Can Democrats Win a Shutdown Fight?

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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Trump promises more political prosecutions and retribution. The military has arrived to liberate war-ravaged Portland. Stephen Miller wants to investigate people who promote progressive causes as domestic terrorists. The President of Peace says he's close to a deal to end the war in Gaza. And an AI version of Trump is offering all Americans a non-existent medical technology that QAnon believes can bring you back from the dead, which we know about thanks to a post from the real Donald Trump. We'll get into it. We'll get into it. But let's start with a government shutdown that has moved into all but certain territory. We've gone past looming. We've been barreling towards it for a while. And now...

It's all but certain. We're on the brink. Yeah, we're on the brink of it. Funding runs out at 12.01 a.m. on Wednesday. And so far, Trump and Republicans have refused to make any concessions to Democrats whose votes they need to keep the government open. Democrats want to stop health insurance premiums from going up and Medicaid cuts from taking effect. A White House official told Politico that Trump's response to Democrats' health care asks was, quote, go fuck yourself. Cool. Not inaccurate. No, no. And in fact, his actions since then have borne that out. Trump is also threatening mass firings of federal workers who were furloughed during the shutdown. His press secretary said that, quote, food assistance programs for women and children in impoverished communities will come to an end, end quote, if Democrats don't drop their demands.

And one Republican senator suggested Trump would use the shutdown to inflict pain on Democratic areas of the country, saying, quote, I'd be much more worried if I was a blue state. Meanwhile, a New Morning Consult poll of about 2,000 voters shows that 45 percent would blame Republicans for a shutdown versus 32 percent who would blame Democrats, with independents blaming Republicans by an even wider margin. Leaders of both parties met at the White House Monday to see if they could reach a last minute agreement. And from what they said after the meeting, doesn't seem promising. Laid out to the president some of the consequences of what's happening in health care. And by his face and by the way he looked, I think he heard about them for the first time. The closing of rural hospitals.

The fact that so many clinics are closing. We are not going to support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the healthcare of everyday Americans. Period. Full stop. They have some crazy ideas. Giving taxpayer money to illegal aliens for healthcare, that's a crazy idea. Funding transgender surgeries in Peru, that's a crazy idea. Let's work on it together, but let's do it in the context of an open government that's providing essential services to the American people. That's all that we're proposing to do, and the fact that they refuse to do that shows how unreasonable their position is. I think we're headed to a shutdown because the Democrats won't do the right thing. I hope they change their mind.

You know, Senator Eric Schmidt referred to Guatemalan sex changes, but the ones that J.D. Vance is concerned about seem to be taking place in Peru. This is interesting. We're spreading the money around. I'm just not aware of Medicaid covering all these Latin American gender-affirming surgeries. No, I think it's USAID. Oh, those are USAID. That's USAID cuts. I guess because he also referred to DEI in Burma, Eric Schmidt did. Just as a note, they really will never acknowledge what they actually passed.

in the one big beautiful bill. They never will. They never like no Democrat. Just the out and out lie of Democrats are trying to use a trillion dollars or one point five trillion dollars for undocumented immigrants, just brazen and false and makes me actually more receptive. Like we've all debated whether or not health care was the right fight, but the way it plays out when they talk about it after makes it feel like it's more the right fight just because the Republicans are so willing to lie about it. Yeah, I mean.

Well, let's get, let's get, I just, that was just my reaction to the J.D. Vance plant. People have strong reactions. I'm glad you raised the many South American countries that transgender surgeries funded by the American taxpayer may be taking place in. Can I raise a reaction? Yes, please. Speaker Johnson looked really short there. And I thought, it's funny, you went to Johnson because I was like, what's Lurch doing standing behind J.D. Vance there? Who was behind? Oh, Thune's talk. No one lets Thune talk.

He just stands there. The man hasn't spoken since 2002. Honestly, I don't know what his voice sounds like. I think he seems happy about it because he's like, how the fuck did I get here? I don't know. I was like a Tea Party-ish guy back in the day and pretty right-wing, and now I'm just like, what have these people done? Yeah, if you stand still enough in the Republican Party, you will be the reasonable one. Right, that's true. It's just a matter of how long you wait. How are you guys feeling about the Democrats' position heading into the shutdown? Tommy? Not great. I want to talk more about South American surgery. Honestly, that's more uplifting. I feel like we're like the New York Jets right now. We're not looking good.

I think Trump has shown that he can run circles around Democratic leadership when it comes to messaging and communications, I think. I believe Russ Vogt, the OMB director, when he says that he would use a shutdown to speed up doge cuts and the destruction of the government. They also have demonstrated that no matter what we negotiate with the Republicans, the Trump administration will use the rescission process to just claw back money. even if it's illegal. Trump is clearly saying, I will punish Democrats in blue states if this happens. I think the ACA subsidies that we're talking about are really important to a lot of people. If we don't extend these ACA subsidies, tens of millions of people will see their premiums go up as much as 75%. And that's a huge deal, and it's really bad. But I think almost no one knows what I'm talking about right now, who's listening to the show, let alone the broader electorate. And so I'm worried. I was talking to a smart friend today about government shutdown, someone who'd been through a few of them. And this person made the point to me that you don't have to talk about our conversation. That's us. Yeah. In our office. I thought it was smart, too. Go on.

Yes, we Dan said. No, it wasn't Dan. This person said to me, a shutdown is never a vehicle for legislative victory. At best, it's a vehicle for messaging. But usually voters just want the government to be open and to function. Love it. What do you think? So I just want to say that, like, I feel like I don't know. I really don't. And I watched a conversation with Faz and Matt Glassman. I thought they were both very smart. I came away more uncertain.

Like I will say, though, I also came away with a better appreciation for why health care might have been the right choice because, you know, there's a debate. Should it be about democracy or should it be about tariffs? And I do see one argument for why health care is the right fight is it is a place where you could see some concessions not feeling like a dramatic identity ego wound to Trump. Right. Like there is the possibility of an ACA deal. Right. Whether it comes in this debate or this negotiation or the one that would follow the CR, where I find myself nervous.

is the way in which the strategy and leverage around the kind of old school, normal political leverage gets muddied with what Tommy's talking about. And so you have- What part of what Tommy's talking about? So you have- Mike Johnson's height. You have just the old school- Mike Johnson's height. Mike Johnson being a short king.

So you have the old school sort of negotiation around a shutdown. Who's going to give in? The party in power is forcing the votes. The party that's out of power that's making the demands is seen as unreasonable. There's also, I think it still counts as normal politics, going to be the question of how long the filibuster holds, which I think is not getting enough attention in this, given that Republicans in just the past, what, two weeks undid part of the filibuster and they've been playing a lot of games when they pass the one big, beautiful bill. I don't think that's been getting enough conversation as to what happens in a multi-week shutdown as Republicans come up with some way in which they can honor Thune's promise to not get rid of the filibuster on legislation while creating yet another exception and passing whatever the fuck they want, making a negotiation even harder for the longer term spending bill to come. I'm worried about that. But then that gets combined with.

Donald Trump can start firing people. Donald Trump can target his political enemies. And there's two problems with that. One, he's already doing that. He's already doing that. And so he will do that regardless. He did not need a shutdown. You can get more authorities, I think is the concern, and make it happen faster and deeper cuts. Allegedly. Yeah, Schumer doesn't think that's true. I know this person I'm talking to today. Not you guys. Not us. Clearly no one in Schumer's office either. But I do think the concern goes beyond, oh, he's going to have these added authorities, which he does have. He's going to abuse his office even further during a shutdown to speed up what he's already done when the government is open. And I do think it's a trap to concede that that's leverage.

against us because it allows his extra legal powers to make him more powerful in the actual legitimate arena. And I do think it's important to not concede on that front. But even if you don't concede anything on that front, Democrats are just in a really tough position. So I have a couple thoughts on this. One, I think back to Tony Fabrizio's memo in July. He's Trump's pollster. And it was mid-July. I think he came up with this memo. He said the 2024 outcome for these districts, these are the most battleground districts in the House, was even the generic Republican is down three points right now among all registered voters, among those most motivated to vote.

Republicans down seven points. If the Republican candidate lets the premium tax credit expire with the ACA, the Republican trails the Democrat by 15 points in these districts. And if the Republican supports the extension of the tax credit for the ACA, they're leading by a couple points. Now, this is mid-July. Tony Fabrizio was like working for a coalition that was like hired by the insurance companies. Obviously, the insurance companies want the tax subsidies because it helps them in addition to actually helping people not have their premiums grow up. But it made me think like...

okay, what if we win? What if there is some kind of a deal with some kind of extension for ACA subsidies? There's never going to be a deal on reversing the Medicaid cuts, right? That's like a fantasy. That's what they passed. That was their main legislative accomplishment, right? So, but what if there is a deal on ACA because some Republicans, especially Republicans in frontline districts, are nervous? Substantively,

Amazing, right? People's premiums don't go up as much. We've like probably 20 million people get some help on premiums. Do Democrats in any way benefit politically from doing that a year before the election? Do Republicans benefit from doing that a year before the election and having that off the table? And was the shutdown fight at that point worth it for Democrats in any way? Right. In the near term, I don't want anyone's premiums to go up. I don't want anyone to get hurt. But we are bailing Trump and the Republicans out of their own political problem. And at some point, if we want his approval to go down, he needs to touch the hot stove.

Zooming out a little bit, like part of the meta conversation and what activists are telling Schumer is that this government is doing illegal, unconstitutional, terrible stuff, and that we should not fund it. We should not be a party to ice raids and rescissions and all the terrible things. Where is the strategy that goes from shutdown to an endgame that gets Donald Trump to change his behavior? No one can articulate one because there isn't one. I sound like I'm super negative on this because I think it's better for us to debate this. I'm genuinely torn. I don't know what the right thing to do is. I know that Chuck Schumer is getting tons of incoming from activists just like us, in part because of rage we all had several months ago about the failure of a strategy the last time there was a funding fight. But I'm just like I'm not seeing a clear endgame when it comes to policy or communications, especially with the leadership we have. So it's funny you said that because my other points that I was going to make is that I started to think about this in terms of like.

go big or go home. And the go big strategy that you referenced that activists are pushing on is to say that, like, we're not voting to fund this government. Illegal tariffs, illegal detention of American citizens, illegal troop deployments, all kinds of ways that he's abusing his power. And until you meet with us so that, you know, you can have the policies you want, you won the election, but what you are doing is illegal. And if you don't meet with us and you don't want to help us on that, then you figure out a way to fund the government because we're not voting for it. And guess what? You are free.

to change the Senate rules. You've abused power in a bunch of other ways. If you want to change the Senate rules to get rid of the filibuster, to pass the budget, you're free to do that as well. But you cannot count on our votes for this. And we're going to make sure that American people know how illegal this is and we don't want our names on it. Like, I think that, and then to answer your question, then there is no way out, right? Like their way out is the Republicans decide to reopen the government on their own, but at least Democrats then take a stand and make a big fight. Then my next most favorite option here is maybe just like not doing it at all. Because I do think that, I'm worried about what you say, Tommy, which is like, you start getting in this negotiation about healthcare and there's a couple outcomes I see. One is,

We do it for a couple of weeks. They don't give in on health care at all. And then we just fold. The most likely outcome is like a five day shutdown and then we cave and look even weaker. Right. And then maybe we get a fig leaf, right? Which is we cave, but they say, oh, we'll give a vote on ACA at some point. And then who knows? Then it passes, maybe. And then again, we've saved their asses. Or what? Or they negotiate an ACA thing. And I guess we get a short term win. But again, we take it off the table. So I don't I think that the small ball, which is what they're doing now, I think that is the least chance of any kind of either substantive or like political victory. And again, I'm doing this for the sake of argument, too, because I've gone back and forth a million times. But yeah, I don't know. I also just like.

Is that right? Right. Like, let's say Democrats fight on health care. They get some kind of a concession. It reverses some chunk of the ACA clawbacks on the subsidies. They declare a victory. We're still hammering Republicans next year on health care. We can claim we force them to do this. And to the point that Faz made in your conversation, like people don't like Donald Trump. They don't know what Democrats stand for. They haven't seen Democrats stand up and fight. And here's a moment where Democrats are standing up and fighting for something. Then you say, well, that's not the real central galvanizing concern. Our democracy is under threat. So we should fight across everything. But fighting across everything. I do think all the guarantees, right, that Republicans.

justify getting rid of the filibuster by saying Democrats will never give us their votes. We want to reopen the government. Then we've lost any leverage we have to do some good in negotiation over health care. And you're right. In some sense, helping Republicans out of the ACA subsidy shortfall does kind of get rid of a political disaster for them. Absolutely true. But like, man, like I just, that's a tough position for us to take that we want to teach the controversy. I don't know. I don't think it's teaching. I mean, I think to Faz's point, I think instead of just being like, this is bad, this is bad, it'd be like, we want.

to end an illegal tax on Americans that's tanking the economy. We want to make sure their premiums don't go up. We want to make sure that we can walk on our streets without being detained, even though we're citizens in the United States, so that we don't see troops in our streets and our tax dollars aren't going to... There's a couple of things. I know what you're saying. It is definitely broader, but have the fight. I mean, Chris Murphy was on Colbert and he was like, why would we fund a bill that literally destroys our democracy? And I was like...

Good line. I liked it. And then I saw this guy, Con Carroll, who was like a Republican Senate communications director. And now he's like a Washington examiner opinion guy. And he said, quote, we can't vote for a spending bill that literally destroys democracy. But if you extend one existing health insurance subsidy, then everything is fine. And I was like, honestly.

Yeah, I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. When I talked to Warren about this, I asked her version of this question and her point was just like, we have to prove we can win a fight. We can win something here. This is the one. This is the issue. There is a place where there is a path to some kind of a genuine victory for Democrats. And it would be nice to use what limited power we have before Republicans decide to take it away, to use it to prove that we can actually do something. And like, I worried the same way Faz is worried about the fact that our leaders in this feel as though they're being pushed towards it. That is a problem. Like, there's all kinds of reasons this is not ideal. I don't like any of the options, but I am coming around to why if we can get a victory here, it's the one place we could. Now, then the question is, was this the right time? Because.

a ticking clock around these subsidies is going to fall in November, December. The subsidies end on January 1st, right? This bill is just to carry you through to the bigger negotiation to come. Was this CR the right moment? I don't know. It's like a seven week. Yeah, we'll do this again in seven weeks or something, right? Yeah, and we should also say that to your point earlier, Tommy, that no one knows what the fuck we're talking about. One reason that they're doing it now and not later is the insurance companies will be sending out the notices soon to people. The premiums will go up. And by the way, those notices aren't just for people who use subsidies to help afford.

insurance on the exchanges, everyone's premiums are going up because if there's less money for people for subsidies, then that means that insurance companies in general, that means some people will lose their health care coverage, which means everyone's premiums goes up because the pool of people are sicker. Right. So it's like this is a people are going to get these notices and that's going to be a thing. So, you know, it's good to fight. But I am I am like noticing J.D. Vance there when he was like, we sat down and they did have some good ideas. I'm like, oh, he's thinking the good ideas are extending the ACA. Yeah, look, this is a maximally cynical.

perspective. And I, again, I don't want anyone hurt, but just like in pure political terms, I think people are far more likely to notice and be angry that their premiums went up and they're ever to hear a democratic party argument about why we have shut down the government because we suck at communicating. Our side sucks at communicating and their side lies about everything. They're saying it's about sex changes in Peru. It's like, what? Right. And if the election was next week and we saved it, maybe, but a year from now, we'll see what happens. Pod Save America is brought to you by Uplift Desk.

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Okay, right after we finished recording on Thursday, Trump finally got the indictment of Jim Comey that he personally ordered, though it took a former insurance lawyer who had never prosecuted a case before and couldn't find the courtroom to actually get it done, which she had to do alone because not a single lawyer in the office of 300 people that she now runs would agree to help her because of lack of evidence that a crime was actually committed. Even then, the grand jury rejected one count, and only 14 of the 23 jurors approved the other two. None of that mattered to Trump, of course, who told reporters on Friday that he thinks there will be other indictments. In addition to the investigations he's ordered of Adam Schiff, Tish James, John Brennan, and others, Trump told NBC over the weekend that he, quote, would imagine the DOJ's... also investigating former FBI director Chris Wray over a completely false conspiracy that the FBI staged the January 6th riots, which even Kash Patel had to partially debunk. The DOJ has also subpoenaed Georgia District Attorney Fannie Willis' travel records, and Trump is personally pressuring Microsoft to fire Biden's former Deputy Attorney General, our friend Lisa Monaco. So Trump said his success would be his retribution, but I guess he's ultimately decided that his retribution would be his retribution. The three of us haven't had a chance to talk about Comey yet. What do you make of that indictment? Love it. I think, you know, broken clock. No.

It's so brazen, right? Like he 86 Comey here. I was saying this to the guys beforehand, but if ultimately I do end up sharing a cell with James Comey, just know I did kill myself. But this, like, the brazenness of it, right? He posts over the weekend, we're not going quickly enough after my enemies. He gets this guy Siebert out of there. He appoints this unqualified person who's a loyalist into this job, the looming deadline of the statute of limitations. This person comes in, gets the indictment together despite the fact that the declination memo from the Department of Justice said there's not enough evidence to charge and rams this thing through, couldn't even get all the indictments done in front of a gang jury and that anyone, anyone you consider, look, all the fucking Trump loyalists love it. They think it's great.

He's going after a sentence. The fact that anyone is trying to do any kind of defense of this is so fucking embarrassing. It is so obvious and brazen. It's the most brazen thing any of us have ever seen at the Department of Justice. There's no even pretense that this is anything other than a political prosecution that's happening right in front of our eyes. It's fucking nuts. Yeah, so it's just clearly about revenge, and Trump told us as much. And Comey is going first only because the statute of limitations is about to run out, but there is a long list that we are just going to tick through. And the goal is not just to punish Comey, although that's part of it. I mean, I think there's a very good chance that this case gets tossed. You could imagine a scenario where the judge scolds the prosecutor for bringing something that's ridiculous. Like, to only get 14 out of 23 grand jurors to support this indictment is...

incredibly weak case. It's embarrassing. And then Hogan is like, I object. Did I do that right? But it's about, you know, scaring the shit out of Democrats and political opponents and, you know, making sure that big Democratic donors no longer want to support Democratic organizations and, you know, putting fear in the heart of his enemies. And like the exchange with Ted Cruz that this case is ostensibly built off of is confusing at best. Best. But like in reality, I don't think any reasonable person would read that given the facts that we know and assume a crime was committed. No.

a crime like for it to it has to be like willful intentional corrupt right like those are the words used for uh to make false statements uh or obstruction of congress like a real crime and it's like Comey answering a question over Zoom in 2020 about testimony that he gave in 2017, and Cruz kind of confuses the question that Grassley had asked before him. So Cruz confuses the question, and then no one even knows if Comey was talking about Andrew McCabe or his other friend. We could go through the details of the whole thing, but I don't think it's worth it. It's an incredibly weak case, and you know that because the 300 people in the Eastern District...

of Virginia, who declined to bring any charges until Lindsey Halligan showed up, thought the same thing. Yeah, it's absurd on its face. James Comey, not a perfect person. The guy is fucking by the book. And he was going to testify, honestly. Maybe he's parsing his words. Maybe he's being careful, but the guy was being honest. Too by the book, some would say. And then also occasionally, extremely not by the book. Like announcing a little investigation stays for an election. But the thing that I'm coming back to is, you know, Bill Pulte, the Trump housing aide, starts drumming up mortgage fraud czar. Mortgage fraud czar. He keeps drumming up mortgage fraud allegations against everyone from Adam Schiff to Lisa Cook. And then people go through and like, actually, look, see, Lisa Cook maybe didn't do this. Maybe this person didn't do this.

And like people should do that. They should dig into whether these allegations are fair or not. But it is beside the point. So Ruth Marcus posted an excerpt from the speech by Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. It was about being a prosecutor. And I thought it was really well said. It said.

We know that no local police force can strictly enforce the traffic laws or would arrest half the driving population on any given morning. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, the prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. It is in this realm in which the prosecutor picks some person who he dislikes or desires to embarrass or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecutorial power lies. That is the threat. You can dig into anyone. You can find a technical violation on the part of anyone. That's why this is dangerous. Whether or not people want to parse and say, well, maybe Comey did lie, even though that's bullshit, it is giving into what is so obviously dangerous about what the Trump administration is doing. They are finding the people and then looking for the...

a crime, not the other way around. One like bitter irony or frustrating piece of context around all this is I'm pretty sure we are talking about conversations about leaks to a reporter who was writing something about investigations into the Clinton Foundation. And those investigations went nowhere because there was no illegal activity or wrongdoing. But the FBI and DOJ seem to have been working overtime to blame each other in the press because the other side didn't want to get called up to Congress to get berated by someone like Ted Cruz to say, why aren't you prosecuting the Clinton Foundation? And I think that's why there was all this talk via intermediaries or whatnot with this reporter about these articles that led to this stupid outcome.

So that's one of the fact patterns in this. And again, it's confusion over which one they're talking about. The other is that... when Comey had those meetings with Trump where Trump demanded his loyalty and then Comey took notes, he had said before publicly that he gave those memos and notes to his friend, Daniel Richmond, who was a professor who worked for a time at the FBI. And then the question is, oh, did he authorize Richmond to leak those memos? And Richmond has previously said, no, he didn't. He just talked to me about how the press was getting on him and I decided to do it myself. And also, Richmond apparently didn't work at the FBI at the time that he got the memos. He's like a special government employee about some random thing like surveillance technology or something. Yeah, it does seem like Daniel Richmond was a bit of a carve out for Jim Comey.

when he wanted to work the media on a certain thing. But that doesn't mean it's a crime. Nothing about that is crimey. You'll be surprised if no Republican politicians and pundits are mostly all on board, except Andrew McCarthy's written a couple of nice, strongly worded pieces in the National Review saying this is preposterous, so good for him. But the rest of them are on board. Some say Comey was indicted by a jury of his peers. That's the John Thune sort of explanation. It's like, hey, you say it was political, but there was a grand jury and they gave the indictment. Others have just been more open that this is just revenge for Trump being indicted. And they don't seem all that worried that this, in the words of the New York Times, quote, risks ushering in a cycle of retaliation in which each new administration takes aim at the last one. What do you think?

Yeah, it's the trick they all have to pull here is that Trump wasn't indicted because he's unusual. Trump was indicted because Democrats went too far. Trump was indicted because he broke the law. Joe Biden's Department of Justice did not behave like Trump's Department of Justice. There is no post by Joe Biden saying, go after my enemies. It's more akis, akis, akis. And so you end up like they're trying to claim somehow that, well, you know, we saw them target people like Donald Trump. But Joe Biden's DOJ also prosecuted Hunter Biden. That was just a smokescreen. Because he's always going to pardon him.

I just also like, you know, Joe Biden isn't the state of New York and the state of Georgia. And it's like different. I mean, come on. It's just their position is Donald Trump is allowed to break the law. If you hold him accountable for breaking the law, then you're going to get you're going to get prosecuted as well. Look, also Cash Patel clearly lied to Congress in his confirmation hearings. If they want to set a precedent where people like Cash Patel are going to get prosecuted after the fact for that behavior, that that's OK. That's a road you can go down, but it's not a great one for anybody. Well, the New York Times piece, I know I was reading and.

Peter Baker, I think, wrote it. And at the beginning, it says there will presumably come a time when the Republican Party is no longer in control. Like, presumably, yes. The way that they're acting and the reason that they don't seem worried that it'll come back around to Kash Patel or anything else. One reason could be that they don't plan to relinquish power.

Yeah, but also, look, I think that the people working for Trump view it themselves as having no choice. They have to do his bidding or they get pushed out, so. Yeah, I think, like, there's a little bit of both. They can't predict the future, you know, we won't be, like, fatalistic. No, but they could also just not do it, for sure. Well, they could not do it. Yeah, but the people that won't do it are now all being fired, and the people that will do it are being put in place. Look, I think it's somewhere in between. I think there are people that are open to the idea that Donald Trump has no choice but to stay in office. And it's a sad state of affairs. We have a Republican, a Democratic Party that has become an agent of terrorists, and we have no choice. And I think there are people that are working their way towards that, for sure. A lot of these people are just one day ahead of the news.

Might not have been there at the beginning, but like Trump's going to stay in power forever. But like, well, these Democrats are now threatening us for these prosecutions. So what are we to do? Yes. Well, the other part of this is, you know, the other side of.

For my enemies, the laws, for my friends, everything. And so it's also pardons and all of us that feeds into this. But the pardon power remains. And we do not need to concede that there will never be a Democratic president again. And a Democratic president will have it, nor should we. And so Democrats will be able to reverse any political prosecutions that happen under a public administration. And I don't know how open we'll have to be about that or should be about that. But as we get closer, I think like the more brazen Trump is, the more honest we have to be about the fact that part of our job is to kind of clear out the brazen politicization of these prosecutions, including people convicted for them. The chance at Democratic rallies in fall of 2028. Win this one for Comey. Free Garland.

Trump's government's also moving full speed ahead on his broader war against immigrants, Democratic voters, and Americans who live in cities. On Saturday, Trump said, quote, I am directing Secretary of War Pete Higgseth to provide all necessary troops to protect war-ravaged Portland and any of our ICE facilities under siege from attack by Antifa and other domestic terrorists. I am also authorizing full force if necessary. I mean, imagine hearing years ago that that would be a statement from the president. Everything about that. Secretary of War Pete Higgseth, war-ravaged Portland.

Scary stuff. The war he's referring to, of course, is a long-running protest outside a single ICE facility that will now be protected by 200 troops for the next 60 days, though Oregon officials were already suing to stop the deployment. There were also dozens of armed, masked ICE agents patrolling downtown Chicago in a show of force this weekend. And at this point, too many stories to count of ICE detaining and assaulting American citizens or legal residents, including a Chicago journalist, American citizen, who was just sitting in her car outside an ICE facility with her window down when a masked ICE agent shot a pepper ball that burned her face and made her vomit. There were no protests in the area. There were nothing else. It wasn't like they meant the pepper ball.

for someone else or a crowd. She was just sitting there with a window down and got shot. Do you see the video of the ICE agent? This woman was begging him to just tell her where her husband had been taken over and all of a sudden he just throws her to the ground. It's like physically assaulting this woman in a hallway in front of all these reporters. Now, this man was actually suspended, which is like the first time. Bad news, bad news. Right before we recorded, the ICE officer from CBS, the ICE officer relieved of his duties after being captured on video pushing a woman outside an immigration court in New York City, has been returned to duty. Two U.S. officials tell CBS News DHS had called his conduct unacceptable three days ago. Trisha McLaughlin was on the record, I think. The man just beat this woman up for no reason. I'm sure.

Someone internally did something, right, to suspend him. And then fucking Stephen Miller probably found out, got on the phone and was like, get that fucking person back on. Well, there's blowback online about it from the right. There's blowback online saying, well, look, I thought Trump was going to go hard and they're going to use all the full force. Then all of a sudden there's one little incident of somebody finally standing up for ice and then we're off to the races. Can't admit any wrongdoing. On Portland, this is a much smaller deployment than we saw in L.A. or D.C. And, you know, so they're suing the Oregon AG and the city of Portland think that it's different than the lawsuit in L.A. Of course, you know, they have to say that either way. They think they have a better legal case here. Why do you guys think Trump's doing it and what does he want to get out of it?

He wants a message. I mean, there's a recent AP poll that Trump had 53% approval on crime. It's better than immigration, the economy, other big issues. Portland's been caricatured for years on Fox as like a crazy lefty bastion of Antifa violence. And it's a liberal, you know, soft target with the Democratic governor. So I just think this one is exactly the message they want to be portraying.

Yeah, I think that's right. I think it'll feed into what we're about to talk about, which is I do think they want the conflict a little bit between Democratic governors saying get out of our cities and Trump saying I'm just here to protect our, you know, you're giving your cities over to these violent Antifa protesters and we're going to stand out to it. And then these places become flashpoints where they can use the images to forward the debate about the left and the broader sort of claim that this is a mass, that smear half the country as being part of some vast violent movement. Yeah, I think you could argue that Portland is because. politically, LA and DC did not go as well for them as they thought. I don't think it was a massive loss for them, but all the polling shows that people are against the deployments in DC, against the deployments in LA. The polling got worse for him over time. And when you ask people now, do you want it in your city? Would you be against it in your city? It's even worse for them. So I think it's a win-win for him in Portland because either nothing happens and then he can say, oh, we did liberate Portland. It was wonderful. Or you get the reaction that he probably hoped he got in.

either D.C. or L.A., when there is a more violent, destructive reaction to ICE and the National Guard and the troops being there. Which, you know, you probably think, Portland, come on, give it to me, Portland. You almost burned down a couple summers ago. Yeah, without us even being there. The federal deployments becoming a flashpoint for protest, which then are used to justify why the federal deployments were there in the first place, this sort of vicious circle, is exactly what they want. It's what they got in L.A., even as much as it may have blown back on them. Sorry, that did sound like my sentence was not continuing.

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Go to H-I-Y-A-H-E-A-L-T-H dot com slash crooked and get your kids the full body nourishment they need. to grow into healthy adults. On election night, we will all be feeling a lot of feelings. Do not spend it alone. Spend it with me, Alex Wagner, for Crooked Media presents live election results. We're gonna have Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vitor, Stacey Abrams, Dan Pfeiffer, Aaron Ryan, and many more special guests to be announced. And they're all gonna help us make sense of what's happening as the election results roll in. So here's what you need to do. Subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube and tune in on Tuesday, November 3rd at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific for hot takes, catharsis, and as many results as we can possibly analyze.

One other thing to keep an eye on here is Trump's latest executive order on what he's calling domestic extremism. Over the weekend, Stephen Miller tweeted, quote, we are witnessing domestic terrorist sedition against the federal government. The JTTF has been dispatched by the attorney general pursuant to NSPM-7. All necessary resources will be utilized. For those of you who don't speak fascist, the JTTF refers to the Joint Terrorism Task Forces, and NSPM-7 stands for National Security Presidential Memorandum 7. For those of you who still don't know what the fuck that means, the order calls for, quote, a comprehensive national strategy to investigate, prosecute, and disrupt entities and individuals engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation, including, quote, the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations,

funding sources and predicate actions behind them. Ken Klippenstein has been reporting on this and says that sources tell him that this will likely cause the FBI's domestic terrorism watch list, which is currently at 5,000 to double within weeks or months. He also reports that a number of big law firms are taking it seriously enough that they've issued guidance for left-leaning nonprofits and other organizations. Have you guys looked into this and what's your level of concern here? I think it's a piece of a larger puzzle that will let the administration essentially designate certain liberal or leftist organizations and frankly, like policy views as terrorism. And then this will give them the pretext to use federal agencies to investigate, prosecute, otherwise harass organizations that are funding these alleged domestic terrorist groups. Because the memorandum mentions, quote, institutional and individual funders and officers and employees of organizations that are responsible for sponsor or otherwise aid and abet the principal actors engaging in the criminal conduct. So my guess is this is just another way to go after like the Soros folks or other, you know, big kind of democratic progressive funders. Yeah. So first of all, the kind of branding it is.

NSPM 7 and declaring it. Look, I'm loathe to use a Star Wars reference, but it really does feel like a reference to Order 66. And I'm sorry to be a person doing that. I know you. And that's okay. I'm a big nerd. You should learn. Maybe the AirPods that translate can help you. But he's always situating his conduct in sort of a grand nationalist history. You always feel that. Like, this is NSPM 7. A great historic moment in the history of our fight against the leftists. That's what he's got to say to his wife to get a girl in the morning.

That's what she says. That's not our characterization. She's a matador. Yeah, which is an ironic term, right? Because it's like, isn't he trying to, you know, it's like, that sounds like, it sounds like, are you welcoming that kind of culture? I can tell.

Where are we going? Who's getting bored here? Anyway, what I was going to say. So like us. Throw me out in the clown suit. Yeah, throw me out in the clown suit. I'll run distract for you guys. All right. But the part of this is like you read this order and it has this grandiose language and then you get into the specifics. Some of it is extremely vague and hard to understand what it could mean. I do think that's on purpose. Tommy pointed to the ways in which it goes after funding. You get to this moment where you get to this. There's a part where it describes.

what they're characterizing as domestic terrorism. And it says the attorney general shall issue specific guidance that ensures domestic terrorism priorities include politically motivated terrorist acts such as organized doxing campaigns, which, by the way, they've included desiring the unmasking. They've described unmasking ICE agents as doxing. Swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder. Trespass and civil disorder are the two that stuck out at me there. I'm like, those are pretty broad and just like, oop, you walked onto federal property.

I'm sorry, but like, look, destruction of property can mean a lot of different things. It can mean, it can mean burning something. It could be, it could be burning Portland to the ground. It could be whatever. Just lighting a simple Waymo on fire. Could be anything. Yeah. But all of this is meant to be vague, right? Like it's meant to be like applicable to a wide range of activities. And just the intimidation that people will feel not knowing what this will apply to, I think is part of what will make it dangerous. And then you look at this and you say like, well, they could go after anybody with this. It's just clearly a...

such a clear suppression of speech. And they're talking about anti-capitalist, anti-American views. Like, you can famously be anti-American in this country. It's called freedom of speech. I mean, I don't know how this is not a pretty drastic First Amendment violation. Huge, huge First Amendment problem. I think the point is to get the investigations going and make people's lives miserable and make them lawyer up, which is probably why all those big law firms. Yeah, the point is to read Hoffman to be too scared to donate to progressive. Yes, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. And by the way, to hope that if they start digging in based on these kind of specious reasons, again, as we talked about earlier, you get into somebody's books, you get into somebody's finances or emails, whatever, and all of a sudden you've uncovered something that you can use. Ken Klippenstein in his piece on this, his first piece.

I was talking about, it's like they're going after pre-crime, like in Minority Report, because it says the strategy is to disrupt any individual groups, quote, that foment political violence, including, quote, before they result in violent political acts. So part of this, too, is if you, they want to let people know that if you're in some organization that donates to someone else and then, like, Months later, that person, someone in the place that you donated to commit some act, whatever, it could come back to you because you made the... I mean, it's fucking insane. Well, by the way, he's saying that Gavin Newsom describing something as authoritarian is a terrorist threat. It says they can be identified by any of the following indicators of violence. Anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, extremism on migration, race, gender, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family. That's a good one. Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality. Fuck. It's nonsensical.

Bad, bad people. Of course, we had another horrific shooting over the weekend where a deranged man who appears to be a Trump supporter shot up a Mormon church and set it on fire, killing four people. J.D. Vance called the situation just awful and called for prayers. I assume they'll be getting to the bottom of who funded this domestic terrorist and calling for everyone who didn't say the right thing to lose their job about it. Is that what's going to happen now? Is that part of the anti-doxing under NPSM 7 or whatever? Notice that hasn't been a big, the fact that the guy's wearing like a Trump 2020 t-shirt and he's got a Trump Pence flag. I saw Benny Johnson from TPUSA was fast out of the gate saying this is an attack on Christianity itself. And then, you know, quickly there was an inconvenience of facts. This is like exactly what we're talking about.

when we were in the last round of the politicization of these shootings and accusing the entire left of being complicit in a murder, which is, so now if a person has a Trump yard sign, they're deranged. But if they have some evidence of having left views, they're part of a vast left conspiracy. They will make the motive important and central to a collective punishment if they don't agree with the person. But if it's on their side, it's, of course, a deranged person. When really what we see over and over is how people are getting radicalized online, whatever the underlying political views that are part of the justification.

We just we will never figure out how to get out of a cycle like this unless we collectively view these as a shared threat around people becoming taking these sort of violent acts based on radicalization on these forums and wherever else. And you, of course, saw all those Democratic politicians saying this is right wing violence. The right did this. One of yours did this. Donald Trump. You saw that, right? Oh, that's right. No one. No one did that. No one said that on the left. Not one Democratic politician. But like, you know, Zeynep Tufetri, we've talked to, like talks about like there's just no.

The putting this in politics means there's no talk about the contagion of it. Right. We saw like people writing on bullets. Right. That's clearly from one event to the next. There's a surge of these things like violence is contagious. We know that we've learned about this on suicides, on mass shootings, on political violence like this. There is clearly something happening and we can't fucking figure it out because everything is polluted by this, like the way in which they're using this for political purposes. Only somewhat related here. But you guys see the Daily Caller column last Friday explicitly calling for violence against the left. Good stuff. The Jeffrey Ingersoll there. It was it was published as, quote, an editorial in the Daily Caller. Longish op ed. It says here's some quotes from it. Quote, today I choose violence. Literally.

And then another quote, I know calls for violence are generally frowned upon. The issue is I simply don't care. Then again, just in case you weren't sure, is this a call for violence? Yes, explicitly it is. And then finally, quote, choose violence. So is someone going to now, I remember J.D. Vance gave a big speech when he was on Charlie Kirk's podcast complaining about a nation editorial. We talked about it that.

condemned violence and simply said that they didn't agree with Charlie Kirk and didn't say nice things about him. And he threatened to, you know, investigate everyone who's ever funded the nation, including made up the Soros Foundation, which didn't even fund the nation. And should we, are they going to now investigate who funds the Daily Caller? Hold on, I'm Googling who funds the Daily Caller. It was Foster Friest. I'll figure it out for you guys. Foster Friest did. And also the Kochs are connected. I'm going to send him a stern letter. Yeah, Foster Friest did. No, but there's a couple others. Charles Koch Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, they're crazy. Scaife Foundation. Okay. Yeah. So everyone, I assume everyone's going to look into that. They should. It's a good one for the NPS, NSPM7, whatever. Nipsum. Nipsum. Nipsum. Nipsum.

Nips him. Nisp him in the bud. It's also just like all these people. Brain rot. Everyone has brain rot. They are watching things online. They're getting very angry and they're writing it up because they're seeing so much shit online. It's making them kind of crazy. Look at what they're doing and they're getting away with it. The Daily Caller also just conducted a one hour interview with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Imagine. Imagine an outlet that just conducted a full interview in the Oval Office with a Democratic president and then leaves and then has an editorial that says, I call for violence.

Yeah, the hypocrisy stuff's real annoying. It's just un-fucking-believable. I know, I know. It's un-fucking-believable. It's not even the hypocrisy, it's just like, it's their, their bullshit is just, like, they should not be taken seriously.

Yeah, I just it's more to like I am more I maybe it's too sociological, but I'm like just looking at people. I'm watching people. I'm watching people that were once I don't include this person who I never knew. I'm watching people that they were, you know, maybe Trump curious, maybe somewhere in the middle between being anti-Trump. Like, I think I'm watching people that used to be a bit more reasonable, radicalized real time. You're watching that happen online. And I do think it's from people kind of exposing their brain to like the sewer of the Internet and getting a warped view of their own side and a warped view of the other side and only seeing. I mean, like.

The same problems with polarization. They're not just for people that are voters. It's for the actual producers of content and influencers and everybody else on these platforms. They're not immune to it. And you see it every day. And the fact that it's not just one guy that thought this has made it through a whole editing process and onto the website by a bunch of people who said, yeah, let's get that out there. Brain rot comes for content creators. Clicks, clicks, clicks. I mean, look, the only thing we say is it's a very fringe view to support bounds. This guy is one of a tiny swath of the country that believes it's an appropriate response. Most people don't. Everyone should condemn it. That's all we can do.

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On election night, we will all be feeling a lot of feelings. Do not spend it alone. Spend it with me, Alex Wagner, for Crooked Media Presents Live Election Results. We're going to have Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vitor, Stacey Abrams, Dan Pfeiffer, Aaron Ryan, and many more special guests to be announced. And they're all going to help us make sense of what's happening as the election results roll in. So here's what you need to do. Subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube and tune in on Tuesday, November 3rd at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific for hot takes, catharsis, and as many results as we can possibly analyze.

Okay, we had some other breaking news on Monday. President of Peace Donald Trump has solved the Middle East. Trump called September 29th, quote, potentially one of the great days ever in civilization. Yeah. As he stood next to another great product of civilization, Bibi Netanyahu at the White House, and rambled through the points of a peace plan that we have no idea, as of this recording, whether Hamas will accept. While the plan includes some promising aspects, including an end to the act of fighting and the return of all hostages, its crown jewel is definitely this. My plan calls for the creation of a new international oversight body, the Board of Peace. We call it the Board of Peace. Sort of a beautiful name, the board. The leaders of the Arab world.

Israel and everybody involved asked me to do this. So it would be headed by a gentleman known as President Donald J. Trump of the United States. That's what I want is some extra work to do, but it's so important that I'm willing to do it. Tommy, do you think you're going to be asked to be on the board of peace as well? Oh, that'd be cool. I'm not on any boards.

What if it's paid or unpaid? Do you think Trump is going to spend more time on the board of peace or the Kennedy Center board? Good question. On both. What do you make of this plan, this 20-point plan that they released and its prospects? It's kind of been floating around for a while. I mean, like, the event today was exactly what I expected, which is Netanyahu and Trump talking about agreeing to something vague that they can call a peace deal that Netanyahu knows he will never have to implement because it's basically designed to be, to look and sound maximally reasonable but be rejected by Hamas. And that's what I expect will happen. I did, like, his typically understated self-calling in the greatest ever in civilization. This isn't a two-state solution plan. It's a ceasefire plan, just to be clear. But, like, again, I think that...

Netanyahu, he tried to sound like he was on board with the big picture while reserving the right to renegotiate or delay every actual detail. I think it's probably a non-starter for Hamas. Why do you think it's a, I have no idea, why do you think it's a non-starter for Hamas? Because they have to trust Netanyahu generally to implement it because they don't think Trump can control him because they watched, you know. the last year. The plan calls on Hamas to release all the hostages within 72 hours, which means they give up all their leverage immediately and then have to trust that the rest of the plan gets executed. The plan basically calls on Hamas to disband as an organization and they'll have no role in Gaza going forward, which is, of course, a totally understandable position for the Israelis to want to take. But from the Hamas perspective, you can imagine that'd be hard to agree to. And then finally, like this is an organization. Their DNA is resistance to occupation and trying to get land back. And they're going to be cool with Gaza being governed by Donald Trump and Tony Blair. That's the best you guys could do.

Trump and Tony Blair? Unfortunately, it's the best we could do. Do you think Tony Blair knew he was on that list? He's like, what? What the fuck is Tony Blair doing? America First now means Donald Trump is going to chair an organization governing the Gaza Strip. We're giving Argentina a $20 billion bank bailout. Trump is now talking about retaking Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. So I guess we're going to reinvade Afghanistan. And we're blowing up every ship off the boats of Venezuela and talking about airstrikes both within Venezuela and Mexico. This is now America First, I guess. Yeah. There was a story in the last couple of days about the IDF moving back into parts of...

Gaza City parts that had already been in and then left back and forth. And now as they're moving through, they're kind of raising whole parts of the city and holding territory and not letting it go. And the beleaguered people that have been there, some of whom are leaving as they're being told others have no place to go and have left and come back and are now kind of giving up on having anywhere to go or seeing any purpose and kind of leaving. And it is so ugly and evil what is happening. And then you have the president and Bibi standing in the oval kind of patting each other on the back, declaring the greatest day in the history of civilization while kind of inflicting this collective punishment on Gaza.

even as they say that Hamas is responsible and doesn't care what happens to the people of Gaza because they use the people of Gaza like human shield. And so the whole thing is disgusting. And that's all I got. Were you excited to learn, though, that Jared was involved? I'm so mad about this. Thank you for prompting this. Thank you. Jared Kushner is not a government employee. He has no role in this administration. He did the Abraham Accords back in the day. Those are holding on by a thread. Abrahams. Abrahams. Abrahams. Because he mispronounced it. Well, apparently it's closer to the Israeli, the Hebrew pronunciation. Oh, yeah, yeah. But he just, he couldn't read. But Jared Kushner, he's sitting on, I think, $5.4 billion in almost exclusively foreign money. But is he happy? Saudi-linked, Emirati-linked, Qatari-linked money in his investment fund that they're using to buy EA Sports. It's in the game. It's like one of my favorite video game companies as a kid. Like, it's just like an insane conflict of interest that is never mentioned.

Any of the coverage. What is Jared Kushner doing there? He doesn't work there. He just sort of popped back into it, by the way. Like a couple weeks ago. Yeah, he was not even part of it. And all of a sudden, he was thanking Jared on social media. And you're like, wait, Jared's back? Walking in with Tony Blair, slapping him on the ass, saying, good job. He's probably pretty bored. He wasn't happy. I was on vacation once in Hawaii. And who walks into the restaurant? But Benjamin Netanyahu, Tony Blair, and a bunch of other people sitting around the table at that restaurant. Next thing you know, you wake up. That's a polycule for you. One thing led to another.

The Kushner part of it made me so mad. I fired up like a thousand tweets and got no engagement. I'm so mad about Jared Kushner. Two billion dollars on the Saudis. It's crazy. At least. He's doing Gaza. Whatever. The corruption is just... I know. It's like, to your point, this war is about to have gone on for two years. Like most scholars think it is a genocide.

thousands of kids have been killed. And it's like, there is no serious effort to get the Israelis to stop, right? Like everyone, like all the people were like, Hamas could end this war today if they release hostages. I actually do not think that that would get the idea out of the Gaza Strip. I think if Hamas released the hostages, it's not clear at all to me that given what the ministers around Netanyahu say about their desire to ethnically cleanse and occupy Gaza in perpetuity would actually get the idea. So I think it's going to have to be a deal where both sides do some really hard things and there's just no serious effort to get there. And it's so demoralizing.

All right, last thing. President of the United States posted his first ever AI-generated video of an AI-generated Fox News segment featuring his AI-generated daughter-in-law, Larry Trump, throwing to an AI-generated Donald Trump in the Oval Office, promising every American access to a non-existent medical technology known as medbeds that have become an obsession in QAnon circles. I can't even believe I said that whole sentence. Let's take a listen. Breaking now. President Donald J. Trump has announced a historic new healthcare system, the launch of America's first medbed hospitals and a national medbed card for every citizen.

Every American will soon receive their own MedBed card. With it, you'll have guaranteed access to our new hospitals, led by the top doctors in the nation, equipped with the most advanced technology in the world. These facilities are safe, modern, and designed to restore every citizen to full health and strength. This is the beginning of a new era in American health care. Holy shit. I love AI. It's great.

The politics of the like the far right, we're like, it's cool as long as Donald Trump is for universal fake health care. But real health care, we're going to cut dramatically. But fake health care, everybody gets it. It's going to be amazing when you get in your fake med bed and you have your fake card. It's for everybody in our beautiful new hospitals. I can't wait. Let's share with our audience what a med bed is. Tell us more. I know you've become an expert today, right? Yeah, I did a call with a med bed CEO. You talked to a friend. Dimitri Medbedev. Yeah, he's doing reporting. Medbedev.

That was good. That was good. Medvedev. That was nice. I don't want to bring the conversation. So apparently Medvedev is a mythical thing made with alien technology that will cure every ailment.

When this was first pitched to us by someone whose name rhymes with Belize Amon, I was like, what's the big deal? Who cares if they do like AI fanfic stupid med bed garbage on the Donald Trump Twitter feed? Now you're looking for your card. But then I listened to the QAnon Anonymous podcast episode about med beds. Great show, by the way. And the reality is so much darker because what's happened is there's QAnon grifters sell people like future access to med beds and they charge them like hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. And in some cases, it's not just that people are getting fleeced for their money, but they're delaying treatments in real life.

because they're waiting for a med bed. So it's really bleak. There's also, there's a couple of funny versions. There's one organization that's selling, I think what they call like a 5D med bed, which is they promise to get you access to a med bed that is quantum entangled with your current bed. So you like upload a picture of your bed and you imagine it and then you're quantum entangled with this technology. So basically you pay like three grand at this company to imagine.

Thanks. So the promise of the med bed, and there are many promises because, of course, it's not real. Reverse aging, right? You can wake up 30 years younger. Some believe they can actually resurrect the dead. Oh, I hadn't heard that. Some believe that JFK Jr. and Princess Diana are alive somewhere and that the med beds have brought them back to life. And the reason this is a QAnon thing is because they believe that, of course, the elite have been using the med beds, right, to resurrect themselves. Oh, you can regrow amputated limbs, missing organs in minutes. Well, the big one is reversing vax damage. Vax, of course. Oh, yeah. You can reprogram your DNA and you can cure all diseases, including cancer, obviously.

And what they do is they eliminate the need for vaccines, right? Or anything like that. Well, there is no need for vaccines. Of course. Well, you wait for the med bed, you don't need the vaccine. And what happened is the elite cabal has these med beds it had for a while. But once Donald Trump, they believe that once Donald Trump became president, that he's storing them now in an underground military base and he will give the green light any moment, which it seems like cat's out of the bag. Cat's out of the med bed, you know? Some people think that Trump's already using med beds because of his youthful energy. And his weird hands.

Get in that medbed a little bit longer, my friend. First of all, medbeds are also in the film Elysium. And I do think that... Prometheus. Oh yeah, and Prometheus. Passengers too. I would just say there was a time when conspiracy theorists used to go to the library, pull out the microfiche, put something really interesting together. And that was a simpler and better time. Conspiracy theories still can fucking work. They piece it together. You gotta actually have the string. And now people see Elysium. They take a quote from Hunter S. Thompson. And next thing you know, we got fucking AI medbeds. Tough. Here's something I'm interested in learning the answer to. I hope someone does some reporting on this.

How do you think this got from like QAnon conspiracy to Donald Trump to him thinking, I'm going to post this thing. He's since taken it down. He's deleted. Someone must have been like, hey, the med beds, that's too far. I don't know how that happened either. I love that story. Like, what do you think happened? I bet someone sends it to him. Yeah. Or he's literally scrolling and he's seeing it online. Like, I'm sure he has a feed and he's seeing stuff and he thinks, oh, there's people saying I'm good at health care. Yeah. It was a quick re-truth. And all of a sudden. Sorry, I said re-truth. I know. I'm sorry. He posted it. But yeah.

He also posted about medical marijuana for seniors this weekend. He also posted about how his gold trim, the Oval Office just decked out in 24-karat gold. It's like every foreign leader who comes now is just telling him, this is fucking amazing, you're the best. Now, hadn't we determined that he, in fact, was buying most of these little accent pieces from, like, Home Depot and spray-painting them? We don't know. But then if you put them in the medbed, it becomes real. Remember that episode of Captain Kangaroo? Remember that one? Everything could turn into gold? But actually, they didn't seem to have it. They had a silver one and a gold one, and the gold one was a different shape, and it really bothered me as a little kid, but that's because my mother took time off. But she actually didn't. I texted and asked.

She didn't. And she's on vacation. I won't hear this. Double check that one. I did. I texted her. I said, are you sure you didn't take Tylenol? And she said, nothing. Just prenatal vitamins for you and your sister. I was like, I don't know. I'm going to ask her dad. Maybe he crushed it, put her mashed potatoes. She was complaining. But the point being, what are we talking about? Oh, yeah. So people did find that some of the things attached to the wall are from Home Depot. And it was assumed that they were spray painted gold. It is not. It is possible that there's someone doing gold leaf. It could be leaf. It could be leaf. It could be leaf, but it could be spray painted. We just don't know. We just don't know. I think that at the next press conference, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffrey should stand up and say they have added another demand. They want med bed cards for all, like Trump promised in his

the government fund. That's great. That would be fun. It is so sad. Yeah, that would be fun. I would love to get in there with the fucking med beds. It is just so sad. You think about the people that are falling for this and it's so conspiratorial and so sad and so isolated. You have to be so isolated from the world to believe that this is real. It's like alien technology, they think. Did you see that footage, though, where someone was carrying the med bed into Jeffrey Epstein's cell? No. Oh, I don't know.

I don't understand. If MedBeds are real, what happened to Leona Helmsley? Where are all the rich billionaires that were famous and who died? That's the thing. It's like they never explained why they haven't been deployed yet. I mean, this is stupid. Anyway, something to look forward to. MedBeds. There's a woman in Canada who claims to be the queen of Canada who says she's going to make them free for everybody. This is going to be a great segue. Two quick announcements before we go. First, we've got some new merch up in the store. It's MedBeds.

Congratulations. No, there's some fun anti-anti-vax items. So that's good. Check them out at cricket.com slash store. It's a great way to help support what we do here. Also, Vote Save America, as you may know, running a first-of-its-kind pilot program to recruit candidates from Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas. School board, city council, state legislature, all up and down the ballot. We love that. Even if you're not from those states, if you're interested in running, they'll connect you with our incredible national partners at the National Democratic Training Committee and run for something to get you set up and ready to run anywhere in the country. We've already had thousands of people sign over the past couple months. Vote Save America is hosting a live call on Tuesday, October 7th at 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern time to welcome new folks to the program. Our own Tommy will be there with Vote Save America's partner.

and they'll talk about what this work's all about and how we're going to support you every step of the way. If you've even thought about running, this is where to start. Sign up for the call and learn more at votesaveamerica.com slash run. Paid for by votesaveamerica. Learn more at votesaveamerica.com. This ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. Guys, breaking news. Just before, that was a lot. What do we got? Breaking news. Google-owned video site YouTube will pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump over the company's decision to spend his account in the wake of January 6th. The agreement says that Trump has directed YouTube to contribute $22 million to help construct the new White House ballroom. Oh my God. Steal it twice the price.

The rest of the money will go to a handful of other plaintiffs who accuse YouTube of censoring them. I'm sure that's a sundry list of wonderful fucking people getting money from Alphabet. Terrific. Terrific stuff. I hope that ballroom's nice when it's ready for Trump's third term. Anyway, that's our show for today. Thanks to no one for coming on.

Some really big people did not make time for this today. We want to say how grateful we are. They're so busy. We get it. Hey, guys, we get it. We get it. Look, we know on the list, it goes Brian Tyler Cohen, the gals in Nebraska, a couple Midas touchable guys, maybe somebody who was at the DOJ for Biden 5. You know, there's a long list of people that you got to get to. There's a historian or two on the list. After that, I don't know. I don't know what's happening with Atrios, but maybe they're still around. Fire Dog Lake, and then you get to us. Pod Save America.

Remember Fire Dog Lake? Yes, of course. Fire Dog Lake, what happened to Eschaton? Good poll. Are they doing Eschaton before they're doing us? What happened to Eschaton? I feel like in 2005, Tommy probably had to yell at Fire Dog Lake on behalf of then-Senator Obama for some postings on Daily Kos. Obama probably posted like a 5,000-word rebuttal on Daily Kos. Joy Reid has a YouTube now. We're after Joy. Put us wherever you find it. We'll be here. They know it. What happened to the Aussie guy? He's doing content because he's ahead of us. Perhaps.

Unbelievable. See you when we see, I guess. Hope you stopped by CricketCon. Perhaps all these people, all these people who are interviewing the politicians after they interview them, they can come on and talk about their interviews with the politicians. What do they like? Politicians, what do they like? Anyway, I'm out for the later part of this week, but Dan and Alex Wagner will be back with a new show on Friday. I will be looking for a new MadBed.

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