Trump & Hegseth’s Venezuela Flex Could Ignite Regional War 10/23/25

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I am here for you. Thank you for that spattering
of applause. It means so very much to me. Guess
who's here today. Albert is here, Albert, thank you. And
Kim is here. Kim, how are you? And I am here?
Nothing really Well, that's a kind of morning I'm having
to everyone.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
I know.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
It's I spent my morning, as many of you know,
nursing my eighteen year old Kat who is very ill.
He has manifestation. I thought, honestly that he was passing
away like six years ago, and I'm so delighted that

(00:41):
he's still around. But man, he is really sick and
it's all this intestinal stuff. So the place looks like
a crime scene every morning. And anyway, so for those
of you who have spent the morning as have I
cleaning up a cat pee and poop especially, will shout
out to you. Yeah, I'm not above it is what

(01:03):
I'm saying. I'm not a beach. Shout out all right now,
what a show you have happened upon today. Nathan Taylor
from the Election The Truth Alliance will join us this hour.
As a matter of fact. Yeah, and Donald Trump has
found new ways as President of the United States to

(01:24):
enrich himself, and it's a site to behold.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
We'll talk to me that way.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
It's the kind of thing that you would think might
run a foul of the law. So we have a lawyer,
former federal prosecutor and distinguished defense attorney now David Katz
joins us an hour two to help us speak about
everything from the plan to sue the government that he

(01:54):
is in charge of for two hundred and thirty million
dollars for the pay and suffering that he went through
as a result of investigations and indictments associated with Donald
Trump's Russia investigation, the collusion with Russia. Also the document

(02:17):
case in Florida, the retention of top secret documents which
show it was inappropriate, was the kind of thing that
seemed to be an open and shut case, but of
course it ended up with the concierge judge down there
in Florida, who was able to scuttle the case for
Donald Trump. So the one thing I'll say isn't a

(02:39):
side and then we will get into that an hour
or two. Just on that point about the president somehow
suing for the pain and suffering associated with this. It's
not as though he was acquitted of this I mean,
it's not as though this is even a righteous battle.

(02:59):
In other words, I don't understand. The facts really aren't
on his side. He got a break because, as I say,
a judge scuttled the case, really just put it kind
of back burnered it, knowing that that would kill the clock.
And then ultimately the charges were dropped because, as I
told you yesterday and as we told you at the time,
Jack Smith, who was prosecuting the case, realized that adherence

(03:25):
to the law dictates you have to drop the case
because you can't bring the case against a sitting president.
That's the only reason the case has went away. So
the idea somehow that you're going to sue over the
fact that these cases were brought, that implies in some
way that you were found innocent of a crime or
not guilty, or some sort of adjudication ended up with

(03:48):
you being again found to be an aggrieved party. This
is not the case here.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
They were weaponizing the Justice Department, Mark. I mean, it's
never been done before.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
That's true, that is the I mean, that's what he's saying.
I've never seen it. And so you end up with
this case in which Donald Trump will likely give himself
two hundred and thirty million dollars, and when asked what

(04:20):
he thought about it, the majority leader in the House
of Representatives, Maga Mike Johnson, said, what it's the thing
they all say, you know, they say, I'm just hearing
about it. I haven't really I don't know the facts
of this case, but gosh, I've just read a little

(04:40):
bit about it. Then he went on a He segued
immediately to the fact that Donald Trump is constantly hassled.
They're after him all the time, and you know, so
I can understand why he'd feel like he's the aggrieved
party here.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
Since he always answers the questions that way. Doesn't it
seem like he doesn't know much. I mean, you know,
you must be really woefully uninformed if every time someone
asks you a question your first answer is, oh, you know,
gosh about that about it?

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's kind of their go to response. I,
with my credibility glasses firmly in place, Albert, I wonder
if you can uncork for me. We have a lot
in the show today. As I mentioned, I want to
talk about the elections. We'll talk about that both with
Nathan Taylor, from the Election Truth Alliance, and also prior
I'd like to talk about how the new administration, I

(05:42):
still call them new administration. One of the eight months
in they have populated the administration with those who are
in key positions of election integrity. You know. The federal government,
of course, has instruments such that the elections can be
monitored and observed by the FEDS to make sure that

(06:04):
everything is kosher, you know, and they have now populated
those positions with people who are all election deniers from
twenty twenty. And the idea is that you essentially have
set up, in all these different ways, an election that

(06:26):
is likely to not reflect the kind of integrity that
you want when it's really the only chance for the
people to express their voice at the ballot box. We'll
talk more about that. I also something from Barack Obama
will do it a little bit later this half hour,
but first some big news to share out of the
world of arrests and the law. We'll talk about it

(06:52):
in a segment we call law and Disorder in the
criminal justice system.

Speaker 4 (06:57):
The people helps addicts, thieves, bombs lane, girls who can't
keep on address, and men who don't care are represented
by two separate and equally important groups.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Copp a flat foot, a bull of Dick john Law.

Speaker 4 (07:08):
You're the fuzz, the heat, You're poison, your trouble, your
bad news.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
These are their stories. Let's start with the crypto pardon.
That's right, President Trump pardoning Shangpeng Zao, the billionaire founder
of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Binance this massive cryptocurrency exchange

(07:36):
run by Chanpeng Zhao, who admitted in twenty twenty three
to money laundering violations. And again Binance so massive that
the money laundering violations and this is admitted in his

(07:57):
plea allowed terror urists, drug traffickers, and other criminals to
move money on the Binance platform. Jhao is the majority
owner of Binance. It has a deal? Does Binance with
the Trump families? Cryptos startup fun?

Speaker 3 (08:18):
Are you saying that crypto and binance is the way
that criminals move their money.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
Around without question? It gives the way that you can
pay someone off or some entity off, and there's very
little way even though it's on the block. It just
and it suggested that the Trump family has very much
benefited from that so far. Talk to David K. Johnson.
Talk to David K. Johnson. You can talk to you well,

(08:43):
Sir Kenzurr about this, talk to pretty much anybody. It's
right out there. So anyway, this Binance connection to the
Trump family, its suggested, has led to the partning of
this guy who's the majority holder of Binance. President Trump

(09:05):
exercised his constitutional authority by issuing a pardon for mister Jao,
who was prosecuted by the Biden administration in their war
on crypto currency, said Caroline Lovitt. The pardon was, of course,
the latest example of how high profile business partners of
mister Trump and his family have benefited from his rollback
of the wide ranging crypto crackdown that was orchestrated by

(09:28):
Joe Biden. To seek the pardon, mister Jao hired lawyers
and lobbyists who had ties to the Trump administration. Meanwhile,
Binance struck a business deal with World Liberty Financial. Does
everybody know what World Liberty Financial is? You'll recall that
we've talked about it at length. It is the Trump

(09:49):
families crypto startup. It's kind of like the eBay of
crypto or a better It's like the e Raid of crypto, right,
It's like a Charles Schwab. You can buy and sell
crypto on the Trump family platform. So there is Zoo

(10:12):
and Zhoo's business. Binance struck this deal with World Liberty Financial.
That deal alone is poised to generate tens of millions
of dollars a year for the Trumps and for the
family of Steve Whitcoff. Because Whitcoff, who's the Middle East
Advisory's also doing the Ukraine deal. He was Trump's golfing buddy.

(10:36):
He's also a real estate billionaire. His son is in
business with the Trump sons on this platform, the crypto platform.
So again, this deal alone generates tens of millions of dollars.
And that's from just the Binance buy in Okay, not

(11:01):
to mention all the millions of dollars and tens of
millions of dollars you get with all these various trades
in the collective. But the crypto industry's richest Man Xiao,
a Chinese born executive who now lives in the United
Arab Emirates, admitted that he had violated the law by
failing to install rigorous compliance systems at Binance that allowed

(11:23):
people in countries under sanctions and terrorist groups like Hamas
al Qaeda and the Islamic State to move money on
his Binance platform. When he pleaded guilty, Jao, who goes
by cz, stepped down as chief executive of Binance, though
he remained its majority owner held on to virtually all

(11:44):
of his wealth. Now he could have an opportunity to
retake direct control of the exchange. The pardon could make
it easier for Binance to establish a presence in the
US market and then challenge domestic exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken.
You see how this stuff matters in the overall business environment.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
Does it say how much he paid for the pardon.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Well, we know he bought into the world liberty financial
I mean they think that's pretty much all you had
to do. And then as noted, he employed lawyers and
lobbyists to get this done. But this is by far
the biggest crypto exchange in the world and at times
they note here it has processed as much as two

(12:30):
thirds of all digital currency transactions. Two thirds of all
crypto is traded on Binance. To have them back in
the game is huge. So and you know FTX was
that other major exchange. It went down because of the
arrest of their CEO, and with them out of the game,

(12:52):
Binance may be the big player in crypto. So he
gets his pardon and the Trump family gets to rejoin
them and Binance with World Liberty. Financial meantime, the Trump
administration planning to demolish the White House's entire East Wing.

(13:15):
At the same time, the cost of the ballroom now
instead of the two hundred million, is being revised, and
like many contractors revise, they tend not to revise down.
The new cost will be three hundred million.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
Yeah, so we went from the east wing won't be touched.
The ballroom will be just adjacent to We're just knocking
down the facade to make an entryway from one building
to the other. To Now, the entire East wing is
a goner.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
That's right, You've got it, Kim. It's a ninety thousand
square foot ballroom project that was, as Kim suggests, as
to exist independent of the White House. It won't interfere
with the current building. Those were the words of Donald Trump,
the president. But now it turns out they'll need to

(14:13):
get rid of the East Wing and the cost of
the entire thing is going to be now up to
three hundred million. Now No one has asked this question
that I've seen, But can I just ask it? How
the hell are you spending three hundred million dollars to
build this ballroom? I just don't what are you building
it out of bricks of cocaine? I don't understand why

(14:36):
it's so expensive to do that math it's more than
two thousand dollars a square foot. I don't understand how
you spend that kind of money. But I do understand
the promise that's been made that there'll be no taxpayer
money dedicated to this build that's going.

Speaker 3 (14:59):
To be done, except the two hundred and thirty million
that you know he's going to give to charity. Suddenly,
the charity might.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
Be the ballroom. I promise you that two hundred and
thirty million dollars that Trump will get, because he's the
one who has to approve it, it'll go right into
his pocket. It ain't going into the ballroom. The ballroom
is going to be paid for by palanteer, by meta,
by Google. It's already, it's already happened. We've already we
detailed on this show twenty five million here, ten million there.

(15:28):
So the idea somehow that this is going to be
handled by private money. That's not supposed to happen either.
Do you understand the way in which there is a
quid pro quo associated with private money going in? So
I don't care that it was it's being I'm glad
it's not being done by tax with tax pry money,
although I don't necessarily even believe that that's true. But

(15:51):
the idea at least as articulated that it's going to
be sponsored, if you will, by I don't know, crypto
dot com whatever, what Binance finance. It'll be the Binance
Theinance Ballroom or the World Liberty Financial Ballroom whatever. That's
not the way it's supposed to be. This is this
is an outrage. It's a perversion of the symbolism associated

(16:15):
with the White House, which is the people's house, and
also the actual practical restrictions on buying influence. I mean,
you essentially are this is a white House that's wildly
open for influence peddling, as we know. But everything is
being done in this course loathsome way. And so the

(16:39):
latest is East Wing gone three hundred instead of two hundred,
and that's the latest on that.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
Meantime, if you could ask mister Predicto, if the price
of this ballroom will balloon up to five hundred million.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
Oh, I'll just ask mister Predicto. Will the price of
the ballroom exceed the express three hundred million? Will it
go beyond three hundred million? I ask you, mister Verdicto.
Everything points to know. So he, mister Predicto, thinks that
it will stay at three hundred million. Uh Cata producer
Drovin Watt. So yeah, it's a bargain at three hundred million.

(17:18):
And there was major, major news this morning out of
the FBI, and it dealt with some very high profile people.
The head coach of the Portland Trailblazers is among those

(17:39):
charges in an illegal poker operation tied to the mafia. Meanwhile,
Miami heat guard Terry Rosier or is it is how
he says his name, Albert, you're the commission.

Speaker 5 (17:52):
Yeah, that's correct. He has before you get into it,
he had ties even last season to an investigation that
the NBA made on Terry Rozier did their own investigation
and actually found stuff.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
I see. Yeah, illegal gambling is what I think that
case is about. So, but this is a pretty serious stuff.
The poker games apparently included basketball players lending credibility to
their authenticity the authenticity of the games, and then the

(18:25):
games were allegedly rigged in favor of those running the games.
They use technologies like rigged shuffling machines and X ray technologies.
You could read cards facing down on the table. I
don't even know you could do this stuff. And I
played a lot of poker, and I played in some
games with some of these guys, but not in these
games that they're talking about. I mean, these are obviously

(18:47):
games where there's I think some sick amount of money,
you know, being shoved around the table. You know, athlete
type salaries you need to play these games.

Speaker 5 (18:58):
But yeah, there's ties to the mafia here, and everyone
who was a part of these poker games were in
on it except for the people they invited. So they
used the high profile nature of these former athletes to
get these people. Oh, you could go play poker with
Chauncey Billups, but except the mafia and Chauncey Billups were
all in on it, and we're basically stealing from all

(19:20):
these people.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yeah, you have a little bit of the announcement this morning.
They had they made a major announcement with the Cash
Battel I think was there wearing his FBI jacket. And
I mean this is huge because it does, as Albert
has just noted, and Albert is we call him the
commission because he is our Commissioner of Sports, it does

(19:41):
involve the coosen nostra. I mean it involves the mob.
Go ahead, Albert. Here's a little bit of the announcement.
You can see those on Washington YouTube. You can see
that's Cash Hotel in his blue FBI jacket, alongside those
who are involved with the legal proceedings and charges that
will be brought against.

Speaker 4 (20:00):
Now, I would like to turn to the other case,
United States versus Ilo, the Rigged Poker game case. Beginning
as early as twenty nineteen, the defendants in this case
orchestrated a scheme to use wireless cheating technology to run
rigged poker games across the United States, including in the Hamptons,

(20:25):
Las Vegas, Miami, and Manhattan. The scheme targeted victims known
as quote fish, who were often loard to participate in
these rigged games by the chance to play alongside former
professional athletes who were known as quote face cards. The

(20:47):
so called face cards included the defendant Chauncey Billips, who
at the time of the scheme was a former NBA
player and is currently the head coach of the Portland Trailblazers,
and also Damon Jones, a former NBA player and coach.
What the victims the fish didn't know is that everybody

(21:10):
else at the poker game, from the dealer to the players,
including the face cards, were in on the scam. Once
the game was underway, the defendants fleeced the victims out
of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per game.
The defendants used a variety of very sophisticated cheating technologies,

(21:33):
some of which were provided by other defendants in exchange
for a share of the profits from the scheme. For example,
they used off the shelf shuffling machines that had been
secretly altered in order to read the cards in the deck,
predict which player at the table had the best poker hand,

(21:54):
and relay that information to an off site operator.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
The off site operator.

Speaker 4 (22:03):
Sent the information via cell phone back to a co
conspirator at the table, and that person at the table
was known as the quarterback. The quarterback then signaled secretly
the information he had received from others to others at
the table, and together they used that information in order

(22:25):
to win their games and to cheat the victims.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
I guess there was millions of dollars involved, you know.
I mean, I mean, which wild idea. I mean, it's
a really complicated system that you know, they with X
rays and then there's a there's a confederate who can
see it, and then radio's back or whatever it may be.
But I mean, when you're dealing with millions of dollars,
I guess it's worth having that kind of complexity laid

(22:50):
over it. It's pretty amazing that there's so many participants.
And it's always interesting to me when people are and
these NBA players are all very well compensated, right, I
mean they're they're gazillionaires, and yet they're involved in some
kind of illegal poker thing like they have to. I mean,
how much could you be Let's assume they can make
a couple extra million a year doing this just seems

(23:11):
like it seems like a grift you don't need, you know.

Speaker 3 (23:15):
So they find they find a weakness and they exploit
it and they say, okay, you do this for us,
or we do this to you and the you know,
it's the it's the mob way, right, So maybe even
if they didn't want to do it or didn't need
the money, they are pushed into it.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Because it's a fair point that with the mob involved,
you never know exactly you know, who's leaning on who
how long until Trump pardons them all? Thank you, Wendy.
That's exactly. I mean, it's so uh, it's so true.
There seems to be you know, if you're a celebrity
and you have any connection to Trump and you say
something nice, you will get your pardon. But it's uh,
it's extraordinary gambling debt to the mob. It is true. Also,

(23:52):
the last thing I would say to you, a commissioner,
maybe you can maybe say a thing or two about this,
But the NBA first professional sport to embrace gambling on
the sport. That is to say, you know, there's always
been this kind of radioactivity about gambling and mentioning gambling
around sports, but the NBA went with it. They said, hey,
it's okay, you can you can bet on this sport.

Speaker 5 (24:14):
Yeah, they were the first ones in a couple I
remember Atlanta and a couple other locations where live betting
is allowed. They actually were allowed that to happen in Arenas,
and it started with the NBA and then it branched out.
You see it all over like ESPN News now might
as well just be a gambling web like a service
like I used to watch that a lot as a
kid growing up. Now it's just lines twenty four to

(24:35):
seven and betting, but it starts with that. And there's
the Damon they mentioned of other players, Damon Jones and
Terry Rozier. They're also part of a separate investigation where
they're actually influencing the games, So we'll see what happens
with them on top of this whole mafia stuff as well.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yeah, by the way, you mentioned Arenas. Gill Arenas is
mentioned in all of this. Isn't he Albred? He's an
NBA player, right, I believe he's mentioned in some of
this as well.

Speaker 5 (25:02):
I mean he's he was the guy who brought a
gun into the locker room and had that whole controversy.
I think there's a great thing on Netflix about him too,
but a lot of controversy around. I'm sure there's a
lot more people and a lot more names that will
be coming up.

Speaker 1 (25:14):
He's the only one I actually have played poker with.
But it was a very small game. It was like,
you know, you're buy in for a few maybe maybe
one thousand dollars, you know, but it was a few hundred.

Speaker 5 (25:24):
He knows he's a crazy guy, and he's a fun guy,
and he just leans into it. So I'm not I'm
sure he'll just like laugh this off and just kind
of move on.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
We're huge, Bush were the fish. I was the by
the way, I am the fish for you know, I
believe I'm so bad at poker that even if you
told me, hey, don't worry, the game's all fixed, I
know somehow I'm going to end up losing still, even
though the whole don't worry, we're only going after it now.
Somehow I know I'm going to end up losing. Here. That,

(25:51):
my friends, is Law and Disorder.

Speaker 6 (25:54):
Tune in again next time for more Law and Disorder.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
I'm a Mark Thompson show. All right, let's roll, Hey,
we can't flop?

Speaker 1 (26:08):
Yeah, Mark the Fish Thompson was my the name I
went by.

Speaker 5 (26:13):
He went you went by Joe Fish Fish.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
Oh my gosh, I don't know where my Joe Fish is.
Where is it?

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Hey?

Speaker 5 (26:22):
When that comes to you after the segment, because we
could have definitely used that during the Joe Fish sal
the shoemaker, Joe Box, and little Anthony.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
That's it, right, those are the guys we needed.

Speaker 5 (26:32):
Joe Phillips name sounds right along with all of them.
Not a nickname, but very cool.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
Too, too good. I'll bet they are already looking for
those pardons. How long before the Trump marquee name is
displayed in neon lights over the White House when he
renames it the Trump white House by executive order, says
Louis for the five dollars, super chat, thank you. Look,
I'll just say this quickly about the construction at the

(27:02):
White House not approved. There is history at the White House.
It wasn't designed to be the nicest residence in Washington,
the grandest residence in Washington. It was to actually have
a sort of muted quality given the fact that it

(27:23):
is the people's house. So the palatial aspects of the
build out and the golden crusted oval and everything he's
done within the White House isn't consistent with the general
ethos the philosophy behind this place that is supposed to
be the people's House. Now that said, there have been

(27:43):
modifications for the White House through the years, but the
teardown of the East Wing without any kind of approval
from any of those people associated with sort of maintaining
the historical apparatus, that is, deciding what's appropriate what's not.
Don't touch this doorway, don't touch this window, et cetera.

(28:06):
That's all been populated by people who are again are
loyalist to Donald Trump, so he gets the green light
wherever he goes. So when you say, doesn't somebody have
to approve this, Yeah, but the somebody is, you know, again,
a toty of the Trump people. So I don't think
any from what we've seen in all the reporting any

(28:26):
kind of formal approval was sought. But even had they
sought formal approval, as I say, it just would have come.
It should be called the Epstein East Way. Thank you,
Uncle Scrooge. Very funny. Jim Slayton says Trump's most honest

(28:47):
post yet the AI video of him crapping on US citizens. Yeah,
that was a while. I just couldn't imagine what he
was thinking. Thanks Jim for that super chat. Lucy McAllister,
you are so generous and supportive of this show it's
why you are my favorite mccallison. How are you? Oh,
I'm sorry, is there another mccaue?

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (29:07):
Oh, Kim is also a McAllister, Lucy, you are I mean,
I don't want to say. Look, it's not it's not.
It's not a competition. Okay, So when I say you're
my favorite company, it's not a competition. But I will
say if it were a competition, you would win. That
is my point, Lucy McAllister, my favorite McAllister. Thank you

(29:31):
for a twenty dollars supersticker really means a lot and
we really appreciate all the support. If he donates it
to the White House rebuilding, Beth Farmer says, of the
two hundred and thirty million for him being wrongly put
through so much, We pay for the dance hall and
he gets a fat tax break. Yeah, that's right. I

(29:52):
mean that's another point when you say I'll put it
maybe to the ballroom. First of all, he's not going
to going to go right into his pockets. This is
all ridiculous. He's gonna it's a grift. He's taking two
hundred This is a remarkable grift that you could sue
your own government and you approve a two hundred and
thirty million dollars payout for a legal case that you

(30:14):
were not acquitted of. You were not acquitted of the
charges involving these various things to which he's referred the
document's case, the Russian thing. There is no acquittal anyway.
The idea somehow that you could then donate that and
deduct it. Yeah, that's so consistent. Thank you, Beth Farmer.

(30:35):
That's brilliant. I think that's exactly what we're talking about.
The Presidential Bunker is supposedly under the east wing. Yeah,
that's right, it was originally. I believe there is an
operations center under the east wing. I'm sure some allowance
has been made for that to be relocated, or perhaps

(30:56):
it's still there. The East wing is generally the first, ladies,
it's the least if you want to feel better about
this at all, it's the least historic of the blueprint
associated with the White House, the least all right, I
got to move along. I've got to Nathan waiting. But

(31:17):
thank you, guys, and we're still reading and digesting all
of your thoughts, super chat superstickers to thank you guys
have been super generous and I appreciate it, Mark Thompson Show.
One thing that's happening within the Trump administration that I'll
just make a note of is that Donald Trump is
elevating a lot of twenty twenty election deniers to positions

(31:41):
that are associated with the federal government monitoring elections. So
it's a kind of a setup for elections to be
manipulated or at least handled in such a way so
as to favor the GOP and Trump related causes. More
on that as we can tell you. But one of
the breakthrough pieces of research statistically is being done by

(32:07):
the Election Truth Alliance and the guy who's been on
the show a few times. I think, with legitimate revelations,
stuff that should at least give you cause for pause,
so you can reject this, you can circumspectlly look at
this and decide for yourself. But I love the way
he in this dispassionate way. You know, he's just a

(32:30):
very like just the facts man. Guy comes on and
shares with us the latest from electron Truths Alliance. This
is the great Nathan Taylor kid.

Speaker 6 (32:39):
Nathan, Well, thanks, you had me waiting in the wings here.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
Sorry, my friend, thank you, thank you for your patients,
and I'll let you just get started because I know
you've got stuff from Florida.

Speaker 6 (32:49):
Oh yeah, well, you actually brought up with the whole
casino mafio mafia gambling something interesting. We talked about using
machines electronics to manipulate results. As you said, you know,
you had potential card shuffling machines that we're rigging, you know,
shuffling and rigging the deck a little bit, people being

(33:10):
potentially blackmailed to help do it or cover it up.
And I find all of those things very interesting because
it further highlights can we trust electronics and systems to
not only you know, count our cards, but count our elections?
And how do we verify? So you've had me on
a few times. I think in the past we've talked
about some of our findings in Nevada, in Pennsylvania. Now

(33:32):
we've brought to you some recent preliminary analysis for Florida.
We've also actually recently released some concerns for Minnesota, which
was won by Harris. But we're still finding some interesting
things there. But I did want to highlight, like I
always do, and you bring it up, is is what
the ETA is doing. Is what I am doing.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
I'm one of the.

Speaker 6 (33:52):
Executive directors of the Electriue Alliance. My backgrounds and cybersecurity
information systems, both civilian and military. And is this election
denial right?

Speaker 1 (34:02):
You know?

Speaker 6 (34:02):
Are we questioning the outcome of elections? And does bringing
up the concerns and the facts right now? Does that
stop people from voting in the mid terms? So I
did want to address that, and I wanted to say
a few things. Well, one, as we always like to say,
there is never harm in doing audits and double checking.
As we said, we audit you know, our finances, our banks.
We audit you know, engineering production to make sure things

(34:25):
are quality tested. There should never be harm in a
second look, a second opinion, a second check. And if
people don't want that, questions are like democracy are the
most important thing in my opinion, Counting the votes and
making sure the votes are counted correctly. Is that's a
cornerstone of American democracy. And I don't think anyone should

(34:45):
push back against the harm in making sure that our
votes are counted correctly the first time around. And you know,
we address any problems as they come up.

Speaker 1 (34:54):
So well, I should also say that perhaps with the
most consequential election in American history, it's fair to ask
a question or two and at least, as you say,
just to do a general audit. I mean, you know,
before anybody's throwing in the accusations anywhere. It's it's simply
an audit, give us access to the information and then
and we move on. So that's one of the things
I like, as I was saying, kind of in in

(35:17):
preparation for you coming on, I just like the dispassionate way,
the unemotional, statistically underpinned way in which you reach your conclusions.
So go ahead.

Speaker 6 (35:26):
Yeah, and two flags as well when it comes to audits,
is we do in the US depending on states, there
are some types of audits for after the elections and
what the ETA has started bringing up as we investigate
the statistical concerns, but also those audit reports, we are
worried that those audits may not be sufficient in catching
some of the things we're flagging now, and that's why

(35:49):
we want these second audits. These we pretty much want
to go to the counties and the precincts that look
strange and we want to focus on those. We want
you know, handcount investigations there. We want that second independent audit,
and I'll jump right into the concerns. And I've tried
to make this PowerPoint. I know when you first brought
me on, we could sit here for thirty minutes to

(36:10):
an hour talking slides. I've tried to make this pretty
short and pretty simple for you. So please, at any point,
you know, ask questions or jump in. But let's see
what we can bring up. The Florida power point here.
I may have to have you guys throw it up
on the screen.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
There it is.

Speaker 6 (36:25):
Here's Florida. Pretty simple. So, as I said, election here
the Alliance, nonpartisan nonprofit organization founded in December. We've been
investigating not only the twenty four election, but any special
or intermediary elections since then, and we've been publishing our
findings and actually recently we've started talking about this. Not
only have we been using statistics to determine if there's

(36:46):
any red flags, but we've been on the ground in
some of these swing states and some of these non
swing states investigating the counties that are coming up as
anomalist and we will continue to make some of those
on the ground findings public as we go forward. We're
just now starting to talk about and release some of
the on the ground findings in Florida, and by the
end of this week what we'll have even more, and

(37:07):
then we'll actually get into some of the legal things
and I'll touch I'll touch base just at the end
about some of the legal implications for those on the
ground investigations.

Speaker 1 (37:15):
I do you want a flag?

Speaker 6 (37:16):
Statistical analysis of elections is not proof of election fraud.
It is in best evidence, but it tells you where
to look, and if you start to find a bunch
of red flags, it warrants investigation. Okay, So to keep
things very simple. You've seen some of our charts before.
We've done heap maps, we've done other types of things.
This is a scatterplot. You may have seen this on

(37:36):
some of our reports, if not, we have reports at
Electric Adlance dot org. We've done three different swing states,
We've done a handful of non swing states. And one
of the most common formats we use as a scattered plot.
And this is just precinct voting results across state, county
or multiple counties. And the reason I bring this up
is we are based on the experts and peer reviewed

(37:57):
work of election fraudctors that have looked at Russian elections
in Europe, and you know, even some experts in the US,
they flagged that a normal election should look a bit
more like what we're going to show. You should have
a normal distribution. It should be when we do it
a scatter plot and we do you know, the amount
of votes you're getting or the vote shore you're getting

(38:17):
versus the turnout across precincts. It should be more of
a straight line. And that's what we're going to actually show,
and you know, show some of what Florida looks like
in comparison. But the reason I bring this up is
if you look out the graph on the rights, we
have labeled here a normal election pattern. This is a
scattered plot of every This is you know, a generated one,
so this would be every precinct in the county. The

(38:39):
x axis is turnout. That just means I got one
hundred registered voters fifty show up to vote during the election.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
Do we lose him? Have you lost me? Okay?

Speaker 6 (38:57):
Hello, you guys are good? Am I here?

Speaker 1 (38:59):
Yeah? The acts as you were saying, go ahead.

Speaker 6 (39:02):
So any questions so far on we were so much mistress.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
So you're saying one hundred turnout, you were just explaining
the access is simple. I'd say a hundred, yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 6 (39:13):
Nowhere is nowhere, So the X axis is turnout. And
since these are precincts and every dot is a precinct.
For example, if you've got one hundred registered voters and
fifty of them vote, that's fifty percent turnout, they'd be,
you know, somewhere at the fifty percent line. That's how
you read these graphs. And then it's just the percentage
of the votes. So if you get fifty percent of
the votes, you're going to be at the fifty percent

(39:35):
on the y axis above or below that. So nonetheless,
the reason why we highlight it this way is this
is a good method to show if there's any abnormal
voting patterns. And on the right we have an example
of what we argue based on the work of these
election experts, abnormal could look like. For example, there should
be no relationship between how many people show up to

(39:55):
vote and how much of the vote a candidate is
getting across multiple precincts. It should be as I said, generally,
what you'll see is both candidates are going to sit
at a average vote share at low turnout, medium turnout,
and high turnout. If you see this effect which is
on the right, which means we're seeing that for this

(40:16):
candidate that as turnout increased across these precincts or precincts
of higher turnout, more voters showed up or more votes
were cast, either or one candidate begins to disproportionately benefit.
That is a red flag for potential vote manipulation. In
this case, it could be vote stuffing, either physical or digital.
And this is what's been observed and reported in Russian

(40:39):
elections multiple times, multiple elections by election experts such as
roman Udot Sureges Shpilkin. So as we said, we know
what normal should look like, and we know what abnormals
should look like. Now I'm going to actually show you
what we've put out recently for three counties in Florida.
And here that is this is the first county. This

(41:01):
is the most populated county, the more liberal county. This
is Miami Dade. And this is all of the votes,
all the vote types for the county. And pretty much
what we're showing here is this the same type of graph.
This is a scatter plot. What we see is that
across all the precincts in the county. As more votes

(41:24):
were cast or more voters turned up to vote, the
Republican presidential candidate began to proportionally get more votes across
the board. And as we said, this type of effect
has been flagged for potential ballots stuffing in Russian elections,
and we see the inverse, of course, for the Democratic
president they go down. So this is one way to

(41:46):
visualize it. Now I'm going to actually show you a
much easier to visualize way, and we can actually start
talking about some of the implications.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
Before you do that, let me just ask you a question.
Why couldn't it be that as voter turnout increases that
just more people come out? Who are Trump voters? Yes,
we get that question a lot. So here's the problem
with this effect, and we'll actually show it even more
precisely in a second graph. The problem we're finding is that,
as we said before, per the work of experts, there

(42:15):
should be no relationship between the amount of people showing
up to vote across all these precincts and the amount
of votes you're getting in other examples such as we'll
show you for mail, and what we actually see is
that both candidates are somewhat consistent across all voter turnout,
So precincts of low turnout, precincts of high turnout, the
average amount of votes they're getting across all of those

(42:36):
precincts in those percentages is somewhat consistent. And so in
order to create this effect normally, well, it would be
arguably impossible to create this effect normally by voters being engaged,
because in order for you to get specific precincts that

(42:59):
as more people turn out the vote more votes are
just for one candidate. There's no way for voters to
know the amount of turnout in their precinct during the election.
They can't, you know, you can't really engage certain groups
of people to do this this well. And that's where
we're flagging almost algorithmic or some type of systematic manipulation,

(43:19):
because it's too persistent, it's too consistent across all of
these different ranges of turnout. And we're actually going to
show it to you here again, Okay, And these are
the other two counties we're seeing the same effects. This
is Palm Beach and Saint Lucie. I believe Palm Beach
was still one by Harris, but we still see this
effect in that county, and then Saint Lucy as well. Now,

(43:42):
one thing I didn't really touch on too much, but
you know, as we said, with concerns about machines and
counting and how you could potentially manipulate them. These three counties, specifically,
two of them use esn S, which is a major
voting system used all across the US, and the other
is Dominus system, which is the second top one. We
could talk a little bit more about that at the end.

Speaker 6 (44:01):
There's been some changes to dominion recently. Okay, now I'm
going to show you what I personally like. And these
are the same data set, we just put them in bits.
So now instead of you just looking at a bunch
of dots on a graph and lines, we've put them
in percentages and on these are the same data. On
the left is a binning graph, same turnout on the
x axis, same vote share on the y axis, but

(44:24):
we've just put them all in bins by ten percent.
And then on the right we've done the same technique,
but instead of it being by set ten percents, we said,
let's put them in weighted bins. So you've got, for example,
two hundred, two hundred and you know, a little bit
more than two hundred thousand votes per bin, and that
takes out a lot of the noise. Now, explain to

(44:46):
me what effect we're seeing on the left here. What
do you think this looks like?

Speaker 1 (44:53):
It looks like, at least from a turnout standpoint, you've
got a very good turnout for Kamala Harris that exceeds
that of the Trump turnout. If I'm just if I'm
seeing this properly, I kind of blow this up.

Speaker 6 (45:07):
Yes, So what we're seeing to kind of put it
in words, I know you've got some listeners. We have
a graph here with multiple bins ranging on the left
from thirty percent turnout all the way up to around
ninety percent, and it's in sets of ten. And what
we're seeing is we're seeing that below sixty seventy percent turnout,
Harris has a majority of votes across these precincts. So

(45:29):
all of the precincts below sixty seventy percent turnout, Harris
has a majority of the votes Above that sixty seventy
percent turnout. We see a flip and Trump begins to
then dominate those higher turnout locations from sixty from I
think it's somewhere around sixty five, sixty seven percent, seventy
to eighty percent. I mean, can real little bit around On.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
The right hand side of the graph, you really shee
it driving, and.

Speaker 6 (45:53):
So on the right hand side. What we've done, as
I said, is we've weighted these so that, for example,
on the left, you have some turnout percentages that don't
have a huge amount of precincts, and it's going to
create a lot of noise or inconsistency on the right.
This is another technique of visualizing any changes. They're weighted
so that we have an equal amount of votes across

(46:13):
all of these bins and we get to see any
major changes clearly. And what we see is it's the
same effect. The X axis has just shifted a little
bit zero to sixty six percent. We're seeing Harris is
getting a good amount of the votes above that point.
That is when Trump begins to overtake Hares and begins
to win across all of those higher turnout precincts. Now,
the reason this is a concern is, as we said,

(46:35):
and as we'll show you with mail in there, is
we have yet to determine a reasonable way that vote
or that voters could do this because there is not
a way for a voter to know what their turnout
engagement's going to be, Nor is there really a way
to mobilize voters so that only at sixty six percent
in higher precincts of turnout does all the Republicans show up.

(46:56):
It doesn't. If you're going to mobilize your voter base,
they're going to show up, crossed all turnout percentages and
you're going to have more votes. All right, any questions
on this.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
No, but it still lingers the point that I think
I could make, which is I get it, so more
voters turned out, and those were Trump voters. Maybe there
were voters who had never voted before, maybe they were
animated by some anger at Biden or whatever it was.
But as we point to more and more of the

(47:26):
voter turnout reflecting votes for Trump, couldn't it be that
just Trump voters turned out in big numbers.

Speaker 6 (47:33):
Yeah, I mean theoretically it could be.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
But you're saying, but let me, but let me so
I answer my own question. But I'm kind of just
trying to summarize and make sure I understand your point.
But your point is, sure, Mark, that is possible. But
it would defy the normal kinds of mix of voting
that you would find. I mean, you just wouldn't find
in a normal voting pattern. The kind of surge for

(47:58):
one candidate that we saw. Is that essentially the point.

Speaker 6 (48:02):
Yeah, it's pretty much. To put it in layman's terms,
theoretically you could do this, but to do this consistently
across multiple counties, where all of those counties you see
the same effects of sixty percent turnout and hire going
to one candidate, it begins to lean into the level
of non human voting behavior. And as I said, once

(48:26):
you start seeing that consistency across multiple different counties, different voters,
it just becomes a little too much. It's a red flag.
And that's why we want these investigations and really we
want answers. And as I said, this is all of
the vote types, by the way. So what we do
have for you next is we do have mail in voting.

(48:48):
And as I said, as well, oh we'll come back
to that. I don't want to get to that just yet,
all right, mail in voting, Oh, they'll get ahead of me.
So mail in voting, right, So, as we said, why
is it? And this is where you know you can
have good pushback. We've brought this up for Pennsylvania, and
we brought this up for Nevada. We started seeing, you know,

(49:08):
the same concerns in North Carolina. Why is it that
mail in voting looks statistically like what we would expect
and what has been held up as a more normal
human voting behavior by election experts. So why is it
that mail in exhibits the effect that we argue is
more normal where both candidates have a somewhat consistent amount

(49:28):
of the votes across all turnout. And that's what we
see here, right. You see that Harris from low turnout
of zero percent and above precincts so zero to fifteen
and all the way up to round thirty five. Because
mail in is at most thirty five percent of some
of these precincts, we see that across all of these precincts,
Harris is getting closer to that fifty five to sixty

(49:49):
percent of the vote and Trump that inverse. In the
remaining mountain we don't see a huge and consistent change
for any precinct thresholder level, And as I said, this
is what we would expect to see. So why is
it that mail in looks like this, but election day
and early voting, depending on what types of voting they have.
So in Pennsylvania, election day, in North Carolina early voting

(50:12):
and election day, why are we seeing the opposite effects?
And we're seeing it almost a effect of a certain
turnout threshold and above begins to benefit one candidate. And
that's where we're flagging. This needs to be investigated. We
need to go to these places that are exhibiting these effects,
and we need to actually handcount an audit and make
sure that this isn't. As I said, this could be

(50:34):
some unique, very interesting effects, but it's too consistent, and
it flags for the same type of vote manipulation being
seen in Russian elections. And I think, as I quoted before,
they were actually seeing in twenty eleven Russian elections where
turnout of I think eighty to ninety percent does the flip.
So that's where the pro Russian or pro Russian government

(50:56):
party begins to get a huge amount of the votes
is eighteen to ninety percent and it jumps up. Okay,
any questions here, any thoughts on you know mail in
and no.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
It's fascinating. The mail in really is telling isn't it.
Now Again you could say, well, you know, Democrats use
the mail in more than typical GOP voters, and that's
the reason that Kamala Harris had such a good showing
in the mail in. Part of the tabulation, I suppose
that I'm trying to think of a pushback, you know,
potential pushback. Yeah, but again, I would you still say that.

(51:28):
You would still say though, that the that the dispersal
of votes, the way in which they're distributed, would have
a more natural kind of a view in the in
in in person voting than and in some way reflect
what was happening with the mail in.

Speaker 6 (51:48):
Yeah, we would expect to see I mean even if
you know, if a candidate is really popular for election day,
we would expect to just see this effect just whatever
candidate is more popular, you know, getting more of the votes.
Wouldn't expect to see any change it as set turnout.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Now, sure, exactly that's mail But just to be I
just want to put underscore for myself. Maybe the reason
the mail in is important and instructive is because it
shows you the votes were there for Kamala Harris in Florida.
So as you look at that turnout surge and it's
all going for Trump. You think, to your void a minute,
I mean, how can the mail in be so reflective

(52:22):
of one thing and yet the in person reflective of another.
So it again, as you say, it feels red flaggy.

Speaker 6 (52:28):
Yeah, and you I mean for a lot of these places,
you're dividing votes across three different types of voting. And
one thing we do on a flag is mail in
seems to have a little more strict security and process.
Right You've got for I know, North Carolina alone, you
have to have either witnesses or a notary when you
send your mail in vote. You have to pre register,
they have to send the valet to you and get

(52:48):
it back, so there's a bit more of a verification process.
Election day early voting, you know, you're just going in
person and you're voting on the system there. And so
I'm going to show you this. I know we're running
a little low on time, but here's the thing I
wanted to show you. And as we talked about before,
So on the left is those three counties we talked
about summed up for Florida. On the right is Pennsylvania.

(53:10):
All of the precincts across all of the counties. And
remember what we talked about, it's concerning that you would
see the same effects across multiple locations, multiple demographics, and
we're seeing the same effects in Pennsylvania where precincts of
lower than sixty five seventy two percent, it's a little
higher of a threshold for turnout, but we see that

(53:30):
effect as well. Right zero to sixty five percent, Harris
is getting majority of the votes. After sixty five to
seventy two percent, we see that close and then Trump
begins to take over from seventy two percent in higher
turnout across all of these precincts, and his average vote
share is sitting closer to that sixty percent. And it's
the same effect we're seeing in Florida. It's the same
effect we're seeing in North Carolina in some concerns, and

(53:53):
really it just it brings up the question of why
would you see the same effect consistently across multiple counties
and multiple states when they are different regionally speaking, but
they all use the same voting systems. And so that's why,
as we said, we're going to keep releasing these types

(54:16):
of investigations, but we have now as we said, we've
started doing on the ground investigations. We were going to
these places where we're seeing these effects. We're looking at
the systems and the voter registration databases that are used here,
and we will continue to make public the problems we
are starting to find. And the last little piece I'll
throw at you then, is everyone says, you know, well,

(54:38):
as we brought up, and we've said time and time again,
and people don't seem to be, you know, fully aware
of kind of how our voting system works in our elections.
Seventy to eighty percent of the votes as of twenty
four are handmarked paper ballots. We use hand marked paper
ballots all across the US. We don't use a lot
of the voting machines. Those are smaller. Now, what's interesting
is even those handmarked paper ballots are not hand counted.

(55:02):
They are machine counted. They are counted by an optical scanner.
Almost one hundred percent of the votes are. And so
we bring up that concern because we're saying, even though
people handmark their votes and cats them, they are still
counted by machines. Sure, it's not the right, it's the counting.
It's not who votes, he counts it's who counts the votes,

(55:24):
and so, as I said, we're not making any accusations
against these companies. We're just flagging that they do these
top three systems, Yes and S, Dominion and Hardinner Civic.
They span a majority of the swing states the non
swing states, and if a malicious third party actor could
compromise these systems, these are a common link across all
of the places we've started to find these statistical red

(55:46):
flags and anomalies.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
So you men, you mentioned these systems. Let's spend a
second on what's just happened with Dominion voting systems. Okay, Nathan,
I mentioned we covered it on the show the other day,
but it bears mentioning as an adjunct to it you've
been talking about.

Speaker 6 (56:02):
Yeah, so Dominion one of the second largest voting system
in the US. I know they span a few different states.
I know they span Nevada pretty aggressively. They have both
tabulation machines that do optical scanning I like the precinct level,
and then they have voting machines. So you go into character.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
But I think they're in twenty seven states is what
I recall. Maybe you and they do.

Speaker 6 (56:22):
Have some of the counties will be like you know,
predominantly E S and S state, but then there'll be
some dominion counties. They're pretty mixed in. And yes, they
were recently purchased by another entity and relabeled as liberty voting,
I believe. So what are your concerns about that? You know,
I can't talk too much about the implications.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
Well, my concern I can say this. I mean, you're
you're the dispassionate, unemotional statistician, But I can just tell
you I'm the wildly emotional, panicked guy who is looking
at a company and a technology that's been purchased by
someone who is a very strong GOP advocate and ally
of Donald Trump. And so one worries that these systems

(57:06):
that are used are not impartial any longer. They are
owned by entities and people with a clear political agenda.
And that's my concern.

Speaker 6 (57:16):
So I will say two things. First and foremost, the
ETA has brought up multiple times the concerns of should
the companies that own our voting systems be connected or
partisan in nature at all?

Speaker 1 (57:29):
Right?

Speaker 6 (57:29):
Should they not be nonpartisan? Should they be using open
source systems? So right now, most people aren't aware our
voting systems are proprietary, they're owned by the companies, they're
audited by a select few groups, and outside of that,
there's not a lot known about how these systems work
or run until you really are able to get in
and access them. I will highlight as the ETA has

(57:50):
been investigating these systems more, there are some concerns coming
up with the twenty four election where one of the
companies that audits Dominion hard Inner Civic ny ands or
at least ESNs and Dominion that get addited specifically by
this company that's pro v and V. There were software
updates that do raise some red flags. I mean, I

(58:13):
think you know multiple entities have reported on this, and
know Smart Elections have reported on this. I know Newsweek
has talked about this. But these software updates, from our
understanding so far, may have made changes to some of
these systems that may have weakened some of the security
practices such as flagging or alarming if there's any changes
to the source code. And so these systems were updated
software wise, it was de minimous, meaning you didn't recertify

(58:36):
the machines, you didn't have to check them again. And
I think that update came out just before November, and
it's things like this that we say we definitely believe
that there should be a second look at how these
systems are ran, who runs them. And at the end
of the day, I think the final piece that I
really like to bring up a lot is this is
we've had examples of a malicious compromise of hardware and

(58:59):
software before. We had Volkswagen in twenty fifteen with diesel
Gate right where they got caught because they were cheating
emissions testing. They were being audited and passing their audits,
but the data was not adding up. There was two
high emissions for what was being reported. So what did
you do. You went and you said, well, let's test
the systems in use, or let's test the end result,

(59:21):
which for us is going to be looking at the
physical balance that people cast. For diesel Gate was driving
the vehicle on the highway and testing the emissions then.
So these are just things we bring up and at
the end of the day, we want people to be
confident in our elections are free and fair and safe
and secure. We want to improve our election practices and
we want to make sure that if there is a compromise,

(59:42):
we need to investigate it now so that it can
be handled and made public before the midterms, when I
feel like a lot of Americans are going to be
engaged and are going to vote, and the implications for
the midterms and the next presidential election are very large.

Speaker 1 (59:58):
Sure, of course that's true. Quickly, George Hunt, with a
five dollars super cheat, says, no one to blame but
the people, the stolen election machines that voted for him.
Now everyone is afraid to stand up to him, just
as we knew it would be. You know, well, that
may be the dominion of voting machines sold to their
publican donor. Yep, we covered that, and so they've collected

(01:00:19):
a lot of data, says Randy. What impact is all
this going to have for the twenty twenty six or
twenty twenty eight elections? Anything?

Speaker 6 (01:00:26):
Yeah, Well, so I'll say this, as I said, we
we're limited in what we can say right now. You
know my lawyers, you know I'm very tight lipped, but
I will say this on the ETA is not only
publishing these findings and having these conversations, but here in
the near future we're going to make public are on
the ground investigations and the legal actions that will be
coming from them. Some of the problems we're finding is

(01:00:47):
we're we're finding evidence of a potential compromise of some
of the voter registration databases used across some of these
states that are very impactful. We're also, as we said,
concerned about the systems and the machines we found, smatching
reports from you know, the counties themselves and their data
and some other things as well. So I would say
this as we go forward, right, it's mostly about as

(01:01:13):
the ETA makes more of this public. Really, what we
need is we need the states to start doing these
investigations as well. We need governors and the secretaries of
states to get on board, to come to the table.
We need them to start looking at their systems, because
once we make public some of our findings, the implication
isn't just in the place that we're having these problems.

(01:01:33):
It could be anywhere and everywhere these systems were used.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
And we have a state centric election system obviously, So
that's why you need the states to get involved. Brandy
also asking is Mark suggesting that Harris could have won Florida.
I don't know. We didn't come to that conclusion here.

Speaker 6 (01:01:51):
I just was as of right now, the ET hasn't
many public statements there. As I said, though, we are
investigating the rest of the counties in Florida and we
will have some as we go forward. I will flag that,
you know, it is very interesting this effect is happening,
and it does bring up concerns that if some of
the bluest counties in Florida were impacted and it is

(01:02:12):
vote manipulation, those counties could have their results changed. And
we'll see what the full scale will look like as
we go forward. I will flag one other thing is
we've been investigating not only the presidential election, but some
of these down ballot races as well that have raised
red flags, So some of these Senate races, some of
these House races, and we will be making those findings

(01:02:33):
public as we go forward as well, and then we
can have those conversations.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
On data distribution. We get this, Nathan cc ryder says,
show me a graph for the last ten general elections
compared to twenty twenty four for an accurate sample set.
When you show the which you did, the disbursement, the
heat map, and various things that you've shown as to
a normal dispersal of votes and an a dispersal low votes,

(01:03:01):
et cetera. Are you comfortable with and can you address
her concern about the idea that the sample size has
to be significant so that the statistics are significant as well.

Speaker 6 (01:03:12):
Yeah, this comes up a lot. I've heard a few people,
you know, bring up the law of large numbers. We're
actually working on kind of a public statement in address
about that. We've got, you know, some PhD statisticians that
are batting around the language and how to talk about it.
But I will say this, I would say that BTA
is very confident that the data sets we have for
using all of the precincts in a county is pretty
sufficient in getting a good picture of, you know, some

(01:03:35):
of the trends in voting behaviors, and you know, you
actually see and what we've shown a few times is
we see high variation in lower turnout because you have
less votes. But we're still seeing what we argue is,
you know, a concerning effect even in places where there
isn't a huge amount of votes. We're going to places
that have the most amount of votes per precincts and

(01:03:56):
we're finding this effect there. So there is no bigger
data set than some of the most populated counties in
the state. So we're pretty confident, as we said that
these are some alarming concerns. We make this public right,
We make our reports public, The data is public. We
also put the state up on our dashboards after we
verify it, so that you guys can go and you
can look at it yourselves, and you can peer review

(01:04:17):
it and raise any flags if you think there's inaccuracy there.
But as I said, we've done this analysis to multiple
swing states, multiple non swing states, and we're finding this
effect pretty consistently in places that are alarming, and we're
not seeing this effect as much in mail in and
we have looked at past elections or both the twenty
twenty election. We even have data sets going back to

(01:04:39):
twenty sixteen a little earlier. We do plan on making
a bit more of that public as we go and
we can have those conversations as well as how does
that change and how does it compare.

Speaker 1 (01:04:50):
At minimum, it's provocative and perhaps it's insanely alarming. Election
Truth Alliance you can find them. You can knock around
on the website, nonprofit, nonpartisan, and Nathan, you always bring it.
You bring the receipts. People can believe them, people can
question them, people can talk about the data set, they
can talk about the sample size. But you do bring

(01:05:14):
it and you lay it out so beautifully and I
really appreciate you spending time with us always.

Speaker 6 (01:05:18):
So thank you, yes, thank you so much for having me.
As I said, we'll have some more stuff coming out
here in the near future. I'd love to talk through
that when we get to that point. You're the last piece.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
Yeah, we'll we'll have a link to Election Truth of
the Lines under this studio. Go ahead, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:05:33):
It'll be it'll be big. And you know, I feel
like the last thing we start bringing up and we
keep talking about now that I think people people understand
is it's like democracy is not going to defend itself right,
Like we got to be engaged, We got to ask questions.
And I really think at the end of the day,
as we make more of this public, it is worth
our time to make sure our elections are free, fair,

(01:05:53):
safe and secure as we go for So thank you
so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:05:56):
Yeah, bravo here here thanks uh, Election Truth the Line.
See you again, Nathan Nathan Taylor, it's along, my friend
see your soul the Mark Thompson Show right on. I mean,
it's provocative. You can throw it back, and you can.

(01:06:18):
This is the problem, and I'm seeing it in the
chat on some level that somehow, if you question the
election results, you have thrown yourself into the conspiracy theory.
You know, I'm not a conspiracy theorist how much of anything.
I mean, I don't believe the official line on a
lot of stuff, but I also don't believe in these
complex conspiracy theories. I mean, from landing on the moon

(01:06:40):
to you know, whatever it might be. You know, fill
in your conspiracy theory. But I also say this, just
because you're a conspiracy theorist doesn't mean that there wasn't
actually a conspiracy. In other words, sometimes conspiracy theorists have
the right thing. Now, this isn't I wouldn't say this
is a conspiracy theory per se, but you can lay
at anything you want. I would suggest that there is

(01:07:04):
a reasonable question. It was asked by the Republicans. Why
can't democrats ask the same thing? Or why can't just
independence Well meaning independence Americans asked the same questions about
the legitimacy of an election. In an election count so
I think there was a radioactivity, you know, sort of
a sense that I don't want to bring this up

(01:07:24):
because it now puts me in the category of an
election denier, like the crazy Maga crew. I think that's
sort of the way the Democrats felt after the election,
and that kept them from asking for a recount in states.
And the reality is that the election tallies were just

(01:07:45):
outside the recount thresholds where you would be compelled statistically
based on the count to have a recount dictated, so
you'd have to pay for a recount. But getting that
money for a recount wouldn't have been hard. It takes
some of that money you spent to get Beyonce to

(01:08:06):
show up to whatever fundraiser, and that money could pay
for the recount. So all I'm trying to say is
that I think questions about this are legitimate and you
don't have to embrace it. You can say it's all
crap and this makes us look bad? And how come
we're questioning things really that it makes us look bad.
I don't know who the US is, what Americans are?

(01:08:29):
We just supposed say, oh, that was the count YEP
of course, uh huh okay. I believe it right, just
like I believe all the other official crap that's coming
out of this administration. Yeah, I believe those were those
are Narco terrorists driving those boats off the coast of Nasulla. Yep.
If that said so, great, I don't want to question it.
I don't see why questioning it is a bad thing.

(01:08:53):
I get it. Oh, yes, to leave earlier, David Casidley earlier,
so I can't blither on anymore. Is that what you're
telling me? Gosh, I just I don't know. I thought
I was trying to say what they.

Speaker 6 (01:09:02):
Do this to me all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
I don't know what they had to try to make
a point. And then Kim comes in and says, you
got to go to cats right away because he's got
to take off my god. All right, all right. This
guy is one of the great legal analysts in the
English speaking world, the former federal prosecutor now defense attorney
in southern California. The great one. He is, David Katz.

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):
David, great to be with you.

Speaker 1 (01:09:28):
We are taking you places you never thought you'd go before.
Did you ever think a president who was never formally
acquitted of charges that were brought against him for retention
of documents and got collusion with the Russians, all of
these different things, frauds of all sort, the fraudulent claims

(01:09:50):
associated with that New York case. Did you ever think
that that president would sue the government that he would
then become president of and be able to, with the
sweep of a pen approve whatever damages he claims in
this case it's two hundred and thirty million dollars and
be able to just pocket that money. It's a grift

(01:10:12):
of a sort I never thought we could even conceive of.
Give me the legal x's and o's of that, Oh,
great one, David Kats, Well, let.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
Me just say first, you know you always ask me, Mark,
how do I practice law with the amount of media
that I do in the United Kingdom and across America.
By the way, if I if you don't mind a plug,
I'm going to be on News Nation tomorrow Pacific time,
really serious show that they do, either a one thirty
or two thirty or maybe both, probably talking about these

(01:10:42):
Circuit court decisions and the Supreme Court. So I think
that's for your audience that has some time tomorrow News
Nation one thirty or two thirty Pacific time. But to
answer your question. How do I do? I was gonna
have to leave early today, but now I don't because
my criminal court hearing was con continued. That's the expression
we use that meets postponed. It was continued about an

(01:11:04):
hour and a half ago, and so I can stay
until as long as you blake. He was very very good.

Speaker 1 (01:11:11):
David. Let me, then, counselor ask you, what do you
make of the President of the United States claiming that
he is entitled to damages for the harassment that he
received as a result of the court cases brought by
governments of the United States. I say governments, meaning he
was both state government and federal government that Trump endured

(01:11:33):
during his time away from office. Now that he is president,
he wants two hundred and thirty million dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:11:39):
Well, you know, this is a SNL skitch sketch. This
is not something that you would ever think could actually happen.
You know, there's a famous old Woody Allen movie, I
think from the late sixties where he's the attorney and
he's also the witness and he runs back and forth
between the lectern where the lawyer is in the witness box.

(01:12:01):
And it's very funny because he's got on both hats.
But it's actually, well, this is it. Even Trump said, wow,
I just sued myself, and I guess I approved the settlement.
Well it doesn't really look good. Well, of course it
doesn't look good. It's self dealing in the worst sense,
in the worst imaginable way. The way we got here
was that there are these administrative remedies, Mark, and so

(01:12:22):
the idea is, let's not clutter the court. If a
fair minded justice department or some other administrative agency would
simply recognize that there was a violation of the law
and they would simply pay damages. As a lawyer who
actually practices day in and day out, all these administrative
remedies are usually a joke. Mark. All they do is
delay you. They're a trapped for the unwary. When you

(01:12:45):
do go to court, Oh you haven't exhausted your administrative remedies.
You haven't doubted this side and costs that tee. But
he's of course turned it on his head, as he
always does, instead of it being for everyone else, actually
a slowdown and a means to just deny your claim
and waste your time. That's the reality. When you go
to the department of justice and you say, oh, I
think that the prosecutor violated by clients civil rights, They

(01:13:09):
roll their eyes, delay your thing, and then you can
eventually go to court and try to make that claim.
Many of these claims are very difficult to bring mark
because there's this qualified immunity that we've blasted. But of
course qualified immunity protects the government workers and the government system.
The fact that you're even acquitted doesn't mean that your

(01:13:32):
rights were violated. That's the beauty of our system. If
they don't have enough evidence, you get acquitted. But we
have what we call the American rule, not the British rule,
which means that in a criminal case, basically in any case,
you pay your own lawyer. The British rule is more
that the losing party pays the winning party's lawyer. You
can analogize from that that the loser in a criminal case,

(01:13:54):
which would be I guess the government where they indict
somebody and the person's not found guilty to pay the
legal fees of the defendant. But that's not our system.
So anyway, Trump has turned all of this on his head.
He files an administrative claim. This is actually before he's elected,
but he manages to keep this pretty secret. I don't
remember this coming out that he filed it back in

(01:14:15):
the middle of twenty twenty four. Of course, Biden and
his administration were so scrupulous they never leaked it. We
never knew about it. And now it's about to be
acted on and Trump says, you know, when it's acted
on by the Department of Justice to pay me for
all these egregious violations of my civil rights Trump by
being charged in these two federal cases. I think that's

(01:14:38):
what it pertains to the two federal criminal cases. Yeah,
two hundred and thirty million sounds about right. And they
actually are going to try to do this collusive talk
about that word coming back, this collusive, concocted thing where
I guess it's Todd Blanche or maybe BONDI herself will say, yes,
I've analyzed this, this is a right claim. It's worth

(01:15:01):
two hundred and thirty million dollars to Trump. Here's where
I signed it. And people say this one won't even
go to court because the idea is it's an administrative
remedy mark short of court. I think if they get
anywhere near approving this two hundred and thirty million dollars
or giving any of it to Trump. I think a
couple of things will happen. You know, there is going
to be an accounting for all of this, and I

(01:15:21):
think Bonding and Todd Blanche, if there any part of this,
are going to lose their bar card or even worse.
You know, John Miller, the Attorney general, he went to
federal prison under Nixon. That's a real thing for committing crimes.
And the Statute of Limitations would still be in play
after Trump's next three years. So there's that for them
to think about, and I think their bar card. I mean,
it's just let me get this straight. And for Blanche

(01:15:43):
it's even worse. So Blanche represents Trump as his criminal
defense attorney. He comes to be the deputy attorney general.
He then pays his former client, to whom he has
a duty of loyalty ongoing pays him two hundred and
thirty million dollars because after all it was just and
obviously a huge amount of that would be for fees.
So I guess Plans would think, how much can I

(01:16:05):
really you know, how much have I pocketed on this case?

Speaker 1 (01:16:09):
You know, touch a big thing. I don't want you
to blow by that, I mean a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
Of people have fifty million dollars in legal fees.

Speaker 1 (01:16:16):
That would pay a handful of people to make a
lot of money with this exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:16:20):
It may not have been paid yet, Mark, it may
not have been paid yet. You know, I don't really
have the money. I'm doing this crypto thing, Todd. I'll
pay you. I'm down the road. I know I have
an obligation to pay you this fifty million dollars for
these old invoices of yours. And then he pays the
fifty million dollars. Trump's story is that if he gets
the two hundred and thirty million dollars, it has to
cross his desk, so his clay will cost his desk,

(01:16:43):
and he will approve his claim to be paid by
the taxpayers. But he says to the taxpayers, don't worry about it,
because I'll give it to charity. Obvious nonsense. The charity
that he used to have was shut down because it's
violations of the law and not giving the charitable money
to any charity at all. And of course, the main
charity that is obsessing Trump right now is paying for

(01:17:03):
his big, beautiful ball room.

Speaker 1 (01:17:06):
Well, that's not a charity, and I made the same
point that you've just made yesterday. He defrauded. He defrauded
a children's cancer charity. Okay, to the point that, as
David Katz has just noted, he has barred he is
barred from doing any charitable work in the state of
New York.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
They Swing voters knew that. The Swing voters knew that
when he made him the leader of the free world.

Speaker 1 (01:17:30):
So the idea that he would give a penny to
charity is totally absurd. He'll pocket that money. That's what
I was saying in hour one. The ballroom appears to be,
you know, earmarked for payment from Pallenteer Meta Google. A
lot of the crypto bros are going to step up
and and throw them. I'm sure Binance is throwing a

(01:17:52):
lot of money at it. They just got a bit.
He got that big pardon the CEO of finance. So
that's to say one thing.

Speaker 2 (01:17:58):
So many of them are such they'd be the skunk
in the ballroom. They'd be a skunk at a cocktail party.
It's just a bribe. It's just another way to take
a bribe and to destroy this beautiful old East Wing.
That's horrific. That's happening as we speak.

Speaker 1 (01:18:13):
Well, just because you mentioned that, I mean, he is
within his legal powers to destroy that East Wing, but
he typically needs to get some approvals to do it,
you know, David Katz. But as I was noting in
the first hour, I don't mean to laugh at it's
so absurd. There are Trump functionaries in every place where

(01:18:35):
he needs approval, So getting approval is not a problem.

Speaker 2 (01:18:38):
You know, this is how it's done in Banana republics.
You know, somebody's brothers in law in charge, and they
stand up there sanctimoniously. You know, if you followed some
of these third world countries, they don't just say I
did what the hell I want, Go screw yourself now.
They issue a statement that says this has been approved
by such and such an agency, I went through some process,
all this kind of stuff. Trump is actually not even

(01:18:59):
doing that very well. He's acting more like the stereotype
that we have of the strongman in the been out
of republic who says, I do what the hell I want,
Go scoo yourselves rights.

Speaker 1 (01:19:10):
This really is true. You're making such an important point
here because I'm seeing, as I've often said, no sleight
of hand. Trump is right out front. We will do
this because I said we're going to do it. And
look there's no one stopping him. I mean, the Leader
of the House, Mike Johnson said, gosh, I don't really
know much about what's going on. I know, you know,

(01:19:31):
they've certainly made adaptations and changes historically to the White House.
Barack Obama put in a basketball court, they put in
a bowling alley, a swimming pool through the years. So
I don't really see necessarily why you're giving this president
such a hard time.

Speaker 2 (01:19:48):
The bowling alley was underground and not visible. The basketball
court was the size of a basketball hoop. Look at this,
Just look at it. And you know, you grew up
in Washington, D C. Market and I did for a while,
and then I was a law clerk back in Washington,
D C. And you know, these historic buildings. What a
message this sends, all the efforts that we do to

(01:20:09):
preserve historic buildings, the sacrifice that people sometimes have to
make because we want to and they want to make
a profit, which they have a right to do, and
we balance off their need to make a profit or
their investment against the public's desire to have a beautiful
place preserved, And where is the concern for preservation here
at all?

Speaker 1 (01:20:28):
You know exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:20:29):
I mean it's going to be garished. You know, it's
going to be garished and ugly.

Speaker 1 (01:20:33):
Yeah. Well, I mean again, it's it was designed not
to be palatial, but to be the people's house. And
beyond that, there is history there, as you note, and
there are based on reporting, no historians and those who
are you know, archivist, et cetera consulted in retaining anything
from doorways to windows, all these things have some historic significance.
Even allowing for the fact that the East Wing is

(01:20:55):
probably the least historic part of the White House, there's
still a lot of history wrapped up in it. And
the other thing I'll just say is that as they
demolished now the entire east wing, and this is a
promise he made when he was talking about this ballroom,
is that none of the White House would be touched.
And there on this picture you see that it is demolished. Now.
The price for this entire thing, this bloated price to

(01:21:18):
begin with, from two hundred million to three hundred million dollars.
I'm wondering again this has to be grifted. There is
no way you're spending three hundred million dollars to build
a ballroom. What is that ballroom built of? I mean,
it is absurd that you spend three hundred million dollars.
So I'm suggesting, even in this supposedly privately funded way,

(01:21:42):
there will be money stuck in his pocket. It is
a grift.

Speaker 2 (01:21:46):
Private funding of public accommodations like this is a terrible idea.
It's an old demagogue's line where you say, I love
my country so much, I'm not even taking my salary.
We've heard that from a few presents. We've heard that
from Trump, I love my country so much, I'm not
even taking my salary. And then you know he doesn't
take his whatever it is, five hundred thousand dollars salary,

(01:22:07):
if that's even true. And then Trump and his family
have already made billions with a B billions and he's
only been in office nine or ten months. I think
that's just the crypto grift. So it's a terrible idea
because it's an invitation to bribery. And you know, when
they pay for these inaugurals, that we don't need to
have such huge inaugurals and such money spent on the inaugurals. Mark.

(01:22:29):
That's the problem. What I hope happens with this ballroom
is I hope somebody runs to court right away and
they get a restraining order, because this is the old
thing where the landlord, you know, destroys your property first
and then goes and asks for permissions later. This is
just an old thing that Trump has done. This is
the bad landlord, the abuse of landlord in Trump, all right,

(01:22:50):
and he did this first he made announcement very publicly
that it wasn't going to even be touched, the east
wing was not going to even be touched. And then
he came and did it that well, that wasn't the
particular semantic nonsense that he relied on. His semantic nonsense
now is that as they were just about to do it,

(01:23:11):
they realized that it was much more efficient for the
plan to just total the thing, to demolish it completely,
and so it just was evolving, you know, like like
like two days before it evolved. It was obviously done
as a cover up. Uh, you know, this is a
this is just a So I hope that some court
will restrain this and say that he had to go
through those procedures and that.

Speaker 1 (01:23:35):
Job.

Speaker 2 (01:23:36):
They say that you can demolish some technicality, you can demolish,
but not build. You need some kind of permission, and
you don't need that permission to demolish. I want to
see that statute. I want to see the interpretations of
that statute. Whild say that you don't have to ask
anybody's approval before demolishing the new building. I don't believe it.

Speaker 1 (01:23:56):
This is the problem with the law. And now I
can say this to a lawyer, a distinguished council. The
problem is that we've sort of adhered to the law
and had a basic understanding that there would be adherents
to the law, and so we look to the law,
and we look to various judicial decisions to in some

(01:24:18):
way influence events. I'd suggest, respectfully that this crew, under
the leadership of this president, who operates really like a mobster. Frankly,
this is the way ura king, however you want to
put it. An autocrat. He wants something done and no
one will challenge him. Look, I'll go back to the

(01:24:39):
beginning of the administration. It was illegal to have DOGE
established as some kind of instrument by which there would
be a complete trimming of government, sending them into USAID, EPA, IRS,
the Treasury Department, and they're firing people. They are getting

(01:24:59):
rid of people. This is not a government organization. They
have no power. But if nobody says anything and nobody
actually intercedes, they get away with it. And they did.
To me, that's all I needed to see. It was
completely grotesque. They changed government and dismantled huge parts of
it forever, and they did it illegally. And so the

(01:25:24):
building of this ballroom and the destruction of the White House,
in a sense, it's metaphorical for what they are doing
across the board in government, and it's being done with
complete disregard for legality or illegality.

Speaker 2 (01:25:37):
Senator Warren said that this destroyed East Wing, demolished East
Wei half demolished East Wing. Now that you see is
a metaphor for the whole Trump presidency this time around.
It's illegal, it's destructive, and it's not helping you. So
hopefully the average voters will get it. But let me
just come back on what you said a little bit,
because you know the things that I would look at

(01:26:00):
in this back and forth, and it was not certainly
not good for the challengers it was good for Trump.
But there were public interest groups that went to court
very quickly. Mark They were not like raided or stopped
or had their you know, electricity cut off. They weren't jailed.
They were allowed to have, you know, to function as
the rights groups that they are. They and their very

(01:26:23):
able lawyers went to court very very quickly. The unions
that it's wish there were more unions in general, and
more unions in the federal government. We didn't have a
union when I was an assistant US attorney. We weren't
unionized in the Department of Justice. But like the Treasury
workers are, so the unions that existed went to the
courts very promptly. They got very prompt hearings. Some of

(01:26:44):
the judges, even judges picked by the Democrats, didn't seem
to get it right away. I remember there was a
doge ruling where the court could have a Democratic appointed judge.
I think she was actually the judge on the January
sixth case. Instead of issuing a very rapid tear that
would have stopped those from fooling around in the social
security records and other very private records, she didn't act

(01:27:07):
right away, and in that that that was a case
for a temporary injunction. So they didn't have a perfect
reaction to all those things. But you know, the Trump
administration has lost over and over again in many courts,
and there are some things where they haven't lost, where
they probably were supported by the law. And there were
many things where you could really question the US Supreme

(01:27:28):
Court if they were really following the law as written
and as interpreted. And so yes, there were some judges
that didn't act as quickly as they should have, but
the cases did get brought to court. You know, like
I think this one's going to get brought to court.

Speaker 1 (01:27:41):
So I mean this one just because you ended with
this one, I'll just say so again, this is a
Trump dance. Oh gosh, Well, what am I supposed to do?
Reconstruct the East Wing? I mean, it's gone. Okay. It's
sort of like what am I supposed to do? Bring
a breakold Garcia back? He's in El Salvador. I mean,
in the case of Garcia, they did bring him back.

(01:28:03):
But there are many other American citizens who were deported
as part of this ice effort, and they're being sent
to various countries all over the world, and various institutions
of deportation and detainment all over the world, and the
court cases months later say hey, you can't do that,
that was illegal. Gosh, you know again, the vase is
already broken, you know, Humpty dumpty. I can't put him

(01:28:25):
back together again type things. So I don't know, David,
and I love this conversation and back and forth we're
having because I know you have such great faith in
the law, and you should, you're a distinguished lawyer. And
I have such a cynical view of the law because
I see it unable to handle someone who is essentially
a lawless figure with ultimate power over the entire Justice Department.

(01:28:45):
And so we moved to the two hundred and thirty
million and we go, gosh, I mean, as you say,
there's an absurdity to it, but I don't see how
the law restrains it except for what you've said, which is,
after the fact, people associated with that may actually lose
their licenses to practice.

Speaker 2 (01:29:02):
Well, let's just take the East Wing as one example.
They go to court, and that's of course what Trump
is going to You know, I boke the vaz and
now you can't fix it. Haha. Judge wasn't I clever
as usual? I was faster than you were. The federal
judges have huge power, including to issue injunctions. They can
tell him to stop, and if that's the right remedy,

(01:29:23):
tell him that it has to be rebuilt. Maybe if
he was acting completely outside the law, as he may
have been, use his own funds. Now that's dangerous too,
because Trump's when told to use his old funds, like
when he got hit for five hundred million dollars in
New York, it looks like instead of thinking I'm going
to stop doing what I'm doing, I'm going to be deterred.
You know, Trump's mentality is I'm going to do a

(01:29:43):
crypto grift. I'm going to take so many bribes that
I'll be able to pay the five hundred million out
of my pocket and still a lot of other dirty
money in other pockets. And unfortunately he gets inspired to
figure out ways to take bribes and to do things
that are illegal. But you know, the remedy for something
like that was the Congress. We have terrible luck or
especially with the voters and how they voted in certain states,

(01:30:05):
that we don't have either a democratic Congress or a
House that would be the normal way, oversight hearings by
one of those bodies to deal with this kind of
you know, this was this was a president that the
Framers saw coming. They saw somebody, you know, like Napoleon,
having won an election, never leaving, never abiding by the law.
They saw something like that, and they saw the remedy. Actually,

(01:30:27):
Napoleon got reigned in by a legislature or parliament as
it were in France in his era. So this is
very much what they had in mind and how you
would reign in kings and tyrants, or it would be
kings since we weren't going to have a king and tyrants,
would be that the House or the Senate would do it.
They have absolutely abdicated. It is so shapeful what the

(01:30:47):
Republicans I mean, they haven't stood up for their own institution.
They haven't. They've they've surrendered their own power. That's not
something that the Framers really thought was going to happen,
but we've seen it in our era. So what's the
next remedy? Mark? The next remedy is the next election.
And I know people are pessimistic about it. We are
going to have an election. There's no stopping an American election.

(01:31:08):
The pandemic didn't stop the American election. You have all
these civil minded people in all fifty states. They have deadlines,
they gear up, they have the election, they have the vote,
and I think the vote will go overwhelmingly against Trump
and the Republicans, and that will restore an awful lot
of order. Look at the seven million plus people who
went into the streets just the other day peacefully protests.
Think about that mark. Because they knew how Trump was

(01:31:30):
going to manipulate any kind of violence. Over seven million
people refrained from any violence and they were totally peaceful.
And that is from the determination. They say. The vote
now for redistricting in California is more heavy, is heavier
than the presidential vote. So that's what else the Framers
had in mind, that when you have a would be tyrant,
the people would be sick and repulsed and would stand

(01:31:51):
up to it.

Speaker 1 (01:31:53):
Well. I love that you pointed to the way that
the public has been animated. It's a remarkable thing, though,
the way so much of the public that now is
being affected by awful MAGA policies. You know, farmers, working
class Americans, those who are working and living paycheck to paycheck,

(01:32:16):
are realizing that their vote for Trump is you know,
directly affecting them in a negative way. Someone related a
story to me. I meant to mention it to everybody,
and I'll mention it to you and everybody right now
about the strength of the MAGA belief. This is someone
in a friend of mine's family. I've just reconnected with
him after a couple of years, and he was saying

(01:32:38):
that they turned down. Now this is they live in
a trailer, in a kind of subsistence living situation. Government
assistants this kind of thing. And during the Biden administration
checks that relieved a lot of the COVID burden. I

(01:32:58):
think it was. Remember there was some checks that went
out to all Americans. They turned down the check. They
didn't want it because it came from Biden. Now, this
is a family that is desperate for every dollar just
to stay alive. But the fervency with which they feel
an allegiance to Trump and the MAGA movement is such

(01:33:22):
that they didn't feel comfortable taking that check. That's the
America that we're living in right now, David. And it's
a remarkable thing to me, you know, which is why
sometimes issues don't matter. It is again a kind of
Now you could say, yeah, market, that's always the thirty
percent of the people are always going to be like that,
and that might be true. But I'm just trying to

(01:33:43):
speak to the power of the MAGA movement. I think
it really is there. But as you've said, things are changing,
and the economy and many of the revelations that are
going to be sort of set upon Americans may begin
to change that arithmetic, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:34:02):
So, Mark, do you want to talk about the Ninth
Circuit cases, the Seventh Circuit case, the US Supreme Court
on the you know, sending the basically violating the Passe
Comatatis Act and sending the military into the cities.

Speaker 1 (01:34:16):
I do, But I also want to make a note.
Please leave time for me to ask you about the
threat to New York voters that Donald Trump issued should
they vote for Mamdanni in New York. But first let's
start with Yeah, can I.

Speaker 2 (01:34:28):
Do one thing before I forget mom, Donnie went to
my high school, the Bronx High School of Science. So
in due to your school, I want all of your listeners,
no bye bias, no by bias.

Speaker 1 (01:34:38):
Going okay, yeah, all right, all right, well more on
that as we continue, all right, what is what is
the state of the state on these various deployments that
will go to American cities, Portland and the rest.

Speaker 2 (01:34:52):
Well, I think that basically the Supreme Court, the courts
are going to do the right thing on this because
the idea that there is an emergency because the president
says there's an emergency, that's just not the law. I mean,
that's not the law on anything else. We don't have
fiots like that. If the tariff tariff case ends up
going the way that you think, Mark and the way

(01:35:14):
the economist Bot thinks it will, one of the reasons
will be because of foreign affairs, that the president has
more power in foreign affairs. But this is something that
is so it's so inside of what we stand for.
This is not foreign affairs. This is whether you can
send the military into our cities, whether you can send

(01:35:37):
the military against civilians. And we've had decades and decades
of finding that you can't. Ever since the Civil War especially,
people thought this is awful to send the military against citizens,
and only if there's a rebellion, Mark, or an insurrection.
There has not been in a rebellion or insurrection, and
courts decide all the time whether definitionally something happened or not.

(01:36:01):
So what the district judge who was I know her
and she was appointed by Trump, but she's a terrific judge.
She was appointed during the first term, and I think
she was probably better, he thought than the other people
in Democratic blew too, Democratic Senator's Oregon. And so he
accepted someone who was just terribly smart in middle of

(01:36:23):
the road, and she ruled against him on just what
I said that it was untethered to the reality, was
untethered to the facts on the ground. There has not
been rioting on a major scale that the local authorities
couldn't handle. That's this. You need to have an insurrection
or rebent and it has to be something that's shown
to be beyond what can be handled without sending in

(01:36:46):
the troops. So they then went to the ninth Circuit
and unfortunately the ninth Circuit panel was two judges picked
by Trump, and it was just it was like a
love letter, you know, between Bondie Trump and those two judges,
like they all they all like reading from the same
you know, prayer book. But it's not the law. They said, well,
it's up to the president to decide. We defer to
his discretion. No, not if there's not a if those

(01:37:09):
two elements are not met, if there's not a rebellion
or insurrection, and if it hasn't been shown that dealing
with it without the army, they could be dealt with
without the army. So there was nothing like that in Oregon.
Of course, we saw that down in LA there was
absolutely nothing like that, and that that decision still kind
of bouncing around. But fortunately La is not that much
of a problem anymore. I mean, there may be a

(01:37:31):
deployment tomorrow that makes it a huge problem, but most
of the Marines have been withdrawn. The National Guard had
been withdrawn from southern California, is my understanding, And so
that leaves us with Chicago. And so what's going to
happen with those two trumpy judges is that the third judge,
who was appointed by Clinton and is an excellent judge, Graver,
she immediately said this case should go to the full court.

(01:37:54):
And because she asked it go to the full court,
that started process going where both sides had to. They've
actually filed the briefs yesterday, Mark, so I think they'll
be what they call on banc, which is they get
twelve members of the court together and as a bench
they decide, not the three people picked randomly, but as
a bench they decide. I think there are the votes

(01:38:14):
on the Ninth Circuit to overturn that and to not
allow the deployment in Oregon, which was the Ninth Circuit
decides that that will bar the deployment in San Francisco,
and it'll bar it here in Los Angeles. That leaves Chicago,
where the Seventh Circuit already decided the way that I
just said, They already decided that the deployment cannot be
done in Chicago, and they may try to get that

(01:38:36):
on bank or take that to the Supreme Court. They've
taken one of these cases, the administration, to the Supreme Court.
But again, I have confidence in this Supreme Court because
there's just simply not a record. And as you watch
TV all the time, you know, I keep dreading the
fact that there'll be days of rioting, there'll be something
that the US Supreme Court, even though it's not in
the briefs, you know what I mean. If the whole

(01:38:58):
country is watching this on TV. In some areas convulsed
by riots that the police really can't handle. But that
hasn't happened. And that's why I'm so thankful to everybody
out in America who realizes that they're just playing into
Trump's hands. If they get violent, or if they do
something at night, you know, and if there are looters
and stuff like that, these local authorities have to arrest

(01:39:19):
the looters. If they're doing something illegal, they have to
prosecute the looters. If people are doing violent things. I mean,
you know, one of my surmises is that they're provocateurs.
They're really nothing but people who want to help Trump.
For all I know, they're people who got pardoned by Trump.
Am I being hyperbolic? No, somebody pardoned by Trump. Mark
just threatened to kill the minority leader, Kim Jeffries. King

(01:39:42):
Jeffries right, And it was reported in the media that
at least the FBI did a good job this time.
My understanding is that the FBI did not catch this
person Mark, that this was the state police in New York,
which is what I say all the time. The state
of New York, Illinois, California need to step up to
the plate. Don't wait for the FBI. To do stuff.
There's no reason why every FBI agent who's good, who

(01:40:04):
gets drummed out of the FBI isn't hired by the
California grew of Investigation, the New York Greer of Investigation.
Let them fight crime. And another example is marcis why
on my monologue excuse me? Is George Santos. I've been
saying for a long time. This is like Paul Mattiford's.
There ought to be a state prosecution as well as
the federal prosecution. It is foreseeable that Trump will pardon

(01:40:27):
people that no one in their right mind except Trump
would pardon. Or maybe he's not his right mind, but anyway,
nobody would pardon George Santos, the fabulous. He ripped out.
This guy took took money from some poor guy with
some story about his dog. The restitution fell when Trump
pardoned Santos. The restitution or to fell along with the
rest of Trump's commutation. He doesn't owe the people that

(01:40:50):
he ripped off. He doesn't owe the poor. I think
he was a paraplegic Vietnam, not Vietnam, but he's a veteran.
He's a veteran, and he swindled this fellow. It's all
in the record, it's all in the sentencing. He swindled
this fellow. He doesn't even have to pay him restitution.
This is a timely case that the States should bring
against him for those swindles, and they should put him
right back in jail after he gets due process, after

(01:41:12):
a fair sentencing. But from what I've seen of it,
he should go right back to jail because three months
was way too little. Take that from a criminal defense attorney.
Three months for Santos for what he did was way
too little.

Speaker 1 (01:41:23):
He took people's credit card numbers and ran up bills
to pay for lifestyle stuff for himself. You know what
I mean When yeah, I mean so.

Speaker 2 (01:41:34):
When you take a debit card, the credit card company
doesn't lose the poor guy who usually can't get a
credit card and so he desperately needs that money that's
on his debit card. The poor person loses the money
on his debit card, not the debit card company. When
a Santo's like that scams him.

Speaker 1 (01:41:51):
Yeah, no, it's true. I wanted to thank you for
visioning the question of the troops and the presence of
troops and deployment of troops and American cities. I wanted
to speak about the City of New York. The city
has already been hit by Donald Trump's retribution associated with

(01:42:13):
the monies that were already earmarked for so many of
these various infrastructure projects from the Holland Tunnel to the
West Side Highway, etc. I mean, we're talking about almost
twenty billion dollars that was directed toward blue cities and
blue states that's now been shut down because Donald Trump
wants to make a point and basically take it out

(01:42:34):
on the Democrats and democratically controlled cities and states. But
he took it to a different place, and I thought
this place is illegal, which is he told New Yorkers
that he would withhold funding for New York City if
Zoron Mamdani wins the general election this November. And I think,

(01:43:01):
I mean, there's nothing wrong with campaigning for a candidate,
if you wanted to go campaign for Cmo or whatever.
But I think if you're threatening like that, isn't that
like a voter intimidation or of some kind. There must
be laws, and I'm certain that there are laws that
proscribe against that.

Speaker 2 (01:43:19):
You know, Mark, every week we write the Bill of
particulars against Trump. How many pages log is it? Of
course you cannot do what he's doing. I mean you can,
I guess say it. It's a kind of shakedown talk.
You know, presidents don't talk that way, except Trump. But

(01:43:40):
there's several things wrong with it. One is impoundment. Even
if you didn't have that piece of you know, revenge,
political threatening the piece, you cannot impound funds if the
money is voted for New York for a certain purpose.
And we've had that over and over again with the impoundments.
And in fact, one of the things that Congress has
been doing to the Democratic minority is what they call

(01:44:03):
a recision. And a recision is lawful because you say,
later on, we the Congress that voted five billion dollars
for this project in New York, we've decided we're not
going to spend it in New York. And they rescind it.
They passed new legislation if they have enough votes. That
is not something good that happens to New York. But
that's legal. Trump doesn't want to do that because even
with these Republican majorities, he can't get the votes to

(01:44:26):
impound or rescind the funds. So to rescind the funds.
So two points on that he just impounds them himself
or threatens to impound them himself. That is illegal since
the days of Nixon, that's been found to be illegal.
There's binding US Supreme Court. President. Don't say to me
they changed Roe v. Wade and they did presidential immunity

(01:44:46):
for all we know they'll do that. I don't think
that they're going to change the impoundment laws. And one
of the things that the Democrats want in order to
join in it, you know, to reopen the government. They
want Trump to do as part of on reopening the
government is to have the Trump and the Democrat and
the Republicans agree not to do these recisions. Because what

(01:45:07):
they did with the spending bills was they told the Democrats, Okay,
we're going to share the loan, we're going to split
the love. We're going to give you ten million dollars
for project ten billion dollars for projects that you want,
and then they all signed. They got to the sixty votes,
and then the Republicans turned around and said, oh, we
want to re send that. We want to take that back.
And of course the Democrats are saying, we can't run

(01:45:29):
a government like that. We look first of all, you know,
you're always humiliating us. We look terrible with our voters.
The further left, the worse we look with those voters.
So we said, you know, we have to live with
these bastards. So we at least agreed to get ten
billion dollars for something that were our democratic priorities, and
then two months later they took it back. So that's
part of the deal that the Democrats want to make

(01:45:50):
to reopen the government is no recisions in the future
that what is it made in these compromises, Like if
they're going to spend one hundred billion dollars, let's say
so that the Obamacare subsidies will continue, so people don't
have these huge sticker shocks that they're having right now
with their health premiums that you know, a month from now,
they don't say, oh, well, wait a second, we agreed

(01:46:10):
to one hundred billion dollars where we're rescinding, we're only
making it fifty. And can I say one more thing
about New York because I followed this this campaign, you
have three fascinating characters which let you have the floor
and talk about.

Speaker 1 (01:46:22):
No, no, no, this is AHA shake it up election
go ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:46:26):
One is Cuomo. Uh, and of course he's very unpopular.
And then there's a fellow who has this guardian angels.

Speaker 1 (01:46:33):
So this felm for.

Speaker 2 (01:46:34):
About forty years has run around with a red beret.
He's a colorful figure. He's a Republican. So he's had
no chance of winning much of anything. But he stayed
in the race.

Speaker 1 (01:46:44):
And so you have Well I'll tell you. I'll tell
you a way that he could. I tell you a
way that he could put on a show. Slee. Well,
if Cuomo drops out, then I think many votes could
go to Sleegel. I don't know if he could win,
but all of a sudden he becomes way way more relevant.

Speaker 2 (01:46:58):
Uh, cats do I don't. I don't pretty.

Speaker 1 (01:47:02):
A long shot. I don't need cats adamas.

Speaker 2 (01:47:04):
On that take it to the bank.

Speaker 1 (01:47:10):
I'm not even giving you credit. If that happens, come
on as a front runner. But it was a fascinating
election and uh, and New York may become a very
interesting place, you know, Uh, given some of the policies
that Mamdanie has articulated, and.

Speaker 2 (01:47:28):
You know, people haven't followed it. The slima on the right,
he's the one who wears usually the red beret for
his guardian angels, and he didn't wear the red beret.
And he's a good speaker, and he had a couple
of great lines that Cuobo said, you know when things
have gone up so much since I left, And Slieveer
went right in there and said, you didn't leave. You

(01:47:50):
ran away from the impeachment by your fellow Democrats. You
didn't leave. I do hug and kiss people casually.

Speaker 1 (01:48:00):
Yes, yeah, that's a that's if that's the best you
can do, the best explanation. Uh, I thought mum Donnie
was brilliant as well. I mean he pivoted with a
lot of Cuomo stuff as well, on everything from uh
the incompetence associated with his dominance in New York politics,
as to COVID handling, you know, the essentially the seniors

(01:48:26):
being getting a death sentence essentially because of the moving
into these retirement homes of people with COVID. I mean,
he he botched COVID, never really owned it, and Mamdannie
was there to show him the receipts. And then of
course the question of his relationship with various religious communities
in New York. It was a It was a I thought,

(01:48:47):
a really fiery debate, and both Mamdannie and as you say, Slee,
well they both really managed it. CMO's real high ground.
From a debate standpoint, it seemed was these guys don't
know what they're doing. You need somebody who really has
experience when it comes to running a city of this size.
And their retort was, yeah, we've seen your experience. You
screwed stuff up in a big, big way.

Speaker 2 (01:49:09):
So well, Mom, Donnie's great line. Fellow Bronx science alum,
he said, we've experienced your experience. That's why people are
voting for you. Quota.

Speaker 1 (01:49:19):
Yeah, very very good. Quickly, David, I wanted to just
mention that the uh the handing down of a judicial
decision about the Pentagon and the book ban at US
military schools. I covered it a little bit yesterday, but
I just thought it was worth the noting. It was
kind of it's a feather in your cap. This is
what I mean. I'm the grim one who always says,

(01:49:39):
you know, the justicism isn't going to help you out.
They're not going they're going to let you down. They're
not going to restrain Trump. They're not going to restrain
heg Seth. Well, in this case, actually to your credit,
David Katz or you know, with your faith in the
judicial system, they did restrain the Pentagon and they said
you cannot dry clean the libraries of all of these
books that have have to do with a black history,

(01:50:00):
with Dei et cetera.

Speaker 2 (01:50:03):
Well, it's astonishing. Apparently they run a lot of libraries
both in this country and I guess that's some foreign
US bases, and so the Department of Defense decides what
books are in there. I mean, like they don't have
anything better to do, like make sure China doesn't take Taiwan,
like make sure we're doing the right thing in Ukraine.
And we don't have anything better to do than to
go through and figure out whether this book or that book.

(01:50:26):
And you know, it's stuff that woud probably blow your mind.
I mean it might be stuff like you know, D's
like like an analysis, just an analysis of our history.
One thing that shocked me. I used to think that,
you know, it was kind of overblown. And you know
a lot of these debates who are about like ten
you know, gay lifestyle books and then you say it's
every book about American history. I mean they clean these

(01:50:49):
things up. Books about slavery. We had slavery in this country.
That was the original sin. We're still dealing with the
aftermath of slavery.

Speaker 1 (01:50:56):
Anybody, one of the books was called ABC of Equality.

Speaker 2 (01:51:02):
How could you not be an education this country, an
educated person, and not know about slavery reconstruction, what happened,
you know, racially in this country. It's just astonishing. Anyway,
the federal judge ordered that they put the books back.
At least it was an interesting decision because I guess
there were only certain certain books or certain libraries. So

(01:51:23):
the judge limited it to the certain books and the
certain libraries. But they'll be follow up lawsuits that say no,
no other books. Really by the same reasoning, they should
be put back, and they should be put back at
all of these Department of Defense libraries quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:51:37):
David Katz in Arizona, the AG is suing to force
House Speaker Johnson to seat Democratic elected and elected by
quite a large margin, Representative Grijalva. Can you speak to
this case and this lawsuit.

Speaker 2 (01:51:52):
The reason this one matters so much is that she'll
be the vote that's needed for the discharge petition on
the Epstein. So with her vote, there'll be enough to
have the House pass a bill that says, Department of Justice,
you must discharge these charge of petition that says you

(01:52:12):
have to. Now will Trump find a way to prevent that,
But at least we'll see well and others once they
do the discharge petition Mark, we'll see all the ways
that Trump, Bondie and Todd Blanche cash ptel the FBI,
how they try to thwart it, how they try to
play games with it. And that is one thing that

(01:52:33):
actually enlivens the magabase to sort of understand that, you know,
Trump Patel, that these are not good people, these are
not what they thought they were electing. So it'll make
them play a lot of games. And she's the two
hundred and eighteenth vote. I think that's that's the amount
that they need, and she is that vote. They haven't
shaken anybody from their positions, so she'll be that vote.

(01:52:55):
So he wants to delay her the speaker as long
as he can. So she finally said, you know, they
have protests back there that say swear her in, swear
her in. The Speaker's not swearing her in. And so
there's a lawsuit that's now been filed. I think the
lawsuit's overdue. I think it should have been filed the
first week that the speaker didn't swear her in. And
I think that it's meritorious because they now don't have

(01:53:17):
any representation. There's a properly elected person. There's an idea
everyone's supposed to have representation. There's eight hundred thousand people
in each congressional district and they elect somebody under their
state procedures. She's been elected under their state procedure. He's not.
It's a ministerial duty of his to swear her in.
And that district now doesn't have they have. Someone said

(01:53:37):
taxation without representation, they do, they do. They're like the colonies, right,
they got to pay taxes in that district in Arizona,
and their representative won't be seated by the opposing party.
I think she'll she'll win that lawsuit.

Speaker 1 (01:53:49):
The ruthlessness of the GOP is something on display in
a way that we typically I think haven't seen in
politics across the board, on issue after issue, and this
is one more way in which they're ruthless. David, thank
you for hanging out again. You can find him on
news Nation tomorrow. He's doing a big News Nation thing

(01:54:10):
that he does on News Nation. He's an analyst. It's
a big he's a big deal. He's a big I
get it. I get it. We're kind of like I
feel like you were the rehearsal for like when you
go on NewsNation.

Speaker 2 (01:54:23):
I got to News nation's getting more audience. So it's
like you Mark, you know, it's it's growing, it's becoming
more popular, so why not be part of it?

Speaker 1 (01:54:32):
No, absolutely, I'm only giving you a hard time, so
I'm excited to see that. And of course you can
find him here on Thursdays. Cats, You're wonderful and we
so appreciate our time with you. Have a great week
and break your leg tomorrow on the News Nation and
across the English speaking world as we see you on
more and more outlets that appreciate your great legal analysis.

(01:54:53):
Appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:54:54):
Pal, Thank you, Thank you so much. Great to be
with all you guys.

Speaker 6 (01:54:58):
Bravo, Bravo.

Speaker 1 (01:55:03):
Yeah, thanks for slumming with us, David Katz, Yeah, right exactly.
Thank you sal the Shoemaker for making that point. Yeah, Kim, Yeah,
I wanted to do one story. I know we're a
little bit. It was toward the end of the show,
but I really did want to get to one story.
It's a Pete Hegseth story. And I saw it today

(01:55:24):
as I was preparing for the show, and Albert did
I Did I put it in or not? Oh my god,
did I not put it in?

Speaker 3 (01:55:34):
Did we talk about San Francisco? Did you did?

Speaker 1 (01:55:37):
No? No mention that while I look for this, Yeah,
I wanted to.

Speaker 3 (01:55:40):
And I don't know if Albert can throw up the
Trump's truth social post, but the White House Trump was
set to send in extra ice agents, National Guard. We
don't know what kind of surge was coming supposedly this
weekend to San Francisco, and it now seems that that

(01:56:01):
is not going to happen. According to this truth social
post made by Trump, he says federal agents will not
be sent to San Francisco, that he was getting ready
to surge the city with agents to crack down on
crime and immigration, but he says friends in the area
asked him not to move forward with it.

Speaker 1 (01:56:22):
He said, the trends, the tech community, which supported Trump
in a big way, as you know, they're the ones
who said, please don't send troops here. And so now
he's not.

Speaker 3 (01:56:34):
So they told him that Mayor Daniel Lurie is making
progress in San Francisco. And then Trump talked to Mayor
Luriy last night who asked him to give him a chance,
luri a chance to turn it around. Trump said people
he respects have called him saying the future of the
city is great. So as a result, Trump said they

(01:56:55):
will not surge San Francisco. On Saturday, san Francisco gets
a repri from the federal takeover.

Speaker 1 (01:57:02):
Wow, there you go. I mean that is big news
because it was odd that he was quick to put
San Francisco on the list. You know, I had found
something and Albert, can you I sent you a picture
of Hegseth in the in the fighter jet. It's the
top gun thing.

Speaker 2 (01:57:22):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:57:23):
Yeah, so you know one of the things Hegseth is
a poser, Okay, heg Seth is an incompetent. I don't
want to say a guy with no military experience, because
he actually did have military experience, but we've we've talked
about his limited experience and essentially he's a talking head.
He was hired because he was, you know, out of

(01:57:43):
central casting. The way that Trump has hired a lot
of these people. He speaks well on television and he's
a dogged defender of a Donald Trump. But a lot
of what he does is performative. And so it is
with his latest in which he plays like Tom Cruise's

(01:58:04):
Top Gun character. You see him there in the plane.
That is your director of operations at the Pentagon. Yeah,
he handles the Department of Defense. Well, it turns out
that that was a total fraud. He doesn't know how

(01:58:26):
to fly a plane. He has received no flight training.
But that picture again reminiscent of Top Gun and the
Tom Cruise character that was posted on social media by
Hegxeth to again suggest his prowess and his flex and

(01:58:48):
everything else that's implied by that picture, when the reality
is he was a passenger on that flight. All done
for social media, all done to simply create an image.
So that's your latest word out of the Pentagon. This

(01:59:10):
as the Pentagon spoils for war. I mean, the reality
is quite a stark one that the reality of these
strikes on drug vessels. There have been two more, as
you know, this time on the Pacific side. Five people
were killed. And now this is nine known strikes against

(01:59:38):
alleged narcotics trafficking boats since last month, thirty seven deaths.
The first seven strikes were with the Caribbean Sea, but
this has the Eastern Pacific. And again it is not
clear that everybody involved in these various the casualties associated

(01:59:58):
with this traffickers. In fact, there seems to be evidence
that at least a handful of them were just fishermen.
So this was announced by Pete Hegseth, the same guy
who was in that fighter jet. He suggested that the
boats were operated by quote a designated terrorist organization and

(02:00:20):
we're transiting along a known narcotic trafficking route in international waters.
They were known by our intelligence, he said, to be
involved in illicit narcotic smuggling. He didn't specify the organization
that allegedly operated these boats. So he shared videos of
the strikes. And as you know, I think that there's

(02:00:42):
kind of a snuff video aspect to this, kind of
you're watching these people who may be innocents being killed
by US ordinance. So I'm very suspicious of this move.
And the other thing that really bears touching on anyway

(02:01:06):
is the way in which the door is now open
and has been spoken of quite openly by this president
to a land battle in Venezuela. The Trump administration saying
to Congress that the US is in a non international

(02:01:28):
armed conflict with drug cartels, arguing that the narcotics they
smuggle killed tens of thousands of Americans every year, and
this that is to say that smuggling constitutes an armed
attack on the US. Then, as you know, they had
two men who survived one of these attacks and they

(02:01:50):
were repatriated to their countries, Ecuador and Colombia. So they
found no evidence in the case of those two guys
that they had committed a crime. So I don't quite
understand it. Are you saying that there happened to be
two guys who didn't commit any crime, that they were
alongside a lot of other narco terrorists, they just happened

(02:02:10):
to be they were catching a ride. I mean, it
just doesn't make any sense. The whole thing doesn't track.
So what's happening now is I think the increased conversation
around some kind of armed conflict and how these things
can easily end up in a much bigger situation than

(02:02:35):
even Trump or heg Seth could anticipate. Meaning they don't
really think it through for them. It's a military flex.
They are playing with fire and I very much worry
about what is going to happen, and Mike, we end
up in an armed conflict in Latin America.

Speaker 3 (02:02:53):
Well, it's not only the drug boats, the alleged drug
boats being blown up, but Trump has called Nicolas Maduro
illegitimately elected. Trump is threatening land action in Venezuela, saying
it might not just be blowing up the drug boats.
And we know that he's populated US warships and US
troops now in the Caribbean area. So it's kind of

(02:03:15):
an escalation of maybe provocation of some type of more
serious conflict with Venezuela.

Speaker 1 (02:03:22):
Exactly, thank you, exactly. They want regime change. So again,
go back and build your ballroom. Okay, the three hundred
million dollar grift that is your ballroom where every corporate

(02:03:43):
entity from Meta to Google to Palanteer, they all have
a piece of the action. They're all going to donate
to your ballroom, just as they've donated to your inauguration,
and they've donated to your other enterprises, as they have
invested with various Trump related projects. Go back to that

(02:04:07):
grift because the price that's being paid by Americans right
now for the chaos of tariffs, of the government shutdown,
of all of these half baked policies, the bailout of
Argentina to handle the hedge fund community that is so

(02:04:29):
heavily invested in Argentina that they need that bailout. These
are all things that are wildly damaging to Americans. As
the inflationary spiral continues, as the snapcheck checks, and as
all of the various social programs are discontinued during this
government shut down, and even as government employees, everyone from

(02:04:52):
air traffic controllers to TSA workers, they don't get checks.
They're literally having to look into go far under me
campaigns for them. Go do your ballroom, because this stuff,
the battles you've chosen domestically and now in Latin America,

(02:05:13):
it's serious stuff and there are serious prices being paid
as a result. Trump wants to Venezuelan oil. That is
the main motivation for him, says Ole Hansen. No, maybe
it's that too, wouldn't surprise me quickly, the Trump administration,
says Vilma, spending money like drunken sailors. I believe the
taxpayer is going to end up paying for the grotesque

(02:05:35):
White House ballroom. Of course that's true. Filma is one
hundred percent right. Thank you for the five dollars super chat.
I was saying that before. I mean the two hundred
and thirty million it's close to three hundred million dollar
check that you and I are going to write to
him for whatever damages as a result of these legal cases.
That's his latest thing. He can come up with those
every couple of months. You know. Another way that I

(02:05:56):
was in a grief party by this government is fill
in the bland. Think it's it's grift on parade. Tom
Graves says, fraud, waste and abuse, hates competition. Yeah, ain't
that true. I hear Trump hired undocumented workers and plans
to deport them after this, so no taxpayer money will

(02:06:17):
be used, no harm, no foul. Wouldn't surprise me. That
was the case in New York, as you know, if
you've read dab K Johnston's stuff, it was all those
Polish workers that were you know, then stiffed. Am I
your favorite a delamator? You are, Richard? You are my
favorite delamator. Richard delamator with the two dollars A super
chat the Epstein Memorial Ballroom. I know they really should
call it that. I think that's a great, great idea.

Speaker 4 (02:06:43):
The only reason I'm here is because you are a friend.

Speaker 1 (02:06:46):
Uh that's my elon, so happy it's called a corruption mark.
The actual cost is fifty million. Then Trump pockets the
rest exactly paging auditors. Yeah, thank you, Cci Rider. That
does sound out right. I don't understand how you spend
three hundred million dollars on the ball room. Don't understand it.
You know, I know we've seen no plans, we've seen

(02:07:06):
a you know. Now, I'm not saying I should have
approval of the plans, but I'm saying somebody should. It's
this this guy and this crew does what they want.
So I'm so I think I can't really respond to
these of that going into a thing. On the elections,

(02:07:34):
Republican in Florida ran a very strong campaign encouraging people
not to use mail in ballots, but go to the
election officers to vote for to vote for fear fraud. Okay,
now I'll accept that, tolle Bob. It did seem though overwhelming.
You know that you did all the Republicans just vote

(02:07:57):
in person, Okay. I don't know. The skewing mostly had
to do with the in person vote, and so you
could have that surge of Republicans. I'm not saying you
heard me ask good Nathan about that, but it just
did seem a little overwhelming. That's all Buck. That's something

(02:08:17):
to buck here was Buck. There's no conspiracy theory here.
Mark Harris just sucked as a Democratic candidate. Progressives didn't
vote for her. I agree with that. I suck might overstated,
but I thought she was really weak. Never was a
big Harris a fan. And people in my audience hate
me when I say this. They don't like it when
I say any when I have any criticism for Biden

(02:08:39):
or any criticism for Harris, I went to read you
an email I'll read it tomorrow about how I criticized
the Hunter Biden deal where he was on the corporate board.
How can you criticize him. I was making the point
the other day that his participation in that, you know,
the Ukrainian energy deal it was for was it ten
million dollars? That's nothing compared to the Trump grift by

(02:09:02):
their kids. I thought the Hunter Biden I was making
a point about for Biden. But even that wasn't good.
My audience just doesn't want anything said about Hunter Biden.
What I was simply making the point about was the
fact that this crew, the Trump kids, are literally involved

(02:09:23):
in a grift that makes whatever Hunter Biden made on
his best year because he was a Biden makes it
look like a rounding error. So I was making a
point that the grift associated with the Trump crew is
so much greater than the very things they accused Hunter
Biden of. But even when I made that point, it
was like, don' don't say anything about Hunter Biden. Do

(02:09:44):
much inno it? Oh? Okay, gosh, I'm sorry anyway. I
don't know how I got off on that, but I'm
glad I did. It was a lot of fun, all right.
How dare you play that music? Albert? When I'm I'm
just I'm just beginning my rants, Albert? How dare you.

Speaker 2 (02:10:05):
Got why are you yelly?

Speaker 6 (02:10:08):
We have a poker game to We have.

Speaker 1 (02:10:12):
A rigged poker game to go to go attend to
Who's Who's the fish? Mark is always the fish? All right,
tomorrow Moe Kelly joins us, uh, Michael Shore joins us.

Speaker 7 (02:10:26):
And I know I ever occurred to you that instead
of uh you know running around. Uh you know, given
the nature of all this news, you know, this could
be a lot more uh uh uh a complex. I mean,
it's not just it might not be just such a simple.

Speaker 1 (02:10:45):
Uh you know, I have I'm scheffer of Stevens for
the Mark Johnson Show. Two M I T. Professors join
us tomorrow too.

Speaker 8 (02:10:56):
Yeah, all right at a time, bye bye, yes, put

Speaker 2 (02:12:00):
On

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