7/8/25: Alex Jones Cries Over Epstein, Glenn Greenwald On Trump Fascism, Peter Thiel Antichrist, Texas Floods, LA ICE Invasion

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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All right, guys, we're joined now by Pulitzer Prize winning
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The one On on Legal and greenwellngread to Caesar.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Good to see you.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Crystal so wanted to start with talking about MAGA influencers
in disarray over the Trump Department Trump's Administration's decision to
close the case on Jeffrey Epstein's say he definitely killed himself. Guys,
don't worry about it. There was no client list. This
had been a real article of faith. I mean I'm

(01:05):
not sure I realized how sort of central it was
to a lot of like MAGA expectations about what would
happen in the Trump administration.

Speaker 4 (01:11):
But before I jump in, I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Going to show you Alex Jones here in just a second,
but just wanted to get your take off the top
about what has unfolded here and the reaction that we've
seen from MAGA world.

Speaker 5 (01:21):
I think the most notable part of this is that
it's not just MAGA pundits or MAGA influencers who have
been talking about Jeffrey Epstein in very vehement and definitive
ways for the last four years or more.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
It's the very people who run the law enforcement agencies.

Speaker 5 (01:37):
The highest positions are occupied by these people like Pambondi, Cashpitalit,
Dan Bongino.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
These are the people who've been going around on.

Speaker 5 (01:44):
Their podcast and other podcasts accusing Biden officials of corruptly
concealing Jeffrey Epstein's client list, saying that Bill Gates is
in Congress desperately lobbying to conceal the list because he's
on it, insisting constantly that this is like the Rosetta
stone for ciphering the entire corrupt globalist network of degenerate

(02:05):
and abusers and predators and the like. And then they
get into office and within a couple of months it
becomes obvious that for whatever reason, they're not going to
release any of the information they had been accusing Biden
officials of concealing.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
And now they're at the point where they're even claiming it.

Speaker 5 (02:19):
Doesn't exist, that there is no client list, there's no
evidence he ever blackmailed anybody, A complete one eighty on
everything they've been saying for the last four years. So
if we want to assume, just for the sake of argument,
that they're now telling the truth, how do they not
come out and very profusely and publicly apologize to all
the people who they have been maligning and whose reputations
they've been strowing over the last four years by accusing

(02:40):
them of things that they themselves are now doing.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, that's so well said, And I mean it was
always preposterous to me the idea that Trump was really
going to blow the lid off whatever was going on
with Epstein. And to be clear, I think there are
a lot of very good questions, very troubling links and
patterns with regard to Jeffrey Epstein. I know, something you've
been pointing to is like the key thing I really

(03:04):
want to know about is whether there were links to
intelligence agencies Masad in particular.

Speaker 4 (03:09):
But number one, Trump is like.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
The most pro Israel president, not that you know other
American presidents haven't also been pro Israel, but his first
term was extraordinarily pro Israel, going even further than previous
American presidents had gone.

Speaker 4 (03:23):
So that's number one.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Number two, we know these guys were friends. Well, there's
pictures of them together. He was on the quote unquote
Lolita Express. Jeffrey Epstein at least claimed they were best
friends for a decade and so and number three, You've
had a bunch of Trump administration officials who also were
involved in various Jeffrey Epstein dealings. I mean, Trump's labor

(03:44):
secretary from the first term was Alex Acosta, who was
in Florida striking this effectively corrupt sweetheart deal with Jeffrey
Epstein that let him get off the hook and avoid significant,
significant prison time for some of the crimes that he
did commit. So I always thought when you asked Trump,
you said, are you going to release these files? He

(04:04):
always dithered. He always thought, well, maybe, but I'm concerned
about this or that. So you know, it should not
have come as a surprise that nothing was going to
be different, that he was not in fact going to
expose whatever was really going on here, right.

Speaker 5 (04:21):
I mean, I do think it's important to note that
Trump and Epstein, they were obviously very close, had a
falling out, so that he wasn't concerting with Jeffrey Epstein
after Jeffrey Epstein's conviction to the extent that other people
had been That to me is, you know, the most
two interesting things are even after Jeffrey Epstein got convicted
of trafficking miners for commercialized sex, basically obviously, if you're

(04:44):
trafficking miners, it's basically child rape, it's pedophilia.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
Huge numbers of the most prominent.

Speaker 5 (04:49):
Power of people in the world had no compunction about
openly associating with Jeffrey Epstein, not just associating in like
passing him by at a party, but going to his house,
et cetera. But then the other thing, Crystal, is that
his wealth free Epstein's wealth is inexplicable in terms of
what he did. We know a lot of it came
from Lex Wexner and other people who are extremely.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
Active in pro Israel activity.

Speaker 5 (05:09):
So the question that the Trump administration still hasn't answered
is did Jeffrey Epstein work with or foreign any capacity,
any intelligence agency, domestic or foreign, the MASAD, the CIA, whomever.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
And they're just like, we're not going to tell you that.

Speaker 4 (05:21):
Just move on, Yeah, just trust us. Nothing to see here,
trust us. We're moving on. All right.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Let's go ahead and take a look at this this video.
I want to play the whole thing of Alex Jones
reacting to this news as it was coming out. Now,
he has since formulated his own theory of what's actually
going on here, which of course conveniently absolves Trump of
any sort of responsibility here. But let's go ahead and
play his initial reaction.

Speaker 6 (05:46):
Obviously, there's none of the globalist wouldn't do to keep
this coming out.

Speaker 7 (05:51):
They've already tried to kill Trump repeatedly, have they rolled over?

Speaker 6 (05:56):
I see a lot of signs that, I mean, Trump's
pretty much in charge now, and so all of this
points towards them using the information uh to uh control
the deep state. So meet the new boss, same as
the old boss. The who song won't get won't get
fooled again. This is gonna be an unmitigated disaster. I
don't know how they got Trump and the DJ to

(06:17):
do this, because the public is not buying it, no one,
no one is buying it. So I never saw any
evidence of Trump involved in any of the stuff that
came out.

Speaker 7 (06:31):
It was all fake.

Speaker 6 (06:31):
The fake Jane does all the all the crap, you know,
Egene Caro, all the crazy leftist cat lady, all of it.
So now by coming in and being part of the
cover up, the trumpministration has.

Speaker 7 (06:46):
Become part of it. I mean, it's just you.

Speaker 6 (06:49):
You cannot see it any other way. So I'm gonna
I just got to the office. I'm gonna go throw up. Actually,
and as only happens every few years when something really
really bad happens or something. I mean, I'm physically gonna
gonna you probably right now.

Speaker 7 (07:01):
My mouth is watering right now because because I have integrity, and.

Speaker 6 (07:12):
You know, I just really need the Trudministration to succeed
and to save this country, and they're doing so much
good and.

Speaker 7 (07:18):
Then for them to do something like this terrors my
guts out.

Speaker 6 (07:23):
And you know, the left, they're all complicit, They're open
to promoting pedophilia. We know they're pure evil, and they'll
think it's all funny. Oh look, Alex is sad Mauga's
tearing itself apart. Your globoust masters literally want you to
eat bugs and live in a five g tow hundred
square foot coffin apartment. Look at the left. Look at

(07:44):
them all supposing with their visor shots looking like dead zombies.

Speaker 7 (07:47):
I mean, come on, you guys are.

Speaker 6 (07:49):
Sick, and so you shouldn't look at those of us
that have a soul still and have integrity in pain
over this and celebrate, you dumb pieces of fucking shit.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
So his new theory he had on the sky that
says the Epstein case is being covered up by intelligence
groups to protect Western agencies there also seems to be
from him and a bunch of others. By the way,
lame shifting onto Pam Bondi, as if you know she's
doing this, just freelancing on her own with no input
from Trump whatsoever, and completely again absolving him a responsibility.

(08:21):
But what do you make of Alex's reaction there?

Speaker 5 (08:25):
Well, it's understandable that it's so heavy and emotional, because
I think a lot of people maybe who don't pay
so much attention to MAGA discourse, don't have a full
appreciation for how central this has been to their entire worldview.
This is not like just some isolated little sex scandal
that occasionally they would talk about because they thought it
implicated people who were their political enemies. This was something

(08:46):
they believe was the key to understanding essentially how all
the deep state, how globalist institutions are decaying and robbing
from the inside, and we were finally going.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
To get the truth.

Speaker 5 (08:57):
And again the fact that it was the very people
who are now in charge in doing the cover up,
in their view, were the ones who are promising that
all of this was going to be exploded in the open,
and who were adamant. They weren't just saying like, maybe
there's a client list. They were saying, there's a client list,
why aren't we seeing it. It's impossible for even these
leading MAGMA influencers to try and justify it, no matter

(09:18):
how much they want to defend Trump.

Speaker 3 (09:19):
It's just the betrayal is too is.

Speaker 5 (09:22):
Too glaring and blatant, and yes, they're going to try
and distract attention from Trump himself and put it on
people like Pam Bondi or whatever. But at the end
of the day, Pam Bondi is Trump's attorney general and
he has the ability to fire her at any moment,
and he won't over this for sure, and some kind
of reckoning is going to have to happen.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Well, not only that actually puts C two up on
the screen here. So initially Pam Bondi and Cash Motel
and Dan Bongino were all taking, you know, the bulk
of the heat, and then Trump comes in on True
Social and praises Cash Motel and Dan Bongino, saying that,
you know, after they close this case, they're getting back

(09:58):
to the basics locking up criminal cleaning up America's streets.
So you know, makes it difficult for people to argue that, oh,
it's Cash Battel and it's Stan Bongino, who are the
culprits here, which I think part of why they've shifted
so much blame now on too, Pam Bondi because she
has not gotten the overt Trump seal of approval in

(10:18):
the wake of this nothing to see here on the
Jeffrey Epstein case, right.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
And you know that's going to come.

Speaker 5 (10:24):
I mean, Trump doesn't care about the Epstein files, as
you said he would kind of. There was an interview
he did with Lex Freeman in October, a month before
the election, where he was asked about it, and Lex
Freeman said, you're going to release the client list, right,
the Epstein client list, And Trump said, yeah, that, you know,
we're definitely going to look at that. He was a
little noncommittal, but leading people to believe that he would.
He doesn't care about it, as you said. He think
is very comfortable with having it concealed. Always, as you said,

(10:45):
gave caveats and excuses the others, and so of course
it's going to defend Pam body. He's never going to
fire her, and that's what I mean by her reckoning.
At some point, they're going to have to face the
fact that everything not just that they were told in promised,
but that they told and promise the people who listen
to them has all come crash down, either because it
was untrue all along, or because the cover up continues
and there's just it's too big in the modern world

(11:06):
to bury it or to ignore it.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
Well, speaking to that point, I mean, Jadie Vance, this
was on the campaign trail, he was you know, celebrating
how the list was going to be released. You had
Pam BONDI we covered this yesterday. She said just quite
recently that she had the client list quote on her
desk in an interview with Fox News. And now we're oh,

(11:30):
there is no client list whatsoever. But just as a little
walk down memory lane, let's play C three of JD
Vance with Covaugh saying, we got to release the list.

Speaker 8 (11:40):
Everybody in politics has advice that's much worse than alcoholism,
is the way that I put it.

Speaker 7 (11:45):
But we we release the list. Seriously, we need to
release the fccene list. That is an important thing.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
Let me also play for you C seven. This is
Alena Haba recently with Piers Morgan saying that we were
going to be deep disturbed by these shocking revelations that
the Trump administration was on the verge of bringing forward.

Speaker 4 (12:06):
Let's go out and play that, guys. It is incredibly disturbing.

Speaker 9 (12:09):
We have flight logs, we have information names that will
come out. There were so many individuals that were hidden
and kept secret and not been held accountable. I believe
in accountability, so you have to now go through your
process again.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
Now it's time for accountability.

Speaker 9 (12:30):
We have seen for so many years, Pierce in this country,
many investigations, subpoenas, testimonies and congress et cetera, et cetera.
But there's a general frustration with accountability. We take it halfway,
we don't take it home. And I really believe that
now with Cash and PAM, there will.

Speaker 4 (12:45):
Be accountability, accountability.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
And this is one of the things is like, I
don't expect any of these people too. You said they
should apologize, They should apologize, but I don't expect any
of these people to reckon with any of it. They'll
just pretend they never said it. They'll just say, oh,
it's the fake news media trying to think Trump. You'll
have the influencer world saying, oh, well there's some other
higher level, elite pedophile ring that's actually the ones that

(13:09):
have more power than Donald Trump. Like they'll spin and
they'll cope and they'll lie. And it's just wild to
me that this is so common and so typical.

Speaker 5 (13:20):
Yeah, you know, we covered this on our show last night,
and it sounds like you guys had the same fun
as we did.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
Like when we were going through these.

Speaker 5 (13:25):
Clips, I was actually surprised at how adamant and emphatic
and definitive. A lot of them were in that last
one was yet So I mean like that last one
was not going to.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Have as a Trump lay or a pundent.

Speaker 5 (13:37):
That was her as US attorney for the for New Jersey,
and she said, we have the names of the people
who you're going to be shocked by who are involved
in this, and this is all gonna come.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
This is all.

Speaker 5 (13:47):
This was not four years ago. This was three months
ago or four months ago. So they I believe, of
course what you're saying is true. I mean, we have
Dan Bongino saying, like Bill Gates is in Congress every
day working hard, Cash Patassa the same thing to make
sure that he wasn't exposed as being on the list.
He's doing everything he can't as a presient and playing
Bill Gates as a pedophile that he was on Epstein Island,

(14:07):
that he's on the list. And now they're all like, yeah,
never mind, none of that was true. So I get
what you're saying. They're gonna I mean, like Karenline Levitt
at the White House yesterday when asked about this, she
gave like a four second answer, and then she's like, hey,
look over here, all these bad guys were putting in
in in prison, we're rounding them up. They're probably gonna be,
you know, having theater about immigrants and criminals or whatever
to try and distract attention. I just don't I don't

(14:30):
think it's gonna work with their own base. I'm not
sure Americans generally care that much about this, but I
think their own base has built their entire It's the
edifice of their worldview. And you know, if you spend
years promising people things and then it doesn't happen, your
own credibility and therefore your own money making and your
own career is at stake. And I think a lot
of these maga people, the big maga people, it's gonna

(14:52):
they'll come around, but it's gonna take a lot of effort.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
It's a problem for them.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Put c six, Let's go through some of these, the
slide shows of the various rationales and efforts to cope
with this up on the screen.

Speaker 4 (15:04):
We can go through these quickly.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
You've got Insurrection Barbie, who people are on Twitter know
this is a prominent mega influencer personality. I'm not saying
we need to move on from Epstein. I want to
see accountability for everything. What I am saying is that
Epstein is not the end all and be all defining
moment of the Trump presidency. So already we've gone from
you know, for her, it's this was you know, quite central,

(15:26):
and now all of a sudden when it doesn't go
the right way that you know, this is really not
ultimately that big a deal. Let's put the next one
up on the screen from Cernovich, this is you know,
it's out of Trump's hands. There's a chain of command
on this planet. Elite pedophiles are at the very top,
even above Trump, way above him. We've got the Charlie
Kirk response. Next, he says, if Trump was on the

(15:48):
Epstein list, why didn't Biden release that info to stop
Trump from being president?

Speaker 4 (15:52):
Because of course this looks suspicious as.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
Hell, especially given Elon Musk is threatening to you know,
release information from the Epstein list acclaiming Trump on it.

Speaker 4 (16:00):
You also had an at.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yahu coming to town the next day, and then you
have this ultra maga, Kathy Ultramaga saying, seriously, who even
gives a fuck about these files? I'm sure she was
not saying that under the Biden administration, and then you
have Valentina Gomez saying covering up for pedophiles is becoming
the new normal. I would say this is the most,
you know, this is the most. I think this is

(16:21):
the best attempt to actually grapple with reality. But you know,
Glenn Well, I think you're right that I think Cash Fattel,
Dan Bongino, they're going to take a real hit. I
think Pam Bondi is already like people are, you know,
saying she should resign, and she should she should be
fired from the administration, et cetera. Some of these influencers
who went to the whole Binder situation, and we're posing

(16:43):
for this photo op being used as propaganda props by
the Trump administration previously. I think they'll take on some
water and credibility hit. But what I've seen is ultimately
with the with the hardcore true believer magabase, they always
find a way to whatever it is that happens under
the Trump administration, they find a way to justify it.

Speaker 4 (17:04):
We saw it with the Iran attack.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
You know, you had prior to the US bombing Iran,
you had a significant proportion of Republicans MAGA Republicans in particular,
saying we shouldn't do that.

Speaker 4 (17:15):
The second Trump does it, that.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
Number completely shifts and you've got now eighty five or
ninety percent who were like, yes.

Speaker 4 (17:22):
That was the right thing to do.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
So I think, you know, they'll find a way ultimately
to cope with it and absolve Trump of responsibility and
blame Pam Bondie or the deep State, or just gets
distracted by some other thing that's happening in the world.

Speaker 5 (17:37):
Yeah, I mean that global. I mean, in reality, this
is partisan behavior in general. I mean, as you know,
I had huge numbers of fans who were Democrats and
liberals under George Bush's administration because I was criticizing his
war enterror policies. And then Obama comes in, continues many
of them, extends many of them, and suddenly they they
looked at me as their enemy because I was criticizing
Obama for doing the same, and they were like, no,
it's different when Obama does it.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
We trust him and he is part of ship.

Speaker 5 (18:00):
In general, I think MAGA world sometimes actually will push
back quite a bit on what Trump's doing if they
feel like it's too a bridge, too far from what
they were promised. But if this is what you said
is what they're going to do and it's gonna work,
Which is I think that's exactly what they're planning to
do in already previewing, which is, we're gonna have.

Speaker 8 (18:18):
Some big, cruel, evil, you know, like sadistic program to
round up a bunch of immigrants and send them to
like Sudan or wherever, and you're.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
Gonna get all excited about that.

Speaker 5 (18:30):
Maybe we'll bomb some other countries because there's some terrorists
there and you'll.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
Be excited about that.

Speaker 5 (18:34):
I think that's clearly what they're planning and banking on
the fact that eventually people will just forget about this
and move on. Who are their biggest supporters, and I
you know, it's a good safe bet that that will happen.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
It is partisan behavior, and I think that's a fair point.
But I do think it is stronger with MAGA. And
you even saw it with the Iran bombing, like I
wish I had the pull because you saw when Trump
does bomb Iran, you see Republican support for it skyrockets
I don't know, forty points, and you see Democratic support
for it go down, but not to quite the same extent.

(19:06):
You know, it was like maybe a ten point drop,
and there was already a low support for such a
thing among Democrats. You know, Trump, there is just a
he says, I get to define what magas, I get
to define what America First is. And I think he's
right about that. You know, I think his supporters have
decided we're not. You know, we've got certain ideas of

(19:26):
what MAGA is. But ultimately we trust this guy. And
if he says that we need to bomb Ran, well
he must know something that we don't and we're just
going to go along with that. And what I would
use as a counter example here is the fact that
under Joe Biden as you have still the vast majority
of Democratic leaders fully on board with we're going to

(19:47):
give Israel whatever they want.

Speaker 4 (19:48):
The bear hug strategy, etc.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
At that same time, you had the Democratic base running
at you know, lightning speed in the other direction, saying
this is disgusting, this is a genocide.

Speaker 4 (19:58):
We don't want anything to do with this.

Speaker 2 (20:00):
So partisan behavior, no doubt, you know, impacts people across
the board. And I think your example is correct. But
I do think there's something unique about the culture personality
around Trump that is particularly strong, and there isn't a
similarly situated Democratics figure, at least at this point, that
has the same level of pull on the Democratic base.

Speaker 5 (20:24):
I mean, this, I think is a complicated conversation. I
would suggest Obama did have that, especially in his first term.
I mean, the amount of faith and trust and love
and reverence and deference to him among Democrats and liberals
in general.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
Was extremely strong.

Speaker 5 (20:37):
I think there was a lot of that around George
Bush to you, especially after nine to eleven. So I'm not
quite convinced that it's stronger among MAGA and I actually
do think that, you know, with Iran, for example, you
did have some very prominent Trump allies, starting with Tucker Carlson,
but a lot of other people who well who from
the beginning were saying, you cannot do this as the
betrayal of America first, they were saying during the war,

(21:00):
they're now saying it. Still a lot of people questioning
Trump's relationship with Israel.

Speaker 3 (21:04):
How is that America first?

Speaker 5 (21:05):
But I think you're right on the level of, like
the average normy Trump supporter is very inclined to trust
him and not question him. But I think on the
level of kind of more influential pundits. There are at
least some of them who do push back pretty assertively,
and you even showed some clips of.

Speaker 3 (21:21):
Them doing that now with Epstein, like wait a minute,
what is this?

Speaker 2 (21:23):
And yes, but they're never never on him. It's always
Pambondi's fault. It's always the deep state's fault. It's always
somebody else. And you know what like Steve Bannon for example,
and Tucker in that even in that interview with Ted Cruz,
which I thought was extraordinary, the way he would position it,
and I understand why he does it because it's like, tactically,

(21:44):
you can't trample on Trump's ego or else you're going
to be dead to him or you go to lose influence, right,
And the way that he positioned it was what not
bombing Iran is the true reflection of what Trump really
wants and what he's really a third and so if
he doesn't go in that direction, then there's he must
know something we don't. You know, we're I actually haven't

(22:08):
seen them particularly critical of the bombing of Iran after
the fact, I've seen them moving on to other things.
I've seen, you know, Steve Bannon even before Trump decided
to Bombaran, saying, listen, at the end of the day,
if he bombs them, we're all going to get back
on board.

Speaker 4 (22:21):
So and you know, there's no.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Secret why, because if you do disagree with him and
criticize him personally directly, that's it. You're dead to him,
and your influence is going to be toasted. You're going
to end up like Liz Cheney or you know, any
one of the other sort of exiled former Republicans who
dared to say negative things about specifically the person of
Donald Trump.

Speaker 5 (22:44):
Yeah, I mean again, I do think that a lot
of presidents look at the world that way, Like if
you openly criticize them, republicly criticize them, they start to get.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Really angry, I think.

Speaker 5 (22:53):
But you know, like we were taught, we chatted briefly
before we began about the mena who visit and I
were saying, like, nobody is more easily manipulated Trump, And
so if you're somebody who actually cares about not just
opining but having influence, you want to formulate what you're
saying in a way that's likely to appeal to Trump.
So a lot of these neocons, we're saying America First
means being strong and showing the world that we will

(23:15):
take action. That's America First, and you know, playing on
his ego that way, and other people are saying America
first means we don't go to wars for Israel or
for other countries, always trying to get Trump to say,
you laid out this brilliant philosophy, and the way that
you align with it is by doing what I want
or the other person says what I want.

Speaker 3 (23:33):
I think that's just being strategic.

Speaker 5 (23:34):
I think that's being mindful of trying to exert influence
rather than just being on the outside throwing rocks.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
Like the Elon Musk is now left to do. So
I get your point.

Speaker 5 (23:42):
Obviously, there's a ton of people who are hacks, who
are willing to go to bat for Trump no matter what,
and who will do so here as well. I'm just
a little bit doubtful that it's worse than other previous presidents,
especially ones with very strong kind of personal charisma like
Obama had, who I think did inspire some more things.
But at the end of the day, whether it's more
or less or whatever, I agree with you that directionally,

(24:05):
that is what's going to happen.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
All right, Well, let's talk about some of the people
and the company specifically that has done very well under
the Trump administration is clearly playing this game very effectively,
and that would be Palenteer and some of the affiliated
personalities around that, including billionaire Peter Teal. Let's put this
up on the screen to sort of set the stage.
I think this is still the case that Palenteer is

(24:30):
the top. It's certainly one of the top stock performers
in the Trump two point zero era. It has soared
seventy four percent this year alone, no surprise. There's you know,
all sorts of linkages first of all, between Palenteer and
this government, including through the Vice President jad Vance, and
also they have been a beneficiary of significant contracts from

(24:53):
the federal government. This is something that you have covered extensively.
I also want to get your reaction to some recent
comments from Peter Tiel is a billionaire investor in Palentteer specifically.
But before we get to that, you've done such great
reporting on Palenteer and on this relationship and on what
it means for individuals and privacy in this country moving forward.

(25:16):
So if you could just lay on a little bit
of what you've found here for people, I would love
to have you explain some of that.

Speaker 3 (25:23):
Sure.

Speaker 5 (25:24):
So in March, on March twenty, exactly two months after
being inaugurated, Trump issued an executive order basically consolidating all
data and intelligence that every individual agency collects under the
auspices of Palenteer, essentially saying, Palenteer will be the kind
of overseer technologically to make sure that this information doesn't

(25:45):
remain siloed. I actually prefer that information be siloed when
the government collects it about us, because then it becomes
more protected and less capable of creating this comprehensive picture
of us. But this executive order basically destroyed any of
this attempt to keep it isolated. You know, here's finetional
information with the IRS, here's you know, health information with
HHS or CDC, here's other stuff.

Speaker 3 (26:05):
With Homeland Security.

Speaker 5 (26:06):
It's all now being consolidated under Palenteer, under the justification
that it's necessary to track illegal immigrants, is necessary to
attract criminals. And you know the interesting thing here, Crystal
is back in two thousand and two, there was this
really creepy agency that was created under Donald Rumsfeld called
the Total Awareness Information Office. Total Awareness Information It was

(26:28):
led by John Poindexter, a big figure in Regulant Bush
and that was when Pollanteer was founded in two thousand
and two, and one of the first things it did
was met with Poindexter and tried to convince him that
Pallenteer was situated Peter Teel and Alex krpro the Alex
Trputell runs it to oversee this Total Information Awareness Department,
to basically be the sole contractor that has the sophistication

(26:49):
and technology necessary to collect it all, analyze it all,
put it in one place. Even in two thousand and two,
the phrase total information awareness was too creepy. It was
a bridge too far. It never really happened. We know
it eventually happened. That was this note in reporting. But
now it's happening even more aggressively, all under one specific contractor, Palatiner,
who was run by not just founded by Peter Tiel

(27:11):
and a billionaire investor, but run by Alex Karp, who
has some of the most twisted, sociopathic views of the
world of what American power should be about, how it
should be exercised of anyone I've ever seen, and for
a movement, the Trump movement MAGA, that claimed to be
so alarmed by deep state power, by unconstrained spying domestically
on American citizens, to watch this consolidation all under one

(27:34):
company in the name of obviously keeping us safe, et cetera.
The same thing the Patriot Act and all the other
weren't receive dropping programs that we were subjected to was
ushered in on that same justification. It is alarming in
the extreme, but I understand why it's not being talked
about that much because it is a little bit complicated.
You have to dig into these orders to how the
government is structured. But Palenteer is a very dangerous menace

(27:56):
to essentially all of our basic rights, and the power
that they have now is at the highest peak.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
Another story that you highlighted that I'd like for you
to dig into for people a little bit is the
Army turned four big tech executives, including one from Pollenteer,
I believe, into officers, and so you had this direct
merging of the world of big tech with the military,

(28:23):
like direct merchic. And of course we're not Pollyanna here.
We know how close and symbiotic that relationship is. We
talk a lot about the military industrial complex. This seems
to me to be another level, and it didn't get
nearly the attention that it deserved.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
There's so interesting.

Speaker 5 (28:40):
I of course have been very critical of some of
the excesses of democratic rhetoric when it comes to Trump.

Speaker 3 (28:45):
You know, you're throwing around the word fascism.

Speaker 5 (28:47):
I think a lot of people throw that word around
without ever giving much thought to what it.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
Actually is and what it means.

Speaker 5 (28:51):
One of the defining hallmarks though a fascism, if you
study it, you know, like in a scarlely way, as
developed by Mussolini or whatever, is the merging of stage
and the private sector all for one unified cause. So
there's no tension between the private and the public sector.
It's all one nation, everything merged for some national purpose.
And so to take the top executives a pollunteer, open AI,

(29:15):
META and several others and commission them into the US
Army as lieutenant colonels.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
So they now have an oath to serve the military.

Speaker 5 (29:24):
They talk openly and proudly about how they now have
this obligation to do so well at the same time
running the companies that are collecting all this data about
us that are developing AI in ways we really don't
fully understand, and not just you know, having a partnership
between public and private, but there is always some tension still,
but actually a formal explicit integration, not saying the commissioning

(29:45):
of these all these five guys, that's a big deal
in and of itself, but it's very illustrative of the
trend in which this is going, where there is really
no separation, there's no tension, there's no impediment. Everything is
sort of being like elo and utilize for this unified
national vision, and that is a hallmarkt Fascism is always

(30:07):
classically studied and understood.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
I'd love for you to elaborate a little bit on that, Glenn,
because I think you're someone who weighs your words carefully,
and so for you to say that, I think is
you know, extraordinary, and it's obviously not a word that
you have just thrown around to your willy nilly. And
so not only do you have that merging of you know,
corporations with the military, you have the shipping of people

(30:29):
with no due process to Seecott. You have the calling
up of the National Guard in LA thousands of troops
the deployment of the Marines in Lami. There aren't even
anti It's protests there anymore, Like the pretext of that
is just preposterous. You have the kidnapping of college students
who dared to say, you know, write an op ed

(30:49):
that was critical of Israel and holding them on grounds
that are you know, protextual and basic assault on the
First Amendment that are extraordinary. You now have an effort
to target actually naturalized citizens as well and to denaturalize them.
Those are just some of the things you know, that
we could throw ount there that seem to be, you know,

(31:10):
fascistic in nature. How are you thinking about this administration
and that conversation about whether this is this administration is
pushing at its core of fascist ideology.

Speaker 5 (31:24):
One of the problems I've had with the way Democrats
often think about Trump is I think people tried to
depict him as some radical aberration from the American tradition,
Whereas to me, he always has just been a natural extension.

Speaker 3 (31:38):
Of everything that came before.

Speaker 5 (31:40):
So everything that you're describing here, all these powers of
deprivations of due process and denials of free speech, this
just didn't appear when Trump got inaugurated.

Speaker 3 (31:49):
These are things that have their roots.

Speaker 5 (31:50):
I mean, there was a censorship program that the Biden
administration practiced very aggressively to coerce and pressure and threatned
big tech companies to remove the scent. A lot of
the due processed deprivations go back to the War on Terror,
which never went away.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
This was never dismantled.

Speaker 5 (32:03):
This machinery that was constructed after nine to eleven that
we were just talking about, the intelligence surveillance state didn't disappear,
even though we unveiled it and uncovered it after Snowden,
so that foundations have been laid on a very bipartisan basis.
That said, I have been very vocal about many of
the genuinely grave attacks on core liberties, and now instead

(32:23):
of justifying it in the name of terrorism, it's gypidly
justified in the name of immigration, but also still terrorism
when it comes to people who are accused of terrorist
group alignment or allegiance simply because they're criticizing Israel. So
a lot of this has long extensions over the last
twenty five years of both parties, but it's kind of
on steroids now because the project of the Trump administration

(32:46):
in the transition was to figure out what they did
wrong in the first term that made them too weak,
and to eliminate all constraints on their ability to do
what the president wanted. And I think they actually did
a much better job than a lot of people assumed
they were capable of doing. And you're seeing the manifestations
of that in ways that I do consider extremely alarming.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
I think that's all very I think that's all very
well said, and the putting on steroids of the previous
trends is certainly the way that I view this administration
as well. Not to say, I mean, if you look
at the one big beautiful bill, right the priorities there
of gutting the social safety net to give a giant
tax cut to the rich while funding a massive expansion

(33:26):
of like the surveillance.

Speaker 4 (33:27):
State and national security.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
That is at home with any Republican administration in my
entire lifetime, and some of the Democratic ones as well.
But the extent that they take it to both with
that and the assault on liberties is what to me
puts them in somewhat of a different category than the
things that I've seen previously in my lifetime. I do

(33:51):
want to get your reaction to these Peter Teal clips
that have been circulated. This is from a Rowstout that
interview last week. And the reason that Peter Teal is
important is not only because he is a billionaire, but
he is someone who is very influential. He is very ideological,
he is very influential specifically in terms of this administration.

(34:12):
So this is a person that you really should be
listening to the things that he has to say. And
so Dalta asked him some pretty interesting questions. Peter Thiel
has been talking about his view of how the Antichrist
might arise, and his theory is effectively that someone like

(34:33):
a Greta Tunberg as the example he specifically uses, would
come in and claim that they're trying to save us
all and you know, create peace and safety and unity
and save us in this instance, from the climate crisis,
and they would use that as a way to create
a totalitarian, one world government, and that would be how
we get the rise of the Antichrist. And Dalta sort

(34:53):
of flips that on him and says, well, isn't it
possible that the tools you are creating and helping to
create through entities like Palenteer, for mass surveillance. Isn't it
possible that that could be the means by which the
anti Christ rises. Let's go ahead and take a listen.
This is D two to that exchange.

Speaker 10 (35:12):
My very specific question for you, right is this, Well,
you're you're you're you're an investor in AI. You're you know,
you're deeply invested in Palenteer, in military technology and technologies
of surveillance and technologies of warfare and so on, right,
And it just seems to me that when you tell
me a story about the Antichrist coming to power and

(35:36):
using the fear of technological change to sort of impose
order on the world, I feel like that Antichrist would
be maybe be using the tools that you that you
were that you were building, right, Like, wouldn't the Antichrist
be like, great, you know, we're not going to have
any more technological progress, but I really like what Palenteer
has done so far. Right, Isn't that isn't that a concern?

(35:58):
Wouldn't that be the you know, the irony of history
would be that the man publicly worrying about the Antichrist
accidentally hastens his or her arrival.

Speaker 11 (36:12):
They're all look, they are all these different scenario. I
obviously don't think that that's what I'm doing.

Speaker 10 (36:19):
I mean to be clear, I don't think that's I
don't think that's what you're doing either. I'm just interested
in how you get to will a world willing to
submit to permanent authoritarian rule will.

Speaker 11 (36:30):
But but again, uh, there are these different gradations of
this week can describe. But is this so preposterous what
I've just told you as a broad account of the
stagnation that the entire world has submitted for fifty years

(36:54):
to peace and safetyism? This is a first Thessalonians five three.
The slogan of the Antichrist is peace and safety.

Speaker 4 (37:00):
So, Glenn, what did you make of that answer?

Speaker 2 (37:01):
And what do you personally put the odds at that
Peter Teel is himself the anti Christ.

Speaker 5 (37:08):
I mean, I guess if you were to force me
to place my money in a casino on any one
individual of the eight billion people on Earth being the Antichrist,
he would be one of the top two or.

Speaker 3 (37:15):
Three people I might consider.

Speaker 5 (37:17):
Yeah, same, But I do think yeah. But you know,
there was another there was an interesting part, another intriging
part that's very related, where I'm sure you saw this,
and I actually did like a twenty twenty five minutes
to someone out we do a Q and am Friday
next one asked me about it.

Speaker 3 (37:28):
I did like a twenty five minute response on it
where Ross.

Speaker 5 (37:32):
Ter pat asked him do you actually favor the continuation
of the human species? Like do you favor the survival
of humanity as it is? And he basically was saying no.
He refused to say yes. He was stuttering around, like,
you know, way more than he usually does. It wasn't
like an autistic stuttering. It was like, really he was
struggling with that question. And Ross like, that's a very

(37:52):
basic question that should be an easy yes, Like I'm
asking you should humanity survive? And he basically described this
trans Yeah, yeah, that's something we should all have. That's
like the warm up question that I think we should
all be able to answer quickly. But he couldn't because
he has this very transhumanistic vision that is shared by
a lot of Soilicon valley tycoons like him. They basically

(38:12):
view themselves as transcendent beings, as kind of the ubermens.
And there's a lot of reasons why billionaires become accustomed
to thinking that way. They're surrounded by people who treat
them that way, they have the kind of power that
makes them believe that they're uniquely capable of doing that.
Mark Zuckerberg talking to Rogan Show about merging technology and

(38:33):
robots and artificial intelligence with humanity to create a different
form of human, a superior form of human, And a
lot of them have this vision that is essentially, in
my view, so anti human. It's like a kind of
vision where our efficiency and our utility is going to
be maximized, even if it means the elimination of all
the things that we think about as being the essence

(38:53):
of humanity in a way that would destroy whatever you
think about, is the soul or the spirit or whatever.
So I want to talk about the Antichrist and coming
and attacking humanity with the intention of destroying it. I
do agree with Ross's premise that it seems like a
lot of what Peter Teel is doing is way more
likely than say Greta Bundberg, who has spent the last
eighteen months protesting the genocide in Gaza and not very

(39:15):
antichrist like to me, in order to do that. And
I think the fact that you know, obviously the Antichrist
comes and poses as a noble and benevolent figure, and
there he is saying safetyism. The whole point of volunteers
based on safetyism. Let us spy on you to keep
you safe. Like the projection there is so remarkable.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
Well, and also actually put D four up on the
screen here, guys, because you know he's he's invested in
AI and they haven't almost.

Speaker 4 (39:43):
I shouldn't even say almost.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
They have a religious belief around what AI will do
for the world and will do for you know, effectuating
this outcome of transhumanism and allowing them to live forever,
like they are literally God's you know, it's complete with
like you know, the story of redemption and forces of

(40:04):
evil that are trying to stop them, and they are
in the driver's seat. In terms of the direction of
AI regulation or lack thereof, you can see here that
Americans are deeply opposed to just letting a rip with AI.
This is overwhelmingly bipartisan sentiment of like, we need to
be thinking about what all of this means. And even

(40:26):
if you don't subscribe to some of the more apocalyptic
possibilities of basically like the AI taking over and like
killing us all, there is going to be significant. There
is already significant disruption from these technologies, and people like
Til have made themselves, you know, very influential in this administration.
And again the alignance with with jdie Vance I think
is very significant.

Speaker 4 (40:46):
Here as well.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
They have really gotten what they've wanted in terms of
we're just gonna race forward with this thing. We'll figure
out the consequences later. We got to beat China, China's
developing AI, we got to be to get to artificial
general intelligence. And it's very much at odds with how
the vast majority of Americans want this to be approached.

(41:09):
And in teals ideology, he talks a lot about stagnation.
He has this view that we've sort of like stagnated
technologically and we haven't been innovating in the way that
we previously had, in this sort of transformative way. And
I haven't thought that deeply about it, you know, to
say whether I think that is true or false. But
as an antidote to that, he believes that we should

(41:29):
just race forward with this technology, come what may, and
has this and again I don't think this is just
Peter Teel. He's very influential, but many of these Silicon
Valley Titans have this same view that effectively, you know,
there's a you know, there's there's a faith, like a
religious faith, that this technology is what we have to

(41:52):
pursue and it's going to actually create this bounty in
this sort of utopia that they have in their minds.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
I absolutely agree with you.

Speaker 5 (42:01):
If they have this utopian vision of what AI is,
that is obviously in their interest to foster and perpetuate
because of how heavily invested they are in it, and
because they're the masters of the AI, so they want
to get people to believe that it will just lead
to bount the full, abundant, loving futures for all of us.
So there's a lot of propaganda with that. But you know,

(42:23):
also one of the reasons why I'm so concerned, and
I do think, I know, I'm very of many minds
about AI.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
I want to understand it better.

Speaker 5 (42:33):
I want to you know, really, I don't think any
of us really understand it, including the people who are
unleashing it correct and I think that we need debates
about what kind of safeguards are needed. The problem is
that it's not just what you've described, which is this
kind of transhumanistic narcissism that the people in control of
this technology possess and really do believe in as a

(42:53):
religious faith. But it's also the competitive aspect, you know,
as nation states. Now we're told, oh, China has it,
and China does have it at least is advanced as
the United States has. And that was that deep seek
trauma to the American mind that it seems like they
even might be ahead of us in terms of the technology.
And so the idea then becomes, well, if we limit it,

(43:13):
the Chinese never would, or the Iranians ever would.

Speaker 3 (43:16):
All the bad people are the terrorists, never would.

Speaker 5 (43:19):
And that is the really that to me is the
biggest danger, this idea that far own survival. We can't
really allow any limits on AI because if we place
limits on and others want and they will come to
dominate us. Trump named as AI zar David Sachs, who's
one of the co founders of PayPal with Peter Tiel.
He was the chief financial officer. I know David pretty well.

(43:40):
You know, he's I think there's I don't think he's
like this Bond villain, but he definitely is somebody who
really believes in the urgency of going forward with AI.
Trump believes in that, everyone around him believes that, and
we're barreling toward the future, which I don't think people
really understand without any kind of contemplation or debate for all,
because all the incentives of the powerful people are to
just barrel forward with it and have it unleashed with

(44:03):
zero restraints of any kind, or even debate about whether
we should allow that to happen.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
Yeah, Glenn, last question I have for you, and thank
you for being generous with your time this morning, is
you know, I have long thought that we shouldn't have billionaires,
that billionaires are sort of inconsistent with the democratic society
because when you do amass that amount of wealth, the
amount of commensurate power and disconnect from just like what
ordinary people are going through really does create a challenge.

(44:34):
It's almost an impossibility to have a truly sort of
like democratic representative society when you have that much money,
wealth and power concentrated in the hands of a few.
But if I had any doubts about that view, those
doubts have been swept aside by what I've seen in
this era of Trump two point. I mean, first, you
had Elon Musk buying, you know, buying his ability to
have this whole of government mandate through Doge, buying Twitter

(44:57):
and making it his personal playground for whatever it is
that he wants to do politically. At the moment, you've
had the spectr of Bill Ackman, who's out there right now,
you know, workshopping in real time how to intervene and
get his candidate of choice and to think specifically Zora
On Mom Donnie, who won overwhelmingly in a Democratic primary,
and he's trying. He's out there saying, I've got hundreds

(45:17):
of millions of dollars available to a candidate who wants
to come forward to try to defeat Zoron. You have
Peter Thiel, as we've been discussing, and you know the
influence of Palenteer and what that means for everyone in
the extraordinary access that he has, and you know the
links with David Zax and with Jade Vance, et cetera.
Where are you on this question of whether or not
billionaires should exist and are consistent with a democratic representative society.

Speaker 5 (45:43):
Well, let me say this about that, which is there
was that Jora one interview where he said, I don't
think billionaire should exist, and everybody acted like you know,
that was like from the Red Book of Mao or
like you know, right out of Lenin. And if you
go back and look at the founders, you definitely were capitalists.
They didn't believe in it. I mean, there was no
of communism then, but they they believed in capitalism. They
were very wealthy, they were gand owners, et cetera, and

(46:04):
they wanted to preserve those those prerogatives economically that they
thought was the birthright. Nonetheless, they talked openly about how
if economic inequality becomes too severe, it will inevitably spill
over into political inequality and will undermine and subvert all
the principles they're trying to great of nobody being above
the law, of everybody being subjected to the same political rights.

(46:25):
And so this is you know, intrinsic in the idea
of the American Founding that yes, you're going to have
political equality and economic inequality, but if that economic inequality
becomes too grave too you know, lopsided, the political rights
will become purely illusory. And I think that's exactly what
we've been seeing and what we're seeing even more so now.

Speaker 3 (46:46):
I mean it's hard I've gotten.

Speaker 5 (46:48):
To know some millionaires, and I think that it's hard
to express what it does to people's minds.

Speaker 3 (46:54):
You know, we've seen that with fame.

Speaker 5 (46:56):
You know how people who get too famous, too wealthy,
end up sick and ill, and they I early because
it's just too much for the human brain to handle
being a Billionaire's that times a thousand, and to have
those people with that kind of mental outlook exerting almost
unlimited power in our democracy, nothing good can come from that.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
I think that as well. Said Glenn, thank you so much.
Great to see you, my friend.

Speaker 3 (47:19):
Always get to see Crystal.

Speaker 4 (47:20):
Take care.

Speaker 2 (47:23):
So we continue to keep our eyes on Texas, where
the death toll from those horrific floods there in the
Hill Country has risen now over one hundred. We still
have a number of people who continue to be missing
as the search and rescue effort now enters its fifth day.
At the same time as that effort is ongoing, and

(47:45):
as huge questions remain about what happened with the National
Weather Service about these vacancies, about whether the cuts to
the National Weather Service impacted the ability to properly forecast
this extraordinary event, whether it impacted the community warnings that
were received, but even as those questions persist, we now

(48:08):
have a new question as we entered this phase of recovery.

Speaker 4 (48:13):
Christy Noan, of course the head of DHS.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
FEMA is under DHS, and this administration has really aggressively
gone after FEMA. I mean, Trump has floated getting rid
of FEMA altogether, and they have sort of consistently pushed
this idea that a lot of the recovery efforts should be,
if not all of the recovery efforts should be pushed
to the States. So I wanted to start by focusing

(48:37):
in a little bit on Christy Noam here, whose role
is going to become increasingly significant. Let's take a listen
to some of her statements over the past several days
as she's been asked to respond to this tragedy and
potential federal government failures.

Speaker 12 (48:51):
For decades, for years, everybody knows that the weather is
extremely difficult to predict, but also that the National Weather
Service over the years at times has done well. Times
we have all wanted more time and more warning and
more alerts and more notification. That is something and one
of the reasons that when President Trump took office that
he said he wanted to fix and is currently upgrading

(49:12):
the technology, and the National Weather Service has indicated that
with that and Noah, that we needed to renew this
ancient system that has been left in place with the
federal government for many, many years. And that is the
reforms that are ongoing. They continue to elevate and up
their notifications. You know when your notification hit your phone, sir,

(49:32):
I'm sorry I can't speak to when that is, but
I do carry your concerns back to the federal government,
to President Trump, and we will do all we can
to fix those kinds of things that may have felt
like a failure to you and to your community members.
We know that everybody wants more warning time, and that's
why we're working to upgrade the technologies have been neglected

(49:53):
by far too long.

Speaker 2 (49:54):
So a couple things that she says there. First of all,
she says, well, weather, it's hard to predict, true, but
you know you would have a better shot at an
accurate forecast if you didn't just have Doze take a
chainsaw to the National Weather Service, something that was a
plan that was laid out by the way in Project
twenty twenty five. As Emily and I talked about yesterday.

(50:15):
So this has been an ideological project of the conservative movement,
not just of some you know, Elon Musk freelancing here.
This was an intentional plan for two reasons. Number one,
primarily two reasons. Number one, they just don't like the
federal government and would like to privatize a lot of
that weather collection weather forecasting.

Speaker 4 (50:35):
Number Two, they.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
Feel that the National Weather Service and NOAH are part
of what they call the climate change alarm industry, and
so since they're revealing data that is inconvenient for the
narrative that climate change is fake and we don't need
to do anything about it, they just want to take
an ax to it. So she says, well, you know,
weather forecasting is hard. Number one. The other thing she

(50:56):
says there is that they're working on some new technology
to improve the warning systems. People reporters and people who
are familiar with these agencies said, we have no idea
what she's talking about, Like this appears to maybe there's
something we don't know about, but this appears to have
just been made up to cover for the fact that
what they've actually done is significantly degrade the capacity of

(51:20):
this agency to be able to properly forecast and to
be able to communicate those forecasts and those warnings to
the community.

Speaker 4 (51:29):
So that was her cover up.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
As I said before, we are now shifting into a
recovery phase, and so you had possible failures on the
front end of the forecasting, the warning, the communications with
the community, which we covered yesterday. Now you have questions
a potential failure of the FEMA response, given that FEMA
has also been severely degraded by this administration. Let's go

(51:53):
ahead and put this is some independent reporting from an
outlet called the Handbasket up on the screen who's been
speaking with FEMA staffers about how this response is unfolding
versus how under previous administrations the response would have unfolded.
So the headline here is FEMA response to deadly Texas
floods delayed and deficient, with Christinoum in charge and staffers

(52:13):
are sounding the alarm. This reporter, Marissa Cavas says that
disaster struck and then goes on to talk about how
at this point, normally you would have hundreds of staffers
on the ground from FEMA and that right now they
have quote barely any staff that's been deployed, and the
acting administrator, David Richardson is quote nowhere to be found

(52:35):
per one source. If this is how they are going
to do a major hurricane response, people are fucked. That's
according to insiders at this agency, at FEMA, who say
this is not going the way that it previously would
have gone under other administrations that took disaster recovering war
seriously and didn't have this ideological war on federal emergency management.

(53:01):
So as the recovery unfolds, this is another thing we
really need to keep an eye on and see how
effective it ultimately is. We know that this administration has
been in this instance, they put in the emergency declaration
so people can apply for female assistance. In other instances,
I covered these horrific floods in West Virginia, and unfortunately

(53:22):
these extreme weather events, of course with climate change, are
coming faster and more frequently and are more and more devastating,
and they delayed for weeks that emergency declaration, which severely
hobbled the ability people were struggling and suffering trying to
put their life back together and recover from being able
to get the assistance that they needed. In other cases,
I know in our case in Arkansas, Sara Huckabee Sanders

(53:44):
had to go and use her personal relationships, which fortunately
she can petition the king to go and beg for
that emergency declaration. So that has been a consistent pattern
not to mention the threats from this administration to effectively
weaponize federal emergency assistance against states like California where they
have a political beef. Now, Texas is one of the

(54:05):
states in the country that has the sort of largest,
most developed state response. So it's a relatively large state. Obviously,
they're familiar with natural disasters, including flooding. This an area
that is prone to flooding, although this is the worst
flooding disaster anywhere in the country in a century or
rivals some of the worst in a century. So Texas

(54:27):
does have some state resources to be able to respond.
But even in a place like Texas, you still are
very dependent on the federal government being able to come
in with money and staffing resources to be able to help.
So that is something to continue to watch for and
appreciate this report from the ground because I haven't seen
anyone else really talking to the staffers from the agency
and getting the scoop on how this response compares to

(54:49):
previous ones. At the same time, we had Caroline Levitt
being pressed on questions of the administration's response and whether
the cut to the National Weather Service here contributed to
an increased loss of life. So more young girls, in
particular dead because of these chainsaw cuts to the National

(55:11):
Weather Service. And Noah, let's go ahead and take a
listen to E three.

Speaker 13 (55:14):
They gave out timely flash flood alerts, there were record
breaking lead times in the lead up to this catastrophe.
There is ongoing flood monitoring, and these offices were well staffed.
In fact, one of the offices was actually overstaffed. They
had more people.

Speaker 3 (55:30):
Than they need.

Speaker 13 (55:31):
So any claim to the contrary is completely false. And
it's just sad that people are pushing these lives.

Speaker 2 (55:36):
So I don't know what she's talking about there, because
those offices and the union that represents those workers say,
and all of the reporting before prior to even this
tragedy unfolded, says that these offices were understaff, that there
were significant vacancies, and one in particular we talked about
yesterday was the guy who was supposed to be you
know who's meant to be in touch with the community

(55:57):
and sort of spearheaded. That was a veteran that people
area really knew and trusted, who had a lot of
depth of expertise. He took that fork in the road
resignation offer, and because you have a blanket hiring freeze,
that position has not been filled. So not only did
you lose you sort of like pushed down this guy

(56:19):
who was really impactful in the region, very knowledgeable in
the region, exact sort of person that and now he's
a private consultant, exact sort of person you actually want
in federal government.

Speaker 4 (56:28):
Not only do you lose that guy, you don't replace
him with anyone.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
So you know there will be a lot of reporting
in the days to come about the failures here on
every level and whether those cuts had an impact, and
whether or not we can pin down exactly whether there
was an impact here or not. You have had significant
warnings from all of the previous NWS heads who said,

(56:54):
if you make these cuts, you are going to degrade
the ability of the Weather Service to do job and
it will lead to increased loss of life. So those
warnings are there as we head into the peak of
hurricane season. Last piece I have to get to here.
This is so, this is wild. I don't even know
what to say about this. Put you two up on
the screen. Ted Cruz Senator from Texas, known previously as

(57:19):
kang Kuon Ted because he was caught in Cankun while
a horrible natural disaster was unfolding in Texas. I believe
that was when they had the electricity loss, power loss
and a deep freeze. People were literally freezing to death.
And he was in cang Kun. Well, this time, as
disaster strikes, he's in Greece, caught vacationing in Greece as

(57:45):
these floods hit. Now you could say, okay, well, how
could he know, right, He couldn't know in advance. This
came on very rapidly. You would have no way of
knowing in advance that these floods were coming and that
it was going to be devastating loss of life. But
not only did he there when it happened. Okay, we
could forget that, but he stayed. He was caught by

(58:05):
tourist root in the area, who snapped that photo of
him sight seeing days after the floods had hit, as
the search and recovery as effort was ongoing. So he
apparently didn't leave his vacation in Greece until Sunday to
come back. So just absolutely extraordinary. This man once again

(58:26):
caught vacationing while his own residents and constituents, his own
constituents suffered through one of the worst natural disasters, one
of the worst flooding disasters that we have had in
a century. All right, let's go ahead and turn to
this unbelievable shocking images coming out.

Speaker 4 (58:43):
Of La with this ice raid.

Speaker 2 (58:45):
All right, guys, so I was talking to Glenn Greenwald
earlier about whether this was a fascist administration or not,
and we certainly had a performance of fascism in La
Park that unfolded yesterday. Let's go ahead and put these
images up on the screen of heavily armed military kidded
out immigration agents, including some on horseback. You can see

(59:08):
these sort of fortified vehicles rolling through the streets, sweeping
through the park in what appears to have been and
Ken Klippenstein was able to get leak documents as to
the purpose of this operation.

Speaker 4 (59:22):
Appears to have.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
Been a show of force to demonstrate to La and
to other cities and localities around the country that they
can operate effectively with impunity wherever and whenever they want.
Mayor Karen Bass of LA came down to that park

(59:44):
to confront agents and try to get them to leave.
Let's go ahead and take a look at how that unfolded.
Sort of a chaotic scene where she asked to talk
to their boss and to tell them they needed to
move on.

Speaker 4 (59:56):
Let's take a listen.

Speaker 5 (59:57):
My comment is.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Right now unknown at this time whether they actually even
made any arrests or whether it was purely just hey,
let's march through this park and show how big and
bad we are for the cameras. Can put the La

(01:00:22):
Times reporting up on the screen here of the way
they covered it. Their headline is heavily armed immigration agents
descend on MacArthur Park in LA they say. Dozens of
immigration agents, some on horseback, others carrying rifles in armored
vehicles swept through MacArthur Park on Monday in an extraordinary
show of force at the heart of LA's immigrant community.

(01:00:43):
Heavily armored Border patrol officers with a fleet of white
mini buses partially blocked the streets surrounding the park, which
has become a source of crime and drugs in the
area in the last few years. Activists with megaphones were
able to warn locals at the park before the contingent arrived,
according to police sources. The move comes days after President
Trump signed a budget that will provide a mass infusion

(01:01:04):
of funds to the Department of Homeland Security to ramp
up its immigration enforcement to levels unseen before in the
United States. LA has become the poster child of Trump's
mass deportations plan, as more than sixteen hundred people have
been arrested between June sixth and June twenty second. Go
and put Ken Klippenstein's report here up on the screen

(01:01:25):
because he actually got the leak documents of what this
operation was truly intended to do. Great reporting here from
Ken so he says exclusive Operation Excalibur in LA was
a show of force. Leaks from the military's LA deployment
reveal Coca Cola versus Pepsi rivalry, sweaty guardsman an abject failure.

(01:01:46):
He goes on to write that today's homeland security operation
was a mere show of presence. Internal Army documents I've
obtained say ice and custom agents dressed in military garb
assaulted the park, which the documents describe as a hot
be of historic lawlessness and the founding location of MS thirteen.

Speaker 4 (01:02:04):
The Salvador and Gang.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
News media is describing the operation as an ominous crackdown,
but National Guard sortes is tell me it was a
botched laughing stock. The military aspect of the operation, code
named Operation Excalibur, has not been previously reported. And there
were some eight different I believe, federal government agencies. Let
me see here, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

(01:02:28):
eleven different agencies that were involved in this show of
force in this LA park. They were all code named
different colas. That's why he says the Coca Cola versus
Pepsi rivalry. So the ATF was A and W, the
CBP was Canada dry. You had the FBI was coke
and the LAPD was Pepsi.

Speaker 4 (01:02:48):
So this mass operation to march through.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
The park and as I said before, effectively like demonstrate
fascism for the cameras. You guys likely know the context
in backstory here, as was indicated in the La Times article,
LA has really become their sort of demonstration project of
what mass deportation looks like. They love the fight with
LA because you've got Karen Bass, a democratic mayor. You've

(01:03:14):
got Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, and you had
those anti ice protests which turned violent at times, with
some throwing of water bottles a police officers, some torching
of Waymo cars, some graffiti that is all over, but
they use as a pretext to call up thousands of

(01:03:35):
National guardsmen in a very legally dubious, by the way operation,
and so they federalized the National Guard in California. Absolutely
extraordinary action that we've just sort of like moved past
because it's been so crazy everything else that has been
going on. And not only that, not only did they
federalize the National Guard, they also called up active duty

(01:03:57):
Marines to come in to LA to deal with what
ultimately was pretty run of the mill protests. Those National guardsmen,
at least I'm not sure about the Marines.

Speaker 4 (01:04:09):
They are still there. They are still there instead.

Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
Of doing any of the many other things that they
could be doing, including continuing the recovery from the horrific
fires that you had in and around LA. So this
is some of what they're doing with them mass show
a force in a park, planning these operations, and according
to Ken, you know, many of the National guardsmen that

(01:04:34):
he was in contact with are humiliated by They say,
this is this is an embarrassment, like this is not
the way that we're supposed to be operating. There was also,
you know, some indication that, oh, well, maybe they would
have the National guardsmen start to cover their face and
mask in the same way that the ICE agents have,
which has contributed to the sense of rogue lawlessness of

(01:04:57):
that agency. You know, oftentimes they show up in plane clothes,
those completely masked looks like a kidnapping indistinction. They won't
identify themselves sometimes, won't show a warrant, won't indicate what
law enforcement agency they're with, etc. So they wanted the
National Guard to adopt some of those tactics, and apparently
there was pushback on that because their view is we
are in the community, we're meant to be here to

(01:05:20):
help and serve our fellow Californians. And when you think
about the typical assignments that they'd be receiving, things like
helping out with recovery, that's the orientation that they are
used to when they're engaging with fellow community members. So
absolutely insane, and it does fit with broader plans from
this administration, as announced by Tom Homan, who is, you know,

(01:05:43):
spokesperson for the most aggressive enforcement and most aggressive and
cruel tactics that this administration has deployed when it comes
to mass deportation, and he's threatening these type of operations
everywhere in the country. And with the passage of the
funding from the One Big, Beautiful Bill, they are going
to have the resources to basically do whatever they want.

(01:06:05):
Let's go ahead and play F five and take a
listen to Tom Homan.

Speaker 14 (01:06:09):
President Trump said it, Turisko. We're going to double down,
triple down the sanctuary cities. Why not because they're a
blue city or booths tape, Because we know that's where
the problem is. So where we're going to send our assets.
We're want to send them where the problem is, sanctuary city.
So I've said it before, we'll flood the zone the
sanctuary cities. If they don't let us arrest a bad
guy in account of jail, they're going to rest them

(01:06:31):
in the community. We're going to wrest them at a
work site. So they're going to increase community operation. We're
going to increase work sale enforcement operation. We're going to
get the bad guys, so they don't want to help
get out of the way.

Speaker 7 (01:06:41):
We're coming to do it.

Speaker 4 (01:06:43):
We're coming to do it. Flood the zone.

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
And you know what he's saying there about going after
immigrants at job sites, it's actually really significant, has major
implications for the distance between their rhetoric about immigrants and
the reality of who immigrants are and the type of
operations that are being conducted here. Because there has been
a Stephen Miller directed focus on job sites and places

(01:07:07):
like the home depot, that means that you have fewer
resources actually to go after the genuine criminals. Because it's
easy to just roll up on a home depot. It's
a lot more difficult to find and locate and identify
gang members who aren't just going to be there hanging
out at the home depot. So if you're shifting resources

(01:07:30):
towards we're going to chase down farm workers in the field,
we're going to go to the home depot, We're going
to go to the garment factors was another place that
they went in LA that helped to kick off those
anti ice protests. That means you're focused on that regular,
most often law abiding immigrants who may or may not

(01:07:50):
be documented and there's also been a lot of racial
profiling here. You're focused on that and you are actually
not focused on resources on finding an identify, flying and
tracking criminals. So that is the effect of what these
policies have really meant. Let's talk a little bit about
the ICE funding, which is just it's hard to wrap

(01:08:11):
your head around the amount of resources that are about
to flood into this rogue, lawless agency. Put this up
on the screen, comparing the ICE budget, and again this
is not all of immigration enforcement.

Speaker 4 (01:08:23):
This is just ICE.

Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
Thirty seven point five billion dollars. Now it will be
bigger than most of the world's militaries, so rivaling the
military here of Canada and coming in significantly above places
like Italy, Israel, Netherlands, Brazil. So you've got a massive

(01:08:45):
budget here. You had one analyst who said, once they
get this budget amount into their coffers over the next
four years, they're going to have more money than the
budgets of the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, the US Marshals,
and the Bureau of Prisons combined. This will be the

(01:09:07):
largest best funded federal law enforcement agency in the history
of this country. They're trying to hire ten thousand ICE agents.
And I was just reading yesterday a piece on how
we have previous examples, in particular during the Bush administration,
of trying to staff up some of these law enforcement
agencies really quickly. And what happens is number one, you get,

(01:09:33):
you know, because you're just trying to take whoever you can,
you get huge issues with corruption. Number two, you get
huge issues with complete lack of any sort of experience.
And number three, think about the type of people who
would be applying to do that job of getting kitted
out in military gear to march through a park where
moments earlier children were playing, and sending people to Alligator

(01:09:58):
Alcatraz or shipping them off to Seacott with no due process. Like,
just think to yourself about the type of people that
that job would apply to, would appeal to. Those are
probably not really the ideal people that you want doing
what is already you know, sensitive and intended to be,
you know, under the Trump administration, certainly an.

Speaker 4 (01:10:20):
Absolutely cruel job.

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
So that's the direction that we're heading in this you know,
what we're seeing in this park in LA, what we've
seen in LA more broadly, what we've seen with Alligator
Alcatraz with Seacott, with the raids that we've seen across
the country.

Speaker 4 (01:10:36):
They're just getting started here.

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
And now they're going to have the budget with mass
detention facilities built out by private prison contractors, with huge
influx of ice agents, with money to do basically whatever
they want to do. This, what we're seeing now is
just the tip of the iceberg. All right, guys, thank

(01:10:58):
you so much for watching to We are going to
have actually a bro show tomorrow. Saga and Ryan Sager
will be back from recording with Tucker. Looking forward to
seeing how that interview went. I think it dropped this morning.
I'm not sure, but I haven't taken a look at
it yet, and then be back.

Speaker 4 (01:11:13):
To me and Sager on Thursday.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
So hope everybody has a fantastic day and I will
see you soon.

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