TACO Tuesday in Tehran

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New slash, the South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South too. We're in the final stretch of them in terms, and the political map has only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential flips. So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground. I'm Erin Haines, journalist and expert on all things Southern politics.

And I'm Jennifer Paul-Mary, former White House Communications Director. Tune in on Mondays to Longplay series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Plaids Avamerica, I'm John Faver. I'm John Faver. On Today's show, we've got Trump seemingly making up stories about negotiating with Iran to calm the stock market after he threatened to blow up their power plants.

Ice agents being deployed to airports because Trump refuses to fund TSA unless Congress passes a law making it harder for people to vote. Democrats fantasizing about a Schumerless future and hotter candidates and the president celebrating the death of Bob Mueller. Then love it talks to Strix Grutin Easley-O-Lippmann about the Supreme Court's latest assault on mail-in voting and lots more. But first, some exciting news guys. Thanks to all of you listeners. We are, as of this recording, just 484 subscribers away from having 50,000 friend of the pod subscribers.

So if you haven't yet subscribed, please consider doing so, not just to help us hit 50,000, but so that you don't miss out on all the crooked content we're putting out for subscribers only. And you're saying that, Tommy, at 50,000 you'll show feet? That's right. I do have a wicky feet. I can add to it.

I do. Okay. Tommy, we'll show feet. I wouldn't say they're my best feature. I was going to say...

Well, we'll give the 50,000 subscriber Trump's phone number. Oh, should I go get my phone? Well, we're calling. Yeah. Ask him about his tweet.

Let's check in. Oh, that's good. Or should we ask him if he thinks the new eye at all is hot? Oh, yeah. This is probably like he's getting to the witching hours.

He's not knowing. He's not knowing. He's probably calling during a favorite show. Oh, yeah. Is this Hannity?

Oh, he's saying it's eight, right? Maybe this is 18. Oh, no. This is like some little... He hates Newsmax.

I don't know. I'm a little excited for a second. I get a little nervous. Me too. I get a little nervous.

I feel comfortable that Tommy has a plan, but I didn't. I do. I mean, I have to do the Tommy's run recorded line. I was telling that pod at America. We're bigger than Ben Shapiro.

Then I want to ask him if the new Supreme Leader is Robin Williams from the Bird Cage Gay or Nathan Lane from the Bird Cage Gay. Oh, wow. Or Scott Bessigar, Lizzy Graham Gay. He's more than Lizzy Graham Gay than anything. If Lizzy Graham is gay, which we can't know for sure.

Which we can't know for sure. But we can ask Trump. We can ask Trump. We can ask Trump. All right.

Let's get to the news. Roughly 36 hours after Trump threatened to obliterate Iran's power plants unless they reopened the Strait of Hormuz, which caused oil prices to soar, is Iran threatened to retaliate by destroying energy, water, and communications infrastructure across the Middle East. The president backed down just in time for markets to open, claiming that negotiations to end the war are underway, which Iran said isn't true at all. Just Trump talking to reporters about this Monday morning. Tomorrow morning, sometime, their time, we were expected to blow up their largest electric generating plants that caused over $10 billion to build one shot.

It's gone. It collapses. Why would they want that? So they called, I didn't call, they called. They want to make a deal.

We're doing a five day period. We'll see how that goes. And if it goes well, we're going to end up with settling this. Otherwise, we'll just keep bombing our little hearts out. He said there's many points of agreement with Iran right now.

What can you give us about this? Like 15 points. 15 points. They're not going to have a nuclear weapon. That's number one.

That's number one, two, and three. They will never have a nuclear weapon. They've agreed to that. The more moves, there's going to be a controller down. That'll be open to everyone if this works.

How soon? And who is it? In the eyes of the eye of the eye of the eye of the eye of the eye of the eye of the eye? Me and the eye of the TBD. They're calling it the Tehran taco, guys.

Are they calling it that? No, no, I hope not. They are. Yes, somewhere. I realize the simplest answer here is nobody knows because the president has undi-guit.

But what do you guys think is going on here? How did we get from Trump threatening an escalation that would likely constitute a war crime just on Saturday night to a seemingly fabricated story about a possible deal to end the war? Tommy? Yeah, we went from zero enrichment regime change to joint custody in the straight arm movements. Is that where we're at?

Maybe Marco. That's the market job. Maybe the chairman of the straight arm movement. He's the bridge. He's the troll that sits at the straight arm movement.

That's a good P-text that does a rhyme scheme. In between the price of oil exploded, the stock market fell way off the ties. I think Trump woke up Monday morning. He saw the Asian and European markets way down. S&P futures were way down and decided to send up the old taco bat signal.

It's predictable. We know Trump cares about two things. It's TV coverage and bad moves in the stock market. The only criticism he probably gets in person at least is from billionaires and CEOs and bankers who can afford to go to his country clubs who will see him and be like, I'm worth a billion less than I was yesterday. I think that's what happened with the move.

That's why that's in the press. That's not only the guy that would have talked about airstrikes on IRGC targets, it's only about market manipulation. This will get us through the short term, longer term. I don't believe a word he said in that clip. The Iranians know they have a leverage.

They're going to use it because they don't want to wake up in six months with the Israelis once again bombing them, bombing going for regime change, trying to kill off their leaders. Iran has denied that there have been substantive talks. I've also seen a list of demands from Iran that could include simultaneous ceasefire in Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq. Iran continuing its missile program, Iran codifying its rights and nuclear enrichment, Iran getting payments for damages in the war. Reparations.

Reparations. Reparations. And then some sort of the fact though, recognition of their control of the strike was Trump kind of preemptively grants there. I don't know, man, JD Vance maybe is going to leave these talks. I think that would be a good thing.

We should get Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner away from these talks because they're morons. But also the US Marine contingent gets there on Friday. So yeah, I see about that. I have a question because I read some reports that they're all headed to Islamabad in Pakistan for talks. And JD Whitkoff and Kushner are going to meet the speaker of the Iranian parliament there.

I saw Pakistan officials talking to Reuters to Reuters too. But like a question about this, if you're the speaker of parliament in Iran and you're probably next on the Israelis list for targeted assassination, you're just popping your head up now, hopping on a plane and going to Islamabad. Is that something that you think the... Probably safer out of the country than in. There's a moment when Trump was asked who exactly he is negotiating with.

It's actually very similar, sort of geometrically, to when he was asked which president he was talking to and then didn't want to say and then they all denied it. So Iran saying these talks aren't happening, Trump saying they are. But he won't say with who, why? Because he suggested he says who the US is talking to, Israel might kill them, which also gives you a little bit of concern about what the negotiating posture can be about promising it into the conflict when you can't promise that your chief ally won't step in and escalate when you choose not to. But they're joking, I mean, kind of joking.

But like also they have killed a bunch of top Iranian officials now assassinated them. Every time the Iranians have negotiated, we have bombed. They have bombed them or attacked during the negotiations. Like if you're the Iranians, why do you try to go negotiate at all at this point? They were complying with the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear agreement, which I pulled out of it in 2018.

Then the US and Iran were negotiating with the Israeli started the 12-day war and then we were negotiating again. Apparently the last round of talks before the most recent war was the most productive yet, then we bombed them. And then Trump and the press bragged about how we use talks as subterfuge to trick the Iranians, right? So now the Iranians are that dumb. They know that there's 7,500 plus Marines heading to the Middle East right now.

And look, I mean, the Israelis have killed a lot of people who have been our interlocutors and talks. They can kill the speaker of parliament. The power structure in Iran is the RGC. It's the military. So that's who's going to be calling the shots here.

And so Trump could be like, oh, I have a secret source like Delce Rodriguez of Iran. I don't buy it. Yeah, I saw that a bunch of Trump officials just told Politico too. They're doing the Delce Rodriguez thing again with the speaker of parliament. They're like, this is what he's looking for.

And one official said that the speaker of the Iranian parliament, he's a hot option right now. That's the quote. He's a hot option. What does that mean? People are talking about him a lot.

I think he's someone that they can deal with. He's a hot option. But they got to test him out. We're not that part of the show yet. Let's give a hint to our hot fan in the section.

Hot Iranian? Hot Iranian section. The administration has gone several Iranian generals up to like 3,000 or 4,000 degrees. Jesus. Tough.

So there's that. I do think that the trouble for Trump here is that like, Taco speak aside, like he doesn't just get to cancel the war, like he canceled some of his tariffs. Like the Iranians and the Israelis kind of can do whatever they want and keep this thing going in a way that really wreaks havoc on the global economy and our own for as long as they want. Yes. Look, what an extraordinary couple of weeks this has been.

The first war launched without Congress, without clear goals, goals that evolved over the course of that weekend. They didn't really land on. If there's one set of goals that kind of landed on repeatedly, it's the Rubio version, which is no nuclear capabilities to destroy the Navy, et cetera. But they had talked about regime change. They were the regime's inability to project power.

Then they closed the Strait of Hormuz, at which point Trump began begging our allies to join the fight after the fight had already begun. And they said, no, thank you. We will continue to not be part of this war. We weren't consulted on anything to do with especially after even bullying us for a year. And then Trump said, actually we don't need you because it's going so well.

And then he saw the markets tank and is now trying to end it this way. And yeah, he's not in control of events and he wants to be in control of events. But really, there's no, I saw a piece of analysis about this, which is actually ironically, a place where there's not much nuance. Either the Strait of Hormuz is open or it's not. It's not, you have a huge set of non-consequences that Trump is not able to solve.

He has to get it open. Oron has to say whether or not it's open and that's what puts him in this position. And you can kill a bunch of leaders over and over and over and over and over, you could create opportunities for promotion, but it doesn't deal with the underlying problem. Yeah. I want this war over today, if not today, tomorrow.

I think that's the best outcome, the sooner or the better. But we should be clear, if the war ends today, it is a failure. We lost. Like the 900 pounds of highly nutrient uranium still sitting in Iran. The regime is still in place.

In fact, their position is hardened because we were placed an 86-year-old named Hamane with a 50-something-year-old named Hamane, who was apparently much more angry at us because Trump killed his dad, his wife, his kid, and some others. And by the way, 86-year-olds tend to die on the phone accord and create power vacuums that are not made by the United States. He was going to regime change himself and then maybe the protesters were on the streets in December, January. He could have helped exercise a better option. And then Iran is now fully realized it's economic leverage through the Strait of Hormuz.

And it sounds like they intend to continue to exercise that leverage. Why wouldn't they? Why not? Trump has also asked about his decision to lift sanctions on 140 million barrels of Iranian oil that's already sitting at sea, which could be worth about $14 billion to the Iranians. The move was intended to ease what has now become a global crisis that the head of the international energy agency said is worse than the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks combined.

US and Israeli officials have also started forecasting a battle for Hormuz that will likely involve the 2,500 Marines headed towards the Middle East right now. Though there doesn't seem to be much clarity on what that would entail, at least based on what various officials are saying in public. Here's Soybean farmer Scott Besant and horny warm-monger Lindsey Graham on the Sunday shows. The president and the process of winding down this war were escalating. Again, they're not mutually exclusive.

Sometimes you have to escalate to de-escalate. The sanctions were in place to prevent Iran from getting any of the money. They will have access to some of the money. Again, Kristen, you're missing the point. In essence, we are Jiu-Jitsuing the Iranians.

We are using the Iranian oil. We are using the Iranian oil. Here's why that's so present. Trump, keep it up for a few more weeks. Take car, Galan.

We did a go, Jima. We can do this. They're really sending their best. I guess we're funding both sides of this war now? 14 billion dollars for the Iranians?

I don't totally understand how this brings in the art of Jiu-Jitsu. I don't understand what that is. We're even the type of speech that he was referring to. He was Jiu-Jitsuing them with their own oil. I guess it's the idea of being that if you remove the sanctions you lower the price of oil and therefore lower the amount of money Iran gets, but Iran was currently getting zero dollars.

I'm the map trudgingly in line. But 14 billion is more than zero dollars. The pellets of cash that Obama gave Iran in the nuclear deal, that was about 1.5 billion altogether. It was just their own assets on frozen. Yeah, the pallet of cash was 400 million as part of the bigger settlement.

Sorry. The data back to 19. The 1970s with the Carter administration, there was an arms deal with the Shah of Iran that obviously ended when the Iranian revolution happened and then it wound its way through these various courts and we had to pay them back and that's how it ended up doing it. That became the biggest deal ever Donald Trump talks about to it. That pissy cadaver they put out on the Sunday shows.

It's got a tough interview. He's suggesting that giving around 14 billion that they can use to fund a war against us or new nuclear infrastructure or more weapons for Hezbollah or the Houthis is Jiu-Jitsu, which I would disagree with. It's very angry that Kristen Welker for suggesting we should talk about how to pay for the war as they're primed to request 200 billion dollars in funding. Everything about his interview there, he was terrible. That just seems like a lot of money.

Also, I don't know if you saw that when they were talking about the Iranians' reparations as part of any negotiation and the war, Trump officials were like, well obviously we're not going to give them reparations, but maybe we can just unfree some of their assets. It just depends on what we call it. I'm like, oh, so you might unfree some of their assets and then say that that, oh, interesting. For a nuclear deal. But it's different when Trump does it.

It's different when Trump does it. Trump's giving them even more money. I don't know who is receiving less genuine feedback more Donald Trump or Lindsey Graham at this point. He's out there frothing at the mouth comparing car guy onto fucking Iwo Jima. Are you out of your mind?

Plus about 7,000 Americans at Iwo Jima, 20,000 wounded. Oh, are you saying your goal is to have one of the great battles of fucking World War II in the Middle East right now? Like that's your goal? That's what you think we should be. That's the good analogy here?

Yeah, we've got to give them. At first we've got to give them the let them sell their oil so they can make 14 billion dollars so they can fortify their defenses on car guy and then against the invasion that we're about to launch for what? For oil, for more oil to sell, I guess. I'm so, look, I think we can sanction it again? I don't know.

I still want to take the over on corruption being the way out of this thing. Got Wick off, Kushner, they can make some kind of a deal. Suddenly the straight-over moves is open and everybody's making money and that to me is, and that all of the escalation talk is a threat towards some kind of a deal. It's not impossible to imagine we live in that world. Suddenly you can play 18 holes on car guy.

Genuine, the straight-over moves is beautiful. It actually is. Go look at pictures. Go look at pictures straight-over. You're in the straight-over that we're never going to come back.

Oh, yeah, and by the way, two weeks ago, Meghan Kelly was saying Lindsey Graham is a homicidal maniac with a bloodlust that is insatiable. That's before that interview. It doesn't seem like it's been satiated at all. Not satiated. Shout out to representation, though.

Look at this administration. Scott Bassett out there, Lindsey Graham out there. Yeah. Marshall P. Johnson threw that brick and here we are all these years later.

Beautiful thing. Why do you think, this brings up a good question. Why do they only have Bassett, like you said, the Treasury Secretaries out there on the Sunday shows. They got Graham out there, Hagg Seth doing his briefings. They're all selling the war.

Is the White House really sending their best? Where's Marco? Where's JD? No, I do think that Bassett is out there purely to talk to the markets because they were freaking out. His lack of answers is to sign up for the plan.

I read over the weekend that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was only 60% full at the start of the war. They clearly all thought this was going to be quick and over by now. I heard from somebody over the weekend that Trump is basically the only one who likes Pete Hagg Seth anymore and everyone else thinks he's a clown and idiot and that he sucks on TV and he's doing badly at the job so they're like happy to throw him to the wall. That's awesome. And have him own this policy.

It's not like Trump's kind of there too. You heard him Monday at the policy. He's like, Pete, you're the one who told me to do this war. Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up and you said let's do it. That's right.

I have to say, that's actually to me the most revealing and chilling thing I've learned in quite some time about the way this decision was made because so the first person to chime in to say we should do this is Pete Hagg Seth and we're off to the races from there. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you're counting like US officials, I'm sure I think we got BB, well probably inside the administration is Hagg Seth and then you got Lindsey Graham and then you got Netanyahu. I think that goes with the big war monger. I think over the course of the first four years and then the first 100 days of the Trump administration 2.0, a lot of people try to talk Trump into going to war with Iran and he waved them off where he got waved off it and then he saw them in the name of operation and then he said well, well, it was like we're invincible.

We can't do anything. So I've watched all these types of brief things. He's actively harmful. He's like reading war crime limericks and then poor Dan Kane the chairman of the show chiefs was like let me try to be a fucking adult here, Admiral Cooper from the sitcoms pretty good but Rubio and dance are in witness protection. Remember Marco Rubio after Venezuela, he did the press, he was in the press conference he was everywhere.

Have you guys seen him on TV? He popped up to say, he popped up to say Israel made us do it and then we haven't heard from him since and then JD Vance just sort of runs around trying to talk about anything else and then when anyone asked about the war he was like, oh I'd go to jail if I told you classified info, the advice that I gave the president about this war. There was one more person I saw reported over the weekend that convinced Trump this was a good idea, Rupert Murdoch. Rupert reports. It tracks with the phone.

Yeah, it totally tracks that you've got Netanyahu, Murdoch, Lindsey Graham, and Pete Haggseth. That seems like the right crew for this. Speaking of Vance and Rubio, this is sort of an unsequitur, but I just like this. You see the St. Anselm poll from New Hampshire that just came out?

They started doing 28 primaries on the Republican side, so they did their last one in October. Since then, Vance is at 46, but he's down 11 from October. Faves? No, no, no, this is the horse race on the Republican side. 46?

46% He's down 11 because you know who's at 27. Marco Rubio, up 18 points. Nice. And then DeSantis is at five. Fight it out.

DeSantis is down two from the archival and everyone else is in sickle digits. So, but that is interesting that the Vance and Rubio have switched a little bit. Trump also said on Monday he still wants Congress to send him another $200 billion of our tax dollars to fund this war. We've talked about why this should be an easy no vote for Democrats. Now, it seems like some Republicans are also blocking at the price tag.

Senator John Kennedy says he won't vote for any amount of funding until Congress holds hearings on the war. Tom Tillis said that a $200 billion request would need to pass the Senate with 60 votes. And over in the House, Lauren Boebert said last week. He's already a no on any additional war funding. So Trump and various pundits keep saying that Republican voters are fully behind this war.

You think these Republicans in Congress are finally reading some of the same polling we are? I was struck by the Boebert statement because she said, I will not vote for a war supplemental. No, I am a no. I've already told leadership I am a no on any war supplemental. I am so tired of spending money elsewhere.

I'm tired of the industrial war complex getting all of our hard on tax dollars. And I was like seeing that was like, wow, that is better than a lot of Democrats have been able to come out with and say clearly that there are no any supplements. All these Democrats seem to be playing- Got a hand to her. I'm so tired of spending money elsewhere. I'm tired of the industrial war complex getting all of our hard on tax dollars.

I have folks in Colorado who can't afford to live. We need America first policies right now. And I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. But yeah, I mean, look, this funding request went from a rumored possibility to Politico.

I had a leak of 50 billion. Now it's up to 200 billion. And I was very worried from the very beginning that Democrats view this or that kind of like a rock war lens about supporting the troops. And you're a jake-tapper. Literally say that.

It won't tick Chris Murphy. It won't be accused of not supporting the troops. But now we've got to the point where I think the war is going so badly. The number is so high that I think this is a political opportunity for Democrats and that we should not only loudly oppose it, but we should make it a big thing. These voters do not want to spend 200 billion to drop bombs on Iran.

There was some recent polling about funding. 56% of voters oppose more funding for the war. 41% strongly oppose, personally. 15% who strongly support. 61% of independents oppose more funding.

And then CBS and their poll, like 60% disapprove of the Iran war. 67% of Americans say we should not be willing to pay more for gas during the Iran war. So like people will not feel in the time for collective sacrifice message. Also that CBS poll, like, you know, they had recently polled on March 3rd, so just a couple of weeks ago. War approval was $44.56 then.

Now it's $40.60. Also it mirrors Trump's approval and disapproval now. Trump's drop approval in that poll was $40. Disapproval was $60. The argument just also released a poll as well.

It has very similar numbers to the CBS poll and all the other polls. They also did a generic ballot test for the midterm. And they have Democrats leading $54.46. And if you do probably definitely vote, likely voters. 55.45.

That's 10 points. That would be larger than the vote in 2018. Depending on budgets already over a trillion dollars stories recently about it at the end of the last fiscal year, they were racing to spend what money they had because it was more than they knew what to do with including buying grand pianos and Herman Miller chairs for people. You also have Shandafia. They were talking about what's happening at security at airports.

You had a collision at LaGuardia FAA problems all across the country. Shandafia walking around begging for another $20 billion to pick the FAA to modernize air traffic control, recruit enough air traffic control. You can't get that money through Congress. But Trump's going to get $200 billion to pay for his war basically to legalize it and authorize it after the fact of what are we doing here? Yeah, there already, I was thinking they would do this last week.

I think Bessin started it over the weekend. And Trump today was talking about it too, which is like, oh, we need the $200 billion to sort of backfill for all the munitions that we've already used and for future threats. And we always need the money for our defense. And they're going to try to decouple this $200 billion war funding request from the war that they're asking. Yeah, I did it that this several weeks requires basically upping the Pentagon budget.

By 20%, stuck outrageous, stuck outrageous. Yeah, the thing you mentioned a minute ago that the administration will try to argue that this funding request vote is de facto congressional authorization of the war. And everyone should just know that that is how your vote will be viewed by history. You will be like all these Democrats after 2004, 2003 trying to explain how actually we just voted to authorize George W. Bush to go to the UN to put more pressure on the Iraq.

No, you will be seen as voting for the war and for the funding. Bucken vote against it. I will say hearing Lauren Bobert say that knowing that there are other Republicans who are going to be nose on this, like I now feel more confident that Democrats are going to vote the right way even if some of them are at the beginning of this process were thinking of maybe supporting it. Like, I don't know, I mean, explaining your vote is tough enough for like a $200 billion war funding request for a war that's not going well that no one asked for, but like supporting that when Lauren Bobert voted no and a couple other Republicans, like, you know, I just don't see it. I hope so.

Long play our docuseries exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back. News slash the South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South too. We're in the final stretch of them in terms and the political map has only got more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential for lips. So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground.

I'm Erin Haines, journalist and expert on all things southern politics, and I'm Jennifer Paul Mary, former White House Communications Director. Tune in on Mondays to Long Play series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Long Play, our docuseries exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back. News slash the South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South too.

We're in the final stretch of them in terms and the political map has only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential for lips. So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground. I'm Erin Haines, journalist and expert on all things southern politics, and I'm Jennifer Paul Mary, former White House Communications Director. Tune in on Mondays to Long Play series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're traveling in America anytime soon, here are a few fun developments you should probably be aware of.

One, flights are much more expensive because the war in Iran has spiked fuel prices to obscene levels. So your ticket's going to cost a lot more. Number two, you might end up waiting in the airport security line for more than four hours because Trump is now refusing to pay TSA agents unless Congress passes a bill that would require showing a passport or birth certificate to register to vote. And three, while waiting in that security line, you may see armed ICE agents in full tactical gear milling about the airport, looking for something to do or someone to arrest. This last week of genius came from the president himself who couldn't stop bragging about it to reporters on Monday.

That was mine. That was mine. You know, the paper clip. You know, the paper clip? 182 years ago, a man discovered the paper clip.

It was so successful. And everybody that looked at it say, why didn't I think of that? ICE was my idea. They're able to now arrest illegals as they come into the country. That's very fertile territory.

Now, you know, I'm a big believer that they should be able to wear masks when they go and hunt down, you know, murder as criminals and others. For purposes of the airport, I've requested that they take off the mask. I don't like it for the airport. We still have masks not at the airport, but they need to do it when they're out in the country. The people coming into the airport, typically speaking, art murders, killers, drug dealers, et cetera, there may be a few of them, but there are many.

But they are coming in illegally because that is the easiest way for people to come in illegally to the country is to just book a plane ticket, show up at the airport. He is in his brain and there is some sort of a fact about how this one person is border policy is that a lot of people who come in through the country, or people overstay their views as after coming through, fine, legally. Right. Right. No, I'm not saying it's a smart point that he's making.

So backstory here is that Democrats have been trying to fully fund TSA and all non-immigration parts of DHS for a week now, over a week now. Senate Republicans initially said no, they were blocking these bills. But then over the weekend, John Fune reportedly called Trump and said, you know, Republicans are ready to join Democrats and like funding everything except for ICE. And then Fune said maybe that just Republicans would try to fund ICE with like a party line reconciliation vote or something. You know, let's end this crisis.

The airport lines are getting long whenever. Trump says no to John Fune. He says that he will keep TSA and all of DHS closed unless Democrats pass the Save Act and that he's deploying ICE agents to the airports. This seems like both a terrible idea and terrible politics. What do you guys think?

Did you guys hear the back story, the CNN report on the back story of the ICE agents thing? Apparently it was literally a random woman, a radio caller named Linda from Arizona, which is the idea to Clay Travis on his radio show Friday. Then Clay went on Fox News to talk about it. Trump must have seen that because he then announced his plan the next day. So that's inventing the paperclip.

Now, and now we have ICE agents just milling about the airport. The lines today are still just as long as they were. Why? Because they're not trained to be TSA agents. So they're just walking.

You see these AP photos of them just sitting there looking with nothing to do. Yeah, they're just there preventing the floors from flying up and hitting the ceiling. This is sort of like we're at this place where, oh, no, no, no, don't do that. It's too stupid. That's too stupid of a thing to think it would help.

They're not trained. They're not going to be able to do anything at the airport. They don't have to use the machines. They're not even taking the training to scan. They don't even know how to read the idea.

Those machines seem complicated to me. They probably have to learn something for a while. They're just going to end up standing there. So we should do that. We should do it someday.

We'll have them out there at the airports by Monday. Doing what it doesn't matter. It's what you wanted. And it's an image of the ice agents there. And that's cool.

You're doing something. It's to own the lips, basically. Trump said it drives Democrats crazy. That's what Jim Comer said Republican House on the Sun dishes too. This is like a line that we're hearing now that it's driving the Democrats crazy.

Having the ice agents there. It's like, you're having to be an airport in terrorizing communities. It's like it's not going to be no harm, but like it's not going to be doing all kind of tasks and related to their duties. So whatever you want. Democrats have been demanding to take ice agents off the streets and to take their masks off.

That's what you did. We're getting Starbucks at LaGuardia now. Do a donut run for the TSA guys. That guy's like, great. Like, stand there.

What are we doing here? We're in this purely symbolic fight, too, because before Trump added on top of it, and we got to do say back, and the trans people can't do sports, if I'm not going to reopen the government. What was happening? Utilization. What was actually happening?

DHS was shut down, right? But the reason Trump can deploy ISIS, because ICE has this other pool of funding, $75 billion pool of funding that they're just going to run off of, right? So this is a symbolic effort to say we're not sending any more money to ICE. That's why the government's shutting down. Then the negotiations will open everything up.

But ICE, right? Even that will have no impact, actually, on ICE. Democrats came out in favor of that Republicans. That Trump doesn't want to do that. He wants to add all these things on top of it.

Ironically, any resolution that would have a positive impact on what ICE is able to do or not to would be the result of even more concessions on both sides over a negotiation of actually funding ICE. The only way to actually limit what ICE will do in the next few years is through a negotiation. That's not about not funding ICE. That's actually about getting to funding ICE, which is so far from where we're at right now, because we're having this sort of purely symbolic conversation about ICE and the airports and whether or not we'll let TSA agents get paid. Well, now Trump has just decided to own the whole thing.

He has just decided to torpedo any chance of blaming anything on Democrats, because he's like, you know, John Thune. Ted Cruz was out there saying he would just fund TSA. Like I love to travel. Exactly. Ted Cruz out there.

And then Trump's like, no, you've got to pass the safe act, which the Republicans, John Thune, in response, told a reporter, it's just not really, he's like, look, we all like the safe act, because they're all supposed to say that. Even though some of them probably don't want to pass the safe act, because again, it would probably prevent a lot of Republican voters from registering to vote. But he said it's not realistic to tie the safe act to this funding battle. And you actually see a couple, like I saw one of the Ohio senators say this. Ted Cruz is saying it.

So I'm actually surprised, pleasantly so, that some Republicans are like, OK, this idea from Trump? A little crazy. But I don't know if it goes anywhere. I just keep thinking back to the Politico story from January about how Donald Trump's going to travel the country weekly ahead of the midterms, telling a political message. To be able to guess.

We're going to co-own the straight-of-four moves with the Iranians and have ice ages in the airport. They're like, so? $500 extra dollars to fly to Cincinnati. And you're going to wait for three hours at the airport. Welcome to the Golden Age.

Did you guys watch the Tennessee thing today, the Tennessee event he did just to begin it? It was like a cabinet meeting in that, like there are all these staffers just going to do in the ritualistic dicks. And at one point, I forget who it was. It was Stephen Miller, like, really went to town. And Trump was like, well, I don't know if you can top that cash.

And then Cash would tell us up. And he did his little glazing session. It was just terrible. So Tommy Versen ad hoc blow job, supposed to the more ritualistic and official time. He likes it off the books blow job.

It's a ritual, that's all. That's all it's going to do. Trump also said that the Senate should kill the filibuster to pass the Save Act. They should cancel their Easter recess if necessary, because this one's for Jesus. That's the Save Act.

Have you heard the good news? This one's for Jesus. He actually saved this one for Jesus? He said do it for Jesus. Do it for Jesus.

He said Jesus would want you to present your passport or birth certificate to your local election office in order to register to vote by these midterms, which is, again, is something that would probably disenfranchise, not just Democratic voters, but plenty of Republican voters, which is probably why most Republicans in Congress don't really care that much about passing it. So that's where we are. I don't know how Trump's just going to have to back down in this one, because there's going to be pressure at the airport, the lines are going to be crazy. He doesn't have this problem. Everybody's going to send it with him.

I think he can. He'll find a way to get it. Look, like IRGC guys are doing TSA security work. Yeah, look, I was talking to the Ayatollah. They got some great ideas for what we can do to get these airports running more smoothly.

He says some security guys are taking lonus. Unfuckin' believable. Well, Randy Revolution, and honestly, I think we don't make sure they're gonna look within our back. Yes, I wouldn't do it. He says.

We're not. Yeah. The welcome message goes from Christine Ometh, the reports to the new, the speaker of the Iranian Parliament. Yeah, hot option. Funded or not, speaking of DHS, appears that they're going to have a new secretary in place shortly.

Rand Paul is the only Republican voting against Mark Wayne Mullen, and two Democrats are voting for him. We talked about John Federman voting yes. And as of Sunday, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico said he's voting yes. He said Mullen is a friend, and will stand up to bullying by Stephen Miller. Heinrich also noted that in Mullen's confirmation hearing, he quote, recognize the necessity of judicial warrants, which also supports reporting from the New York Times over the weekend that before his nomination, Mullen had been working behind the scenes with Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer to hash out a compromise on reopening DHS that included requiring judicial warrants in most cases.

I wonder what you guys make of Mullen's relatively easy path to confirmation. Not just the yes votes from Federman and Heinrich, but just not a lot of intense opposition from the Democrats. Seems to be based partly on a belief that DHS will be slightly less chaotic and more humane under Mullen's leadership, and it was under Noam and Lewandowski. What do you guys think? Yeah, the Heinrich statement has a real kind of rose before host energy to it.

So you got to assume right Mullen's getting through with Republican votes because Rand Paul was the only know about matter on the committee, that he would have helped him get out of the committee, but he would have had the votes to get through. So I suppose the argument would be giving him a yes creates a relationship in which you have kind of a better opportunity to put pressure on, have a real conversation with someone you worked with closely, but that also I think works well with Rubio. I was about to say it depends on sort of ignoring what the actual reality is of the Trump administration and what happens when people are in there in the pressure they're under, because whatever relationship you had before, they become, no matter what they're saying behind the scenes, beholden to Stephen Miller and Donald Trump, the inability to be publicly critical of them, the inability to defy them and all the consequences.

After that, and so you have people that have expressed their regrets about voting for Noam, and you have people that have expressed their about voting for Rubio, yet not learning that lesson from their colleagues when they decide they're gonna go for this guy. So I think it's not only lying against these people, it's always something people regret. Yeah, the consensus is that Kristina was a disaster, and I think there's kind of anybody but her vibe, even with Republicans, also senators tend to kind of coast through in these settings, so we'll see. I mean, I do think it's part policy, part personal. Like he does, Mark Maymall does sound like he was genuinely more moderate in the Trump administration on judicial warrants, and also, it sounds like he has some genuinely good relationships, which is surprising because he did try to beat up the guy from the teamsters at a hearing one time, but now that guy from the teamsters is sitting behind him at his confirmation hearing because their voice, also you know, also with their Josh Gautimer, the Democrat from New Jersey.

And so, this sounds ridiculous, but he runs a popular workout group for members of Congress and senators. Yeah, I think he's teaching a polite, I've heard members talk about this and that it's really good. Exhale through the drive, through the drive phase. That's a reference center. That's don't even worry about it.

Oh, and just with three of us, it really does. That's right. I'm quite a Christian. I know. So there's some personal politics here.

He's a disaster. Yeah, he's going to be a disaster, but he's spotted them. He's going to help them really kind of crush their lats and their delts. It's not even a personality thing why he could be a disaster. Like when he's a DHS, there's one way to lose his job, and it's by pissing off Stephen Miller and Donald Trump.

And the senators can't hurt him anymore. Once he's a DHS, right now, they can. They can cost him the nomination, right? But once he gets there, it doesn't really matter. So, but look, I think if you want to make a better argument for why you don't put up a fight, you can only fight somebody things he has the Republican votes anyway.

And so what are you going to do? It seemed impossible to strike down the nomination. I do think what you can do, the most important thing, is in these negotiations to reopen DHS, and as Mullen's getting confirmed, you try to codify the rules about a judicial warrant or all this other stuff, which is the reason that the Democrats tried to use DHS funding as leverage in the first place. As you mentioned, now we've come so far field that we've got ICE agents running around the airports. Speaking of Lewandowski, Dan and I briefly mentioned the NBC story about him openly demanding bribes from a private prison company.

On Saturday, the Times also published a big investigation into Lewandowski's time at the department that is just full of in raging details. On Monday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into the bribery allegations. What do you guys think? Good use of time and energy if Dems get the House back? Yes, the shocking brazen corruption scheme where people are either obliquely or directly suggesting that if you want a government contract, Corey Lewandowski has to get his bequette.

They all deny it, but they have a lot of sources, including sources of the White House that are validating this story. I have no member of the NBC or in the Times, but I thought one telling point was people inside the White House or inside the administration, considering whether or not to do an investigation or take some kind of action, are worried that if they do, Trump will probably come out in defense of Lewandowski. This was my concern that I expressed on Friday's blog. It's crazy. You know, I was like, maybe let's not talk about it until after Trump leaves office, if we're going to go after Lewandowski, and then we should just quiet down until he can't pardon me.

Right, the pardons loom over the whole thing. And then there's the fact that Lewandowski seemed to be getting the presidential daily brief. Absolutely nuts. That blew my mind. He's basically a volunteer governor and employee, getting the PDB.

He's not a full-time employee, and he's getting the PDB, and he's holding meetings in Christine Noom's office when she's not around. He's doing a lot of things in her office, went to the ground. I think go after him. Like whether or not we're able to prosecute this guy, I don't know, maybe they'll be a state charge we can go after. But like, put a fucking head on a pike man.

Like, do some oversight. Try to scare some other people out of doing this shit. Because like, we've talked about a lot of new fan-girl corruption here. The Emirati's buying your barely existing crypto company or like selling some Melania shit going to somebody for the retirees giving you a jet. The jet didn't get the return on that investment.

No, they did not. They could have used that jet. So back it was a jet. Make sure everything goes our way. Heads up, by the way.

Heads up, by the way. It's bulletproof. Yeah, we'll send out, we'll send some cock over to fix the fucking Rosewood guitar. Can we get a fucking refund on that? I got some good guys for countertops who are fixed the Fairmont.

Unbelievable. The Lewandowski stuff, it's such old school corruption. Like, I need a kickback. I need to be a special advisor on the contract for this. You know when Trump White House officials are going on background to NBC and being like, this was brazen and crazy.

We didn't like this. And even Trump is apparently annoyed with Lewandowski. Which maybe he won't give him the part. That's why it's like, let's not assume he's going to pardon everybody. Like, maybe he will, maybe he won't, but like make him do it.

Oh yeah, I think you're right. Like, if he does pardon me, pardon him. But we've got to just, we have to live, that's a concession to him before we begin. You got to go into the documents. I'm Aaron Haines, journalist and expert on all things

Southern politics. And I'm Jennifer Palmieri, former White House Communications Director. Tune in on Mondays to Longplay series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. On the topic of democratic strategy, Wall Street Journal has a big story about a possible revolt brewing against Chuck Schumer from within the Senate Democratic Caucus. It leads with an anecdote about Chris Murphy using over a dinner about the number of senators who want new leadership because honestly that Murphy, Tina Smith, and Elizabeth Warren, are part of a group known as Fight Club who complained about Schumer on a single group chat, particularly his strategy of favoring more centrist candidates in the midterm primaries.

What do you guys think of this piece? So Murphy then says actually that's remembering what the conversation was. In fact, what I was simply saying is while there are people that are frustrated, Schumer has supported caucus and I support Schumer. There's something. Elizabeth Warren was less so sure.

She was like, I'm not going to say whether I support him. Here's what I got to the end of it. And I think the idea is supporting more centrist candidates. I do think it's a new line of criticism or newer than some of the others. But the rest go back to the shutdown and his ability to communicate.

And what I can tell is, according to people that have a problem with Chuck Schumer, would a different leader produce different outcomes or a different leader be a better communicator about the same outcomes? And I think the inability to clearly answer that question is why whatever friction there is or desire for a new leader culminates in just people pitching in a single group chat. Yeah, there's the inside game, the outside game. The inside stuff we don't really see. How he keeps members on sides and organizes things and deals with the caucus.

There are Democrats, there are senators who we like in respect to. We'll call you after this episode, probably inside Chuck's really good at that stuff. The outside stuff, like we see the media, the candidate recruitment, the fundraising. Clearly, Chuck Schumer is not the best messenger. I think he would see that.

He's tried to put forward other younger leaders. But that kind of leads to the question, well, why not just have one of them be the leader, right? The fundraising is clearly off. I think that the candidate recruitment is a thing that's bothered a lot of people because it feels like he's thumbing the scale in ways and states that is unnecessary if not antagonistic to voters. Let those voters and those states decide.

It makes you wonder if this is about who can really win in these states or who will endorse Chuck Schumer as leader in these states if they win because a lot of the new members are not doing that. There's also the basic, like, jaren talker's issue. The guy's really old and he was able to recognize that which will be right. Chuck Schumer famously drove the Delaware and told Joe Biden to drop out. He's the reason behind that.

He's not really looking at the mirror there. I do think you're right though, the counter argument is people are really mad about Donald Trump. They want someone to blame the leaders we have, but that doesn't necessarily take into account their actual capacity to stop Donald Trump when he has a trifecta. I don't know. To me, this boils down to one question, which is like, I do not expect anyone to ask Chuck Schumer between now and November, nor do I think I was doing Chuck Schumer between now and November would lead to any kind of appreciable difference in any of the outcomes for Democrats.

I do think, and I remember having this conversation with Dan on some pod probably many times, like if the Democrats don't take back the Senate, then you almost expect Democrats to have a leader, right, between 26 and 28. But he was like, Dan said, oh, if we win, if Democrats have a win in the Senate, then maybe Schumer stays on and begin his majority leader one last time until he potentially retires in 28 or something else. That, I think, is worth a serious conversation about even if Democrats win the Senate, is Chuck Schumer really the guy that you want to be leader between the midterms and the presidential, because I think that is a perfect time for a leader, and you don't have to go back and debate whether you could have had this outcome or that outcome based on the various shutdown things, all that.

All I have to say is like, look, we are heading towards 20. It is the most important thing to elect a Democratic president. We need our best messengers out there as leaders, and Chuck Schumer is getting up there, and do we really need two more years, let alone six more years of Chuck Schumer is Democratic leader at that point. Yeah, I think it's a good no-brainer. We do not want to go into the most important presidential election since the last one with a leader that represents, we need to be representing people, not representing, ironically, though, I think it's Democratic candidates in at least 13 states have either come out against Chuck Schumer or refuse to endorse Schumer.

The more successful we are in these midterms, the more people that will be in the Senate that have either explicitly said they will not support him or even under pressure, knowing that they want Schumer's support, if you like, Talrico have refused to say they would endorse him. I think at a certain point you want people to just say, no, I'm not going to be for a Chuck Schumer. We need somebody different, because that's the kind of, I don't know, people that are already worrying about how to keep everybody on side, but at the very least, it's a huge problem in success, we're failure. And look, I think the complaints about the recruitment, you know, goes both ways. I think Chuck Schumer getting Roy Cooper to run in North Carolina when maybe he didn't want to at first was a big win, getting Mary Piltola in Alaska to run.

Great. Now, if he wanted to recruit Haley Stevens in Michigan and Janet Mills in Maine, that's fine. It's not the recruitment necessarily, it's the putting your thumb on the scales, which you may not be explicitly, but kind of is. Certainly for Mills, he is. Janet Mills, like, yeah, I think actually recruiting Janet Mills is great and a coup for him and credit to him, but yeah, they formed a joint fundraising committee with the DSCC.

And Haley Stevens is similar. I think there's a lot of good candidates in that field. It is not clear to me that she is the strongest candidate by any means, but I'm almost positive that there have been like DSCC or party events and fundraisers that have included her or her campaign. And you just have to wonder why. And I will say that this is not, I mean, Chuck Schumer, it gets a lot of blame for this, but you know, you wait into the online wars and there's a lot of democratic strategists out there who just we're just assuming, assuming that Mills and Stevens are the most electable candidates and the strongest candidates and those races and it's like not even a question to them.

And I'm like, really? Are you that sure? Yeah, and that's my take. Like everyone's going to be like, oh, you guys are endorsing your empire. No, like we're saying, the voters are mean, vote.

Like people in Michigan vote. That will help us determine who the strongest candidate are. If you can't win the primary, you're probably not the strongest candidate. Just a dose of humility after you've worked on several of the presidential campaigns over the last decade that have come up a little short is what I would say. Speaking of giving a democratic leadership a glow up, Lauren Egan at the bulwark is that with the piece headlined, thirst traps over think tanks, Dems want hotter candidates on the ballot.

She has a bunch of Democrats using to her about how we need more lookers. We need hotter candidates like John Ossoff and AOC on the ballot. Tommy, you recently referred to Ossoff as a piece of ass on the show. Agree with Lauren? I stand by that.

I said again, he's a piece of ass. Look, the man's way taller than the person I expected. He's got a jawline that you could use as a ruler. Great hair. Great demeanor.

Great hair. Look, I like Zeko all the way up. Is the key to winning, quote, run more hot people like the article says, maybe? Like a counterpoint, Donald Trump. I know, I know.

Not hot. Not hot. I think there's a big space between someone between say a Hollywood 10 and a Delaware 86, you know what I'm saying? And the problem, right? There's like a story.

Talk about Dan like that. There's a strange, like the way like hotness and ideology. Like the Bernie beloved figure, right? I'd say he's, you know, I don't think he would call it officially hot, you know, right now where he's at now. Maybe he's a young man.

So handsome. Yeah, he's in some of those pictures. He's handsome. But Pete Hexott would be traditionally considered to be good-looking, one would say. I don't find him particularly hot to me.

I think it's like one asset out of many, right? Like you can clearly win the presidency without being hot, Donald Trump. Yeah, because he's so fucking charming. You know, I think Lauren Sykes and her piece, there's like political signs around this that are tracking this, does help candidates. Yeah.

You know who's hot? Sit on, I'm saying. Wow. Google Young sit on. You could get it.

Castro, famously hot. Yeah. You could help you guys. It's his son, Canada. Alexis.

Oh, yeah. Or now with Katy Perry, take the coup. But maybe you're a bad leader. If you're looking for friends in your life for just normies, it'd be like, oh, yeah, Gavin, you're the good looking one. Or whatever.

Many have said that. Barack Obama clearly benefited from being perceived as young and good-looking and cool and that was part of the appeal, Bill Clinton as well. And John Aasaf clearly has had a glow-up. No doubt. With the last several years.

It is funny that no one in the story would go on the record saying that AOC is hot. There's a reverse gender thing. I know. She's beautiful. Yes.

And I don't know why it's weird for people to say that. It's just a compliment. I get the people don't want to objectify her and there's gender. Yeah, she's beautiful. I'll check if I John Asaf and I know problem.

What does that say? Right, I think it's sort of in the context of our conversation, but I think you know what the article is and someone's like, hey, I have a journalist on the bullwork. Talk about AOC's appearance. No, thank you. Let me know how the piece goes.

That's really funny. We can talk about it here because we're giving ourselves the context of saying all the guys are hot. Yeah, let's clip. All the guys are just looking at all these eminally fuckable guys. You know Bernie's best ass.

How did you feel sent across from Josh to Purell? What? Look, I'll just say, I asked him about this. I think there's a lot of Jewish mothers that would love to have their daughters bring home, a guy like Josh and some. No said, dribble a basketball.

Does he? Yeah. OK. Did you guys play hoops? Obviously, quick.

I think he came up in the book. Didn't come up in the actual experience. OK. Go in the interview though. When I was on the fourth grade basketball team, I didn't have the arm strength.

I could get the ball high enough to hit the hoop. I can obviously pitch it forward, but I couldn't get that parabola going. Right. Probably because you were thinking you need to get a parabola going. And that's our most best coverage.

Did you guys see that JB Pritzker spoke at the Gridiron dinner? And he's on the shot. Did you hear his joke? That he puts the gov and we gov. Yeah, he puts the gov and we gov.

Good for him. Good for him. Here's the thing. Every time I read an article about the Gridiron, and it's like, and then the journalist did something, something set to the something from Chicago. I'm like, how is this a thing that still exists in the world?

This sketch is part of that event is insane. It's crazy. A bunch of journalists get together with politicians, and they make up skits and songs, and they perform them. It's like, what the fuck is that? It's white tie.

White. What is white tie? You mean it's tails, I guess? Right? It's the most.

It's a longer coat with tails. Never. You're supposed to technically have a different kind of shoe. You can't shoot. You would have to drag me to go to that event.

You'd have to Maduro me to go there. You'd just wake up and white tails would have to attack. Let's go to the men's. Let's go to men's. Let's go to men's.

I'm going to die here. I'm going to die here. Put this on. Watching. You're fucking trying to hog hide.

You're going to watch Lynne Sweet sing. Where's the one? We're a pro-Linsweet podcast. I'm sure. I'm sure.

That's the first person to get into my mind. A lot of these traditions began before television. And it used to be at night. It just got dark in your house. And maybe you'd read a book.

And so people went out more. Yeah. OK. I'm going to get yelled at. My second wave to this next section was ruined by our conversation.

So I'm just going to say on the subject of the midterms. Great. If we can't find hot candidates, this is not to say that we don't have plenty of hot candidates running in the midterms. It's a good time to remind everyone about Project 218, which is Vote Safe America's Big Push to help take the house back. Again, with candidates we're hot, not hot, and we're in between.

To recap, we're asking you to get five people you know to sign up for VSA so that they can get the best info about how to make the biggest difference. We've had more than 3,000 sign up so far, but we need more. Head to votesaveamerica.com to learn more. And while you're at it, one more plug here. You know the next No Kings Day is this Saturday, March 28.

There are thousands of events to attend and as we've seen it's very, very important to show up and be counted and be heard. So head to nokings.org to find an event near you. Make a plan to go, bring friends, post some pictures. I told you so. That'll be a sign.

We'll see some of that. I told you regime change begins at home. If you've kept your sign from 2004 about Bush and the Iraq War, you can dust it off and bring regime change begins at home. I think I still think it's like a bumper sticker. I think that it's a sad, but very true statement.

Yeah. That's been around for a long time. Before we get to the conversation with Leah, we got to talk about Donald Trump dancing on Robert Mueller's wave. Me too. After the news on Saturday, the former FBI director and special counsel died at 81 after fight with Parkinson's disease.

Trump and his White House posted the following statement. Good. I'm glad he's dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people. Incredibly, that wasn't the only depraved comment Trump made involving death in one of his perceived enemies when he was asked Monday morning about the resignation of his former counterterrorism chief, Joe Kent, the president said, quote, I'm not a fan of the guy.

His wife was killed. He remarried fairly quickly. I feel like Trump may not be a good person. Yeah. We'll just go numb to this now.

Just real quick, Joe Kent's wife was killed while serving the US military in Syria by a suicide bomber. So that's the context in which he made that comment. Got married too quickly. Just like he said that about Thomas Massey. This is from a guy who would bring a date to Melania's funeral.

Glad. Yeah, for sure. 100%. Yeah. Walker by the golf course grave of his previous wife.

That's where I played that one. I saw Trump's comment and I was like, my first reaction was, you know, Bob Mueller died and now, like, all of the stories about his death have to include the president of the United States issuing this jackass fucking comment. Just because of his family and friends have to deal with that. Number two, and now everyone's going to do like the Charlie, of course, we all live through the Charlie Kirk thing and JD Vance just told people to fire, you know, people who work for them and who, you know, said, celebrated Charlie Kirk's death. And you know, there was a whole government wide effort to hunt down people and cost them their jobs over potentially celebrating or not grieving properly for Charlie Kirk.

And now we're doing this again. Yeah. Can I, I feel like it's actually very quite helpful to be consistent through all of this, which is not celebrating any deaths. Right. And by the way, like not, not celebrating death is not an act of civility.

I'm not saying I feel happy when my enemies die, but I pretend not to as a means of projecting the morals I think we should have. I'm not judging people for what they're actually feeling. When I'm my feeling of what I see when people kind of celebrate someone's death is actually like, when someone dies and they did bad things, I'm not talking about people that are actively in the midst of doing horrible things. They're death relieves people of pain and abuse and tyrants, whatever. But like to celebrate someone, you know, like dying is to act as if dying is a kind of justice that they're getting justice, but that can't be true because everybody dies.

And what you're really doing, when you celebrate the death of your enemies, you're actually just avoiding facing the injustice that happened when they were alive. You're coping with the fact that you don't believe they faced what they deserved when they walked among the living. And so I think about what happens when Donald Trump will inevitably die and there will be a crazy debate of fitting Donald Trump in which our whole country is caught up in this very kind of notion of it's okay that people are happy that he's dead and celebrating in the streets. I feel like that molar tweet from Trump will be back in the rotation when this happens. But the truth is I think a lot of what people will be feeling that kind of like will be a kind of a grief about all the damage that was done and our failure to stop it and to get justice when somebody was walking around.

And so like to celebrate death is to act as if it won't come for all of us. And that's just bad for the soul and it's bad for the world. And so I just want no part of it who ever dies. That's my take on this. And they might express that feeling with like a party hat and one of those like.

I'm not going to say I'm going to go out. Look, you've been consistent on this. You took a day off when the Ayatollah was guilty. He didn't come in that day. And I think that's commendable.

Yeah. Look, I agree with you. I'm still on this topic. You see those tweets go through and you're just like, you just know the cycle. So it's exhausting.

It's exhausting. You know what? I'm at this point. I'm like stage one. I guess like he's the biggest he's the worst person in the world.

He happens to be our president. He's dancing on the grave of like a purple heart winning American citizen who serves FBI director. That's self-evidently terrible. The hypocrisy is exhausting. Like Fox News did a month of coverage of Charlie Kirk insults.

And yet Fox as far as I can tell did not air a single story about Donald Trump's tweet. And then the Daily Wire today unironically had up a story with the headline Red Head and Deja Vu. Sarah Sanders kicked out of Arkansas restaurant flipped off by staff. For those who weren't as terminally online as we are in 2018, a restaurant called Red Head asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave the restaurant. They were a bunch of LGBT employees who didn't want to serve her.

And this became a huge thing. So the civility please come out whenever Democrats do anything in Republicans and there's silence when Republicans do things to Democrats. And it's just like it's so exhausting and frustrating to even have to call out hypocrisy. I don't know. The thing I thought was interesting about this one and this is also one about Ryaner is it is so indefensible.

So we end up with a lot of anger and outrage of Trump's direction and all these people deflecting. But I saw like Brit Hume said something which was like this is what makes people not just oppose Trump but hate Trump. And I think that's true. But even that is kind of like this is bad strategy. This is bad politics.

And it's actually what this also does is prove all the people that oppose him and hate him. They're right. And that really you've done something terrible by embracing someone so obviously morally unfit. So kind of broken in his soul. Well, I've forgotten about the Rob Reiner thing.

There's so many examples like this. And it's also like it is tempting for those people to be like, oh he says things and he's an asshole but like no, no, no. The same thing in Trump that makes him post that about Bob Mueller or about Rob Reiner is the thing that makes him talk about war right now in Iran is like we like sinking the ships. The Navy love with its fun to sink. The ship will bomb the more and it's funny and we're going to kill another one.

And like when you someone who devalues human life like Trump obviously does who has the power that Trump has was his finger on the fucking button. Yeah, that's it's all connected guys. How many of you have quoted Margaret Thatcher saying character is destiny? I stupidly internalize that. I come to believe that there's truth in that.

That character is destiny. That over time your character reveals something important about you and becomes what your life amounts to. I actually stupidly thought you agreed. I'm the iron lady. For some reason the thing that got me angry was she's got this and getting asked about it.

Oh my God. Oh, you know, well grass about it. And he's like, well, I think people have to understand what Bob Mueller put Donald Trump through. I mean, she's like, I'm sorry about what you agree with the same. She's like, I think that people just need to all he could say is he put through Trump a lot like the fact that you're like a fucking grown man who had a real like, and this is what you're reduced to sitting on me the press and like just just dismissing this.

The Trump administration made Bob Mueller the special counsel. You guys selected him. It's like, it's just, you know, like what Trump said about Mueller, what he said about Joe Kent, it's like equally despicable. And the common thread is those were people who opposed Donald Trump in some way. And Joe Kent, as of like five days ago, was Donald Trump's employee.

And he just like, you know, it doesn't matter what Bob Mueller did to Donald Trump over the course of several years of investigation. It's binary. It's like, you're with me or you're against me. I got a little excited. I shouldn't thinking about someone, some journalist sitting down with JD Vance and starting the question by reminding him of what he said after Charlie Kirk died and what he said about people who were celebrating and then asking him about Trump and Bob Mueller and seeing what JD Vance says, see how he gets us slippery prick.

He'll start scolding. Yeah. This is what you want to talk about with everything else that's going on. You can't just be shouted question because he'll just, you know, I want like a good sit down with someone where he's like stuck for 20 minutes. I really, I, I, it's just like, you're right.

That kind of means almost like, maybe it does at this point need to be actually explained why rooting for people's death is bad. Maybe we do need collectively to actually talk about it. No, I like that. I'm with you. I think it's bad too.

Well, they're for Charlie Kirk and we got, we got a stretch for it. But it's almost like I actually want the con, I want someone to talk to JD Vance about like the worth of a human soul and like what happens after we die and what we root for like, what is the purpose of being alive and like who gets to be celebrated and what lives are worthy. It's just that we're at like a kind of first principle saying because the president of the United States is a moral fucking monster. Yeah. Yeah.

A whole bunch of people are working for him. All right. When we come back from the break, strict scrutiny is Lee Lemon. Long clay are docuseries exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back. New slash the South is the new political epicenter of the country.

Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own white house communications director tuning in on Mondays to long play series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Long clay are docuseries exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back. New slash the South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South to bring the South to bring the final stretch of the midterms and the political map has only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential flips. So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground.

I'm Erin Haynes, journalist and expert on all things, seven politics. And I'm Jennifer Palmieri, former White House communications director tuning in on Mondays to long play series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Joining me now to discuss today's Supreme Court hearing on mail and voting is strict through these lit men. Welcome back to the pot. Thanks for having me.

So the Supreme Court heard oral arguments today for Watson v RNC. It's an elections case where the Republican National Committee is arguing that federal law prohibits ballots received after election day from being counted, even if they're postmarked before or on election day. Can you tell us a bit about how this case reached the court and what the RNC is arguing? Sure. So the RNC brought this case challenging a Mississippi statute that allows the state to count ballots that are cast at postmarked on a by-election day, so long as they're received within five days of election day.

A lower court trial judge said get the fuck out of here, write that argument to ludicrous, it would literally call him the question, early voting election law practices for the last 200 years, et cetera. And then the geniuses on the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, three of Donald Trump's Court of Appeals appointees said, you know what? Actually, federal law does make it illegal to count absentee ballots that are received after election day. That theory would destabilize election laws in more than half the states, I think 29 some states. And so because they're ruling head such sweeping implications, the Supreme Court basically had to take this case.

And that's how it got up here. The argument is federal law that just says the Tuesday next after the first Monday of November is established as a day for the election. Their theory is that federal law makes it illegal for states to count ballots that are cast by election day, but not received until a few days after. And part of this is grappling with whether or not that would also mean votes cast before election day would be counted. Also, it's not clear if election day is the day if you can count votes say after midnight, if you turn into a gremlin, if you count votes after midnight.

I mean, they are gremlins, so I think that's kind of non-unique, but sure. Now, are the officials in Mississippi defending this case not also Republicans? They are. And part of what is so striking is that you have the prospect that both the federal government and I think at least three justices, three Republican appointees, if not more, are more anti voting rights than the state of Mississippi. That is the state of our union.

So there was some dissensus between the conservative justices. What was the kind of arguments you were hearing from say, Alito and Thomas versus what you were hearing from say, Kavanaugh and Barrett? So Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch seem to be totally moggapilled like their brains had just been marinating in Fox News and were regurgitating anti absentee ballot talking points. So just as Alito referred to the confidence you can have once you turn your ballot over to the Postal Service and whatnot. Honestly, Justice Kavanaugh sounded like he was more in that camp than in the middle.

So he was throwing out concerns about if the apparent winner of the morning after the election ends up losing due to later arriving ballots, won't that undermine confidence? And shouldn't we fashion a rule based on that? Again, eating up the kind of talking points from the 2020 presidential election. And then you had Justice Barrett and the chief saying some of that, but then also saying, well, federal government RNC, wouldn't your theory also call into question the ability of people to cast early ballots early in person voting? Wouldn't it also call into question?

Why states can even continue to count ballots after election day, even if they were received on a before election day? Like why does it have to be that receipt happens on or before election day, but nothing else has to happen then? Like that's just nonsensical. So they seem to be the ones that are going to dictate the outcome in that case. And I will breathe aside relief if they end up rejecting the federal government and the RNC theory.

But it is just so scary that we are living in a world where it is possible that the Supreme Court at the end of June is going to announce this decision that could again nullify voting laws and practices just a few months before the midterms and over half of the election and craft a rule that would have disenfranchised almost a million voters in the 2024 election. Didn't Kavanaugh, though, question whether doing that would be feasible to meet some concerns about that? Am I being too optimistic? Tell me. I think your interpretation is very generous.

I think what Kavanaugh was doing was tell me why I'm right. Tell me why this isn't a concerned question because what he asked the lawyer for the RNC was, would there be a problem under the so-called Purcell principle if we announced this decision for the upcoming midterms? The Purcell principle is this idea that the court has selectively invoked that suggests courts shouldn't change the rules too close to an election, less they risk voter confusion and whatnot. But the advocate for the RNC said, no problem, just like hand out this bad boy at the end of June and up-end election rules for an election that's going to happen in November, no big deal. And just as Kavanaugh didn't push back on that.

And the reality is this court has really selectively invoked that principle. So it has invoked Purcell when courts try to protect voting rights. Basically it's always too close to an election to do something that protects voting rights, but it's never too close to an election to do something that would help Republicans. They allowed the 11th Circuit to change the voting rules in Florida almost a week before that state's primary. They have allowed other decisions to go into effect that again were likely to benefit Republicans, but not decisions that actually improve multiracial democracy or made it easier to cast a ballot.

So it's hard for me to think that he's actually going to apply that principle in a more even handed way. So I agree that when California takes forever to count ballots, and during that process, suddenly you go from a Republican to a Democrat winning, that creates an impression that leads people to question whether things are fair, even if they are entirely fair, and there's is no evidence suggests they aren't fair. But presumably- It's a bad policy. It's a bad policy. It doesn't believe federal law should be made to assuage false concerns.

They're trying to interpret what the law says. Are they suggesting that the elections we've been running have all been a foul of federal election law? Or are they jonnys sweet, sweet, sorry. John, you're sweet, sweet, sorry. I'm sorry, John.

Let's bring out now. I hear you. Yes, nice. So yes, I mean this theory would suggest that many elections over the last 200 years have been conducted in illegal ways. And you express surprise at the idea that they would indulge the suggestion that these false claims or false notions of voter fraud could actually alter the election rules when the reality is they've actually embraced that idea before.

In a decision from seven years ago about the Voting Rights Act, Justice Alito, writing for all of the Republican appointees said states have an interest in protecting the appearance of legitimacy in an election, even if there's zero actual evidence of fraud. And that was the same idea that you had, Justice Kavanaugh and Alito, reverting back to a bunch during this argument about absentee ballots. Well, isn't it fair for the state to basically adopt rules or the federal government to adopt rules in order to combat the appearance of impropriety, even again, if that's not rooted in reality? But that's not how you usually interpret federal statutes. Under our constitutional system, states are supposed to be able to be the primary rule setters on elections.

And they seemed willing to kind of abandon federalism to abandon textualism in favor of something like what aboutism? Right. Well, because the state has an interest in making their elections fair. The state would be the one trying to protect their election. Perhaps one way they're trying to make sure the elections are fair is by counting carefully.

Allowing people to vote. That would be there. That would be right. This is about usurping the state's prerogative to oversee the elections. But you basically, what you saw today leads you to think that this is right now on the edge, but there could be five votes to protect the counting of absentee ballots and the fact that it's close is incredibly terrifying.

That's what I heard. I think that's what other Supreme Court watchers also heard. And just to pick up on one thing you said, of course, the fact that states take so long to count ballots, that's not a good thing. But the reality is, invalidating the state rules that allow the counting of absentee ballots, that's not going to fix the problem. Because it still takes states a lot of time to count ballots that are received on or before election day.

We need to be able to invest more resources in order to give states the ability to process the counting of ballots. Don't even allow officials to begin counting ballots until a certain point. And so this decision is not going to address all of the bogeyman and the fears they're trotting out. It is just straight up voter suppression. Speaking of straight up voter suppression, President's on a tear here.

He's trying to get the Congress to pass the Save Act, a restrictive voter ID bill to require Americans to provide proof of citizenship. At the moment, it seems unlikely that the bill can pass Congress even as of today. Trump was trying to get some of the funding measures tied to the Save Act, trying to get everything all together. The Senate leaders are throwing cold water on that because there aren't the votes to pass this. And this is the point of the contention has been around what this would do to women who are married.

Now on one side, they say, well, Democrats are spreading misinformation about this. On the other, it's truly not clear what happens to women whose birth certificates and legal names are not the same because they got married. What actually happens if this becomes law and what would be the odds that it would face legal hurdles to actually going into effect? Yeah. I mean, happy women's history month, ladies, you might not be able to vote very soon.

But yeah, so various provisions of the law require you to be able to present an identification that matches your vote. or name when you go to vote. And so married women who change their names, when they get married, might have an identification where their birth certificate or their passport doesn't align with their married name. And so they would be prevented from voting under the Save Act. But it's not just married women.

A lot of people change their names for a variety of reasons. Save sex couples, they change their names when they get married, individuals change their names for family personal reasons. And this law just threatens to disenfranchise large swaths of the population. And that seems to be the goal. I'm glad you put the Save Act together with this case, because I think we should understand this as really all a coordinated effort to suppress voter turnout, make it more difficult to vote.

This is part of their mid-cycle redistricting. Write a set of rules that allows them to retain power. The Save Act is part of that. Sooing for voter data and potentially deploying ICE agents. Those are also voter suppression tactics.

The pending case about the future of the Voting Rights Act, that's another voter suppression measure. And so they are trying to throw everything they can at the wall in order to hold on to power, because they recognize that nobody fucking likes them. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of people who are not being liked, I wanted to talk to you about this story. So last week, and you talked about this a bit on Strix Rigny, a federal judge by an appointee, absolutely tore into some DOJ attorneys in New Jersey in a courtroom, basically had a Trump lawyer removed from court, threatened to have him dragged out of the court, then gave that lawyer a second opportunity to leave on his own volition, an opportunity he took.

What happened? And is it now resolved because of what took place today? I cannot begin to convey the insanity of what has been happening in the US Attorney's Office for New Jersey. Imagine GTL, but on ketamine, and it's the legal version of that. So they appointed.

Jim Tan lawyer. Exactly. Jim Tan lawyer. They appointed Alina Haba, US Attorney, federal judges said, no, that's illegal. Then they created this new leadership structure that they referred to as the trifecta or the triumvirate, where three individuals were supposedly running the office.

Another federal judge said, no, no, no, that's illegal. And the problem with making all of these illegal appointments is if you have an illegally appointed prosecutor, then the cases that they bring have to be thrown out. And so it was jeopardizing public safety, law enforcement, law and order. And so all of these judges were like, guys, just fucking get your act together. And accept the lawfully appointed US Attorney, because under federal law, the judges basically have the power to select a US Attorney for a district after a certain period of time.

And that was what the Trump administration was resisting. So in this particular case, it involved a defendant who had been indicted for a child pornography offense. And because the US Attorney's Office is just not functioning, apparently, the US Attorney's Office entered into a plea deal with this defendant without actually searching the defendant's phone. They agreed to a sentence before actually looking at all of the defendant's phone. And once they looked, it had even more child sexual abuse material on it.

But because they had entered this plea agreement, they were kind of stuck to it. And this judge was pissed off. He was like, what are you doing? And also, why are you insisting on imposing a sentence when you are running a US Attorney's Office that might not even be lawfully structured? So this transcript was basically my ASMR.

I would strongly recommend to people reading it for themselves. The end of the transcript, the judge basically says, in a single year, you have squandered all the credibility that the Department of Justice has built up over decades. And it does seem to have been resolved in the sense that the US Attorney's Office in New Jersey is now being run by the individual that was selected according to the statutory procedures by these federal judges. And so what that would mean is now, there's a lawful appointment structure in place. And so all of these plea agreements, all these criminal cases, aren't going to be called into question as to whether the individuals who stayed at the US Attorney's Office, including some individuals who came in under Trump, can dot their eyes and cross their T's and do law remains to be seen.

But this does actually solve some of the problems at least. Yeah, just so people understand, basically, if the role of US Attorney is vacant, because it's a confirmable Senate, confirmable position, the law says that if it's open, there can only be a temporary appointment by the administration for so long before the judges appoint someone in their stead because there are real powers that are associated with job and they have to go somewhere and you have to know who that person is. And Trump is trying to get around this by kind of continuously appointing temporary people. And the fear would be that those prosecutions, not only was this usurping Congress and the role of the courts and what Congress has assigned to the courts, but it would mean that these prosecutions could ultimately be in jeopardy. They were fighting and fighting and fighting.

It seems like they've, as of today, as of this recording, basically given up the fight. So it does seem like a genuine victory for the federal courts over the Trump administration. It really does. And this is an area where the federal courts held the line and basically refused to back down. And in the game of chicken, the chicken always loses.

And the Trump administration lost as they should have. And so hopefully they actually stick to this and are willing to accept the statutory procedures in other US attorney's offices as well. Lea, before we go, one last question. Donald Trump, over the weekend, said that he was happy that Robert Mueller had died. He said, good. Oh my God.

Because he didn't like him. Do you ever allow yourself to root for the death of people that you don't like or do you know how bad that is for the human soul? Where are you at? You know, I have some sense that that is bad for the human soul because basically when I saw that tweet, I forced myself to think about, okay, when Donald Trump inevitably dies, like what will you say and what will you think? And nothing remotely like the truth he posted about Robert Mueller remotely entered into my lexicon, even though this is someone whose policies and behavior have affected best suffering, right?

Untold deaths, human consequences. And still, I just don't think that is a normal human reaction. It's sociopathic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That isn't justice, we all die, you know?

That's how I feel about it. It comes for everybody. So how do you celebrate it? You just don't have to celebrate. That's a delightful note, right?

You know? But while we walk among the living, subscribe to Strix Groot now. Because these cases are coming down, there are huge cases that will affect the elections, that will affect all of us. And if you want to know what's happening, if you want to be prepared, if you want to understand and do it in a way that is entertaining, even joyful at time, even in these dark moments, please, please, please subscribe to Strix Groot and Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee, thank you so much, good to see ya. Thank you for having me.

That's our show for today, thanks to Lee for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. If you want to listen to Pied's American ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crickit.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcast. And everything we do here at Griggy. Hot Dave America is a quick and media production.

Our producer is Saul Ruben. Our associate producer is Ferris Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Schurling is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics.

The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Szeglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hevco, Mia Kellerman, Carol Pelovie, David Tolls and Ryan Young.

Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America at least. Longplay, our doc is here exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back. Newsflash, the South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South too. We're in the final stretch of the midterms, and the political map has only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential flips.

So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground. I'm Erin Hain, journalist and expert on all things, southern politics. And I'm Jennifer Paul-Mary, former White House Communications Director. Tune in on Mondays to Longplay series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.