For the first time ever, Republicans are winning a government shutdown; the courts sign off on President Trump's takeover of Portland, and Robert DeNiro crashes out (again)
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We live in extraordinary times.
We can communicate across the world in real time.
We can travel to outer space.
But most impressive of all, Republicans are finally winning a government shutdown fight.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
We have the Chief of Staff from the Department of Justice.
He just left the DOJ.
He is stopping by the show to give us the update on all of Trump sending in the National Guard and all the court fights, a little bit of Jeffrey Epstein.
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They said it couldn't be done.
This was a moonshot.
This is I know I know some opinions vary on the internet about the moon, and but actually it doesn't matter, regardless of what you think happened with with the moon, because this is more impressive.
Republicans have never won a government shutdown fight ever in the entire history of the law of government.
Going back to Imperial Athens, going back to King Tut, and the code of Hammurabi.
Republicans always lose the shutdown fight.
And you know how much I hate to say I told you so.
You will recall when the government was about to be shut down because of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats.
I said, I think they're overplaying their hand.
I think this is a little bit different.
Trump won the popular vote.
Trump has unified government.
No one can seriously be duped into thinking that the Republicans shut down this government.
Well, you don't just need to take my accurate word for it.
Here is CNN.
That's exactly right.
Turns out shutdowns are different the second time around when it comes to Donald Trump.
Take a look here.
You know, we speak about Donald Trump shutdowns, net approval rating.
We're talking 20 days into it.
In 2018 slash 2019, Donald Trump's net approval rating was already falling.
The shutdown was eating in and it was popular support.
It was down three points already at this particular point and would fall considerably more.
It was very much on the decline.
You come over to this side of the screen, this shutdown hasn't eaten in the Donald Trump support at all.
His net approval rating is actually up a point and in terms of it in terms of his popular support.
So the bottom line is this The first shutdown during Trump's first term, 2018-2019, was hurting Donald Trump.
This one is not hurting him at all.
There's no real reason Donald Trump might say, at least when it comes to popular support, I want to get out of the shutdown.
What about the question of blame?
Yeah, okay.
What about the question of blame?
Okay, you see here, you see Donald Trump's net approval rating was down 2018 to 2019.
You talk about 2025 as net approval rating is up.
It comes down to the blame game, a game I loved to play when I was younger.
Blame Trump for the shutdown a great deal.
In 2018-2019, 61% more than three in five Americans blame Trump a great deal for that particular shutdown.
You come over to this side of the screen, look at this.
It's a different world.
It's a different world.
What did I tell you?
What did I tell you?
A lot of people could not see this coming.
Because people believe that past is always precedent in politics.
And one of the key features on the left and the right of the pundits who always get everything wrong and then they keep getting everything wrong.
The key feature is a failure of political imagination.
And I go back to a quote frequently from Cardinal Manning, who says, There is a time to come that will confound the confident judgments of men.
We have these confident judgments, one of which is, to bring it back down to earth and really temporal politics.
The Republicans are always going to get blamed for the shutdown.
And I said, I don't think so.
Trump won the popular vote as a Republican for the first time in 20 years.
He got one in five black guys to vote for him.
He got almost half of Hispanics.
We got 40% of women under the age of 30.
We have an increasing number of young people coming over.
I don't think you can use the calculus from 2012, 2008, 2016 for that matter.
In 2025, I just don't think it works.
The people gave the Republicans, the House, the Senate, the Presidency, the Supreme Court.
I don't think you can use the calculus of 2012-2016.
Furthermore, not only have the establishment media been pantsed on live TV, not only have they been revealed to be total liars.
Many of us have known they're total liars for decades now.
But COVID, I think especially proved them to be liars.
A lot of the Trump presidency, when they got infected with terminal TDS, we'll get to Robert De Niro's latest, latest outburst of TDS, because it's really illustrative.
But we a lot of people saw that.
And this ties into 2024 too.
They got the election wrong.
They were so confident going into 2024 that Trump was going down, and Trump was Hitler, and he was an existential threat to democracy.
And he'd be kicked off the ballot, and he needed to be prosecuted four times, and they had to go raid his wife's linen closet in Mar-a-Lago.
And and and then he wins, and not only does he win, he wins the popular vote.
And at that point, it wasn't just the conservatives who tuned them out.
It was the liberals who tuned them out.
CNN's ratings went down, not because conservatives stopped watching, conservatives weren't watching at all.
MSNBC's ratings went down.
All of them.
So that had a compounding effect because now you didn't even have these establishment news channels who could sell the lie that the Democrats were innocent in the shutdown and the Republicans were the cause of it.
Anyway, the numbers don't lie.
CNN, weirdly enough, right now, does not lie.
They have to grapple with the fact that we're in a different political world.
And this cuts both ways, by the way.
It cuts to the bright side, which is, well, we might be able to do a lot more with government than we thought.
Maybe our country isn't totally lost.
Wow, maybe we have a chance to turn things around.
It cuts that way.
Also, we might have a civil war.
We might have a civil war.
You know, you know I'm not a catastrophizer.
I'm not one of these people who says we're always on the brink of civil war and it's the end of the world.
I am not that guy.
But I don't, I don't want to err too much on the other side either.
I don't want to say it can't happen.
It can happen.
There is a time to come that will reverse the confident judgments of men.
And if you, in the year of our Lord, 2025, still suffer from a failure of political imagination, fix it, because we are in, as CNN says, a different world.
Here's another good example.
How?
President Trump is sending in the National Guard to restore order in cities around the country, such as Chicago, such as Portland.
And then we hear from the left that uh this is authoritarian, and that's why they have their no kings protests, the boomiest, cringiest political uh protests that we've maybe ever seen in American history.
And it's unclear what The protest is about.
It can't really be about anything too substantive because Trump is winning popular support on all the substantive issues crime, immigration, the economy.
So it has to be about these abstract issues, authoritarianism, the abuse of power.
And one of the chief claims is Trump is usurping power that does not belong to him when he sends the National Guard into the cities.
That's the claim by the Democrat governors and the Democrat members of Congress and the Democrat talking heads.
He needs to abide by the law.
Well, the law just weighed in.
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has just ruled that President Trump can send the National Guard into Portland.
I feel like I'm on the Maury Povich Show.
Deshaun, you are the father.
The results are in, you are the father.
Trump, you are legally allowed to send the National Guard in to restore cities in Blue City to restore safety to blue cities.
You can do that.
That's what the National Guard is for.
I was on Piers Morgan's show, what was it, a week ago?
I was talking to a perfectly nice Democrat congressman who was really apparently out of his depth when it comes to the law.
Because he said, Donald Trump is violating the law.
When he sends in these National Guard, he's violating the law.
I said, well, you know, the law he's citing is the Insurrection Act.
The insurrection act says that the federal government can send in the National Guard to restore order.
So how's he violating the law?
He said, it is, it is an insurance, is not allowed to do that.
That's illegal.
It's breaking the law.
I said, how?
I just cited you the law that Trump is using to do that.
He said, Do you know what that law does?
Do you know what that law is?
And he couldn't answer the question.
Piers and I had a great deal of fun going back and forth on it because here you have a legislator, a guy whose job it is to know the law and to make the laws.
He didn't even know that.
Well, you now have the executive branch saying, yes, this is how the law works, we're allowed to do it, and you have the judiciary.
Talk about no kings.
Now what now their next their next protest is going to be no judges either.
No executive authority.
You got to protest that branch.
No judicial authority.
They don't like the courts anymore because the courts keep siding with Trump.
And we're going to be speaking to the chief of staff of the DOJ later.
We're going to get the inside scoop on those court rulings.
And then by the way, by the way, the Republicans control the legislature too.
All right?
The Republicans have the House and they have the Senate.
The Democrats can obstruct from their minority position.
They can shut down the government even sometimes, but they don't actually control those houses either.
So it's not just that the Democrats are protesting the presidency, no kings.
They're also apparently protesting the judiciary.
And they're also protesting the legislature.
They're protesting the entire American government, which is a representative government, it's self-government, which means they're protesting you.
They don't like that you unanimously gave power to the Republicans.
They don't like that.
So they say, absurdly, that it's undemocratic when the people vote for their opponents.
It's what it went any election that they lose, I guess, is illegitimate.
But that's who they're protest.
They're not protesting Trump.
They're not protesting a king.
They are protesting you.
And they're getting very, very nasty about it.
Just wait till you hear what the mayor of Chicago just said about this obviously legal court has ruled on it.
Necessary responsible action from the president.
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The people want Trump to restore order.
The people vote for Trump to restore order.
The courts say that Trump is allowed to restore order.
Here's what the mayor of Chicago says.
Look, we're already in the mix, right?
You know, the president of the United States of America declared war on the city of Chicago.
And in fact, he's declared war on working people across this country.
And in order for us to beat back this tyranny, it's going to take all of us to be organized and to be clear about our demands, making sure that our schools are funded, health care is fully funded, transportation, good paying jobs.
These are the things that the people of this country desperately need, particularly at a time in which the ultra-rich continue to get richer under this administration.
Trump has declared war on the city of Chicago by, let me check my notes here, sending in police to stop Chicagoans from being murdered.
Is it two Chicagoans a day get murdered?
Some weekends it'll be 11 people get murdered over the course of a weekend, and then the city of Chicago says, well, it was a holiday weekend.
Trump laughed about this.
He said, that's your excuse?
It's a holiday.
For holidays, we let them murder more people.
You have something like a hundred thousand gang members in Chicago.
City of Chicago fails to protect the people.
The president says, okay, we're going to bring in federal resources to protect Chicagoans from being murdered, specifically from being murdered.
And you say that's declaring war on Chicago?
You don't even believe that.
You know how I know you don't believe that, mayor of Chicago?
Because what did you say?
You said in order for us to beat back this tyranny, it's going to take us all to be organized and be clear about our demands.
Our demands, making sure that our schools are funded, healthcare is fully funded, transportation, good paying jobs.
These are the things people desperately need, especially at this time.
Okay.
Hold on.
You're not saying that in order to stop tyranny, you are going to provide the resources to your people.
No, no, you're talking about demands.
You're not, you know you're the mayor, right?
You know that you're the one who's supposed to be providing these things.
He doesn't say that, though, because he's not providing those things.
He's not providing safety.
He's not providing good education.
The education is a complete disaster in Chicago.
He's not providing anything that he should be doing.
So he all the only thing he can provide are demands of whom?
Demands of Trump.
Demands of the federal government.
The goyons on this guy to say Trump is declaring war on us by helping us by doing some of the things that I want him to do, namely make sure our city is safe.
But forget about that.
He's declaring war on us.
I am demanding that he give us more money for more slush projects that I want.
How many, just historically speaking, how many warring nations pay for all of their opponents' luxuries and public resources?
Does that sound like a war to you?
You know when when Rome is fighting Carthage?
Does that does the mayor of Carthage get up and he say, hey, we hate Rome, and we demand that Rome pay for our education and our housing and our transportation?
We're very upset at Rome.
We don't like Rome.
We're at war with Rome, obviously.
And that's why they need to give us even more money for the things that we can't provide for ourselves.
Does that is that what happens in war?
Is that World War II?
Germany said, after Germany declared war on the United States, they said, you will pay for our schools.
How dare you?
I don't know, it's become kind of a Greta Thunberg accent.
That's not the right.
I don't know.
My accents are I'm traveling around central Europe, it's they're getting a little jumbled.
Is that what happened?
Did Emperor Hirohito say, oh, you will give us some more electric cars?
Get us those electric cars.
We're at war.
No, that's not what warring nations do.
He doesn't even believe it.
He's the two-pit.
If there is a tin-pot dictator here, it's the mayor of Chicago.
He's a two-bit failed ruler.
There are plenty of leaders of banana republics who have more legitimacy than this Joker.
And he's whining and screaming while President Trump does his job for him after winning the popular vote.
The TDS is very, very strong.
It is, as you know, very widespread, increasingly less widespread.
It's been contained since 2024, but it's still a widespread and fatal disease.
Robert De Niro, the actor has contracted a worse case than just about anyone.
Here it sums up the De Niro view, the De Niro lib view, shared by an unfortunately large number of people, of Donald Trump and how the liberals should treat the conservatives.
Trump does not understand anything about humanity, people.
He has no empathy.
I don't know where what he is, but he's an alien.
And he wants to hurt this country.
It's something deeply psychological in him.
He wants to hurt people.
Hold on.
You catch that?
Did you catch it?
I'm going to read it again, just for those in the back, if you didn't hear Raging Bull.
Trump does not understand anything about humanity.
He has no empathy.
I don't know what he is, but he's an alien.
He wants to hurt this country.
It's deeply psychological, he wants to hurt people.
The people who all the time whine and scream about how Trump is dehumanizing, how we dehumanize people.
We dehumanize minorities, an increasing number of whom voted for Trump.
We dehumanize trans children, a category that does not exist.
That's not a real category of people.
We dehum we stop, you need to stop dehumanizing people, Trump.
Because you're not human.
Catch that?
That's what he's saying.
Every accusation is a confession with these people.
Trump does not understand anything about humanity.
In other words, he is no human.
He then goes further, he says, I don't know what he is, but he's an alien.
In other words, he's not a human.
He wants to hurt people, so he's saying he's already justifying some kind of violence against Trump.
It's not quite rising to the level of incitement, say if you say he wants to hurt people.
Now, in the context of the left increasingly murdering Republicans, even so much so that even the Atlantic had to admit there's a left-wing terrorism problem now.
In that context, this probably does kind of rise to the level of incitement, but forget about that line.
Just that first line.
Trump does not understand anything about humanity.
That is dehumanizing.
And that is what the libs do to us.
That is why the libs are likely to end friendships over politics in a way that conservatives simply don't, and all of the social scientific data back that up.
It's why they're the libs are unwilling to date people who are conservative in ways that conservatives don't feel the same way.
It's why liberals will lose their family members.
They'll just they'll divorce their families, disown themselves from their families over politics.
Conservatives generally do not do that.
It's why they justify political violence.
In part it is, it is dehumanizing.
And it has been true for a long time, though.
That for the libs, because they are unfamiliar, because they're unfamiliar with what we actually believe, because they're just not exposed to it a lot, because the libs own the media and the schools.
Because the libs uh generally don't have a sturdy understanding of morality, because liberalism comes down to the maximizing of individual autonomy, and that's about it.
And they're generally skeptical of every metaphysical and immaterial reality beyond that.
Because they don't have a sturdy conception of reality, because their views are ultimately in out of harmony with reality, so that makes them a little bit angrier.
For these reasons and many more.
The left can only come to two conclusions about conservatives.
It's either that we're stupid or that we're evil.
I'm not the first to say it, it's almost become cliche, but it's it's pretty good.
It's cliche for a reason.
They have to think we're really powerfully stupid, or for those of us who, I don't know, have a relatively wider vocabulary or who, you know, have uh been in positions of power or gone to elite institutions or any For those who can't just be written off as dumb, stupid Bubba sucking his thumb.
They have to conclude that we're evil.
You you could be the most generous, gracious look at Charlie.
Charlie would be a good example of this.
They can't really say he's stupid, right?
They couldn't really say it.
So he had to be evil.
He could be the most gracious, generous guy, peaceful, doesn't matter, he has to be evil, and they have to celebrate his murder at the No Kings protests.
Not just like fringe Antifa operatives, elementary school teachers are going to celebrate his murder and laugh about it and joke about it at the No Kings rally.
They have to do that.
And if they do it to him, they do it to all of you.
Because for conservatives, the left drives us crazy, and some of them are legitimately very violent and have to be constrained by the law.
They have to face social sanction and all the rest of it.
But generally, we understand them and we have an affection for them, at least as our countrymen, at least as our fellow human beings.
What De Niro is saying is, no.
Sorry.
You're not even a human being.
No surprise.
He's just articulating what the left has been conveying with its behavior, at least for several weeks now.
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This was a beauty.
Headline.
This is, I think it's from the telegraph, is where this one, yeah.
It was covered all over the press, though.
Pete Heggseth's tie causes diplomatic spat.
Pete Heggseth's tie was a Russian tie.
That's what the media said.
The Secretary of War was accused of wearing the colors of the Russian tricolor during a meeting with Vladimir Zelensky.
What the heck?
This proves Trump's been colluding with the Russians.
We've suspected it all along.
I mean, because that's what the Democrats cooked up with the FBI to frame President Trump spy in his campaign and undermine his administration.
He was colluding with the Russians, remember.
Here is the proof.
Why would the United States Secretary of War wear the colors of the Russian flag, which are red, white, and blue?
Those are the colors.
Maybe you didn't know.
I don't know.
Maybe people don't pay attention.
But you're like, what are they the colors of the Russian flag?
It's red, white, and blue.
Why would the Secretary of War in America wear red, white, and blue on his tie?
There have been a lot of stupid nontroversies cooked up, BS, including the Russia hoax, obviously.
But this one I think takes the cake.
Pete had, I kid you not, a pocket square with the the literal American flag.
To compliment his red, white, and blue flag.
Russian Russian stooge.
Just take note of that little media tempest in a teapot.
Take note of that.
Because that's like every story in the establishment media.
And you look at that one, you say, man, that is the dumbest, that is the most ridiculous stretch Nonsense I've ever heard to try to attack the admin.
That's that's all of it.
All of it is some version of Stop the presses!
A cabinet secretary wore red, white, and blue.
He must be in the KGB.
So to pull it all back on No Kings.
Also British press, Times of London has this story here, which is about the Americans who want monarchy.
Where is it?
Here we are.
Meet the young Americans who want monarchy, but not King Trump.
While millions of protesters took to the streets in fear of the future of the republic, a growing fringe says it is time for an absolute monarchy.
And then, I don't know, I guess the story, you can read it, it's kind of funny.
But it's about, you know, the the American, the monarchists of America, which is this sort of small club of people who who like monarchism, I guess.
I don't know.
There are a million political clubs like this in America.
And they they thought it'd be funny to make a story out of this.
These are, I guess, right more right-wing monarchists than, you know, like the they're not calling for a socialist dictator or anything.
They're calling for a traditional monarchy.
Okay.
Look at all this crazy, how crazy is that.
That's the subtext here.
How crazy is that.
There are people on the right who want a king.
How crazy is that?
And you got these people on the left, they're protesting against a king.
Because Trump wants to be a king, allegedly.
There's no evidence of that.
He wants to be a king.
How crazy is that?
It's so crazy, right?
It's not crazy.
It's actually not crazy.
We're not going to have a crown and a scepter, and I don't think the monarchist club of America is going to become a major political party anytime soon.
But you know why it's not crazy that we would have a king in America?
Because the American president today is more powerful than any monarch ever in the history of the world, including all the Caesars, including Octavian, including Charlemagne, including the aforementioned King Tut.
The American president today is the king of the world.
There are other systems with houses of legislature, like our Congress, but you know, parliaments and things, where the parliament is the central body of the government.
That is not true in America.
It's not even supposed to be true in America, despite some kind of 20th-century libertarian types arguing for it.
That's not true.
We have a strong executive.
That has been true since George Washington.
You see it get beefed up in Andrew Jackson.
You see, it really get beefed up in Abraham Lincoln, whose memorial uh not just coincidentally is him sitting as Zeus in a temple.
FDR was as as clearly a monarch as ever there was.
And it's just in it's not, I'm not even just beating up on FDR.
That is just in the DNA of the presidency.
And furthermore, monarchy is a type of regime.
There's monarchy, there's aristocracy, there's democracy, there are bad forms of that too, that don't govern for the common good, they govern for private interests, so we call them tyranny or oligarchy or mob rule, but people are going to read this.
They're going to say, there are some Americans who want to be a king or want monarchy, or who how crazy is that.
I I think actually, talk about failure of political imagination.
The more ridiculous utopian view is to think that there will never be a king in America.
First of all, there have been kings in America.
There was Bourbon territory.
There was uh Habsburg territory in America, right?
There will be a time to come that will uh reverse the confident judgments of men.
And it's it's particularly ironic in this story, because for all intents and purposes, we have a king.
As I've frequently noted on this show, we have something called AFRICOM.
That's the African command of the American military.
And comms, like all over the we run the whole world.
And power is largely uh largely resides in one man.
And we don't call him a king, we call him a president.
Well, guess what?
The first Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus, he didn't call himself a king or an emperor either.
Prince is the is the first, the first of the citizens.
Okay.
Now, speaking of everything old being new again, apparently the CIA is doing coups in Latin America again.
I'm cool with it, actually.
I know I know it's politically correct to hate the CIA and everything, and CIA has done some bad things.
But I don't know, I actually think I think this is the way to bring the left and the right together.
One of the ways is to stop wasting our resources in the Middle East and fighting all these kind of ideological wars, wars that are not exactly in the American interest.
And just get back to doing what America does well.
Well, we've been doing well since the 19th century, which is doing coups in Latin America.
I think we need to get back to that.
I don't know that we have time to get to it, though, because I want to speak to a guy who, until about five seconds ago was the chief of staff at the DOJ about all the juicy goss, all the hot gas, all the pipe and hot tea.
You know what I'm talking about talking about the raids on the cities, I'm talking about Jeffrey Epstein, all of it.
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Before we get to my guest, also my favorite comment yesterday is from Harrison the Gray, who says, Michael Knowles, be careful what you put in your ears.
Also Michael Knowles, like Sabrina Carpenter slop.
Hey, I'm just saying, not that I listen to a lot of pop popular music.
But when I listen to pop music, if I'm forced to listen to current pop music, I think Sabrina's one of the more interesting artists out there.
Okay.
And I I happen to be correct.
Now, finally, I'm very excited.
I just sat down with uh Chad Meisell, who was the chief of staff, number one staffer in charge over at the Department of Justice.
Very, very hot issues coming Up at the deportations and the raids on the cities and obviously Jeffrey Epstein.
We talk about all of it right now.
Deportations, prosecutions, corrupt Democrats being held to account finally for some of the things that they've been doing for the last um decade.
All that and more, maybe a little tea on the Epstein files.
I'm so pleased to be joined by Chad Meisell, who was the chief of staff at the DOJ until about three seconds ago, finally now catching his breath after uh serving in one of the more thankless jobs in government with all of the heat directed at uh at the Trump administration.
Chad, thank you for coming on the show.
Michael, thanks for having me.
Great to be here.
Okay, I want to run down everything that the DOJ has been doing.
The the, I guess the newsiest part is that uh Comey, Letitia James, uh number of other people have been indicted and are being prosecuted for their alleged misdeeds.
And according to the liberal media, this is an upending of standards and norms, a complete uh end to our political order, and a partisan law fair from an authoritarian to take down his enemies.
Is that is that right?
Because that's what it's written in the New York Times and and elsewhere, at least broadly.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
The first uh, you know, person to ever prosecute uh their political opponent, uh the first person ever spy on the campaign of their political opponent, uh the first person to actually, on the eve of their political opponent coming into office, changing some of the intelligence about that political opponent in an attempt to undermine that political opponent's entire presidency, all under Donald J. Oh, wait, no, no, no, sorry.
That was Biden and Obama, wasn't that?
That is the kind of stuff that they've gotten used to, and frankly, for too long, it's the kind of stuff that Republicans allowed.
I think one of the novel things is that Trump in 47, he's not putting up with that anymore.
He knows the city, he knows the games, he's not new to it, and we're just not letting that stuff happen.
It's also striking me that you know, for the libs now who really enjoyed sewing, they don't enjoy reaping.
Uh for them, they say, we we need to maintain the this political order that uh does not see politicians being prosecuted or whatever.
And I think, well, look, you're you're the ones who upended the standards and the norms.
And and to hold you to account is not merely retribution, though you deserve it.
It's also uh a way to get back to the old standard that we had, which is you didn't see a lot of these kinds of prosecutions.
But you're you're never going to get back to that with one side unilaterally disarming and letting one political party get away with all sorts of crimes and misdeeds.
Even if your goal is to reduce prosecutions of government officials, the only way you're going to do that is put down the Kumbayaguitar and actually hold the people to account who have been who have been screwing up the norms in the first place.
That's exactly right.
You can't have a system where only one party is allowed to uh uh break the law and get away with it, another party for not breaking the law, uh for just being disliked, really for doing stuff that is outside the political norms, or at least outside of most people's common experience of what those political norms are.
You know, we can get back into historical examples because I actually think everything President Trump is doing is well grounded in history.
Um, but even still, if you think about modern terms, hey, he doesn't look like George W. Bush.
He doesn't look like H.W. Bush, therefore we don't like it.
Right?
That is not the standard by which we operate the Department of Justice.
That is not the standard by which we should be fighting.
And they're for too long, but Republicans have just allowed that to happen.
And that's one of the things that I we have to stop, right?
I I look at the timeline too, and this is something that's really impressive.
I look at the Biden administration coming after Trump officials and Trump-related officials, right?
Days after inauguration, it was about 296 days when they indicted Steve Bannon, about 500 days when they indicted Peter Navarro, 502 days when they indicted uh the leader of the Proud Boys for J6 seditious conspiracy, and nearly 900 days after inauguration, Biden coming into office, they uh uh indicted Donald J. Trump.
What is the Trump DOJ doing under Pam Bondy?
Um, 113 days in, they already prosecuted a judge who was trying to help an illegal alien evade ICE outside of her courtroom.
James Comey after 248 days, members of Antifa charging them with material support to terrorism, 268 days, uh, Letitia James, 268 days, John Bolton, 269 days.
I mean, the the amount of wins that DOJ is racking up is incredible.
On top of that, four on the FBI's most wanted list taken down in the first four quarters of the Trump administration, where it took Biden four years to get just as many results.
Law enforcement is coming to America.
Justice is being served.
That's what Trump promised.
And that's what Pam Bonnie, Todd Blanche, everybody at DOJ is doing.
So now that you're out of government, I'll ask for your political analysis here.
Do you think that someone like a James Comey or Letitia James will actually face consequences?
Obviously, just being indicted is a consequence in itself.
But are we gonna see James Comey in an orange jumpsuit or no?
Some judge gonna let him off the hook.
Yeah, like these cases are hard cases.
But like let's walk through how these things work.
One, just being indicted, right?
Having a jury, uh uh a grand jury come in and say there's probable cause to think someone's committed a crime.
Then you have to go through the process of hiring a lawyer.
You're going through all that.
Again, think about what happened to the countless people who were not indicted during the the J6.
Um, myself being one of these people, right?
Hundreds, hundreds of former political uh appointees during um uh Trump 45, had to hire big law firms at the cost of tens of thousands, some people paid hundreds of thousands of dollars uh for legal representation.
You're having to search all of your emails, all of your text messages, turning those over to Jack Smith and his cronies, turning it over to other law enforcement who who's knocking on your door, right?
Just going through that process intimidated so many people, hundreds of good people, many of my friends who said, you know what, I don't really want to serve in government again because of what they put us through.
And so actually going through and saying, well, wait a second, this guy lied to Congress.
And he lied to Congress about his attempts to undermine Donald J. Trump and the presidency.
We're gonna hold him to account.
Now, what ultimately, you know, 12 of his peers decides to do, who knows, right?
Like uh anytime you uh um go in front of a jury of your peers, we don't know what's gonna happen.
But are we doing the right thing by holding him to account?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I I totally agree.
You mentioned your your old boss, Pam Bondi.
Bondi, it seems to me, more than almost any other admin official has caught some flack from the right for a whole host of reasons, and people sometimes get, you know, they're angry that things aren't moving quickly enough.
As you point out, you know, DOJ has moved quickly on a lot of fronts.
The the biggest hit I've seen on the attorney general, it it pertains to the Epstein investigation and the list and the people and the prosecutions.
What's the fact?
What's the fiction?
Where does it stand?
What can we get what can we expect?
So this is this is interesting because this is something that I came into the administration hearing a lot about, but not personally knowing a ton about, right?
Uh a lot of our friends, a lot of your friends, a lot of people who, you know, are in the speaking circuit, we're talking a ton about this.
And these are people I've listened to often.
These are people I believe.
And so even before I saw the first piece of evidence in Epstein, I already went in thinking, okay, here's what I'm gonna find.
There's gonna be uh a black book, there's gonna be a treasure trove, there's gonna be tons of videos, uh, documents everywhere, security camera footage, footage of of uh you know, people on yachts, etc.
Michael, we didn't find any of that, right?
There was no black book.
There was no uh video evidence.
There was no security footage showing hundreds of random men, including potentially famous men, going to parties with underage girls and sleeping with those girls.
Like none of it existed.
Nobody would want to prosecute pedophiles more than Pam Bondi.
No one wants to prosecute like bad dudes, perverts, people who are abusing women more than your leadership team at DOJ, including Todd Blanche, the deputy, including Cash Patel, including Dan Bongino, everybody wants to go after these guys.
But we just don't have evidence.
This isn't the case like Letitia James, where we have a signed document saying, no, no, no, this is gonna be my second home.
Instead, I'm actually gonna use that as a vacation rental.
This isn't the case of like John Bolton, where we go into his house and find thousands of pages of classified information that he should not have had and was sending, by the way, over email servers like AOL and Google.
Like this isn't that case.
We just don't have any evidence.
If there was evidence, we would go after them.
And when you listen to some of the detractors, they don't have evidence either.
They have theories, they have conspiracies, they have conjectures, they have, you know, uh hypotheses.
All good.
All very interesting.
I, you know, now listen to it a lot more.
And I understand where they're coming from, and I see, hey, there's there's a missing minute over here that's suspicious.
Yeah, it is.
Uh, there's this thing over here, that's suspicious.
Yeah, that is suspicious.
Like, how did these things all work together?
I don't quite know.
But when it comes time to proving your case in front of a court, we just don't have anything.
Hmm.
So if there's if if the issue is there's no hard evidence on this, you know, uh it does one conclude from that that, well, look, maybe these guys just simply were not, you know, going to these parties and sleeping with these girls.
Or does one conclude, look, maybe this stuff was happening, but the evidence just isn't there and we can't go on it.
And you mentioned the missing minute.
To me, that is the most uh eye-opening.
I'm I'm pretty placid.
I don't really jump to all the extreme conspiracy theories.
But the missing minute and then the changing story.
To me, I said, okay, some something is up here.
But is is the point just look, maybe something is up.
We just don't have it.
We just don't know what it is.
Right.
I've never said that somebody hasn't destroyed evidence.
I I've not seen any any proof that that's happened.
I've never said that the Biden administration didn't bury a couple things, that you know, some of the agents who are initially working the case, you know, something may have happened, something got lost.
Some I've never said any of that.
I don't think Pam Bondi has said that.
I don't think Ty Blanch said that.
And you know, speaking personally, I I've I've not seen any evidence of that.
But but what I'm also saying is, okay, well, when it comes time to prosecute these individuals, when it comes time to actually take away someone's liberty uh for something like this, what evidence do you have?
And and that's where we're just coming up short.
Yeah, I you know, I was speaking to someone in government, and I I said, Well, what's going on?
What can we expect on Epstein?
You know, everyone's asking about this.
And uh this this person in government uh said, what do you want?
Uh what is what I'm at?
What do you want?
I you know, is there some I can I can't invent something, but what is the exact thing that you want?
And I think a lot of people have a harder time articulating that, you know.
So, okay, so I guess the takeaway from that is probably not a lot is gonna happen.
My my theory on Epstein was either he is who everyone said he was, which is just you know a kind of rogue billionaire who had a weird thing for young girls, uh, and that was it.
Either he was like the official story and forget about any of the inconsistencies, or if he was something much, much more defarious.
I said, we're never gonna find out anyway.
If if some of these theories are true, we ain't gonna find out.
I promise you that.
Uh so okay, I think that's probably what most people expect from that.
In terms of you mentioned the Antifa stuff, I'm personally uh very interested in this.
You know, a lot of right wingers have dealt with Antifa over the years.
I had uh Tifa show up, two operatives showed up to a speaking event I had at University of Pittsburgh through an explosive at the building.
One of those people is in is in uh federal prison right now, albeit for some pled down kind of nonsense.
At least he's facing some some uh consequences.
The liberal media will say that there is no such thing as Antifa.
I think the talking points went out you know a couple weeks ago.
There is no Antifa, sure they have flags, sure they have uniforms, sure they correspond with each other and try to kill Republicans, but it doesn't exist.
What do you say to them?
They are clearly not looking at the evidence here, right?
We have seen organized efforts.
Let me just give you an example of the latest case, DOJ charged, right?
In this case, we found group chats of people saying, here's a federal ice facility, we want to disrupt the operations.
Okay, everybody show up.
I'm gonna bring arms.
I think they need to bring in 20 firearms.
And they shot a cop in the neck, or he almost died.
That several people are charged with attempted murder uh and material support for terrorism there, right?
These things are highly orchestrated.
Where are they getting the 20 firearms from?
Uh people are just showing up wearing the exact same thing, showing up at the exact same time, or saying, no, no, no, like this is this is a loose collection.
Uh, people are just randomly wearing all black and wearing masks and and deciding to simultaneously wreak havoc upon the exact same building.
Oh, by the way, and operating in a coordinated fashion, Such that you have certain people at certain outposts, you have lookouts, you have spies, you have guards.
Like the notion that this is a completely decentralized organization just defies logic.
It defies everything that we're finding out there.
And I think too, like your point, and and again, now I do get to be a little bit more political.
I I I think the left's goal here is anytime you you point out something bad on their side.
No, no, no, it doesn't exist.
Look at the Democrat EG for uh candidate in uh Virginia, Jay Jones.
And it doesn't exist.
He didn't really say that he wants to murder his political uh rival, mutilate his children.
He didn't really say that, hey, hey, hey, we got some 19-year-olds who said someone's everything in text messages.
That's really the focus.
Like this is a game, Michael, that you and I have seen a long, long time, and people are finally starting to wake up to it.
We're just not gonna buy it anymore.
Like we know it's there.
Yeah, I thought the vice president had a great response to the young Republican group chat of people that no one's ever heard of.
And he said, Oh, yeah, I was reading those text messages, and can you believe they said that they would murder their political opponent and their children?
Oh, wait a second.
No, that was the AG candidate in Virginia.
It's just sort of, hey guys, let's let's focus.
There is absolutely no comparison between these things.
We're gonna keep a laser focus on it.
So, in terms of focus, I wish I had more time with you, Chad.
But uh in terms of uh focus, obviously another big thing the BOJ has been involved in are these deportations and prosecuting the gangsters and the illegal aliens who are here.
Uh some people on the right have have hit the administration for not deporting fast enough.
I think that's kind of weak because if you look at, for instance, the Center for Immigration Studies had this uh has had multiple reports now come out on a huge number.
I mean, I think it was back in July, uh 1.6 million illegal aliens out of the country uh since the administration took over.
A lot through self-deportation, some through uh you know Tom Holman picking them up by their collar and tossing them out the window.
But but where does that stand?
Because if you hear from the Libs, they will say that these are all asylum seekers and they're all entitled to 15 years of due process, and they're all abuela, just trying to make paea in their kitchen, and you know, they're basically gonna try to gum up the works until they win the Congress and try to impeach the president, or until they win the White House next time, which doesn't look great for them right now, but they're hopeful.
Uh what is the process?
What is the time scale?
How many of these illegal aliens can we get out of the country before the clock runs out?
Yeah, I think that it's an all-the approach that the administration has taken is uh across the board approach.
So we're using FBI resources, DEA resources, ATF resources to aid in deportation.
By the way, like something that is fairly novel, something that Trump tasked the attorney general with doing.
She's been coordinating very closely with Christy Gnome to see that.
Tom Holman's playing a big role, Stephen Miller's playing a huge role here.
So a lot of coordinated efforts there.
I think that what you've got to do is attack this problem multiple angles.
There are violent criminals who are currently sitting in jails, federal and state custody, who we know are legal aliens.
Let's get them out of the country.
Right?
That that's easy because they're already in our hands.
Now let's go in into certain cities.
I mean, I mean, think at LA at one point, we knew something like 8, 9, 10% of the population in LA was here illegally.
Right?
That's fairly easy.
Of course, then you had district court judges trying to, you know, insert their own coup, think that they're president trying to prevent ICE from actually doing any sort of immigration enforcement in LA, which is a crazy, crazy, crazy issue.
Um, but the more you do that, and the more people realize, well, wait a second, if I'm sitting here and I get caught by you know Tom Holman and his cronies, then all of a sudden I'm gonna go to this facility, it's gonna be a very unpleasant experience.
I'm gonna get sent on a one-way ticket to this country.
Maybe I don't want to do that.
Maybe I'm gonna start doing this myself.
Maybe there's a bit of an orderly way to do that.
And that's something that the administration's encouraging as well.
I I think you have to handle and take this all at these angles.
Unfortunately, the problem is too big, even with the big beautiful bill and all of the money that we've gotten from there and all of the uh new ICE officers that are gonna be adding, you still don't have enough.
Like the numbers just don't add up.
Given how many illegals Joe Biden led into the country, we can't do it.
And so you've got to come up with some of these other ways.
And just like you would in any other crime, you make the situation unpleasant for the criminal.
When you make the situation unpleasant for the criminal, oftentimes they stop, they stop committing crimes.
If you make the situation unpleasant here in the United States, you stop entitlement programs.
You stop putting giving them welfare, you stop the Democrat-sponsored free health care, right?
For illegal aliens.
You stop all of those programs.
All of a sudden, it's not that attractive to stay here.
Why don't we go back home?
Right, right.
I'm not a lawyer.
I didn't go to law school.
But you you referenced something earlier, which is those federal judges who are really trying to gum up the works, even as you're taking this multi pronged approach.
Is it the case that uh one out of 700 district judges has the right to overrule the White House on matters of law enforcement?
You would think so.
You would think so based on how everybody is acted.
And and what's incredible is the number of times we've had to go up to the Supreme Court to get relief.
22 times we've had victories from the Supreme Court.
During the entire four years of Biden, they only went up in an emergency posture 20 times total.
And by the way, our win rate, 90%.
Biden's win rate, 50%.
It just shows you how lawless the district court judges have gotten.
That was one of the things to be honest.
I was pretty surprised by Michael whenever I came into the administration.
I knew that we were going to get some bad rollings.
I had served during Trump won.
I got that.
But what I didn't realize was how lawless they were going to be.
I didn't realize and expect that district court judges were going to be openly defying the Supreme Court of the United States.
Three different times the Supreme Court had to tell district court judges when Trump removes somebody from an executive agency, you don't get to put them back in place.
I mean, how many times, you know, they they were like joking about uh or uh uh crying about you know the Trump administration potentially violating a court order, which by the way, we've never done, and still today have not done, even though I think in certain instances maybe it might be justified, but they've stayed above board, they have not done that.
Yet you have district court judges who are openly defying orders from the Supreme Court, doing the very thing that they're accusing us of doing.
This is very, you know, they read up on their Sololinski before uh before coming in.
Like they all know what they're doing.
That's a really great little bit of rhetorical ammo for the water cooler when when they say this is administration is lawless and they're defying judges, or which they're not, or that the judges are smacking down all hell the judiciary smacking down the authoritarian executive.
You can go back and say, well, actually, those judges that you're pointing to are getting smacked down by the Supreme Court at a rate of 90%.
So uh really, even by your own argument, I think you're hoisting yourself with your own petard.
It's a really great point that I haven't heard articulated very much.
Yeah, and they're gonna continue doing that.
Um, this administration winning in front of the Supreme Court, right?
We had got the CASA ruling, which basically said these nationwide injunctions are not going to be allowed.
Now, of course, because judges are smart, what are they doing?
Well, instead of a nationwide injunction, we're gonna certify a nationwide class and then issue an injunction to the class.
And by the way, the class covers all human beings born or unborn in the United States or not in the United States, right?
It's just a nationwide injunction by another means, and eventually that issue is gonna get up to the Supreme Court, and eventually we're gonna win that issue as well.
So we have a great team led by Pam Bondi who is tackling these kinds of issues, and we're just gonna keep doing it.
It's a little bit of whack-a-mole, but that's what we expected, and that's what our job is.
Chad, thank you very much for coming on the show.
I greatly appreciate it.
And I hope you enjoy at least a slight vacation now that you're out of the pressure cooker of Washington, D.C. and the admin.
I'm gonna go smoke a Mayflower cigar.
Now, I knew, I knew you had excellent judgment already, but this is uh proof positive.
