable clothes that keep you cool, comfortable and stylish. Perfect for summer. Their new tech linen line combines the easy charm of the classic linen with Coolmax shirts, shorts, hoodies, and more at mackweldon.com and get 25% off your first order with the code Uncovered. I love the quality of the tech linen line. In fact, I love any of Mack Weldon's clothes because of their technical properties. Mack Weldon balances classic pieces with updated details to keep you looking sharp. Not flashy, just classic. Always in style and made from the world's most comfortable performance material from button up shirts and shorts crafted with a lightweight linen blend and coolmax technology and breathable underwear that keeps you cool, dry and comfy all day. Crazy comfortable, but elevated sweatpants, shorts, sweatshirts and even blazers. Macwelton clothes are designed to fit your style and the demands of modern life. They look like regular clothes but feel like the latest in modern comfort. Get breathable clothes you can feel comfortable in all summer. Go to mackweldon.com and get 25% off your first order of $125 or more with promo code Uncovered. That's M A C K W E l d o n.com promo code uncovered. And links to our sponsors are in the description below. I'm wearing my Mack Weldon now. And I was just thinking, Ron, how I would love to watch you doing the commercials.

Ron (53:52)

I have my network T shirt on.

Anthony (53:55)

Yes, you do. You've, you've come company man. You are a company man through and through and I love that about you. Okay, let's, let's look to Texas and the, and the floods for a moment because, you know, we're talking about, you know, Democrats being accused of politicizing this by calling for why wasn't there early warning. And you know, these people died needlessly because of the fact that Republicans do not invest in infrastructure, they just don't. That kind of conservative mentality. We'll worry about it when it happens. There's no point in fixing the roof now because it isn't leaking. From your kind of previous life as a conservative, can you relate to that type of attitude?

Ron (54:41)

Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, like, when things get brought up for a vote, you know, in small towns, small conservative Republican towns, rural towns, it's like, no, we don't want to spend the money. And you hear that, especially hear that a lot in older towns about schools, like in Florida, you know, this was always a pitched battle when you want to, you know, raise the sales T or the local property tax for, as a, for a penny to build a new school or, you know, you know, you always get a lot of pushback from Republican voters. It's never Democrats, you know, it's always, we don't want to spend that money. We don't have kids in the school system. The school system sucks. The principal's terrible. You know, you always hear all these excuses. So, I mean, and that happened here. You had the. The county wanted to purchase an early warning system. The sheriff said it, he recommended it. The voter said, no, we don't want to pay for it. Then it came up for another vote in the legislature to have the state fund rural counties that couldn't afford it, have the state pay for it. I mean, the state rep for this particular district where these, where this camp was voted against it. So, I mean, because they're fiscal conservatives, you know, I don't want to spend money on things like that. Trump wants to disband fema. Right. And so, you know, and so there were a lot of stories that came out. And then Kristi Noem, you know, goes on, I think it was CNN or whatever, and, and gets asked about a lot of these things, and she just, right down the line just said, fake news, fake news, fake news. None of this is true. None of this is true. It's all live, you know, but. But she slipped on one thing because they were asking her about one of the reports, which was, you know, hey, some of the local officials are saying that they requested search and rescue teams and they didn't arrive for three days. They didn't arrive till Tuesday. And is that, oh, no, that's fake news, fake news. But it's not fake news. They did, they did arrive three days late. And that is because she put in a new rule that never existed before that anything that's going to cost more than A hundred thousand dollars, which is a drop in the bucket for disaster relief, has to be personally approved by her. And this happened on a Saturday night. And it wasn't, you know, she claims it was approved right away. Well, what do we know? The search and rescue teams were not sent there for three days when it was too late.

Anthony (57:02)

It's so terrible.

Ron (57:03)

They're recovering his bodies and, you know, but she just denies everything, you know. No, none of this true. It's all fake news.

Anthony (57:11)

And yet the truth is in the, the funerals, but we're the bad people.

Ron (57:19)

For pointing out, pointing it out issues.

Anthony (57:21)

Well, because what the, I noticed, you know, what Trump did when he gave his, you know, when he finally showed up in Texas with Melania, and he was, you know, when, when people were asking or the press were asking him questions, he was like, how, how dare you, you know, speak ill of the dead and stuff like this? And it's like, what? Seriously, let's take a look at Kristi Noem, kind of denying that she, she, she didn't respond when she should have done.

Kristine Dahl (57:44)

Big Picture in just a moment. But the New York Times is reporting that thousands of calls from flood victims to FEMA call centers went unanswered in.

FEMA Official (57:52)

The middle of this ongoing disaster because.

Kristine Dahl (57:54)

You didn't renew contracts to keep call center staff in place until nearly one.

FEMA Official (57:58)

Week after the floods.

Kristine Dahl (58:00)

Why did it take so long to extend those contracts? Those contracts were in place. Nobody take five days. No employees were off of work. Every one of them was answering calls. So false reporting, fake news news. And it's discouraging. It's discouraging that during this time when we have such a loss of life and so many people's lives have turned upside down, that people are playing politics with this because the response time was immediate. And if you talk to anyone in Texas that was there, that was a part of this operation, they would say the federal government and President Trump immediately responded. Just to be very clear, on July 7, 15.9% of calls were answered. I mean, does that concern you that only 15% of calls were answered? These are people in a desperate state. FEMA, often the first call that they make, only 15% were answered on July.

FEMA Official (58:49)

7, several days after the floods.

Kristine Dahl (58:51)

These contracts were in place and those people were in those call centers and they were picking up the phone and answering these calls from these individuals. So that report needs to be validified. I'm not certain it's accurate, and I'm not sure where it came from. And the individuals who are giving you information out of fema. I'd love to have them put their names behind it because the anonymous attacks to politicize the situation is completely wrong. I care. These, these emergencies need to be conducted. Exactly how President Trump handled this one. It was that the local responders are the ones who execute the response. The state comes in and manages it, and then the federal government comes in and supports it. And as soon as Texas asked for anything, we were there.

Anthony (59:31)

Just very quickly, firstly, validified is not a word. So just thought I'd make that clear. But secondly, this is what we were discussing last week when I suggested to you that we are now existing under this regime in a post truth civilization, barely a civilization, where the facts are irrelevant, the truth is irrelevant, the media are irrelevant. Whatever this regime wants to say is true, they will say is true, and they will stick together like glue over it.

Ron (60:06)

And these were multiple FEMA whistleblowers who provided this information. All these stories mostly were broken by cnn. Yeah, and Natasha Bertrand was the reporter and Trump personally attacked her and mentioned her by name in a true social post. But the, but I mean, why won't they put their names? Because they'll be fired. If any of them had gone on record, they would be fired the next day. Well, they fired the first FEMA director just because he, he testified before Congress that FEMA shouldn't be disbanded, and they fired him the next day. This is the culture, you know, so, so is if you speak out, if you point out problems or issues, you will be dealt with harshly and severely immediately. That's why they can't put their names on any of this stuff. You know, the other thing though, is Republicans are incredibly good at circling the wagons when they screw up. And we saw this in this case, like, incredible, like they just all band together, the local officials, Abbott, Trump, Gnome. They all get together and they all praise each other. That's what made me sick, watching these press conferences, conferences. Yes. From the, from the day after the storm, it's just all you hear is them praising each other. Amazing job. Governor Abbott, you're amazing. Trump, you're amazing. Gnome. They're. You're all incredible. Everybody just did an amazing job. Meanwhile, there's like, they're still recovering bodies of children, you know, out of rubble, and they're all pray. The Republicans are all praising it.

Anthony (61:36)

It was awful. The thing that upset me.

Ron (61:39)

And then a Democrat tries to step in and go, well, wait a minute, something's not adding up here. This doesn't look right. There appears to be a lot of screw UPS here. Oh, you're a horrible person.

Anthony (61:50)

Yeah.

Ron (61:50)

You're politicizing this.

Anthony (61:51)

Yeah.

Ron (61:52)

Okay, we're supposed to just shut up and let you guys all praise each other while there's like, now is the.

Anthony (61:57)

Time to politicize this. This is, this is.

Ron (61:59)

The Democrats have to grow a spine and be a little tougher.

Anthony (62:04)

100%. I was going to say the thing that upset me the most and I'm seeing a lot of the coverage of this was where Republicans were going on camera and saying that this flood was God's will and the, you know, this is God doing his thing and there's nothing we can do about it and we just have to deal with it as it is.

Ron (62:25)

The children are in a better place now. So you had, you have two, two alternate messaging coming out of. Out of the maggot. That was one. You know, they're in a better. You know, this is God. That's number one. And number two was this is chemically engineered by the deep state, right?

Anthony (62:41)

Yes, that's right.

Ron (62:42)

This is. There actually like have launched bills in front of the, in Congress.

Anthony (62:49)

Democrats are controlling the weather.

Ron (62:51)

That, that this was a plot.

Anthony (62:53)

Yeah. To.

Ron (62:54)

To caught. There is a plot afoot to cause these horrible terrible storms in, in Republican states and Republican areas to kill their people. And Democrats and the deep state are behind it. There's actually legislation introduced right now in front of Congress to ban a weather engineer manipulating the weather.

Anthony (63:15)

Right.

Ron (63:15)

So. So it's always like looking to blame Democrats somehow for their own incompetence.

Anthony (63:23)

And what about the one thing that has not been mentioned? Democrats barely mentioned it, but certainly Republicans wouldn't dream of mentioning it. And if this story was happening in Europe, it would be the headline. And that is climate change. That this is a climate change caused extreme weather.

Ron (63:40)

If you mention that, man, you get just shouted down, Right? Oh, I mean that's. You can't even. If you, if you mention that in connection with a disaster again, you're gonna get just annihilated by the Republican press, social media. You're a horrible person. Again, you're. No, let's not, let's not dare talk about the root cause. Let's not dare talk about like why this keeps happening. You know, and the other thing that strikes me is like you keep hearing constantly from Republicans and Trump this is a once in a hundred year calamity. We've never seen a storm like this. And it's like after, like the 25th time we've heard this after some horrible storm disaster. It's like maybe somebody should ask why is that the case that these are like the worst storms ever recorded that keep happening, tornadoes, whatever it is, these.

Anthony (64:34)

Extreme weather events will increase. It has been predicted by climate scientists who of course have all been disbanded as potentially will FEMA be disbanded. So Trump can pick and choose whether he gives federal support to which nations. Let's have another look at Christine Dahl.

Kristine Dahl (64:53)

Drill down a little bit.

FEMA Official (64:54)

I know there were resources that were.

Kristine Dahl (64:56)

Deployed, but I think the question requires revolves around were all of the necessary resources deployed? According to reports, multiple FEMA officials said you didn't approve the deployment of these FEMA search and rescue teams until Monday.

FEMA Official (65:09)

Which was 72 hours after the flood started.

Kristine Dahl (65:12)

No, they were deployed immediately, as soon as they were requested. And I think what matters the most here is what the local officials on the ground say and what their feedback is. You know, I was there that very morning, the, that afternoon that when the flooding was happening and was with those emergency responders right away with the governor, with Nim Kid who's running the state's response. And every one of them will tell you that they got everything that they needed when they asked for it immediately and that they've never seen a federal government respond in support of a state's management of a disaster situation like this. So those claims, I don't know who's making them out of female and because FEMA has been incredibly responsive, We've had over 700 different employees engaged right in Texas. And as soon as that disaster request was put in, forwarded to the White House and approved within hours.

FEMA Official (66:01)

When, when was the request put in and when did you approve it? And is this accurate that there's this $100,000 sign off?

Kristine Dahl (66:10)

That the $100,000 sign off is for every contract that goes through the department, Department of Homeland Security did implement. That's an accountability. It's an accountability on contracts that go forward. But there was no break in contracts. Those contracts were approved as soon as they were in front of me. And FEMA knew they were fully to deploy the instant that the local officials asked for the request.

FEMA Official (66:30)

When did you get the request for.

Kristine Dahl (66:32)

These search and rescue teams and other resources? Immediately respond immediately. Everyone will tell you. According to reports, they didn't arrive until say, well, this is what I think is really unfortunate is that we have a situation where so many individuals are playing politics with what happened to Texas and the governor and the emergency responders on the ground. The mayor of that city, the judge in that county who has some authority over emergency response, every one of them said, as soon as we asked for help, they were here. The federal government was here.

Anthony (67:03)

Yeah, she's avoiding the question. Specifically this, these 24, 48 or 72 hours. She is completely kind of circumventing that answer with gaslighting. It's so obvious.

Ron (67:18)

It's. And it's so, like, frustrating for me to sit here and watch Kristen Welker try and do this interview.

Anthony (67:25)

I know.

Ron (67:26)

So terribly.

Anthony (67:27)

I know.

Ron (67:28)

I mean, it's just like Gnome keeps reverting back to two things.

Anthony (67:33)

Things.

Ron (67:33)

One is that the local officials praised her. The local officials are all Texas Republicans. It's a 70% Republican county. All the state officials are Republicans. They're all Trump allies. Yes. They're all praising each other for doing an amazing job killing over a hundred people. That never should have happened. Right. So that's one thing that she reverts back to. And the other thing is she reverts back to. I don't know who all these people are who are telling you these things. They, you know, look, this is what you do. You, you pin her down. You say, because here's what we know for a fact. The search and rescue teams did not arrive until Tuesday, three days after the storm. Too late. Too late. Okay. That is a fact. That is a documented fact. So why doesn't Kristen Welker say, you tell me, because we know we can verify this. What day did FEMA search and rescue teams arrive? Tell me the day. And I'm not going to move off that question until you tell me the day. I don't want to hear, oh, we approved it as soon as we got it. No, no. When did they arrive in that county? The date, the time, the place? And she never got to it.

Anthony (68:55)

No. Well, the other, the other thing that I don't understand why these kind of US News, TV news people don't, don't use this specific language, but just point out that she's not answering the question. You say you're not answering the question and you keep saying that, but there is this kind of respect for the office or reporters kind of feel, I mean, look, I'm going to wave the, the ring the bell of authoritarianism again because this does not happen in functioning democracies, in a functioning democracy. The, the news media is part of democracy, holding the authority to account. That's their job. It doesn't happen here. It is just not a thing. There is this fear that you're going to be blacklisted or your parent company is not going to be able to sign off. On their, on their big deal that they're doing, buying another streaming service. I mean, there are so many layers to it. We really do not have independent media in that corporate space. There are no real journalistic questions being asked.

Ron (70:00)

Let's zoom out and take the next layer, which is Donald Trump has stated many times that they want to disband fema. They do not want FEMA to exist.

Anthony (70:10)

Yeah.

Ron (70:11)

So all these wonderful things that she's claiming that FEMA did.

Anthony (70:15)

Yeah.

Ron (70:16)

The position of the Trump administration is they shouldn't have done any of that. FEMA shouldn't even exist. It should. It should just provide some financial aid after the fact and let the state and local. So what she's saying is we did an amazing job. But you're. But the other part is, well, how is it that you want FEMA to be disbanded? Because here's, here's the problem. And the North Carolina Governor, Josh Stein, made the. Made the perfect response to that issue, which is they asked him. Because North Carolina gets a lot of storms. Right. A lot of problems.

Anthony (70:55)

Yeah.

Ron (70:55)

And so they asked. Well, and he pointed out, he's like, look, not every county in America gets a natural disaster every year. So we don't have small rural counties. They don't. And states, they don't have the resources to have a huge organization like FEMA on standby with trucks and planes and helicopters ready to be sent out to natural disasters. Individual counties and states don't have the money to do that. Because let's say Kansas doesn't have any storms, one for three years like this. Well, you've just wasted all that money and had all these people sitting around doing nothing. That's why you federalize this agency, so that they're ready to go wherever they're needed. They're sent.

Anthony (71:40)

Right.

Ron (71:41)

Trump wants to disband that.

Anthony (71:42)

But can I explain it, my theory. Why.

Ron (71:46)

Okay.

Anthony (71:46)

And it goes back, unfortunately.

Ron (71:48)

Well, I have a theory, too. Let's see if yours matches up.

Anthony (71:51)

Okay. It goes back to the eugenics.

Ron (71:55)

This is different than mine.

Anthony (71:56)

Okay. They want people to die. Iran.

Ron (71:59)

Oh, you went way.

Anthony (72:02)

They want. Invariably, the people that get affected by these things are the poorest people, and they want to eradicate the poor. They want the poor gone and they want the people of color gone. And so it sounds sinister. It's not a conspiracy, because there's a lot of evidence behind this. All of the Republican policies and the MAGA policies and everything that comes out of Trump's mouth, if you look at it through the lens of segregation and look at it through the lens of white supremacy. They want these people dead. And I, I, there's no other way of saying it.

Ron (72:39)

They just want to happen more in Republican areas than Democratic areas. So.

Anthony (72:43)

I appreciate that. But look, there were more votes for Donald Trump in California than any people.

Ron (72:48)

Who die in these things.

Anthony (72:49)

Yeah, you're right about the rich people can afford.

Ron (72:51)

My theory, My theory is this, is that account. It's, it's just account. They don't want the accountability that, yeah. That these disaster responses are messy politically. A lot can go wrong. There's a lot that you get blamed for. We saw this with George W. Bush and Katrina, justifiably so. That really put a, a big black mark on his presidency, the way he.

Anthony (73:16)

Never, never recovered from, from Katrina.

Ron (73:18)

Correct. And we saw Donald Trump masterfully take advantage politically of this, natural disasters and train derailments and during the Biden administration and use those to his advantage.

Anthony (73:32)

East Palestine, for example.

Ron (73:33)

Because you can always find something that goes wrong that you're, that you can point fingers. Yeah. And so what I think is that Trump does not want that happening to him, that he, he has no interest in this, in this topic, in this subject and saving lives and, and rescuing people and providing aid. He has no interest in doing that. That's not what he wants to do. And he doesn't want to get the blame for anything that goes wrong. So it's easier for him just to wash his hands up and say, we're just not in this business anymore.

Anthony (74:03)

Yeah.

Ron (74:03)

It's up to you States. You're on your own.

Anthony (74:06)

I'd take your version. Your version is 20% of what's going on.

Ron (74:11)

You can put them together.

Anthony (74:12)

Yeah, it's, it's, but it's 20% of what you're saying that politically it's not good, but it's 80% that they don't give a hoot about whether the poor live or die. It's as simple as that.

Ron (74:23)

You may be right. I hadn't really thought about it that way, but you may be right.

Anthony (74:27)

I just think it's important that we recognize how sinister this regime is. And I mean, this goes back to Jim Crow and, and, and before, you know, this is not, this is not new. It's just that these people now are in power and this is how they exercise their power. And, and, and to eradicate people who don't look like them is, is, you know, it's convenient that climate change is, is upon us because it's doing half the work. And this is why Trump Trump allowed Covid to kill 1.2 million people.

Ron (75:01)

Okay. Because that's a good analogy.

Anthony (75:03)

Invariably it killed the poorest people.

Ron (75:05)

And we saw how he didn't care.

Anthony (75:07)

Didn't care.

Ron (75:08)

And he didn't want the blame for any of it. He didn't want to take responsibility for any of it. Right.

Anthony (75:12)

No, because he. He doesn't.

Ron (75:14)

In his mind, you're right. I think that the COVID could be influencing his desire to get rid.

Anthony (75:20)

Yeah.

Ron (75:21)

It's the same. Because it's the same kind of situation. It's a disaster.

Anthony (75:24)

It's not a nice conversation to have because, you know, it's saying that there is this.

Ron (75:29)

Because he blamed Covid for losing the 2020 election.

Anthony (75:32)

Yeah. Because he thinks that, you know, he thinks that people who get Covid are likely to be Democrats. I mean, he literally thinks he can eradicate voters by not vaccinating people. I mean, do you remember that line? It was the line that blew my mind more than anything. You know, if we test, we see more numbers.

Ron (75:53)

Yeah.

Anthony (75:53)

If we don't test, then there's fewer cases.

Ron (75:56)

That's right.

Anthony (75:56)

That's the mentality.

Ron (75:58)

The problem goes away.

Anthony (75:59)

The problem goes away. And it's exactly the same as disaster relief and recovery is that if we don't do it, then it's not our problem.

Ron (76:07)

Yeah. And it's a, you know, it's up to the states and then, you know, he can just roll in after everything.

Anthony (76:13)

All the dust metal, take the credit.

Ron (76:15)

Take some credit and.

Anthony (76:16)

But isn't it crazy? They're like only 170 people died. It could have been 500 people. So look how well we did.

Ron (76:23)

That's what he said.

Anthony (76:24)

Yeah.

Ron (76:25)

He said we saved lives.

Anthony (76:27)

Yes.

Ron (76:28)

We're heroic. It could have been about COVID He.

Anthony (76:31)

Said it should have been much worse.

Ron (76:33)

Warp speed saved millions of people. And that was one of the things that aggravated him so much, was that he said that line two or three times on the campaign trail at rallies and got booed by his own people.

Anthony (76:46)

And he couldn't understand why.

Ron (76:48)

And that graded on him that he couldn't brag about.

Anthony (76:50)

Yeah.

Ron (76:51)

He couldn't use that line anymore.

Anthony (76:54)

Let's change the subject and talk about him possibly firing Jerome Powell, but not firing Jerome Powell. How the markets are reacting to this. Jerome Powell, just for people who aren't up to speed on this, you know, sets the interest rates. Trump wants the interest rates to be cut because of course that's going to make his economy look better. His con. The economy is, is. Is, you know, we're into growth. Growth is down, GDP is down. It's not looking good for Trump's economy right now. And so this, he knows, is one of the ways that he could fudge it and make things look a little better. He was asked the question about it. Let's take a look.

Donald Trump (77:38)

Well, when he was in my office, I told him he's doing a very bad job. He's way late. That's why I call him too late. Jerome Powell is too late. He's way late. Interest rates should be coming down where we have a very, very successful country. We should have the lowest interest rate anywhere in the world, and we don't. Jerome Powell has done a terrible job, and frankly, I don't think he could do a worse job. He's called everything wrong. So they had a report come out the other day, 71 different economists and me. You know who was right?

Ron (78:13)

Me, Mr. President.

Donald Trump (78:16)

Did you know that I was right? Are you going to appoint Mr. Powell.

Ron (78:21)

To another term as Fed Chair?

Donald Trump (78:23)

You must be kidding.

Ron (78:30)

What is.

Donald Trump (78:30)

Mr. President, Mr. President, what are your thoughts on Andrew? You had a waste of question like, what's the President?

Anthony (78:39)

Yeah, I love how he picks a random number, like 71 economists. Just, again, completely random. But, you know, the economists are saying that there is the chance of a recession, and that's the reality.

Ron (78:54)

So, yes, I mean, we have a Federal Reserve System. We have a board. It's bipartisan, it's, it's appointed by members of both presidents. They serve long terms. They elect their own chairman in the, and this was created over 100 years ago. And, and the purpose of the Federal Reserve is to be, although the President appoints members to be completely out of politics, separate, to do only what's in the best interest of the economy, stay out of politics. The President doesn't control it, Congress doesn't control it. They're, you know, except for they could be impeached for misconduct or something. So, you know, we have high interest rates. Interest rates, theoretically, well, they were supposed to be. Have already been lowered by now, but they weren't. And largely they weren't because of tariffs. That's right. Powell has said this many times. He's like, tariffs are putting, are reigniting inflation. Prices are rising again because of tariffs. And keep in mind, most of the tariffs that Trump is rolling out haven't even started yet. They haven't even really kicked in. That's why I, I get aggravated when I hear Republicans say, oh, look, terrible things haven't happened yet. They haven't even Been implemented. He keeps pausing them. Yes, only a handful have been implemented. And, and so apparently there's, like Trump has said, like, there's. He's putting tariffs on 120 more countries on August 1st. Well, what I said is, let's wait until September, October. That's when you were going to see what's about the impact of this.

Anthony (80:26)

Yeah.

Ron (80:26)

And that's what Powell is saying, too. Powell is saying, we have no economic certainty. I can't lower the rates. We can't lower the rates because rates ignite economic growth can, can ignite inflation, too. So you want inflation to be under control before you lower the rates. And that's where we're coming from. But the issue is this. You know, I don't know that we've ever had a president fire a Fed chair early. Powell's term expires next year. And so, of course, you know, if Trump wants to talk about, hey, I'm not reappointing him, whatever, that's. That's fine. That's his prerogative. The issue is two things. Number one, is he going to fire him before his term is up, which is unprecedented, and install a sycophant? And the names we have heard are Scott Bessett doing both jobs, Treasury Secretary and Fed chair. That's never happened before. Or somebody like a Lutnick or a Kevin Hassett, all these cultists who are going to go in there and radically lower interest rates and, and just screw the economy up. That's the concern. So even today, when the report came out, rumor came out where he threatened to fire Powell. The stock market plunged because the markets do not want to hear this. And then. So the markets dive down. And then. Yeah, that, that was, that was what happened earlier. Right. Earlier in the day. But then when Trump was asked about it, he says, oh, no, no, no, I'm not gonna fire him. I'm gonna replace him at the end of the tournament. I'm not gonna fire. The market shoots right back up. There it is not. Oh, yeah, there you go.

Alex Jones (82:03)

There you go.

Anthony (82:03)

Yeah.

Ron (82:03)

So it goes right back up. So. Oh, no, that's. That's not it. That's not the chart. There's a different chart.

Anthony (82:10)

There was a white chart, I think. Yeah, I don't think I have one.

Ron (82:12)

I have that there. Okay. There's one that shows. That shows when Trump, when the announcement came, it goes way down.

Anthony (82:21)

That's right.

Ron (82:21)

And then it spikes. Right.

Anthony (82:23)

And that's how reactive the markets are. And, and Trump knows that. That. And so. But inflation Is you that this is.

Ron (82:30)

The only reason why he hasn't done it. The only reason why he hasn't fired Powell.

Anthony (82:36)

Yes.

Ron (82:36)

Is because Bassett has told him this will tank the markets way worse than any tariff stuff. Because really the tariff announcements don't even affect the markets anymore because Wall street doesn't believe him. They don't think he's serious. And so they price that in that they don't believe what he's saying about tariffs. But if he fires the Fed chair, that's a whole different ballgame that'll take the markets and, and that's the only thing keeping Trump from doing it.

Anthony (83:02)

I believe that he probably will fire him. We should probably mention that there is a rumor that he's now talking about firing him because of fraud. This is because of the, of the construction or the reconstruction of, of the fed building costing 2.5 billion.

Kristine Dahl (83:20)

Billion.

Anthony (83:21)

Now that is an awful lot of money. There is no question about that. Probably three or four times more than it should have cost, if not more. But this is a convenient excuse for Donald Trump to say I'm going to get rid of Jerome Powell because if he can't, if he can't handle the finances of a construction project, then how can he handle interest rates?

Ron (83:42)

Yeah, it's sort of nuts that we have this weird system where we allow, this happens in two scenarios with courthouses and building like Fed, things like Fed Chair, bank, bank type buildings because we allow for some bizarre reason like the chief judge of an area to like build, you know, be in charge of the construction of new buildings. It's kind of crazy.

Anthony (84:10)

Yeah.

Ron (84:10)

And, and, and, and same thing. The Fed, the Fed gets to spend, you know, as much money and do whatever they want and, and refurbishing their dig. So what always happens is these, these projects always just are obscenely expensive with marble and granite and everything else. I, I, I don't agree with any of that. And I think that you're, that the spending on this building is probably excessive. But look, Trump didn't care about that a couple months ago. Like nobody cared about that.

Anthony (84:38)

No, but it's a convenient opportunity. It's a pretext, it's an excuse. We only have five minutes left. But I want to talk about Russia because this is an interesting shift and NATO as well. And he had the NATO Secretary General in and they were, you know, let me show this clip and then we'll talk about it. But basically saying that he's unhappy with Vladimir Putin. He's finally realized that Putin might not be a very Trustworthy person after all.

Donald Trump (85:04)

And one of the reasons that you're here today is to hear that we, we are very unhappy. I am with Russia, but we'll discuss that maybe a different day. But we're very, very unhappy with them. And we're going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don't have a deal in 50 days. Tariffs and about 100%, you'd call them secondary tariffs. You know what that means. But today we're going to talk about something else.

Anthony (85:32)

And I mean, he's increasingly looking like bad Santa and all that.

Ron (85:38)

That gold everywhere is just disgusting.

Anthony (85:40)

I know. And it's just spray from Home Depot. I wouldn't mind if it was the real thing, but, but this is so interesting because, you know, he's trying to get round giving weapons to Ukraine by saying, okay, well, Europe can buy them from us, NATO or, you know, the EU can buy them from us, and therefore we're not paying for them. That's kind of how he's getting around this, this. But there's this rumor that it might have been Melania that actually was behind his change of heart and made him realize that he's been played by Vladimir Putin all this time. Do you think, I mean, she has previously like worn a kind of pro Ukraine, you know, clothing or. I think she was wearing a, you know, the Ukrainian colors one time and obviously she's from, she's from Slovenia.

Ron (86:30)

Right? Yeah. It was part of the, you know, Warsaw Pact.

Anthony (86:33)

Right. So the block. So she obviously has empathy for the people of Ukraine and recognizes that. You would hope. You would hope. Do you think it's the case that, I mean, he, he basically said that he went home and she said this. I'll show that clip and we can.

Ron (86:52)

Just go with it.

Donald Trump (86:53)

We had a deal. Numerous times I'd get home, I'd say, first Lady, I had the most wonderful talk with Vladimir. I think we're finished. And then I'll turn on the television or she'll say to me one time, wow, that's strange because they just bombed a nursing home. They said, what?

Anthony (87:12)

So only he can turn it into a stand up comedy routine? Yes.

Ron (87:17)

I mean, those aren't reporters. Those are his supporters and White House employees having a good. Such a. So funny that they bombed a nursing home.

Anthony (87:26)

Yeah, I know, it's, it's a, it's.

Ron (87:27)

Offensive, but that's an interesting dynamic there.

Anthony (87:30)

Yeah, it's in. It is. Because it's the first time we've heard firsthand of intervention by the First Lady.

Ron (87:37)

Yeah.

Anthony (87:37)

What I Don't quite buy there is. They don't live together. Everybody knows they don't live together. She's not in the White House. She's. She's in Florida. Completely different lives. So he's saying, you know, I came home to the First Lady. I'm not denying that they may have had an interaction and she might have said this, but it does suggest to me that he has obviously run out of ideas. He's kind of. She's probably the only person that can say this kind of stuff to him. And he's. It's so weird that he's kind of admitting it.

Ron (88:09)

Okay. So, yeah, I mean, I've been married 31 years, so I definitely subscribe to that happy wife, happy life theory of. Of existing. That is definitely true, but I don't believe that this is that kind of a scenario where he's trying to, like, keep her happy.

Anthony (88:27)

But.

Ron (88:27)

But I do think that, you know, I think he's more afraid of Melania than any other human being on the planet. He is terrified of Melania, and that is because Melania is the only person that could completely destroy him. I mean, if she. She knows everything. And so if she ever divorced him, left him and spoke out or wrote a book like Ivana did, right, then he. He would be. He would be wiped out because.

Anthony (88:53)

Not to mention take all his money as well, which is the thing that's most precious to him.

Ron (88:57)

She's had multiple prenuptial agreements. But. But, I mean, the point is, like, no one can hurt him worse than her because even the cultists adore her and worship her, and they would believe what she said is, so he's afraid of her. So I believe that he did probably brag to her, you know, because he's doing it as a brag, like, hey, I just got off the phone with Putin. He's showing off. You know, and I believe that she probably did say, you know what? That's nice that you. You know, my friend Putin. But he keeps bombing, you know, kids and hospitals, so I don't understand why you keep praising him. I. I definitely can see that. Her saying that to him. So. And I definitely can see him going.

Anthony (89:37)

Oh, well, he doesn't read briefings, so he.

Ron (89:40)

Because no one. No one. No one else would have the balls to tell him that. No one else would have the guts to tell him that.

Anthony (89:45)

Right?

Ron (89:45)

She would, because she's not afraid of him. But, you know, so it might be the first time he's ever gotten somebody come back to him at. At him like that. But the other disgusting thing about this is just exactly what he just announced. Look. So he said he was making this big announcement about Russia. He was bringing in the NATO secretary general there. And the Russians were very concerned, according to all their media, that he was going to hit them with something very bad like announce a long range missiles. He was going to give Ukraine more patriots. They were very concerned about what this announcement was going to be because they didn't know what it was. And when they heard that this is Trump threatening secondary tariffs 50 days from now. Yeah, they were ecstatic. Russian media was thrilled. The Russian stock market shot up. Because this is just another delay, another empty threat, another hollow threat.

Anthony (90:42)

But it's further proof that he's an asset. It's a further proof that he's, he's Putin's whipping boy. You know, how much more proof do people need? And this is why whenever he's like Russia, Russia, Russia, it's a hoax. He is projecting as he always does. Just reverse everything he says and you'll get your answer.

Ron (90:59)

Let me just explain real quick the secondary tariffs, what that means. What that means is any country who does business with Russia, because we already don't get anything from Russia.

Anthony (91:08)

Right.

Ron (91:08)

So he's, what he's saying is any country that does business with Russia specifically buys oil from Russia will be hit with U. S. Tariffs. What country buys the most oil from Russia in the world?

Anthony (91:22)

China.

Ron (91:23)

So this is really all he's doing, is threatening to hit China with more tariffs, not Russia.

Anthony (91:28)

No, he, he's again, as I said at the very beginning, you know, if you think critically, you can see through all of this stuff and he just thinks everyone is as stupid as he is. We have to finish. But I do want to show this clip of him at the FIFA World cup holding up trophy because it's so funny. The, you know, the, the, they're trying to get rid of Trump off the.

Ron (91:50)

Stage, trying to drag him off so.

Anthony (91:52)

That, so that Chelsea can hold up, hold up the, the trophy and Trump won't leave. And apparently then Trump steals the trophy for himself and they have to then use a, use a replica. Let's take a look. Get pushed to the back. It's such a, so embarrassing.

Ron (92:38)

He's trying, the FIFA presence, trying to get him out of the shot. Right. So the team can celebrate. He won't. He refuses to get out of the shot. And then he finally gets in and pushes him through to the back. Out the back.

Anthony (92:51)

Yep.

Ron (92:51)

And yes, by the way, that is a replica trophy. That is not the original trophy. The FIFA president brought it into the Oval Office to show it to Trump, and they were going to let him display it there as the host country for a few days, but Trump refused to give it back, kept it. So they had it. They had to make another replica. And that's what you just saw, because Trump has the FIFA trophy in the Oval Office.

Anthony (93:14)

I mean, he's just a petty thief. At the end of the day, that's. That's what this boils down to. Okay, we have to finish. Ron, always a pleasure. Don't forget to download the audio podcast. It drops later tonight. Share the show comment down below. Check out our sponsors down there, and we'll come back next Wednesday and bring you another Uncovered. Thank you, Ron.

Ron (93:34)

All right, Next week, it.