Trump’s 2nd Term’s Most Dangerous Moves Ranked with Texas Dem Rep Micah Erfan

Brogressive hosts Ben Bartlett and Max Levin are joined by Micah Erfan, who represents TX-07 on the Texas Democratic Party’s Executive Committee, for a no-holds-barred ranking of the most dangerous and corrupt actions from Trump’s second term.

At (00:39), we lay out the tier list: how we’re judging illegality, institutional damage, and long-term impact. Then the countdown begins — from gutting FDA safety checks and fast-tracking deportations without due process to the crypto money funnel fueling Trump’s campaign (13:33). We talk about what’s terrifying but technically legal (30:14), and what’s so chaotic it’s hard to even rank (47:18).

Along the way, we track how Trump’s authoritarian instincts have sharpened, and why some of his most dangerous moves aren’t the ones getting the loudest headlines.

If you’re trying to make sense of Trump 2.0 and what Democrats should be doing about it, this episode is for you.

Follow Micah ⁠⁠@micah_erfan⁠⁠⁠⁠, Ben ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@BenBartlettt⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Max ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@MaxLevin23⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and Brogressive Podcast ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@BrogressivePod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ on Twitter/X.

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
Welcome back to Progressive. I'm joined here with my Co host
Ben Bartlett and today we get tohonor a new guest, Micah Erfon.
Micah, welcome to the show. Happy to be here you guys.
So we have some kind of fun and a little silly, just like a way
that I like to cope with things.But we're going to make it to
your list of the most corrupt things that the second Trump
administration has done. And I'm really looking forward

(00:28):
to this because I've been thinking about this as just like
a very silly way to rationalize some really, really bad things.
Ben, you want to explain the veneer scale?
Which Mecca? Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I think at first we were maybe just going to go
off corruption, but I think that's a little limiting because
the scale of shitty things Trumphas done maybe goes beyond just

(00:48):
corruption. So we're kind of ranking it on a
subjective scale of severity andcorruption is part of that.
Illegality is part of that. Just being a really stupid
policy is part of that. So I think it should be fun.
We'll we'll kind of play around with what our standards are as
we go through, but I don't thinkthere will be any shortage of
bad things to go. Corruption is just too limiting
for Trump. OK, He's an easy guy.

(01:09):
He likes variety, and he expresses his vadnais in a wide
variety of ways. So our scale incorporates that.
See, I like that because I'm like, he's such a, he's such a
character that like, I wish there's another timeline where
we just like crown him like the shit poster of America and he
just fucks off, you know, just let him tweet and make funny
things. Because every time I think about
him, I think about that. I've never seen a thin person

(01:30):
drink Diet Coke tweet. And then I think like, wow.
And this is the guy who's like he, he may very well kill
millions of people, you know, like.
I'll just because of I'll keep drinking that garbage.
But anyway, so should we help him with social?
Yeah. We, I think we're just going to
go one by one through each of these scandals, give a little
overview of each, and then, yeah, start ranking.

(01:50):
Well, so the first one I realized I probably should have
picked a picture of the of the actual prison, but I picked the
meeting with Buchele in the White House where the president
decided, hey, let's, let's buildsome prisons.
Let's build El Salvadorian prisons and let's send Americans
there. Granted, he only sends a few.
And then it became a whole controversy of did you deserve
to go there? And then it's like, well, hold
on, wait a minute. You can't just export somebody

(02:11):
to a different country for questionable acts that you have
to, you know, try on our land. But Michael, you got you got any
legal analysis since you go to there's?
A lot of people that have been deported to El Salvador and 90%
of them committed no crime and have no criminal record.
That's according to Bloomberg. We actually found recently that
some of the people in prison in El Salvador is over a dozen are

(02:34):
fully legal immigrants. Like not only did they not
commit a crime because coming here and being on documents on a
crime, but they came here legally.
So that's pretty bad. Now this is him meeting with
them, I guess will include the, you know, the fact that people
are being imprisoned in Salvadorin the equation for those who
don't know. But Kelly, he's definitely a
dictator. Like there's just like no
question about it. He is philosopher king as his

(02:56):
bio, which is remarkable. He he has if if you know, if you
guys go look at his banner on Twitter, he has like tons of
soldiers, like standing up. They look kind of like
stormtroopers. I mean, it's kind of cool, but
it's like really fascist. And he made a map the other day
that he posted of like of countries based on like how

(03:19):
democratic they are. And he put every single country
as authoritarian, including his own.
So like that like, he knows thathe's an authoritarian guy.
And he took El Salvador's constitution and basically
ripped into shreds. He said the military on
parliament forced them to vote for some of his legislation.
And is El Salvador people, there's a one term limit.

(03:39):
He's already been there for morethan one term, right?
So he's a dictator. I say this is a pretty bad one.
It's at least at least an A, if not a S.
You'll see, Like I was thinking about that 'cause I'm like
questionable, like just getting to choose who you disappear and
who you don't like. I feel like it's opening the
door to S tier though. I mean it isn't S tier yet, but

(04:01):
I agree with you in the sense that it could become as here,
but it hasn't yet. So making it a like, it's in
terms of it, it's really bad, really bad, but it could have
been worse, which is a crazy. What almost takes at another
level to me is just the stupidity and like not even
putting any effort in and to putting a plausible explanation
up for how it's legally justified.
And like, when the court ruled that he had to facilitate the

(04:23):
return, his lawyers and the, thesmart people in the
administration were like arguinghe had no power to facilitate
the return. And then Trump is openly on
multiple interviews saying like,yeah, I mean, if I made a phone
call, I could easily, I could easily bring him back in 2
seconds. And I think it's very funny
because clearly I think the reason why he doesn't have the
the ability to like maintain their fake story is because he

(04:46):
wants to never drop the illusionthat he can get anything done.
So he still wants like the imageof the deal maker that if he
really wanted to, he could forcethe El Salvador guy to do
whatever he wants. So like his own ego and hubris
is in theory like dooming their legal justification, Which I
mean, who cares who sees? We will see if that matters.

(05:08):
But it definitely pisses me off when they don't even bother
trying to pretend it's legal. Right.
And he violated his Supreme Court order here, which is like
pretty much as bad as it gets now.
He, he kind of, he kind of avoided it in a roundabout way.
It wasn't like, oh, after Supreme Court, like we don't
care about you guys. It was like, oh, yeah, like I
can't do it, right. But that's it's, it's oh, Mr. I,

(05:30):
it's an A for sure. If we talk about this any
longer, it might be an S, but we'll put it at the A for now.
It's. Just kind of an interesting
because I remember reading about, like, define the Supreme
Court and like, I remember when I was given a capital tour when
I was being like an intern on Capitol Hill, right?
And I would always tell like thestory about Andrew Jackson, like
defying the court and whatnot. When I'd go buy a statue.
And I always, like, point out, I'd be like, oh, yeah.

(05:50):
And that's the instruction statue.
Not a great guy. And, you know, here we are.
He's just like defying the Supreme Court.
I'm like, that's that's bad. You probably should not be able
to do that. But you can't just be like, oh,
whoops. And a Supreme Court where?
A plurality where appointed by him.
They're mostly his own justices or ironically the one the

(06:12):
Republican ones he didn't appoint are probably his
strongest soldiers anyway. So yeah, it's not like it's a a
court that's biased against him or something, or that he could
even argue. About you're the 63 conservative
Supreme Court and for the conservatives don't agree with
him and even on this issue Alitoand Thomas OK voted were against

(06:32):
him that you know you have to dosomething really freaking
illegal for Alito, the guy who who flew a pro January 6 flag
outside not one of his houses, two of his houses to rule
against your ass. OK, so that was pretty bad.
That's so so in terms of bad that's that's our first AI like
that. But in in terms of more silly

(06:53):
and asinine Gulf of America, what do you think I.
Mean, it's clearly a national atrocity.
It's the worst thing that's happened in at least 20.
I mean, no, it doesn't matter. I don't, I don't care.
Gulf of America, I mean like America, there's two continents
of America. Even if you said go for the
United States, it would have been a little bit more
preposterous. It's just kind of, it's
obviously DI mean. If anything on this list doesn't

(07:15):
really matter, it's that one. It's just a nothing burger.
Like of all the things to do with like, this is what you're
wasting your time on. Like I don't give a shit in the
Super. Bowl it very much feels like a
Trump first term scandal. It feels like something that he
would have done in his first term and like resist libs would
have made it out to be like maybe the worst thing he did.
But I think all sides have kind of gotten a little above that.

(07:37):
And it's, yeah, it's small potatoes now.
No, I mean, he literally said inthe video on the Super Bowl was
going on, he said it's bigger than the Super Bowl.
This is a this is a date that's bigger than the Super Bowl.
So, I mean, it is a bigger, that's the Super Bowl event, but
it is still the tier, yeah. Of of all the ones you're

(08:00):
looking at, that one I'll settlewith.
But all right, also we got the Qatari jet, the 770 million, is
that what it is, right, or $800 million jet that the Qatari
government decided to gift him, which last I checked there's
some rules about, you know, whatis it?
Is it gifts when you're in power?
You probably shouldn't accept almost a billion dollar gift of
a jet from a foreign country. But you know, what do I know?

(08:23):
I mean, that's, you know, Micah,what are you?
What are your thoughts on that? Generosity become illegal.
You know you. I'm to be a nice guy getting.
Mad at a just a 700 to $800 million act of generosity.
I mean, I it's obviously the kind of just so insane that even
a lot of Republicans were like, wait, do we support this shit?

(08:44):
Right? Like, I thought we were America
first. Now Trump's running around like
all the Arab States and he's like, I love you guys.
I'm going to throw money at you guys.
We're going to make you so rich.So I mean, I think whenever you
understand this in the greater context of Qatar strategy, it
makes it a little bit more absurd, right?
They paid over 100 mega influencers tons of money to

(09:05):
spread their ideological agenda.Right?
Pam Bondi was a lobbyist for Qatar.
Or making crazy amounts of moneyjust like 2 years ago.
Like the administration's just crawling with Qatari influence.
What the fuck is Qatar? Where's Qatar?
Like, why is this country that'sso small?
It has like 500,000 people able to so easily take over the

(09:27):
Republican Party. It's kind of fucking
embarrassing. And it's sad that it's working,
right? Like after they made this offer,
Trump's like, oh, we're getting rid of sanctions on Syria.
By the way, you know what, we'rethe best friend of the Arabs,
Allahu Akbar, Like Long live Allah, right?
It's like he. I think it's just a sad
indictment of our country that this is so effective.

(09:48):
But you know, listen, it's like a seed tier thing for this guy.
This is corruption, not fascism.So I think it's a seed tier
thing. Yeah, I'd I I would agree it's
probably I might go as far as beats here just because it's so
blatant and how many like I saw Rand Paul was criticizing it.
I thought there was an interesting people were
referencing that Obama in his book wrote about how I don't

(10:11):
know if it was Qatar, it was some country in the Middle East.
But how when he went there for his first trip as president,
that under that on his bed when he got to the room, and the same
for all the diplomats there fromthe US, there was just like
super expensive roomies and jewelry and necklaces.
And they were like told with thebox or told by the diplomats

(10:31):
there to take whichever one theywanted and that they could take
one home. And Obama talked about how,
like, it made him wonder how many people don't have a rule
against this like the US does, or how many people like Trump
would simply take the necklace and never mention it again.
And how many other countries arebasing their policy in part on
these bribes. And now we know that ours is
apparently one of those countries.

(10:52):
Right. This isn't a transfer to the
United States government. This is a transfer that
ultimately will be to him personally.
And the saddest thing is this isn't even the biggest grip to
this administration thus far. His his memes, his crypto tokens
have been bought. He's like, I don't know, 10X his
wealth. He's made way more money off of

(11:13):
selling crypto bullshit than anyany time in real estate evicting
poor people. OK at least he actually had
buildings and was doing something back then.
We've had lobbyists foreign countries buying his crypto
currencies enriching the hell out of this guy.
It's fucking crazy to like, conceive the fact that this is
not even close to the most corrupt thing he's done thus
far. Also, I mean, in that vein,

(11:34):
okay, we'll put that as C, right?
It's just, it's just it's a plane.
Like, I mean, come on, who doesn't get your but.
People are trying to justify it with the Statue of Liberty
analogy, which is beyond like the Statue of Liberty was not
put at whatever president at theTimes private residence after
the after his term was up. Like it's just a ridiculous
comparison. And when he was I saw Trump's

(11:56):
justification that a lot of liketech talk comments were like,
oh, he's he's kind of on to something.
Was he was like, I'd be stupid not to take the deal.
Why would I not take it? I mean, if they're offering us
something for free, but it's notus, it's him.
And this is a plane for him. So yeah, I, I, I it is very
depressing. This is not his most blatantly
corrupt act, but it's but I would argue it's his most

(12:17):
visibly corrupt act because eventhe crypto stuff, a lot of
that's unknown. That's what's scary about it.
This is very explicitly known. We know who paid them.
We know who is trying to get something out of it and it's
very explicit. And yeah, I'd I, I would
probably go up to B, but I'm I'mhappy with C for.
Well, I guess in that same vein,they're kind of tied.
So do we put the plane at C or the cryptocurrency at B?

(12:38):
We can put them both in B or C but I mean the crypto 1 is.
Currencies at B because now literally anybody can but and
this is this is this is true with this stocks too in this
company. Anybody, if they want to win
favor with the Trump administration can buy that
currency or those stocks and they do to win favor with this
motherfucker. Like I I just can't fucking

(13:00):
believe that we had to listen tothem whining and bitching and
screaming about like buying son Hunter getting an appointment on
a Ukrainian company board. What?
What the fuck was the company's name?
We didn't even know the name. Oh, he was he was a board member
of some reign in Ukrainian. Like meanwhile Trump takes a
bribe the size of the entire economy of that fucking like the
entire entire economy of Ukraineevery single goddamn day.

(13:22):
And none of these guys on Rumbo,OK, none of these motherfuckers
on 4 Chan are even they're not pressed.
They don't give a fuck. No, it's based when he does
that. I'm so dumb.
And it's what's so funny for thememe coin stuff is how much
people knew like Trump's true social stock was kind of the

(13:43):
original version of this. It's a very incredibly fake
social media app that you go on there and there seems to be
exactly 1 human user. And it's somehow I believe was
valued in the, in the billions from its stock.
And what I found incredibly, like black billing was on
election night, as the results came in, when it became more
clear Trump was going to win, like the stock shot up because

(14:05):
everyone knew that it's, yeah, that it's basically a Ponzi
scheme to support the president.And and then the the meme coin,
of course, was even more explicitly that.
But yeah, well, that's what the meme point was about.
I mean it's it's all kind of awful because I think the meme
coin like it right after he won,he made so much money off the
pump and dump of his stupid little coin.
I think like he was like the 6thrichest person on earth

(14:28):
temporarily like. By May 20, 2540 percent of
Trump's net worth is now in crypto assets.
Yeah, it's fucking insane. Like the fact that the worst
part of like anybody can buy it.Like, you know, cryptocurrency,
the whole thing is decentralizedcurrency, right?
Anyone can buy it. You can't track it.
Like that's what Bitcoin, that shit was used for, right?
It was to buy drugs, buy shit you weren't supposed to, but now
anyone can do that. You would just buy his fucking

(14:48):
coin and be like, you know the whole thing with like Trump
hotel, right? Like you used to be able to stay
there and like, oh, you had to do all these things to to funnel
the money, whatever. You could only do so much.
Now you would just fucking if you are worth a billion dollars
or you just throw that billion into his fucking coin and like
walk into the White House. It's insane.
And I didn't realize he also, they also launched the World
Liberty Financial, which is a crypto exchange platform where

(15:12):
the, the Trump family owns a 60%stake.
And it's, it's a like crypto exchange platform that the
website like has pictures of Trump everywhere and like
heavily promotes him. But they make a bunch of money
off, I think it's like a 2% fromevery transaction on there.
Explicitly, they're promoting itas the website of the president

(15:33):
of the United States, which is very normal.
And they invest the money that he makes on all this bullshit.
OK, for all these corruption andall these, all these bribes in
their creator ecosystem of shills who just constantly 24/7
suck this guy off. It's just like, you know, he
they use the power they get fromtheir influencer army to be

(15:55):
corrupt and they reinvest the money in more of the same
bullshit. I'm so tired of this shit.
Anyway, let's let's go. We got to get through these.
So the Amazon Prime deal or for the the Prime documentary deal
with Melania, where she got like, what was it, $28 million
to get a documentary made about her?
I don't. Care anymore bro?
I give a get AD. Absolutely nothing for.

(16:18):
Her probably going to give AD but honestly, all of these like
I I sort of put a lot of stuff into this basket of like the
entertainment industries, like being cocked by Trump and
terrified of him in the second term and like what was it CBS
and ABC with those settlements and Facebook I believe paid him

(16:39):
off a huge settlement for banning him from the platform
after January 6th. Like I would definitely put AD
to your because I don't think this is necessarily like Trump
exerting his power as much as it's just like cowardly overly.
Reacting. To the vibe shift from Hollywood
and entertainment companies. But it's still pretty.
Well it's just a crazy amount ofmoney to give her for the deal.

(17:00):
Like OK I get rid of your documentary shit.
Why are you paying her so much? Like I don't think Obama the
Obamas were paid this much for this kind of stuff.
And also who wants to watch a documentary about Melania?
Not even the Republicans care about her.
Trump doesn't even care about her.
Nobody cares about this person like you know Her entire
ideology is hating people like Melania and never wanting them

(17:22):
to come to the United States again.
She has an accent and she's an immigrant bro.
The only thing she has going forwith with MAGA people is a
relation to Trump and that her skin isn't very dark.
Wow, no, you're right. Like, I mean, fuck, it's just,
it's just, it's like that same thing of like, if anybody else
did this though, could you imagine like the backlash
though? Like, could you imagine if it
was like, oh, like first lady Joe Biden signs like a $30
million deal? Like, dude, we would not be

(17:43):
hearing that shit for like months.
People would still be talking about that shit.
There would be, there would literally be like MAGA
influencers squealing about it like in seven years, OK, just
like they're talking about, I don't know, Pizza Hut, A Smith.
Well, and, and Jeff Bezos, I mean, but it's, I feel like it's
lost in my memory hole of the whole weeks around the election.

(18:03):
But he was, he did kill the, theendorsement of Kamala right
before the election too. I mean, I, I, I did this started
before he even won all these andwhat he did $1,000,000
contribution to the inaugurationfund too.
Here's my question and I this isdirected to you, Jeff.
OK, I know you're watching this podcast.
What is the point of being the richest guy in the world if

(18:27):
you're just going to be a bitch?What's the point?
You accumulate all this wealth, right?
I'm the boss now nobody's going to tell me what to do.
Then the moment and this guy comes into power, you don't like
this guy. This guy doesn't give a fuck
about you and now you're on hands and knees doing whatever
he wants. And I.
Got to say Jeff Bezos was one ofthe like few billionaires where

(18:48):
I was like, you know, if I've, if I suddenly came into a
billion dollars, maybe I would like he's not the worst use of
that in terms of like personally, because he was just
like, yeah, I'm going to get all, I'm going to be avoided up
like get, get all this work done.
Now I'm going from being a nerd to like owning all these sports
teams and stuff. And then he dropped, he never
bought the Boston Celtics. And then he did this with Trump.

(19:10):
He's falling off the the billionaire shortlist ranking in
my in. My mind you're.
Not going to Joe lacob #1. You're going to be low on our
billionaire tier list. OK, well, you'll, you'll see.
So in that same vein, what aboutmaking millionaires out of
Ashley Babbitt's family, using you and my dollars to pay her
$5,000,000 to the family or while she's dead?

(19:32):
So that's not paying 5 million to her, but to the family it's.
Like a, it's like a bee or something.
I mean, it's like we've kind of all gone over the fact that
there was an insurrection where they tried to overthrow the
country. Because right now the people
that planned it are in power right now and are constantly
trying to overthrow the Constitution.
But like, it is like really freaking crazy that not only did

(19:52):
these people get away with it and not get life sentences, but
now we're like martyrdom. We're we're like the official
position unites its government is that this person's a martyr.
Like, dude, if you knock on a door and you open a door to a
Republican's house and you get shot, guess what they say?
They say you deserved it. This person is banging on the
door. They're they're attacking police

(20:13):
officers. She gets shot and now we have to
cry and piss our pants about it.We have to go off a vigil for
her. It's ridiculous.
And Parify. But what's so like obvious about
how bad it is, is that they didn't run on this.
I mean, Trump a little bit did, but all of the like the clear
minded people around him, the JDVance's of the world were
explicitly stating in interviewsweeks before the election that,

(20:34):
well, of course he's not going to pardon the like the violent
criminals or the ones who assaulted police officers.
And I'm sure you would have said, of course he's not going
to give a $30 million claim to someone who was shooting, was
ruled by the police who they claim to love as self-defense.
And yet he went ahead and did it.
And there's, there's no accountability there, which does
not shock me, but but I think it's clear that they knew how

(20:56):
obviously bad this would come off and is.
But I. Think it's.
Still happened. See, like I, I put in a beat
simply because it's like you're paying off the the people who
tried to overthrow the government.
You shot her after she was banging on the door trying to
like, you know, fucking overthrow the government and
hang like pens out there. And then now you're paying her
off like her family. Like, that's talking crazy.

(21:18):
But what about cutting Secret Service to John Bolton because
his farmer was he? Was he Secretary of Defense?
Or what the fuck was he cutting his his national?
Security Advisor I think. National security, cutting
security detail for your national security advisor right
after he's already had like attacks on his or threats on his
life from Iran. Like, well, because you're mad

(21:39):
that he called you a bitch and he goes on fucking TV and calls
you a bitch. Like that's.
It's just classic Trump bullshit.
I mean, he would have done that 2016.
I don't think we should spend too long in this one.
But I get AC or something because like, you know, what
he's just constantly saying is if you're not loyal to me,
you're going to have problems, right?
And your life is going to be in danger.

(22:00):
And why does he really care about that?
Because he wants people that will break the law.
He wants people that will do hiscoup, right?
So in three years or whatever, whenever he says I'm King Trump
now, bitch, like I'm not, I'm running for election again.
Like, yo, let's go, like, and all these guys are like, oh,
shit. Like Marco Rubio, you know, he
makes that goddamn face. He's like, he'll be like, OK,

(22:22):
yes Sir, yes, Sir. Instead of saying, oh, shit like
this is actually really bad, I should leave, right?
So he's trying to intimidate people.
That's why it's not AD, it's AC.But who gives a fuck about John
Bolton? I mean, he's kind of a loser.
Yeah, I mean, it's still bad. Like I don't know, I just feel
the things from like what, why, why are you doing that?
But you know, I'm we're long passing.
Didn't he also revoke like Kamala's extended clearance and

(22:47):
service protection? I believe she's up in 6:00 not
that long from now in June and that I think it traditionally
like they extend the period a little bit.
But but yeah, I've been Trump isit's pretty explicit what his
goal is here and pretty dark. And I wish more people would
press him on this of like, why do you think this is something

(23:10):
that will scare people off? And the obvious answer is
because they might be murdered by a crazy person.
But I don't think he's ever beenpressed to that logical end.
Nobody has time to press him on anything because he does
something every single day like that's.
Like you can't. Yeah.
And like the photos I think. Americans aren't paying
attention to anything. Like you tell them about any of
this shit, they forgot about it.Or like they don't care.

(23:31):
They don't. Even know what happened I.
Understand that it's illegal. Like they don't Supreme Court
orders. Like whoa what the fuck?
What is that? There's three branches, but you
got it. You got to spell this shit out.
That's that's the unfortunate thing.
It's like, maybe we should just choose one thing and talk about
that 24/7, not because it's actually the worst thing or
there's not new shit going on, but just because that might be
the only thing that reaches people's brains.

(23:53):
Like that's what Trump did. Like emails, emails, emails and
shit without Hillary. But the thing with about the
Republicans, here's their advantage.
We don't do that much about you.So there's like one thing for
them to talk about and they get to talk about 24/7.
He does so much bad shit, it's really hard for us all to agree
about which bad thing that we should talk about.
It makes you sound like you havelike a tinfoil hat on because
they're like, oh, you have TrumpDerangement Syndrome and I'm

(24:13):
like shut, shut the fuck up. Like like what?
What do you want me to do? Like I could list like 5 crimes
committed today. I don't know.
Well, that, that's, I feel like so much of the Trump thing is
people have this attachment to like, well, somewhere in the
middle must must be the reasonable answer.
So when he like, I mean, I guessthis is like often what left
wing people argue. But like when he pushes the

(24:34):
Overton window so much with all of his insane shit.
And if, if it comes off like, oh, you disagree with everything
he does, you must be super unreasonable.
And it's like like the trap of that and like having a debate
with them. It's like, well, the right
answer must be somewhere in the middle, even if he's made-up
every part of his answer and theother parts completely true,
like. People just attach, right?

(24:55):
You must just not be paying attention and that's the truth.
Like bro, you're not paying attention.
I honestly think one of our problems is like, we're like so
diplomatic with people who don'tknow what the hell they're
talking about. And I, I've seen kind of data on
this recently. I used to believe that if you
like go really hard on the painton people, like they don't
change their mind. But I actually think maybe not
that person that you go really hard on the paint on like they

(25:16):
might not change their mind. But if people realize like how
stupid it is to say like, well, both sides are bad.
Like people just flame these people 24/7. 100% people don't
want to say that shit because it's fucking embarrassing.
It's fucking if you think that you should be fucking
embarrassed, OK? I think that's such a great
point because all this talk about how, yeah, like we need to

(25:36):
coddle the, like, soft Trump supporters who we've lost by
coming off as like, too woke or trying to shrink the tent or
whatever. But the counter example of that,
the people who apparently won these people over, it's not like
they were making this like very sincere attempt to be like
moderate or be really understanding of the other side.
Like, yeah, you're right. It might not destroying someone

(25:57):
in debate might not convince theperson you destroy.
But I actually do think that's avery effective persuasion
tactic. And clearly that's what the
right wing's done. I mean, the entire like Gen.
Z right wing shift I think can be attributed to like the Ben
Shapiro owned with facts and logic that changed my mind stuff
at the college campuses. Like I think a lot of it does
relate to that. Yeah.
Like a Pete Buttigieg or the even Sam's.

(26:17):
I loved Sam Cedar when he went on Jubilee and like he was not,
he would call them fucking stupid when they were.
And I think all the comments were pretty supportive.
So. He's put me in, Jubilee put me
in. I'll call.
Well, it seems. To be not too hard to get on
there slash Herschel Lamb. Dude, they picked people out of
like our university sometimes, like they were doing an episode

(26:39):
and like I saw a clip on fuckingInstagram reels and I was like,
holy shit. Like I know that girl.
Like she like she like I'll be like go to the gym, right?
And I worked there and like all of a sudden I see a picture all
the time, like she was in one ofthose like episodes of like
natty or not. And I'm like, what the fuck are
you doing there? Like I fucking whatever.
But like that whole like this isjust him in the White House.
But honestly he's been fucking AWOL so I really don't know

(27:00):
where to put him cuz he's just been fucking off really.
I know he's. On like as a person.
Just him as like special cabinetadvisor selling Tesla I feel.
Like it's all of Dodge too, as awhole, Like the whole Dodge
operation. Right.
So like that, there's so many things here.
This guy, this fucking South African guy, OK, He just called
immigrants parasites. Bitch, you're an immigrant.

(27:21):
Like you're like, brother, you're, you're from South
Africa, dude. Like he.
Literally you're the guy coming to our country trying to change
it and change the culture because you don't like it.
It's what you complained about. I've never seen someone so
pressed over apartheid going away like apartheid ended.
He never fucking got over and hewants to establish it here.
Like, he's made our entire refugee policy literally the

(27:42):
whole thing about South African white people, as if that's the
group of people in the entire world.
Look at the entire world. In Sudan, Sudan, they're getting
killed. OK, In Gaza, they're getting
killed. But you know what?
You know who needs help? The white people in South
Africa. Now tell me this.
What percentage of the land do white people in South Africa
own? It's more than 5%.
It's more than 10%. It's more than 85%.

(28:04):
It's 90%. This is the most oppressed group
in the country. I mean, in the world, the
requirement to be refugee to theUnited States is to be a racial
minority in South Africa. Who is?
That's freaking white people andsome Indians.
Fair enough. But like that's, that's freaking
crazy. Who is a race based refugee

(28:25):
policy? Ukraine.
Ukrainians. No, just.
Yeah, well, and, and some of thebroader cuts when we're talking
about like how illegal and corrupt and blatantly
unconstitutional some of these things are.
I I'm taking this journalism class and was writing an article
for my, for like the student paper.
And a friend of mine, I interviewed for the article.

(28:47):
She worked for the Department ofthe Interior and she was
technically a probationary employee and she was fired from
her post like by the initial Elon cuts and her because the
only legal justification for firing these workers without an
act of Congress is bad performance.
She was fired for bad performance.
And her literal supervisor, the one who was in charge of

(29:09):
evaluating her performance, he handed her the letter that said
you're fired for bad performance.
And when he handed it to her, hesaid, I don't agree with any
part of this. I think your performance has
been fantastic, but they're making me give this to you.
And so they didn't even make an attempt to cover up how illegal
it was. And then it, it did get
overturned by a court and she got ordered to be hired back,
which she found out about through a New York Times

(29:29):
headline. And like, not from her boss or
anything, but yeah. So I'd, it's that stuff I just
think is so like the, the lack of any care for like the human
side of it and the actual individuals whose life you're
like throwing into chaos just toget overturned a month later.
I'd I would rank the Ilan Doge stuff pretty damn high.
Well, they, they also killed, you know, probably millions of

(29:50):
Africans with, with the black kind, not the white kind.
Don't worry the white kind are safe because the cuts to foreign
aid which apparently doesn't do anything, I'm told it doesn't do
anything includes cuts to anti malaria programs and anti aids
programs. And some of y'all might know
this but people in Africa struggle with contagious

(30:12):
diseases as well. Actually extra and so whenever
we we get rid of the stuff stopping them from getting those
diseases, guess what they get those diseases.
So not only is he shredding the constitution, illegally firing
people, but he's killing people in Africa and he's also firing
people at F the FDA responsible for vetting the safety of our
food and our medicine. Now what does that do?
That means more people get sick,right, because their food is

(30:34):
dirty, but also the drug approval process, which is so
inefficient. We all hate that it's not
efficient, right? Guess what?
It's made less efficient becausenow everybody who's responsible
for reviewing like half their workforce is laid off.
What does that do to drugs? Well, we know what it does
because already some drugs have been cancelled because they know

(30:56):
it's going to take so long to get to this doge bullshit
approval process at the FDA thatthey can't do their drug
anymore. They don't have the money to do
it. So he's also killed Americans.
Congratulations. Well, at least that sounds super
efficient. I'm glad he made it so much more
efficient to get that done. The abundance agenda.
He's maximizing the number of deaths that he could generate

(31:17):
for every dollar cut. It's really tremendous.
Give it a S tier. I was going to say like isn't it
on track to kill more people in the next 5 or what by 2029 or
something like that by the more than the Holocaust.
I think if I the with the projections between the anti
malaria, anti HIV and. It was like pennies.
It was not like trillions of dollars like in the grand scheme
of the US budget. It was a an accounting error

(31:40):
meanwhile. The Republican budget is going
to add $40 trillion to the debt or whatever the hell over the.
Next at least like the poor, suffering, starving billionaires
will have like a little extra money.
So temporarily, yeah, temporarily.
I also think, I think something that's been completely not
mentioned at all with the Doge stuff.
I mean I get it because there's actual real world impact to

(32:01):
these policies, but the reason it's named Doge is because it's
a reference to a meme coin that Elon Musk owns a shit ton of
that started at like 1/10 of a cent and then jumped up so
people got rich off of it. But I was curious.
I actually didn't know this until I just looked it up.
So the the doge thing was announced by Trump on It was
announced on November 12th. So on November 10th, the doge

(32:26):
coin was worth about 19 cents oreither.
Yeah, it was about worth about $0.19.
The day after Trump announced it, it shot up within a week to
$0.46. So that means anyone who's
holding that Dogecoin when Trumpannounced that more than doubled
their money if they got out, which could very well include
Elon Musk, who has openly talkedabout how he owns tons of this.
So I think it's like, not only are the policies awful, the

(32:48):
literally the name is a represents corruption and a
similar thing to the Trump meme coin.
So it's like a more dumb. Aside from the fact that it's
like they've completely ruined like even just looking like a
Shiba. You know for me, cuz like I like
Doge. I like Doge's meme.
I liked it before it was whatever the fuck this is.
It was a good meme, right? It was fine.
It was whatever it was like Pepe's before.
They were like neo Nazi propaganda but but the US Pepe.

(33:10):
That ruined doge. Doge was way better than Pepe
too. Never like.
Yeah, no, and there's been ruined Mojacks too, but I was
gonna say like. Probably run these so this
doesn't go super long, but. Yeah, that's the.
Crazy deportation one like I honestly just like think about
what happened here. The government, okay, government
terrorists, Trump calls them police.

(33:31):
They're these guys are terrorists.
They went to this guy's house. They said you said words that we
don't like and it is sequence that we don't like.
We're, we're taking, we're putting you in prison for this
bullshit. We're putting you in prison.
And then all these First Amendment Bros, the free speech
warriors, ones that are so mad that they don't get a stage in a
microphone at UC Berkeley 24/7. They don't get speaking fees for

(33:55):
speaking at universities. They said, oh, you know what?
Based, Based. Oh, oh, actually like actual
censorship, arresting people forspeech, based.
Freaking S tier. S tier.
OK, I was gonna say I, I put it S2 simply because it's just, we
don't like what you said, so therefore you're disappearing.

(34:15):
Like that's insane. That's fucking crazy For a whole
country that's built on Queen's Speech.
Like that is genuinely fucking crazy.
I I would agree as to and, and it's just like, I, I guess
there's a legal argument for like that.
It's you can basically deport anyone who's not a permanent
citizen for pretty much anything.
But like it's so fundamentally against like you're saying,

(34:36):
yeah, everything they've complained about the cancel
culture stuff. And it's just it like the idea
that like I know a lot of peoplewho I guess are on visas, like a
lot of students who are like, I would never think of as being at
risk for this. But the idea that, yeah, they
could say and is like people sayit's I guess somewhat you could
justify it legally, but could they stretch that to a further

(34:56):
limit of like criticizing Trump goes under this?
Like, I don't think it's very far away from that at all.
And you can. They're already.
Doing that, they're already checking the phones if people as
they come over the border. But I like to read a section of
this document. I'm not sure if Republicans have
ever heard of it. It's called the Constitution.
OK, so I'm going to read this toy'all.
No edited version. This is the original document.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of

(35:20):
religion or prohibiting the freeexercise thereof, or abridging
the freedom of speech, or of thepress or the people peaceably to
assemble and to petition the government for a redress of
grievances. Wait a minute.
I didn't hear the word citizens in there.
Did you all hear that? I didn't hear the word I I just
heard that they shouldn't make any law.

(35:42):
So all this is like, maybe the founders just forgot to include
that this is all just for citizens.
Or maybe it was like, oh, oh, the government shouldn't do
this. Yeah.
Fucking Ted. And and it's not and and you can
make some regulations on speech,I suppose, but it the viewpoint
neutral thing is not remotely met here.
I mean, I guess he's justifying it by saying like it's a

(36:03):
national security concern and saying like Hamas terrorism or
something. But it's it's so obviously
viewpoint neutral. I mean, if someone was pushing
for, I don't know, for like, it was calling for, like, Israel
to, like, go away harder in Gazaand like, wipe it completely
out. Like they clearly weren't
deporting someone for doing that.
It's not remotely viewpoint neutral.
It's entirely hingent on their political perspective, which

(36:25):
like, yeah, couldn't go more against the law of the
Constitution and the like, spirit of it, but lovely.
Also, what about Inspector General firings?
Your whole thing is efficiency, so you fire the guys that are
responsible for keeping things efficient.
Oh, oh wait, these guys, the what are they called?
Like your generals, Like the just independent watchdogs, I.
Mean it's obviously D tier because like that's just normal

(36:47):
levels of bad. We don't need to talk about it
more than that. But yes, like doge fired all of
the people responsible for actually things, making things
more efficient. People that have like it
literally 1000 times more experience, knowledge and
credentials to make these sort of judgements than the like 18
year old Reddit hyper turbo users who are like trying to
spend all day logging into like,I don't know, the, the, the, is

(37:12):
it Social Security? And they're like, Oh my God,
wait, wait, somebody's ID is on here multiple times in the
database. It's like, yes, dude, every
single time they send out a payment, it's going to be on the
database. So every single old person which
is taking multiple payments for Social Security is in the
freaking database. And they're like, Oh my God,
look, there's people that are over 120 years old in the
database. Yes, there's people in the

(37:34):
Social Security database which are not currently getting Social
Security. Yeah, what I think he talked
about this in the pod, even in the State of the Union.
Trump never said I'd. I believe he never said like
there's people who are over 100 years old getting Social
Security payments. He was like out of characterly

(37:54):
careful not to say that. He said, yeah, these people are
in the database, assuming rightfully that all the people
would not look any further into it and make the logical
assumption based off that. But yeah, it's beyond also it
was illegal. I don't know if anything ever
happened with that. But you like this violated the
OR the Whistleblower Protection Act or the Inspector General
Protection Act, One of those things it was supposed to get

(38:16):
like a 30 day notice. I think there had to be caused.
So it's similar to the Dodge stuff but.
Apparently it was not the Treasury payment, Social
Security, accessing, you know, the, the basis of the world
financial system. Nothing, not a big deal.
I mean, that's, you know. There was nowhere for
whistleblowers to go and it had a chilling effect.
Like, I mean it. It's not just about efficiency,
it's about like corruption and like any immoral behavior they

(38:38):
can check you on. So no surprise that he wanted to
remove any checks and balances, but still depressing.
Well, so in the same instance wetouched on the Treasury
payments, we put that one in D tier as well.
Social Security. Yeah, just no, nothing burger.
Just just let Grok get trained on.
I, I think some of these are themystery of it are the problem.
And so it's a little hard to rank because we don't really
know, especially because he's cut the inspector generals.

(39:00):
We don't really know what the terrible effects of that have
been so far, So. So this is the one.
About Eric. This is the one about Eric
Adams. Good little Eric.
For. Those of you who don't have the
pleasure of knowing this man, this is the the corrupt piece of
shit which we currently call themayor of New York City for now.
And, and for some reason, for some reason, woke liberal Eric
Adams, you know, the face of Democratic corruption is now a

(39:23):
MAGA based populist nationalist fighting against the deep state,
according to the Trump fans thatlike, it's, it's fucking crazy
to me because Biden tried to prosecute this guy for taking
bribes from, I don't know, Turkey or some other shithole
like this. This guy was taking bribes,
right? He was literally like, like
everything's recorded. And Trump was like, you know

(39:45):
what, we're going to drop all the charges on this guy if he
does our immigration plan, but we're going to have the threat
of reviving the charges if he doesn't do our immigration plan.
And it's just like, bro, I thought y'all hated Democrats.
Like I thought the one thing that I could agree with y'all is
like, whenever I hate a Democrat, you hate a Democrat.
We can come together, we can like come around, we can BBQ

(40:06):
together. We can be like, fuck Eric Adams.
And now we can't even do that. The one, the one thing that was
holding our, you know, my familytogether now Eric Adams is
based, I'm told. And.
I assumed when I had heard the story that the, as I have with
many of these things, that the Trump administration had come up
with some fake justification for, like the charges were fake
or overblown or something. But they're explicit, like order

(40:29):
to drop the charges. Their rationale explicitly was
that Eric Adams was being restricted by these charges,
that he needed freedom to devotefull attention to assisting
Trump's agenda on illegal immigration and crime.
Like, that was the explicit, like, justification that was
their legal backing for this insane quid pro quo.

(40:50):
And yeah, I guess the common theme here is I'm almost more
annoyed when they don't try to, like, trick us and they just
start bleeding about what they're doing.
It's almost more depressing. It's like I.
Think that of the stage of the CI feel like 3 stages of the C
at least 4 threats of fools of law, right?
Just the fact of like, Oh, no, no, like we're not even trying
to hide it. Like just this is a quick, you
know, I do this for you, but if you fuck me over, like I'm.

(41:13):
So in that case, what about the judge, the judge in Wisconsin
that they arrested in Kash Pattel or scary body?
That's that's like S, that's either a or S like the fact that
like not even, not even Orban, OK, the guy, the, the dictator
of Hungary or president or whatever the fuck you want to
call him. He, he doesn't do this shit.
Like he, the Hungarians are looking at us and they're like,

(41:34):
man, we thought we had our shit bad.
We've had this guy for like 10 fucking years and he's just out
here arresting random elected officials.
This is not like the third guy person he's arresting.
Like, that's crazy. It's also, as I'm told, based.
Now I have a question for the NRA folks.
You know, I was told my entire life because my grandfather's an

(41:55):
NRA member, that the whole pointof your God damn bullshit
organization, OK? The whole point of us buying all
these guns. We we could shoot down tanks, we
could shoot down ballistic miss dolls with the fucking guns you
guys got have is that whenever we have a tyrannical government,
you're going to rise up. Now's your fucking time, boys.
Now's your fucking time. But I don't see you rocking
around with your AR fifteens in the street right now, OK?

(42:18):
Like, I don't see, I don't see none of that energy that I was
promised y'all were going to give when this moment struck.
And it's here right now. So I'm going to need y'all to
rise up. Finally realize that one side
has nukes and that was never that was always a stupid
justification. It's too based because he's
Trump is a big, he's based. He's like tried something like

(42:41):
that. He's going to restore like the,
I don't know, the white cultures, I don't know, whatever
the yadda yadda, you schlop of he's arresting the rogue judges.
I don't fucking know. I don't even want to deal with
the rationale. Well, and I think the details of
this, like all, all she did was tell him to go through a door.
Like it wasn't like she was like, here's how I can get away.

(43:01):
But like she said, go through that door.
And I guess that was not the door they wanted him to go
through. Like that's, that doesn't seem
like a legal justification, especially like I'm pretty sure
this is the first sitting judge like in modern history to be
arrested by federal authorities for how she handled an actual
case, like a substance of a case, not some separate crime.
Like that is very scary. Then a mayor, then a

(43:23):
congresswoman. He's gonna use any fucking
bullshit excuse. He can't arrest every single
person. And all these lap dogs, free
thinkers are gonna eat that shitup, right?
He tells them anything. He just spoons, feeds that shit
to these people and they eat it up.
It's just, it's crazy. I mean, he, he could like he

(43:43):
could, he could arrest somebody for sneezing in the wrong
direction and 90% of his base would be for 100%.
It's crazy watching the whiplashtoo, because like, it'll happen
and the people will like say something right, Then he'll do
something that's antithetical towhat they said like a day or two
prior. And then you have to like watch
them do like the mental gymnastics to be like.
The tariffs were the ultimate example of that, where it was
like, oh, these are just a negotiating tactic.

(44:04):
And then it was, well, actually,no, here's why.
This is like a great policy. It's not a negotiation tactic.
This is our actual policy movingforward.
And then when he reached a deal with someone, they were like,
see, he knew all along it was a negotiation tactic.
I was like, well, you didn't, though, because you were
justifying it as if it wasn't. But of course, there's never any
reflection. Well, clearly, Ben, you didn't.
You didn't buy the tariff dip. So you know what?

(44:25):
Clearly you don't get it. You know, I did mess out there.
JT bought, taught you to. He told you to buy.
You know, he, he was very directwith his message, I suppose.
It's funny with TikTok, I mean, I'm pretty sure you just broke
the law because the only way that you were able to extend the
TikTok ban was if there was likean actual plan of purchase and

(44:46):
it was just no plan. I don't, I still don't think
there's a plan. And I don't know how many days
are left. Maybe it's already passed.
But I'm pretty sure you're just failing to enforce the law here.
And it's like, oh shit. Well, it's kind of crazy how
easy it is to for presidents to do this.
Like is have you all thought about that?
It's like, OK, wait, so one day the president can just be like,
fuck the law, I'm lawless up in this bit.

(45:06):
We're not going to do that shit.And the courts are just like,
no, he's like, what about it? What you going to do about it?
Like JD Vance said, Oh, I'll askthem to send send the army after
me, right? I'll wait until they do that
right, because there's no enforcement mechanism.
The only enforcement mechanism that maybe our founders thought
of is like the people wouldn't be fucking like brainless.
They wouldn't be idiots, right? But it turns out actually

(45:28):
everybody that that likes this guy just completely rot.
There's nothing in there. I mean, the obvious annoying
answer is I think what you could, to put it another way
that represents the exact same message is they didn't
anticipate the Internet. Because I think that's really
what this all comes down to. That's why everyone's Dumber
now. That's why they can justify
anything because there's no, there's no monoculture Cronkite

(45:51):
to give them some facts like it really.
Like, I think the stupidity of the American voter base is
entirely like, related to the Internet.
Check check me if you're having fathers.
You forgot about fucking TikTok.You brought your brains swipe.
Truly did they They failed to consider the brain rot.
You see versus TikTok, democracyloses.
I mean, I think that's like AC tier.

(46:12):
It's really sad how like, I mean, at this point I just don't
care about China as much as I used to.
I mean, I was like, dude, I'm soanti China because I hate
dictators. But like, you know, we see, we
see China, they talk, they talk about invading Taiwan, right?
That's one country. How many countries have we
talked about invading in like the past 100 days?
We got Greenland, we got Panama.Like we're investing like we're,

(46:33):
we're going to invade like all of Europe soon.
Like, I don't even know how we could be so pressed about what
they're doing. Like do am I more scared about
Cash Patel's FBI monitoring my house and listening to what I
say or the freaking Chinese? What the Frick are the Chinese
going to do to me? I know, I know what Cash Patel
wants to do does. Xi Jinping want to like flood my

(46:54):
pool or whatever the Maya Rudolph clip is.
Basically you say we have we have 3 more left.
I feel like we're. Three more we got him attacking
Big Law. It's hard on the Trump scale
because I think it's pretty easyto be like, well, I mean,
compared to everything he's done, it might be DT.
Attacking big laws like that's aA for me because this is just
like this. If, if he keeps doing stuff,

(47:15):
stuff like this, this is just straight up dictator shit.
Like that's because you can rename shit all that you want
like you can, you can fuck with John Bolton or whatever.
You can be corrupt. That doesn't actually give us a
dictatorship. This intimidation stuff.
This will give us a dictatorshiplike that.
If nobody can sue this guy, the only thing that's holding this

(47:35):
guy back just as much as the courts, yeah.
Interesting. I think we should give the
listeners little context on thispoint, in case they're familiar.
So Trump did a series of executive orders targeting major
law firms that he deemed politically unfriendly.
And so one of the law firms, which I guess like a prestigious
international firm, he cancelledall their federal contracts and

(47:56):
suspended security clearance forhis lawyers.
And then the the order accused the guy of undermining the US
judicial system, which I guess, like, had to do with working on
causes Trump didn't like. But a week later he rescinded
the order after the chairman of that law firm promised to drop
all the DEI programs and provide40 million in free legal

(48:17):
services to support Trump's initiatives.
So like it, it couldn't be a more explicit quid pro quo using
government resources and contracts to exert like
political and viewpoint based concessions.
So I, I, I, what I don't understand is like, I know a lot
of this stuff is getting blockedin the court.
Seems like every single thing we've talked about has clearly

(48:38):
of incredibly flimsy legal basis.
Like I, I, I need like a trackeron all these and the court case
is related. Like how has this not been shut
down yet? No.
So this actually has been shut down because the law firms that
went against him on this all were successful on this far.
And of course they're getting a PLPLPL and they're going to be

(48:58):
successful because this is just that's crazy like like his
executive orders basically like you are going to die.
I'm going to just for your firm,It's over, right?
Like that's just a crazy order to have, right.
You represented one client I didn't like one time or you did
DEI done no more law for you. And the courts are like, yeah, I
just, that doesn't really seem like a very strong case.

(49:21):
What DEI is a national security concern, of course, as is, as is
the movie industry leaving the US according to his tariff.
Policy, but. And maybe I'd agree with that
one, you know, But movie? Now, funny with it, the lawyer,
I think big law and the university stuff should go in
the same bucket simply because Iwas going.
To say it's pretty much the exact same sub pro quo and and
the ones who are brave enough tostand up are the ones that

(49:42):
probably are winning court cases.
Act Blue, Act Blue is S tier though, because like, listen,
you can attack institutions, butwhen you attack literally just
straight up your opposition. For those who don't know, act
Blue is how the good guys raise money.
By the good guys, I mean the Democrats.
I know you already knew that, but I'm saying it for those of
you who don't register the connection, that is their
fundraising platform. He's trying to shut down the

(50:05):
Democratic fundraising platform.So OK, Oh, I'm not shutting down
the Democratic Party. I'm just arresting half their
candidates. But I'm not, I'm not shutting
them down, but I am shutting down the their way to raise
money. Oh, OK, that's much better.
It's the same shit. Yeah.
Well, and I think some other important context is that.
So Act Blue, when it was established, I believe it was
like sort of around the period where Citizens United happened

(50:28):
and Republicans had a big financial like advantage
compared to Democratic candidates in general from a lot
of big money donors. And Act Blue, which is mostly
small dollar donations to Democratic candidates like
provide a kind of even the playing field and Democrats
started actually kind of outperform in fundraising a lot
of Republican candidates. And so the Republicans set up

(50:49):
their own site called Win Red, which is like an exact clone of
Act Blue, but obviously Win Red,it's for the Republicans.
And of course, even though it's the exact same site with the
exact same mechanics and in theory I believe like the same
security flaws, that website wasnot investigated by this order
and has not been mentioned once by Trump in relation to any of
this. So very, very obviously

(51:13):
politically motivated and scary.But yeah.
Do you guys know what's happenedwith this?
Like has Act Blue at all been like hurt by this that they
like? I imagine some sort of court
said, hey, no for now, but we'regoing to look into that more and
then we're going to tell you no later.
The thing is, you know, if, if people like Trump just the worst

(51:35):
pieces of shit ever stay around who who appoints the justices,
right? Are the Republican senators
going to hold up these fucking flimsy guys?
No, Trump's going to say, hey, Iwant like Ronald McDonald, like
Trump fan 6969 from 4 Chan, the guy who's like like slaughtered
3 people like on January 6th, right.

(51:56):
I want that guy to be a new justice.
And you know what all the Republicans will say?
Well, the moderate ones will be like, well, I was initially
concerned, but we had a very good conversation and I will be
supporting him. So it's the same shit they do
with RFK. You know, like I'm a doctor and
whatever, I forget which one of these pieces of shit.
He's a doctor. He's like, well, I'm a doctor.

(52:17):
You know, I'm kind of a moderatecandidate.
And you know, I talked to him about vaccines and despite the
fact that he was selling shirts which says, you know, don't take
the vaccine or whatever, he assured me that he's actually
only anti bad vaccines. So I support him 100%.
And now he's now RFK is there and the same senator is like, I
can't believe that he actually has the views that he's

(52:39):
advertised his entire life. Burst of blood vessel.
I'm just not ready for this shit.
It's a person to person wakes upand discovers the sky is still
blue. Is is shocked.
Can't believe it but. Before we wrap I I kind of want
to do a little little bonus gamewith this that I'm curious.
So this ranking is really like our opinion of which one's the

(53:01):
worst, right? But I'm curious of everything
that we've ranked everything on this list, what was the what is
most likely to have the biggest political impact?
What is most likely to like be the most unpopular and the most
winning issue for Democrats in the opposition?
Like which one is because I meanwe didn't include the tariffs I
guess that seems to seems to be.With the American people, since

(53:23):
no one's paying attention to only the economic stuff.
So the doge stuff matters a little bit.
Because the people that got fired are pissed.
That's it. Because nobody cares about
democracy in this country. Democrats, we thought, we've
thought since since January 6th that nobody would vote to like
in democracy. And we'd be like, Oh my God,
he's authoritarian. And people would be like, and
then they're just like, oh, whatthe fuck is authoritarian?

(53:44):
They're like, what the fuck is democracy?
Oh, what's judges? We have those.
Oh shit, what? Like they don't care about none
of that matters at all. This is the only thing that
matters is the economy. It's kind of a distinction
between like, I think it was Matt Iglesias was saying this or
something that the democracy stuff and some of this

(54:04):
corruption stuff, it's a great base issue.
It's great to generate donationsand volunteers and stuff, but
the the normie voters you actually need to win the
elections. That's where we need the
economic issues to to actually run on.
But yeah, it is pretty depressing to go through all of
this and then try to look through picking out which one's
going to actually hurt him politically.
And it's way harder than I wouldlike it to be.

(54:26):
Like sometimes the corruption, if it's super obvious, like some
people care, but it's all a media thing too because half
these people are listening to these right wing Shell
influencers who are just like 24/7, like oh, $700 million
Qatar jet. Like Trump is so smart.
He's so smart. And on that point, I think
that's why the tariffs were thateffective in actually hurting
him, because it wasn't somethingthose people could ignore.

(54:47):
Like they couldn't pretend it wasn't happening because it was
so obviously in the news that they had to like, at least
pretend to make some justification for it or defend
it. They couldn't just like talk
about trans kids in school beingfurries or something.
Well, yeah, Thanks so much, Michael.
I I think that we came to the conclusion that Trump's bad.
I'm starting. To do the Trump man, do be, in

(55:07):
fact. Bad that's I'm really glad I
didn't vote for him. You know, I was on the edge.
I was like shit, you know, don'twant to vote for like the worst
thing ever, like like diarrhea or like Kamala diarrhea, Kamala.
And I was like, fuck. I mean did.
You consider that she laughed kind of weird a couple times.
I don't. Know she laughed kind of weird.
She she seems kind of scripted. She does this weird, you know,

(55:28):
like scrunchy thing and that wasalmost too much for me.
But I hung my nose and I was like, you know what?
I don't think fascism is worth it and I'm I'm feeling better
around my decision every single day.
Incredible foresights. It was just impossible to
predict any of this. So basically an Oracle.
Who could have seen this happening?
You know, it's like it's a you must be well, must be a

(55:51):
visionary, right? Give me give me the lottery
numbers for tomorrow before you go.
But you know, we'll see. Well, Michael, thanks so much.
Yeah. Thank you for joining us.
I look forward to being arrestedfor making this.
See y'all in El Salvador.