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- [00:00]
A
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B
Hi everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Hello friends. Welcome back to another episode of Work in Progress. Today I am sitting down with someone whose brain I am absolutely obsessed with and whose TikTok I am also obsessed with. Today we are joined by none other than Aaron Parnas. He is a lawyer, he is an activist, and he also happens to be the son of Lev Parnas. Yes, the gentleman who was arrested for his role in the whole Trump Ukraine scandal. My goodness. Aaron grew up in a staunchly Republican family, was a Trump voter in 2016, and then was inside the first administration and saw things that really woke him up to the reality of of what most of America is up against with an incoming oligarchy. He has since become an activist in support of the Democratic Party, sure, but I would really just say in support of Americans, particularly school children. It was the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine that led Aaron Parnas to TikTok. He actually works as a securities litigation attorney at a law firm in Washington, D.C. but it was his personal connection to Ukraine and family on ground that really alerted him to the fact that American media wasn't covering the whole story. So Aaron decided to get on the Internet and help. Not only is he an impressive leader and the kind of guy who's bringing Walter Cronkite energy back to the world of social media news, but he's also a lawyer. He graduated with honors from law school at the age of 21. Yeah, this is a guy who got bumped up to high school at the age of 14. And in 2020, he published a memoir titled Trump Ver how the President and His Associates Turned Their Backs on Me and My Family. Today we're going to talk about what that was like seeing from the inside of a scandal, how these enormous systems of politics work, and how it really led him to interrogate himself, his beliefs, and why he believes that truth and trustworthy information should actually be the thing we are all the most loyal to. As of today, he's amassed more than 3 million followers on TV TikTok, and he is usually the first social media account that I check when I finally let myself into my apps in the morning. Let's hear from Aaron Parnas. Hi. Hi. My Internet friend. I'm so excited we're here.
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A
I'm so excited. Also, I didn't, like, I completely did not realize I met you at the DNC when you were with Governor Moore around briefly.
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B
Yes. I mean, it was so brief, but.
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A
Like, yes, this is going to be so fun. I'm really excited.
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B
Yeah. I'm so amped. I, like, I'm sort of at a loss for words because, Aaron, where do we even start?
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A
Where? I don't. I don't know. I mean, I couldn't tell you. It's show, like, truthfully, like, bigger than I could have ever imagined.
- [04:09]
B
The weird thing is, in these really bizarre ways, I'm not surprised by anything. They gave us a roadmap. They told us what they were going to do. Yes, it was evil. Yes. It read like, you know, some sort of insane spy movie that if you turned it in at a Hollywood studio, they'd be like, tone it down. You're being ridiculous. But I'm. I'm so. I'm in shock every day that it's really this depraved and terrible.
- [04:34]
A
I get it. I mean, I. I think that, like, it's interesting, right? Like, we did have the Project 2025 roadmap. We knew what they were, and then everyone was like, well, he's saying he has nothing to do with Project 2025. Okay, great. Look where we are now. I mean, I don't know if you saw Politico had an interview with the former Project 2025 architect. He was asked, what do you think about this? And he goes, well, it's beyond my wildest dreams. Like, it's even better. And I mean, I think. I think it. And I think this goes to something that I've been talking a lot about with, like, my friends and stuff, is that the reason why Democrats don't have their act together right now is because they're trying to compete against as though Trump is running for reelection. He's not completely different beast right now, right? Like, has completely unchecked power in a way. He has a Republican House, Republican Senate. And he doesn't care what the voters think because he's not running for reelection. He has the next three, three and a half years.
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B
Not only does he not care what the voters think. He doesn't care what the courts think. We, we have someone who is occupying the highest office in the land, who is often in the world called the leader of the free world. You know, make up that what you will, but that's the age old tagline for the American President. This person doesn't care about anything but money and power. And so I'm trying to make sense of it. I posted something about them gutting the EPA and I just said, tell me why this makes sense. I don't care if you are a dyed in the wool liberal, if you are a hyper religious conservative. Dirty air and poisoned water and sewage in your drinking water and poisoned earth that you can't grow food in is bad for everybody. So like what are we doing here?
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A
It's anyone's guess. I mean, I really think we're in a position right now where he as president really only knows about 10% of what's happening in his own government. And I think he's really empowered. I mean every president really has, in my opinion, kind of limited oversight of what actually is happening day to day in all these agencies. But I think he's gotten to a point where he's kind of, he has his little pet projects that he really cares about, like revoking Hunter Biden's Secret Service protection, but everything kind of given carte blanche authority to those overseeing these agencies, many of whom have their own pet projects and their, and their own kind of goals, whether it's business interests for big oil, for example, in the EPA example, or really anything else. So I don't think he really cares is the thing. He doesn't really care to go and say, you know what, this is bad. It's more of like, you know what, you think that's good. If you want to do that, go ahead and do it. I don't really care. That's kind of where, where I think we're at.
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B
Wow. Okay, so we, we have to pause, we have to rewind to catch back up to where we are today. Because you, you have really become such a trusted voice out talking about the news. You, you are meeting the viewers where they're at, which is largely on social media. Rather than complaining that, you know, no one's watching the five o'clock news anymore. You're, you're taking the news to the people, which I think is incredibly important. Me and everyone else paying attention saw the, the actual scale infographic of how dwarfed by right wing influencers. Any truth teller or messenger on the left is. So we. We gotta go. We gotta go to the battlefield. How did you get this way? Like, talk to me about your childhood. You. You have always been brilliant. You started college when you were only 14. You were in law school by 18. The accelerated track is wild. And not only were you clearly a brilliant kid, but you grew up in a very political landscape. So can you give the listeners who I very affectionately call my whip Smarties. So they're exactly your kind of people. They like to know things. Give them a little bit of, like, the background tea on how you got like this.
- [08:41]
A
Yeah. Truth be told, I never wanted to be an influencer or even do do journalism. I. I always had a dream of going to law school, working as public defender, and kind of just doing that for the rest of my life.
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B
Yeah.
- [08:53]
A
And really, law school changed that. And I'll talk about what happened in 2022, but that also changed. But growing up, I. I grew up in a political household to the extent that I had family that was close to Donald Trump and had deep ties to the first Trump administration, deep ties to those around the now president, the former president, and really grew up in kind of MAGA world. I claimed to be a Republican myself, even though I really didn't know what that meant at the time. And I was just. I really saw MAGA for what it was from inside, being so close to it. And I did that for several years while also in college, high school, between before starting law school and then really when I started law school when I was 18 and really exposed me to a lot. But I really didn't start being on social media until 2022, when Russia hated Ukraine. By then, I had already decided I was no longer Republican. I'm actually a Democrat. I realized what that was. But in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, I had family in Ukraine, and I would be hearing from my uncle and folks there about what was happening on the ground in front of their house. Bombs overhead, tanks outside, crazy situation. Thankfully, everyone's okay. But I would hear from them, and then I would see what's happening on mainstream media here, and it'd be completely different worlds. And so I just opened up a TikTok account and just started making videos and kind of the rest is history. So it's been a wild, wild journey.
- [10:22]
B
Yeah. It's really interesting that you say the thing about what you knew to be true from reporting on the ground and what was being represented on the media, because back in the day, you know, I'm not old enough to be your Mother. But I'm in that, like, half generation above you. So imagine a time before TikTok, before even Instagram. You know, Twitter had launched. When it first did, I was like, who cares about pictures of anyone's breakfast? The irony being that Now I follow 1 million food bloggers because I care. Turns out. But I was sort of like, the landscape is weird. And as an entertainer, the tabloid culture then was crazy. I was like, I don't want to participate anymore in this cesspool than I have to. And then Deepwater Horizon happened, and I knew that they weren't telling the truth about this massive oil spill off the coast of Louisiana. I had friends down there because I'd been making a film there a few summers before. Fishermen I knew were sending me videos and were like, the news is lying. So that's why I got on Twitter and I flew down there, and then the sheriffs threatened to arrest me and a bunch of lawyers we brought from Global Green. It was a whole situation. And I was reporting the news on Twitter because the news wasn't reporting the news. And when you talk about Ukraine, I feel like there were moments when I went looking where I saw what was happening on the ground there, where I saw Russian forces tying men up and executing them outside of their homes. We knew they were kidnapping children. We knew that hospitals were being bombed. I mean, it was horror, horror after horror. But it wasn't in the sort of Walter Cronkite news package you would have expected from the American news. And now protests are happening in cities around America and cities around the world. Right. About what's happening in America, and they're not being covered on the news at all. So how do you make sense of that? Because you've said, you know, you mentioned earlier, your family was very in the mix in MAGA world for our listeners. Your dad, Lev Parnas, was tight, heavily involved with Rudy Giuliani, Trump's first admin. You've talked about having seen inside version one of this administration, having been in the room for these conversations with top Republican allies. So I'm curious, because of what you've seen, why you think they don't want us to see so much, whether it's about Ukraine, whether it's about the protests, like what's going on here.
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A
I think it's two things. I think, number one, it's fear, and number two, it's money. Right. I think the mainstream media and just media generally is fearful of what Trump can do to them if they report something that's in his eyes. Not Correct. I mean, we see it with the ABC News settlement, right? We see it with it's the 60 Minutes Kamala Harris interview lawsuit. I mean, he's going after the media now more than ever before. And he has the people in his administration to do that. So I think that's number one. I think they're fearful of really getting attacked by the Trump administration. And that's also why, you see, it's funny, no one else is standing up with the Associated Press right now after the Associated Press was kicked out of the Oval, all these other fine with it, apparently. So that's number one. And the number two, I think it's money. I think ultimately mainstream media is their company is just like anyone, any other company ultimately about their bottom line. They care about how much money they're making from ad sales, from Watch Time and all and all that. So I think that they're beholden to those that are paying their bills. And I think those that are paying their bills often don't want the same narrative that everyday people want to see, in my opinion. And I think that, to your point, the protests aren't being covered and all that, it's 100% true. And part of that goes to why there's been such a rise in independent media right now and why social media has really empowered kind of the next generation of media, because mainstream media companies are slowly realizing that they have to cover these events. If they don't, they're just going to be left behind. And I do see some subtle shifts in their coverage, but it's still not there yet. I mean, we still have an hour every night on CNN with Scott Jennings arguing in a roundtable with Abby Phillips. I feel so bad for her because she's such a great journalist.
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B
She's incredible.
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A
Great. They put her on this panel with Scott Jennings and it's no longer news. It's not Walter Cronkite. It's an hour of opinion.
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B
And that's frustrating.
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A
And Americans are frustrated.
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B
So. Absolutely. And now for our sponsors. I do hear you on why they're afraid, but I also find it to be ridiculous. I mean, even the fact that ABC News caved and the judge had to say, what's going on here? He was convicted. He was found guilty of raping this woman. What do you mean? You can't talk about that on the news. It's. It's like splitting hairs here in this way that is so crazy. And yet they want a him and ha and sue and claim, oh, he could never. And then here's Trump importing the Tate brothers. Violent, violent rape culture. Guys having Conor McGregor accused multiple times. And if I'm remembering correctly, someone on the Internet can fact check me in real time. Convicted of having raped and assaulted multiple women. The spiritual advisor is on trial for raping a 12 year old girl. Trump's spiritual advisor. For my friends at home, I'm air quoting, so I don't throw up on myself. Like, I'm just, I don't understand how they will fold when the truth is called a lie and then not talk about any of the rest of the truth. And I'm curious your perspective on that, because that seems like the real sort of central core of Trumpism. Right. Is to say everything you don't like is a lie and then to in the same breath say you love free speech, but then sue everyone who uses their free speech in a way you don't like. When you've talked about these conversations that you were privy to for years, did you kind of see inside the hive mind of this? Like, what did you see that made you go, oh, the emperor really has no clothes? What revealed it to you?
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A
Yeah, I mean, I think just constantly how they spoke about folks behind the scenes, like average everyday people and especially young people, there was a constant, like, subtle undertone of like, they're not smart enough to really grasp what we're serving. Right. Like, what we're kind of telling the public and especially what we're trying to push towards young people. They're not smart enough to really realize what we're going to do. Right. Like, they're going to support us and then we're going to be able to do whatever we want when we get into office. And that's kind of what I saw over those years. And it's actually why I'm not really surprised that young people, and especially young men voted for him a lot more now than they did, but even back in 2016, because what he was selling appealed to them, even if it wasn't what they're actually going to get over the next four years. I will say this, though. I think something that people don't really realize is that the weight of the Justice Department and the federal government on your shoulders, whether you are an individual being prosecuted or a company being sued by the Trump administration, is so great, I mean, so early, just anxiety inducing. I mean, it is. And I represented a lot of folks in criminal matters when I was in, when I was practicing as a lawyer. And there's nothing scarier than having the Department of Justice go after you because it will cost you millions in legal fees. It will cost months, if not years of headache. It'll cost you so much damage to your reputation. And the same thing applies to any one of these media companies. ABC News is a very large company. But if fearful that the Trump Justice Department or the Trump FCC can go after them, then to them, it's, it's much easier to pay them off $15 million than to be in a year's worth of litigation right now.
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B
Right, but isn't that, isn't that dictatorship weaponizing a Justice Department, weaponizing federal departments like the FBI to go after people you don't like, rather than to go after people who've committed crimes?
- [19:06]
A
It is. And, and I, thankfully, I mean, they haven't prosecuted anyone yet, right? I mean, it's only been two months. They haven't, they haven't used the Justice Department to specifically prosecute any of his, quote, unquote, enemies just yet. But we're seeing him lay the groundwork with him, trying to at least publicly say he's reversing Joe Biden's pardons, which insanity. We see the FBI purging and demoting a number of top officials who worked on January 6th related cases. And interestingly enough, in D.C. where I live, the U.S. attorney or the Acting U.S. attorney Ed Martin, has really claimed he's Donald Trump's personal attorney, has claimed that he's going to be going after people who go after Elon Musk. And so they're laying the groundwork to eventually do something. I'm just glad they haven't done it yet. And I hope they don't do it, but you never know.
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B
But here's what frightens me. It reminds me of the adage, first they came for, right? We all know the poem and we're seeing it now. They are disappearing people and then claiming, with no due process, no investigation, no evidence, no proof in a court of law that any of what they're saying is true. These men that they essentially kidnapped, kidnapped and sent to this violent prison in El Salvador. The, the doctor who, you know, the, the kidney transplant doctor who they deported. They, they said that they found photographs sympathetic to Hezbollah on her phone. What does that mean?
- [20:46]
A
Right?
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B
Who investigated that? She's a doctor. Did she, did she download photos of a war zone? Did she, like what? Tell me, tell me why, and tell me the truth, because I don't think anybody would want any version of a violent criminal here. But what happens when we find out that a number of those men that were sent by the Trump administration to Venezuela were just dads.
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A
Yeah.
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B
What happens if they're American citizens? If they can come for. If they can come for. Fill in the blank. If they can overturn your green card status, if they. If they can revoke your citizenship, as they're threatening to, they can do it to anyone. Anyone. And that's what's terrifying to me. So even what you're saying, you know, they're laying the groundwork to weaponize the doj, they haven't done it yet. It sure seems like they're going to. And. And when a court orders them to stop these deportations that don't have any. What's the word I'm looking for? Any. Any grounding in the rule of law, and they say no, what do we do? Like, if there's no checks and balances, who's going to check this guy?
- [22:03]
A
Well, I mean, I don't know. And the truth be told, I've asked members of Congress, I've asked House members, senators, like, no one knows. No one has an answer to it. And I think, I think you made an important point that a lot of people, especially on the right, are missing. And not that Democrats and just Americans generally are okay with, for example, trend Narragua members walking around on the streets. No one wants. No, they committed a violent crime and they're undocumented. Remove them. Everyone's saying that. But under the United States Constitution and under Supreme Court precedent, everyone, no matter whether you're documented or undocumented, you have due process rights. Right. You have the ability to face your accuser. And right now, he is suspending that. And that is dangerous in the situation of the kidney transplant. Doctor, I don't really care about what she. What they found on her phone as much as I care about the fact that there was a judicial order in place that said don't let her leave the country. And they let her leave the country anyway. They deported her.
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B
Exactly.
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A
That's the problem. They're not. They're not going through the proper channels. And today, Justice Roberts rebuked Trump for calling for the impeachment of Judge Boasberg, which I thought was.
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B
Yes.
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A
I mean that. You never hear that.
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B
Never. Okay, okay. Can you walk folks through that? Because. Yeah. You are. You are a politically brilliant human. I am a bit of a political junkie. Not everyone spends as much time as I do or as you do reading the news and studying this stuff. Tell the folks at home what that means for Chief Justice John Roberts to do what he did today. Can you walk us through what a big deal that is. And. And kind of paint the picture.
- [23:39]
A
Yeah. I mean, to put it into perspective, the Supreme Court does not issue political statements, does not issue statements about a sitting president, no matter who the president is. It is so rare for it to happen. And in the past 10 years, it's only happened twice. It happened once in 2018 and once today. And the reason why. And it's. It's. They're so careful about what they do that they don't even clap during the State of the Union. When Donald Trump or any president says the State of our Union is strong, very basic statements, they won't clap. They'll just sit there. Many of them won't even attend because they want to look as apolitical as possible.
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B
And.
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A
Well, this morning, Donald Trump called for Judge Boasberg, who's overseeing this Trend Naragua Venezuelan deportation issue, to be impeached because he essentially did not agree with his ruling. And hours later, Justice Roberts issued a statement saying that essentially calling. And I'm paraphrasing here, but calling for the impeachment of a federal judge is. Just because you disagree with their ruling is wrong. And it's interesting, Roberts didn't say Trump's name in the statement, but he essentially alluded to Trump's comments. Yeah, stunning, because like I said, it's really only the second time in 10 years. And the last time was Roberts rebuking Trump in 2018 for labeling a judge an Obama judge. And he said Roberts specifically said there are no Obama or Trump or Clinton judges. They're just judges. And was like, wow, that's a big deal then. But here it's even a bigger deal because this is a case that Chief Justice Roberts will oversee, and he'll get in front of the Supreme Court guaranteed whether or not Trump can use the Alien Enemies Act. So given the fact that he's now making a public statement, he is risking the possibility of having himself essentially recused from the case by making this public statement, seemingly rebuking Trump. So it is stunning. I'm. I'm personally shocked he made it. I would never have imagined he would have made something like this.
- [25:32]
B
Yeah, it's. It's. When your entire job is to be politically neutral so you can be legally specific to. To feel you have to take a stand is not only radical in a way, but it also could endanger your career. So it's a very big deal. I think this is really interesting, and it. And it speaks to something larger, which is that I'm getting the sense Whether it's these supposed criminals they're rounding up or the supposed inefficiency in the government, it seems like they told a really big story about a really big problem and a, and a, and a really big budget imbalance. And it seems like they've looked under the hood of America and gone, oh, the problems are all a lot smaller than we thought. Most people who come here are pretty nice and work hard. And the federal government, while very large, is actually not very inefficient at all. It just costs a lot of money to run a country for 332 million people and to fund the things those people need, like Medicaid, like libraries, like, I don't know, the Department of Transportation. It's not, none of this happens for free. Like, we don't have water coming out of the faucet or street lights that work for free. And a lot of it requires global participation. You know, you see these sort of threats of tariffs and all of this destabilization because it seems like the fifth, you know, fifth grade bully wants to win in the sandbox. How do you make sense of how we can begin to talk about what the reality is in a country this big versus these big scary lies that Donald Trump and clearly, you know, Elon Musk, the ketamine cowboy who's weirdly in charge now of all our personal data? How do we begin to walk people back from the fear that they stoked that just isn't being proven true?
- [27:42]
A
Well, I think the big answer to that is they actually haven't done a lot. Like, when you, when you look behind the hood of what they've actually accomplished in two months, it's not, it's not a lot of stuff. There's a lot of executive orders that say a lot of things but don't actually do a lot of things. A lot of, it's like, we have to study this over the course of 90 days. I direct you to do this over the course of 60 days. Not a lot is actually getting done. And what is getting done is getting reversed. For example, just 30 minutes ago, before I got on this show, a federal judge in Maryland ordered, essentially said that the Trump administration has to reverse nearly everything they did with usaid. They have to open up.
- [28:20]
B
Oh, thank God. Oh, my God. I was on another podcast. Aaron, you're making me want to cry.
- [28:25]
A
Which is great news, right? But when you think about it, the federal government will now have to spend more money reopening USAID and rehiring all these people. When they did Saving all that money. Allegedly.
- [28:38]
B
Right, Allegedly.
- [28:39]
A
And you're saying, well, you want government efficiency, but now we're spending more, more money to cut. It's, it's wild.
- [28:46]
B
And now a word from our sponsors that I really enjoy, and I think you will, too. I think that's something people miss, is that, look, nobody wants there to be waste, right? Nobody. By the way, I got asked 10 years ago, if you were, if you were the president tomorrow, what would be your first action? And I said, well, nobody's going to think it would be this, but I would, I would hire forensic accountants to audit every single state and department in the country. I want to know where all the money is. I want to. I want to understand how best to maximize the ROI of the United States budget. Because let's be clear, taxes are an investment in a society, and everyone should be getting a return. Clearly, people like Elon Musk don't want to invest at all. They just want all the returns. They want to steal our money. And apparently he wants to privatize Social Security because the close to trillion dollars he has isn't enough for him. And he wants 2.7 trillion more crazy pants. But I, I think it's also really important for people to go, oh, there's probably not as much waste as we thought. Oh, these programs cost money, but they make the planet healthier. For example, with usaid, the work we do around the world, that soft power is what won the Cold War. It is absolutely first and foremost about national security, and it's just the right thing to do to ensure that people around the planet have access to medicine that they need, that we can produce cheaply, should be one of the great honors of American civil life. And to be clear, preventing the next pandemic, whether it be tuberculosis becoming untreatable or Ebola, matters to us because diseases don't stay in borders. And so what I think hasn't been considered is that to turn these things off, these giant machines that get this flywheel of momentum going, to turn them off lights money on fire, and to have to restart them is going to require a whole lot of energy, that is more money being lit on fire to get them back to where they were in the first place. So how do you think? Because I'm going to say, I feel better hearing you say, listen, it's really bad, but they actually haven't done that much. You're right. I needed to hear that. They've also done a lot of really horrible things, and a lot of what they're doing is so cruel. How do you think we begin to talk to people? Not just people like us, voters on the other side, our neighbors. The Internet would make you think everybody hates everybody.
- [31:31]
A
We.
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B
We mostly all really like each other in person. How do you think we start talking to each other and. And letting the truth of how this stuff works and how it's good for everyone actually ring true so that we can make like a team America, because it really is all of America versus the oligarchs at this point. How do we to help cut through the noise and remind people that we're in this together? How do we bring the truth back to our side?
- [32:08]
A
By sticking to it. Right. By continue parroting the truth. I think the truth is the most important thing. And cutting and then just sticking to the facts, sticking to the black and white, not sensationalizing things. Right. Getting back around a dinner table and finding common agreement over the future of Social Security, for example. But I will say this. I think that in a time right now where you have one party that is clearly unified behind Trump and another party that doesn't really have an opposition leader, to me, the best opposition is no opposition. This is what the voters voted for. Give them what they want. Let them see what they voted for. They're already seeing it. And his approval ratings are falling, right?
- [32:46]
B
Yeah.
- [32:46]
A
Approval ratings among independents is down to 30%, 67% disapprove of him. And that will continue. And there are elections coming up in New York. In a special election. You have the Wisconsin supreme court race on April 1. You have November elections and then 2026. And slowly but surely the pendulum will swing at a time where you don't really have a viable opposition. You don't have a leader on the left saying the truth. You have just a bunch of leaders who are not coordinated in messaging. I really think it's important to let voters see for themselves of like, is this really what you. And listen, at the end of the day, if Americans want this, that's on them. We can't stop that if 50, 50.1% want it. But I don't think that's the case anymore.
- [33:34]
B
I don't either. I don't think it's the case, not only with Trump voters, but I also think it's really important, exactly as you said, to, to continue to tell the truth. He had the smallest electoral margin in history.
- [33:48]
A
Right. He barely won 200, 000 votes in three states. That's it.
- [33:54]
B
He barely won. So this is not a mandate. This is not a demand. And, And I Do think that the, the lawlessness. You can't call yourself the party of law and order and support people who beat police officers to death. You can't call yourself the party of law and order and defy the courts and defy everything that is sacred about America, which is our equality, our justice system, your, your right to due process. You can't call yourself the party of family values when everyone around you is a rapist. And the guy who you gave control of all of our data has 14 kids with how many, is it seven or eight women now? Like, what are we doing? And, and I do think the voters in watching what he's doing are having that oh, the emperor has no clothes moment. Do you think that even though they're being heavily critiqued for it, the, the electeds on the left, the Democrats aren't organizing a massive resistance right now so people can find out?
- [34:58]
A
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
- [35:02]
B
I think maybe we're giving them too much credit. I don't know.
- [35:06]
A
Maybe we are because the one thing that Republicans do well, and I saw this on the inside, his message. Well, right, like if they want to talk about Hunter Biden's laptop, everyone from Tucker Carlson to your smallest mom and pop influencer will be talking about Hunter Biden's laptop. On the Democratic side, it's like we have affordable housing, reproductive rights, all these great things. But yeah, different topics, 100 different people, and there's no coordination.
- [35:28]
B
But can I ask you a question? Because now we know how much money Russia has been pumping into these right wing networks. We know that for them, this is opposition. We know that they're bragging on, on our TV that Vladimir Putin is destroying America without having to launch a single missile. I mean, they're talking about it out loud. They talked about how they bought an election for Donald Trump. The right wing all stays on message because they're paid to deliver that message.
- [36:01]
A
They do a good job.
- [36:04]
B
They do.
- [36:05]
A
I mean, the left doesn't have that same thing.
- [36:07]
B
No, we don't have the money. We don't have the reach. We, we don't have the, like, we don't have the evil network of billionaires, you know, paying Tucker Carlson to do pro Russia commercials. We just don't have it. How do you think that became such a runaway train? Because you witnessed some of that disinformation up close in your house. I mean, your father literally helped Rudy Giuliani investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. This whole sham of a Ukraine story, which now the guy has admitted he made up and he's going to jail in the first place. But for some reason, the fact that it. That it's all been found to be a lie hasn't broken through.
- [36:48]
A
Right.
- [36:49]
B
So why do you think that is? Because you wrote in your book, I'm gonna quote you to you, which is so cheesy. I'm sorry, but I'm doing it for the listeners at home. You wrote in your book, quote, it was clear to me that everything the mayor and my father did through the Summer months of 2019 related to Ukraine and the Bidens was done at the direction and with the consent of President Trump. But when your father got arrested in 2019 for this whole scam, Donald Trump immediately distanced himself. So I would imagine, as on the personal level, your book is a way for you to stand up for your dad a little bit, but I would also imagine on the social, sort of societal level, it's a way for you to try to ring the bell and say, this was all made up.
- [37:40]
A
Was.
- [37:42]
B
Can you tell people about it? Because there might be somebody listening who's like, what do you mean it was made up? I haven't seen that anywhere. Give us a little overview and then tell us why you think the. The lie has continued to outlast the truth.
- [37:53]
A
Yeah, I mean, to me, every time I sat in these rooms and granted, I was only privy to, like, 10% of everything that they were doing, right? So there, there was a lot more that I wasn't privy to. But everything, every time I was in these rooms, it was more of like, oh, we have questions that we need to answer, and we keep hitting these roadblocks and we keep getting the wrong answer or the answer we don't like. And it's how to massage this answer to kind of get it to where we need to go. So it was always like they were constantly hitting roadblocks in all of these, quote, unquote investigations, and I call them shadow diplomacy schemes.
- [38:23]
B
When I can I ask a question. When you say hitting roadblocks, meaning they would say, find this dirt, and someone would say, the dirt doesn't exist. Give it up. And then they'd say, no, you have to make us some dirt, more or.
- [38:39]
A
Less, or we're going to mold what you said into something that it isn't, essentially. I really think the reason why it hasn't. The debunking of it hasn't broken through is partially because the messaging on that side is just so. Well, it's so easy to understand, Joe. Biden is corrupt. That is so easy to grasp. It is much harder to grasp that. No, actually the Hunter Biden laptop didn't contain exactly what did it contain. But, like, when you go into the details, you miss the narrative. And they don't, they don't go into details. They have their high level talking points and they stick to it. And to this day, that's what they're doing on a lot of these things. So that's why for an average American, it's so easy to understand, like these big buzzwords or these big phrases where on the other side, when you're trying to fight for the truth, you do have to go into the nitty gritty. You do have to go details. But no one's going to listen to that. No one really cared as much to listen to that. So I really think that's part of it. I mean, I, I will say though, that we are in such 20, 20, 25. We're in such a different space compared to where we were in 2019. Like back then, it was the Trump administration. I mean, that was in the, in the third year of the first administration and they were still figuring out like their left from right, like they still didn't know really much about the levers of government. We were in such a different environment. They know how to get things done now. They know, they know the mistakes they made. So it's a completely different environment now.
- [40:09]
B
Meaning they're more expert at how to break things.
- [40:12]
A
Correct. Meaning I told everyone this back in the first or really during the 2024 election cycle, and people were like, well, do you like Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump? Like, who do you think would be better if you were a Republican? I'd say, well, to any Republican who wants someone in office, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis want the same thing. One can just get it done, the other can't. Right. Ron DeSantis is just a little smarter. Donald Trump is an idiot. He can't actually get things done. And we saw that in the first Trump administration and, well, now he's in office, he has people around him who have been in government who know kind of what to do more. And he has. No one's obstructing him anymore. No one's whistleblowing on him anymore because he has all these loyalists around him. So it's just kind of like full steam ahead. There's no learning curve anymore.
- [40:58]
B
Yeah, that's what scares me is that there's not, there's not a Cassidy Hutchinson in the White House. Anymore, and there won't be, and that's really terrifying. After you released the book, did you hear from anyone on the Trump team? Did anyone reach out to you, or were you just immediately Persona non grata?
- [41:20]
A
I think immediately Persona non grata. I mean, that was. That was such a crazy time for me. That was also. I wrote that book in two weeks between.
- [41:28]
B
What?
- [41:28]
A
Yeah, so I was studying for the bar exam at the time and. Oh, my God, it was during COVID I finished on like, the bar exam was like October 10th or something. And then two weeks later, I published this book just to get it out before the November election. And was it my best work? Probably not, but I just needed to get it out there in case someone was voting and would read it and, and see it.
- [41:51]
B
I am so shook.
- [41:53]
A
So, yeah, it was a crazy time. It was also during COVID so I didn't really have anything else to do, but.
- [42:00]
B
Wow. Completely non related to this conversation. But I have so many questions for you about time management. Like, clearly you've nailed something, so we're gonna have to follow up. What is it like now when you look back at that. Yeah. You know, you. You speak so much about the days following your dad's arrest and trying to make sense of all of this. I can't imagine that it is comfortable to have to investigate how someone so important to you could essentially. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I would imagine betray you or your country in such a way. How do you make sense of it? Like, what's your relationship like with your father now? Because this is a big national political scandal, but this is also your dad. Yeah.
- [42:56]
A
I mean, listen, I love my dad and not my dad. I wasn't really involved in this. Yeah, Stuff like that. So that was kind of separate, but from like a human perspective going through that. As, I guess, a fledgling lawyer, I quickly realized because I wanted to do criminal defense work. And when he was arrested, I kind of experienced the system from the family lens, from the, the family of the accused. And yeah, when I said earlier that there is truly nothing in comparison to having the weight of the Justice Department on your shoulders, like, I saw it genuinely break a person down. And to me, I was looking at that and I was like, it doesn't matter. I mean, like, whether or not you did what you're accused of, the hell they put you through to get to their end result. Yeah, it's not. And my dad, I mean, is just a unique case in that there was a lot of national attention Right. He got an interview on Rachel Maddow, whatever. Like, he. He definitely got some leniency when it came to sentencing. But the average American doesn't get that same leniency. The average American, it goes through this justice system with, who can't afford an attorney, who has, like, a single mom with four kids and is being thrown away for years. And they throw away. They throw them away and they lock them away without the key in it. Very scary, very tough situation. I saw that firsthand as the son of someone who was accused. And I would want anyone to have to go through that.
- [44:26]
B
Right. It's such an enormous lever of an enormous nation. And then when it's focused on you or your family, it must be really terrifying. And I would imagine, again, I'm just speculating here, but I would imagine for someone like your dad to go, what have I done for this person? Like, what have I contributed to? For someone who literally wants to destroy everything we say we believe in, you know, it. It's got to be hard. It's sort of. I don't know why this is what's populating in my brain, but it. It makes me think so much of the accounts I've read from other women who've been in abusive relationships where once you're out of it, you look back and you go, how could I have been in that house for so long? You know, but you're in it, and it's your world and it's, you know, your family in certain ways.
- [45:22]
A
Yeah. And I will say, I mean, I think that in the days after my dad's arrest, that was, like, the first time I experienced, quote, unquote, fame or infamy in a way, and, like, moment where I was walking to school two days after he was arrested, and there was, like, a photographer from, like, like stoics, like, waiting for me to walk by. A reporter slid her information under my apartment door, and I was like, how the hell did you get in there? And I had never been in, like, the public eye ever. And I was like, what the hell did I get myself into? And now, five years later, I'm a public figure. But it was. It was truly a scary time.
- [46:00]
B
And now a word from our wonderful sponsors. I really appreciate the way you've been so willing to talk about all of this, not just on this show today, but out in the world. And, you know, I've. I've read some really amazing accounts and I've watched some really amazing, you know, on camera interviews from some folks who have gotten out of the MAGA world as well, and who've talked about how getting out of it is kind of like having to get out of a culture. I have a friend who got out of a cult. Like, it's. The mindset stuff is really wild. And I'm really curious from this perspective. Not necessarily, you know, today in 2025, in the political landscape of, you know, however many pages of Project 2025 we're into. But I really mean just for you as an individual because you went from being a Trump supporter in 16 to voting for Biden in 2020 and advocating the way that you have and publishing your book and doing everything you could alongside the rest of us who tried to do everything we could for this election. You have such an interesting lens on this stuff. So what do you say to people who are still supporting Trump? Like, how, how do you kind of get the tip of the spear in.
- [47:30]
A
Yeah.
- [47:30]
B
To, to start letting the facts actually matter. Yeah.
- [47:38]
A
I mean, I, My, my one thing with. To all those people would be to like go and have some of these lived experiences that I've had. So, so what made me kind of switch? Because I never really bought into the Trump mantra. Right. In 2016, I couldn't even vote. I wasn't even old enough to vote. So.
- [47:53]
B
Oh my God.
- [47:55]
A
Truth be told, that's true. I remember. But I, it wasn't until like 2018 or so that I was actually some. Working in a, at a summer job in law school, and a friend of mine was doing Teach for America in Miami and she invited me to come into the classroom and teach her students about like just constitutional law. What happens if a police officer comes up to you? These are like six, seven year old kids. And I walked in there and I was like. Instantly it hit me, these kids, I mean, they didn't have the resources that I had. Their, their clothing was right. Like, they weren't in a good school environment. They're lucky if they had two meals a day. Right. Like their only meal that they were getting within the school. And in that moment, I was like, holy. One party cares about these kids, the other party doesn't. And that's when. That's when I flipped.
- [48:46]
B
Damn.
- [48:47]
A
And I think for anyone else kind of in that world, I want them to have those same experiences. And it's whether it doesn't have to be in an inner city school. Right. It could be with an aging parent who needs Social Security benefits and can't get it. Right. It could be a spouse who has, God forbid, cancer and needs health insurance. And gets a massive hospital bill. Until they experience something like that for themselves, they won't realize, like, okay, one party wants me to be okay in a situation like this.
- [49:19]
B
Yeah.
- [49:20]
A
But the other party doesn't really care.
- [49:22]
B
Yes, yes. And it's really interesting, you know, you bring up the experience of kids in school. And I've had this debate with some folks online that are like, if you can't afford to feed your kids, don't have them. And I'm like, aren't you all the same people who don't want women to be able to access abortion care when they need it? Interesting. And it's. My argument is always, look, I want my taxes to feed kids in schools.
- [49:51]
A
Right.
- [49:52]
B
I want kids to be well fed. And no, I don't think pizza should be classified as a vegetable in schools because of tomato sauce. I want them to have actual healthy food. And I want my tax dollars to go to that. I don't want the money I pay in taxes to mean that Elon Musk doesn't have to pay any.
- [50:14]
A
Right.
- [50:14]
B
To mean that Donald Trump doesn't have to pay any. Someone worth billions of dollars should not be paying $750 a year in taxes. It's unacceptable. And I think that the folks that are like, don't live off the government, you know, make your own way. I'm like, okay, make your own way. Go move into the woods. Don't use electricity, don't use water, don't use the roads. You go. Live absolutely all on your own. Provide for yourself, go. But the rest of us invest in a society to be able to be in a society. We're supposed to be in this together. You know, I don't think it's a radical idea to say, well, if it would be cheaper to have universal health care than to do this, you know, private insurance nonsense we do in this country, like, let's shape it up. That's where the money should be going. Yeah.
- [51:11]
A
I mean, listen, I think something heartening, I guess, for you and for your viewers is that I really do firmly believe, and polling has shown, and even my conversations have shown with folks on the ground and online, is that we are really more united than we are divided. We are divided.
- [51:26]
B
I agree.
- [51:27]
A
But truth be told, 80% of the nation is united. You have the far right and the far left, and they are the loudest voices in the room, but they aren't the most popular ones. And that's why. And those who represent us in Congress are not necessarily representing the masses. Right. There are six senators From North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming representing less people than LA County. Right. Like, there is a problem inherent in our system, but that doesn't mean people living in our nation aren't united. And I really do think.
- [52:01]
B
Right.
- [52:01]
A
I do think that the pendulum will swing back to the center. I do think we'll get back to normalcy. We'll take time and it'll okay effort, but we'll get there.
- [52:10]
B
So should we go to South Dakota? Like, what are we doing?
- [52:13]
A
I mean, if you wanna, if you want to go to South Dakota, be my guest. I don't wanna start with advocating for D.C. to be a state, Puerto Rico to be a state. Right. Like, let's.
- [52:24]
B
I'm all in.
- [52:25]
A
When Donald Trump says make Greenland in the state, I'm like, cool, two more Democratic senators.
- [52:29]
B
Right, let's go.
- [52:30]
A
Yeah, but no, I really think, like, just getting back to the kitchen table conversations, really, just getting back within your family, within your friend groups, like, that's back to. And I think. Well, I really, I hope so.
- [52:45]
B
I hope so too. And, and, and that, I think is actually where the hope is rooted. I think for anyone listening who feels hopeless, you gotta get outside, you gotta talk to a neighbor. The silos and the anger on the Internet and the algorithm, it makes things seem so much more hateful than they are in numbers. And there's always going to be hateful people, but there are so many more of us. What gives you hope? And as you're making sure to, to fill yourself up with that, how do you then also keep up with giving your followers these daily and sometimes hourly news updates that can feel hopeless. How do you, how do you balance this stuff?
- [53:33]
A
Yeah, what gives me hope is actually funny. I, it's the, the DMs and the comments that I get from Republicans. So thousands of comments and DMS from Republicans every day who are saying, hey, I don't necessarily agree with you or agree with how you're framing this, but it's right. And thank you. Right. Like, I have a Republican cousin who doesn't watch media, but watches you. That to me means that what I'm doing is breaking through, that the truth is breaking through. So that is giving me hope. And yeah, I have a large audience, but it's a very small audience and compared to the overall number of people in our nation. And even if I could change one mind or just expose one person to the truth, that is giving me hope. And, and I think what keeps me going. And yeah, a lot of the news is quote, unquote, bad but it is the news and people have to be excited about the news. People have to get excited about learning about the news. And even if you think it is horrible and we are good times, I get it. But there is, there is a light at the end of the tunnel because for every bad piece of news, there is a good piece of news out there. It's just going to come.
- [54:33]
B
Yeah. What was it that really made you say, okay, TikTok is it. I'm just going to start making these videos? Were you experimenting with it at first or did you kind of see the vision of how you were going to communicate and then relentlessly follow your instincts?
- [54:52]
A
Yeah, I mean, I just think like it was like that first video that really went viral when I got. And when I say viral, like when it got like 5,000 views, that to me was like, oh my God, I'm viral. Like, it's.
- [55:02]
B
Yeah, I've done it, I've done it. Right?
- [55:05]
A
Like, I think TikTok was like the easiest platform for me where it's truly like the least amount of work into making these videos. I mean, these videos take me two minutes to make. I don't edit them. I. They're one cut. Like it's super quick, super easy. And it's just like the authenticity factor. Like I'm, I was already scrolling an hour and a half every morning and an hour and a half at night on TikTok. Why not scroll five minutes less and make a video instead?
- [55:30]
B
Smart.
- [55:31]
A
What I just started doing and, and now it's like whether I'm in an airplane bathroom or in bed or at the gym, it doesn't matter. The news is the news and it's just, I'm gonna report it. I didn't look like a hot ass mess, which I do 90% of the time, but that's okay.
- [55:44]
B
I think that's great. I actually put mascara on today. That was my big, my very big step.
- [55:51]
A
So my wife, my hair before I came on.
- [55:54]
B
So I love it. I love it. Well, what feels like the goal? Like, you're doing such a good service. You're. You are bringing so many of us together. You are who so many of us check on first thing in the morning when we, you know, get on our apps. But for you, aside from just how you're helping lead folks, like, is there kind of an ultimate personal goal for you with the, the platforms across social media, the substack, which by the way is so good for our listeners at home, the Parnas perspective. If you're not subscribed get it together.
- [56:28]
A
I think the ultimate goal is to bring Walter Cronkite back. That's the goal.
- [56:33]
B
Music to my ears.
- [56:35]
A
And to empower a next generation of journalists. Right. To make it. To give them the platform to report their own news. To make sure that young people now can feel comfortable getting behind a camera and talking about what they see in front of them at their homes every single day. And that they don't have to go through 10 layers of review at a mainstream media company. And that they're just talking about the truth. So that's the goal. Making is fun again. And for me personally, my dream is to potentially have a show one day where I can just talk about facts for an hour. Yes. Because I think it's so needed in this age. Kind of like Walter.
- [57:15]
B
That is my dream. Should we do it together? Should we do it in South Dakota? Be like, we're bringing the news to you.
- [57:24]
A
We can ride on the horses with the Kristi Gnome?
- [57:27]
B
Honestly, absolutely. Like, my other goal in life is to get back to riding. So if I could do the two.
- [57:32]
A
Things at the same time, I would not join you. Actually, that's my biggest fear in life, really.
- [57:38]
B
Okay. We can start small. We could just, like, go hang out and you could stay on the ground, like sit. Yeah, yeah. My partner used to say that. And then we baby stepped our way into it. And the first time she got on a horse, by the end of that first hour, she was so happy, she burst into tears. So you never know.
- [57:57]
A
I've been on horses.
- [57:59]
B
Ah, okay.
- [58:01]
A
Okay. We don't do well together.
- [58:02]
B
It's a deeper fear. Okay, well, this will be part of the offline thing. I have a question, because now you're really. You're inside the baseball, as it were. You used to say that you hoped to maybe be the President of the United States someday. Do you still think that? Or are you like, absolutely not. Hell no. Goodbye. I want no part of it.
- [58:27]
A
I am at the point in my life where I'm no longer planning my life, if that makes sense. I love that growing up, I always was like, in five years, I'm going to do this. In 10 years, I'm going to do this. Well, if I. If I charted my course, the course that I passed out or created the path five years ago, 10 years ago, would have been completely different than where I am now. So. So I'm just kind of going with the flow, just enjoying every day and taking each opportunity as it comes to me. If I run for office one day, it's Because I feel like I was the best person for that job and that no one else can do it better. But right now I'm just kind of enjoying what I'm doing. So we'll see.
- [59:01]
B
I like that I am at the point in my life where I'm no longer planning my life.
- [59:06]
A
Right.
- [59:07]
B
Truer words have never been spoken. I think every time I've really gotten attached to a plan, even if I execute it, I kind of look around and go, oh, right. I think this was a really good idea on paper. And now that I've done it, I don't know if it's for me.
- [59:24]
A
Right, right. And honestly, for me, it's like if you gave me the opportunity between being Walter Cronkite or being the president, I don't know that I would choose the presidency. Well, yeah, because you can do so much more, like, in terms of impact as like the nation's truth teller than you can as a nation's leader.
- [59:45]
B
Yeah, it's really interesting. So when you look at those sort of personal goals and you know, some of them obviously revolve around work, but then there's, there's the whole other side of your life for you, for your joy, for your family. Like, when you look at the year ahead, what feels like in your core core, your biggest work in progress?
- [60:12]
A
Good question. My. Honestly, myself, like, and I'll. And I'll be vulnerable for a little bit in that, like, I'm gonna go to therapy for the first time ever this year. Like, I'm so happy. Right. Like, I'm gonna work on my relationship with my wife. We're in our second year of marriage, building a home I'm gonna work on.
- [60:34]
B
Congrats.
- [60:35]
A
So like that, that to me is the most important thing in my life. Like my personal life and setting those boundaries and building those relationships. And so that's my biggest work in progress. The career. And funny enough, has always come easiest to me. It's. It's the personal stuff that's always been the hardest.
- [60:51]
B
Yeah, I get that. Sometimes I think when, when you are so hyper intellectual, you know, you analyze data, you, you understand policy, you, you think about these big 30,000 foot issues that affect so many people. Your community focused. Right. It can be really hard to then be in just inside yourself one of one and figure it out. And that's certainly been a. Been a journey for me. So you've got friends walking this road, my dear.
- [61:30]
A
I appreciate it. Thank you.
- [61:32]
B
Yeah, yeah. I'm really, I'm really grateful that we got to do this finally today. Thank you so much.
- [61:38]
A
It was so cool. Thank you so much for having me on.
- [61:40]
B
I'm thrilled. And everybody better get on that sub stack. I hope that. I hope that this week your DMs are filled with work in progress, listeners being like, I'm all in. When are we going to South Dakota?
- [61:51]
A
Let's do it.