Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman must deal with incompetency on a level never before seen as the National Security Advisor inadvertently added Editor In Chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg to a top secret, high level chat about their Mardis Gras plans- I mean, the strategic war plans to attack the Houthis in the Middle East. Donald Trump is so concerned that he wasn't even briefed, as he was too busy complaining about a portrait of himself in Colorado and demanding an apology from the Governor of Maine. They finish on Columbia University utter capitulation to Trump to get their $400 million federal pittance back.
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I don't even know if we have time for friendly banter.
Well, hi, Jared.
How's it going?
Good to hear it.
Thanks for having me on.
That was some micro-machine type shit.
I really appreciated that.
Well, my pleasure.
Let's get into it, though, because, yeah, too much to talk about and not enough time.
Okay, I got to make the pitch before we get into it.
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Nick, we had this show all set up, ready to go, and right before we started recording, a blockbuster's not the word that I'm looking for, but I'll go ahead and use the word blockbuster, report from journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, who revealed today, on Monday, March 24th, that...
He was added to a secret signal chat that appeared to involve Pete Hegseth, Vice President J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, and a whole cast and crew from the Trump administration.
He has no idea why he was put on this signal chat, but in that chat, he got a first-row seat.
To discussions and planning of the U.S. strikes in Yemen against the Houthis that involved weapons packages, intelligence, debates about how to do it, why they should do it.
Nick, this is...
I don't even know exactly how to wrap my head around this thing, and I'm hoping that you have something that grounds me a little bit, because this is so extraordinary in not just its unprecedented, but also in what it reveals about the Trump administration and the cast and crew and gaggle of assholes that we're dealing with at this point.
I mean, of course this happened.
Of course.
I think Rudy Giuliani did something like this, too, where he accidentally texted people and he shouldn't have.
And this is the danger of having somebody who is older, doesn't understand technology so well, with their hands on this stuff.
So before we even get to the whole signal thing and the illegality of doing this kind of business...
Well, let's make it very clear.
This is illegal.
Yeah. You cannot use a signal for this, for having a group chat amongst these.
These are the senior-most people in the government.
You can't bro out with your boys talking about a military strike using intelligence.
There was an intelligence officer there that Goldberg couldn't even reveal the identity of.
Moving on.
Now, here's what I think happened.
I think, wait, who was the guy who created this chat?
It was not Hegseth.
He was just part of it.
But the guy who did it is Waltz, right?
Yeah, right.
Yes. And, you know, it's worth looking at how old he is before I say, you know, he's old, doesn't know what he's doing.
But here's what I think happened.
I think that he wanted to invite another Jeffrey G into this chat.
And he probably had Jeffrey Goldberg in his, you know, contacts because he went for whatever he needs that for, right?
So he probably started typing Jeffrey and then autofilled whatever, and he just hit the first one or something like that.
For the record, I am 43 years young, and I use Signal a lot for tips and leaks and sources.
I still feel uncomfortable there, which is why I don't divulge state secrets on there.
That's a good policy, Jared.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Michael Watts is only 51, so he's kind of my age.
He's not even that old.
But I did do a quick search.
This is how rudimentary and how ridiculous it got.
I'm like, a member of the government named Jeffrey G. What would happen, right?
And there's a guy named Jeffrey Graham, who's a career member of the Senior Foreign Service and Senior Bureau Official for the Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy.
I don't know.
He could have been maybe needed to be in that meeting.
You know, they're talking about, you know, attacking another country, whatever.
I don't know.
So I have a feeling that's simply what happened.
But the idea that like anybody else would be there and look, you know, I probably would scan.
Okay, who was in this group chat?
I don't know if you do that for like even your regular texts.
Sure. And I hate group texts, Jared.
I hate them because invariably I won't realize them in the group text and I'll talk shit about somebody in the group text.
Oh, Nick, you got to stop.
You got to stop.
Just a quick little thing.
You got to stop.
Don't talk shit.
I know.
And I usually never put it in writing.
And I knew that, but I've done it a couple times now.
So anyway, the point being is I guarantee you he put the wrong Jeffrey G in there as an autofill.
And meanwhile, good for Jeffrey Goldberg.
He didn't say anything.
I'm just going to sit here and watch this all unfold.
And man, was it a ride.
Well, first of all, let's not give Goldberg too much credit.
Goldberg has his own stuff.
And on top of that, he left the chat.
And I got to tell you, if I was in this chat, you would have to pry my cold, dead hands off of my phone in terms of paying attention to this.
And what happened here, for people who haven't necessarily gotten into the minutia of it, we see, well, we're not given, of course, the intelligence or the weapon packages or the targets or any of that.
Like, this is something that a journalist just so happened to be given complete and utter unfettered access to.
Again, want to remind people.
This is illegal.
You cannot use these background channels in order to do this.
It is supposed to be through approved...
Transmissions. So, listen, I'm not even going to bring up the emails thing.
We don't need to talk about that.
It is what it is, and that's who these people are.
Pete Hegseth should resign today and should probably have some sort of an investigation.
Also, Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance should also probably be investigated on this thing.
They should be hauled in front of a committee if we had a government that worked.
But in the midst of all of this, we also see JD Vance questioning the attack, questioning Donald Trump's direction here.
By the way, is Trump in this chat?
No, he is not.
And we have a bunch of miscreants who are running around doing this shit.
Vance is okay with it eventually because he's talked into it.
If they think it's the right plan, it's the right plan.
But he's very concerned because his main number one concern, Nick, is whether or not we're bailing Europe out when it comes to shipping costs and can we get something for that.
This is incredible insight into how this administration works, and I want people to remember this when we get to the next story that was originally the top story today.
But basically, the inmates are running the asylum.
This is a quid pro quo government.
They are not serious.
They are committing regular crimes on the daily, which we already knew was happening.
And this right here is just a giant...
Smoking gun that lets us know just how haphazard and how criminal this administration is.
Right. And the weird thing about this is that the Houthis are these kind of pirates who are creating all sorts of havoc on shipping lanes in the Middle East.
So I don't necessarily have a problem with somebody going in there and clearing it out so that these ships can get through and get their goods back and forth, right, for the economies can run, in theory, right?
You can say that.
I think it's a much more complicated subject than that, but we'll let that be for the moment.
I mean, right, because you want to talk about the motives and why the Houthis are upset about this, and then they're trying to be a thorn in people's sides, for sure.
But I do find it fascinating, because then you have to discuss what level of...
What kind of attack is this in terms of should the president be read into something like this anyway?
And we probably get the sense of what it's been like probably since the beginning of the country where, you know, I bet you the president has been sort of cut out a lot of this stuff while the underlings are making decisions that could conceivably cause a war, right?
Because it could.
This could flare up without the right, you know, finesse.
Well, I mean, listen, some presidents are given the king treatment, which is that the underlings go ahead and cook up all of the options and then they give it to the president in a way that the president will then choose to do what the military...
wanted them to do in the first place.
That's how a lot of it works.
Then there are task managers.
There are the people who pay very close attention to that.
And for the record, Nick, let's go ahead and hear from the current occupant of the White House, the person who's supposed to have his finger on the trigger of this entire thing.
Let's see what his level of involvement has been.
Your reaction to the story of The Atlantic that said that some of your top cabinet officials and aides have been discussing very sensitive material through Signal and included an Atlantic reporter for that.
What is your response to that?
I don't know anything about it.
I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic.
To me, it's a magazine that's going out of business.
I think it's not much of a magazine, but I know nothing about it.
You're saying that they had what?
They were using Signal to coordinate on sensitive materials.
With what?
Having to do with what?
What were they talking about?
With the Houthis.
The Houthis?
You mean the attack on the Houthis?
Well, it couldn't have been very effective because the attack was very effective, I can tell you that.
I don't know anything about it.
You're telling me about it for the first time.
Anybody else?
That's embarrassing.
That's tough.
The President of the United States of America is not, and by the way, I've seen Donald Trump lie about whether or not he's heard about something or not.
I have seen him, like, you know, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg bullshit, this is the first I'm hearing of it, or whatever, same language.
I've seen him lie about this stuff before.
He has no idea that this has come out.
He has no idea that his underlings did this, what they're up to.
He doesn't know what signal is.
Let's go ahead and break it down to its most basic level.
This is a guy who is almost completely cut out of the decision structure and operations of the government.
Did Jeffrey Goldberg mention that they had reached out to the government for response before they printed this thing?
No. Oh, I thought they did.
Didn't he say he did?
Not that I remember, no.
Oh, okay.
I feel like I read an article.
I assume, you know, now that we're talking about it, I assume that they did.
I mean, that's regular.
Listen, the White House is designed to have people scour the internet for all these things.
And the second things like this pop up, they should know about it, you know, whatever.
So, you know, the idea that they were probably trying to hide it and hope he didn't notice it and no one asked him about it because they're so surprised by what happened.
So here's the question, okay?
And let's make it very, very clear.
I know from people that I have talked to that what Donald Trump is given on a daily basis is basically a briefing of how he's being covered in the press that is either supposed to make him feel better about himself or supposed to demonize his supposed opponents, right?
That's what the whole thing is.
He went out in front of the press corps and they didn't tell him about this.
I just want to make that abundantly clear.
The entire reason that the staff is there is to prepare a president to go in front of people with as much information as possible.
This was going to be the first question.
And the fact that he wasn't briefed on it, I think, speaks volumes.
And I also think that if you were nearby the White House, you'd hear those volumes coming out of the window of the office, because I'm sure he is livid about all these things.
I'm sure he's livid to find out that J.D. Vance was questioning his decision-making.
I found it weird that Stephen Miller was involved in this as well, to show you just the levels here, although I guess it just continues to confirm that Stephen Miller really is.
I guess the man behind the curtain to some degree here.
Well, and so here's the question with that.
And I agree.
Stephen Miller is like just totally behind so many of the things that's happening within the Trump administration.
Nick, why would they not tell him?
There's one option, which is they didn't want him to be pissed, right?
That like they were saying these things, then that's a possibility.
There is a second option, which I think is much more likely, which is these people understand that they got caught breaking the law.
And that what has happened at this point is we have already seen the emergence of what would in the past with another presidency would have been a major scandal.
We never would have heard the end of it.
It would have dominated headlines.
It would have dominated discourse.
It would have been nonstop wall to wall.
This is...
Not just massive.
This is also a sign of the times of how far we've slid into this thing.
And I think that's the reason why he didn't know about it and why he wasn't prepped about it is because, quite frankly, we're in the middle of a cover-up and we're going to watch this thing get covered up if they even have a reason to cover it up because they might not have to because of the way things are presently.
Yeah, I mean, Trump's going to pick up the phone and go, hey, Cash, how's it going today?
Yeah, just, you know, forget about that.
And then, Pam.
Pamela, darling, yeah, you know, you don't have to worry about this.
It'll be fine.
So that's the problem.
Well, actually, Cash would be like, hey, hold on, let me pause this QAnon podcast I'm listening to.
And Pam would be like, I'm currently on Fox News right now.
I'll need to talk to you in just a second.
Sorry, Mr. President.
Right. You know, and so we'll have to find out.
But I do feel like I'm sensing that some of these key players are, you know, there's always going to be a moment when they're on the outs and Trump is going to get rid of them.
Almost invariably.
You kind of question whether you thought that Musk would ever be on that chopping block.
We'll get to him in a minute.
I think he might be moving more towards that at this point.
But certainly J.D. Vance has got to be very concerned based on the last, you know, VP about his fate if he doesn't.
You have to remember, it was so bad for Mike Pence, even though Mike Pence would literally drink the water just like Trump did at the same time.
Remember that?
You'd see him drink water when Trump would drink water.
He was that much of a toady and a sycophant.
And look what happened to him.
So J.D. Vance is going to have to be a little bit nervous about his position, especially in the triangulation of Musk being there, who I think, even though they're some sort of tech bro buddies, I don't think Musk would think twice about...
You know, convincing Trump to kick him off and put Musk as the vice president.
All of these people would stab each other in the back happily and smile in their face as they bled out.
Except for, I think, with Trump and Musk, there is a tension.
We'll get into more of that in just a second because he has made sure that Donald Trump has made billions of dollars off of their partnership.
And speaking of Elon Musk, and let's go ahead and dovetail it from what we have now learned from the Jeffrey Goldberg article.
On Friday, the New York Times revealed in an investigative report that Elon Musk, who, Nick, what's his position in the government?
Well, he won't even say he's officially head of Doge, so I don't know.
It's unclear to me.
That's fascinating.
He was scheduled on Friday to be briefed by the Pentagon on American plans for a war with China.
And by the way, Donald Trump seemed like he was pretty surprised to hear about this and even said, and this is, I think, really, really interesting.
We'll get into why.
He wasn't in favor of that because he said that Musk, with his financial and business ties to China, which we'll talk more about, was, quote, susceptible as a businessman and shouldn't be given access to those things.
The plans were scrapped ultimately because of this report.
And what has happened since then is under the direction of the Pentagon, and I have to assume that Musk has a part in this, they are now conducting a widespread investigation for leaks within the Pentagon, which involve widespread polygraph tests.
So, Nick, this was originally supposed to be the number one story here because it is massive, and there are so many implications to it.
What do you make of the fact that Donald Trump seemed surprised by this, or the fact that Elon Musk was going to get this type of briefing?
It got leaked, and what all is happening here?
Because this is, as the kids like to say, a spicy meatball.
Totally surprised again for this, I'm sure, because here's the thing, Pete Hegseth, if you're looking at what you want to cut in the government and you're looking at all the different expenditures and all the different budgets, the number one place you'd have to turn to is Department of Defense.
I know that the Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are a combined higher expenditure than Department of Defense.
Don't worry, they're going after them too.
Oh, yeah.
We'll get to that.
But, you know, there's a big red X on the back of whoever's running Department of Defense.
So, of course, Hegseth is going to want to get that guy who's in charge of that on his good side.
And let's just see if we can cut, like, just some of the things that are on the edges and whatever.
They look good in the headline and whatever.
And so part of that could very well be, yeah, come on down.
We'll give you a whole tour.
We'll show you around.
Which, by the way, would have been okay and normal if they showed him around in the offices of Pete Hegseth, not in the most secure part of the...
Do a tank.
The tank, which is the most secure skiff you have probably in the world, right?
And obviously, you cannot risk reporting on something like this without having it locked down multiple sources knowing for sure you got it, right?
Because you'd be in a world of hell if you just were going off the reservation to try and report on something like this that wasn't true.
So, either way, I think that they were going to try and, you know, have this sort of meeting and then, like, just sort of really impressive.
Now, that said, Musk probably asked for some more information about China and whatever.
And that's when this whole thing became there, behind Trump's back.
So, I think that all these things are true.
I think Trump didn't know.
I think Musk intended to have this happen.
And I think Hexf is just trying to cover his ass.
So, first things first.
The man in the White House, he doesn't need to know.
He's not even actually the president.
He's Ronald McDonald going out and entertaining the kids.
That's the entire point of this thing.
There are so many things to break down here, and I want to start by answering what you just brought up, which I think is exactly correct.
But I want to do it in a way that highlights something, Nick, that's really, really important here.
Elon Musk going into the Pentagon to get a briefing on plans against China, it absolutely was done because they wanted to sell Doge on what programs that he could sort of slice a little bit.
It's almost like me when I have leftover cake in the fridge and I'm sneaking in and just taking a little bit off the edges, you know, and pretending that it doesn't count.
So they want to make sure that if he does any cuts that would be symbolic, as you were discussing, That it wouldn't eat into their major plans.
That is also Elon Musk, the guy who has all of these contracts with the military.
So he would have to understand the projects that he's involved in, the projects that he could possibly play a role in.
So not only are they trying to sell to the director of Doge, who's in charge of this money, they're trying to sell to the military industrial contractor.
Elon Musk.
Well, guess what, Nick?
There's an extra component of this.
Elon Musk makes billions upon billions of dollars from China.
Tesla is operated in large parts.
Some of their largest sort of plants and operations are in China.
On top of that, Musk relies, and the way that China works is, they're communists.
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, right?
But they're really open for capitalism if you're on their good side.
That means that he operates there under the pleasure of the Chinese dictatorship.
So he has financial dealings in China.
And on top of that, Nick, am I wrong here?
Am I misremembering?
Doesn't Elon Musk owe money to some other country?
That might be interested in American military plans and also their interactions with China.
Oh, that's right, the Saudis.
The Saudis.
So you have one man who is supposed to go in here to get this briefing in order to seduce him for Doge that also is a military contractor that is also in business with the country that you're talking about.
Conflict of interest?
Doesn't even begin to cover what this is.
This is one of the biggest clusterfucks of a situation that you could ever imagine.
And the fact that we have a president who is not just asleep at the wheel, he's never even been at the wheel in this entire time, it makes it that much worse.
And I'll talk more about what I think is happening behind the scenes here and why we found out about this story in the first place and the second.
But I just want to go ahead and highlight, this is what happens when the richest man in the world effectively takes over the government and uses the president as a pawn.
This is why these types of things can't happen.
Jared, what's it called if somebody was able to get, you know, state secrets about, you know, defense, and then use those secrets to then get better business deals?
I believe that's called espionage.
Yeah, right?
That sounds right to me.
That's spying.
It's basically what he's trying to do here because here's the thing.
There's nothing in Musk's purview for Doge that would indicate he needs any kind of security briefing about China.
Nothing. Zero.
Now, the hilarious part is that they tried to explain this away, right?
They tried to make it seem like, oh, well, just in case there were some things that they wanted to cut that might have seemed obsolete but were vital to an attack on China, well, they needed to know that so that they wouldn't cut that and then, you know, ruin their big plans that they ever needed to do to attack China.
Preposterous. Just preposterous.
That could possibly be what their cover-your-ass story is.
If that's what they came up with, then God help them if they're that stupid to think that that would be a good explanation.
I completely agree.
Anything else besides the espionage on this one?
Well, I want to talk about, you know, we talked about how this is a spicy meatball.
Let's get to the center of that.
And you know what we find at the center of that meatball, Nick?
You go into a restaurant, you get that thing, you're like, man, it looks good.
You slice into it.
There's some cheese in there.
Let's talk about the cheese at the center of this meatball.
And here's the thing, Nick.
I've talked to people who have had connections within not just the military-industrial complex, but within the state apparatus of America.
Do you know when they leak?
Do you know why they leak?
Yeah, because they're extremely concerned about espionage.
Well, they're concerned and they're also pissed off.
And I want to make it clear, whoever leaked this, and there were multiple sources, not only could they get fired, they could face legal repercussions, massive legal repercussions.
So yes, I think on one hand they were concerned.
There's another aspect here that I think we need to keep our eye on, which is, as they're going in and purging the CIA, as they're going in and purging the FBI, one of the things I keep saying to you, Nick, is you fuck around with those places, things tend to happen.
Right? Like, weird things start to occur.
All of a sudden now you have Trump come in and to score points with the MAGA crowd.
He's trying to ban certain people from the military.
He's trying to move people around.
He's trying to, like, change the chiefs of staff, right?
So as that's taking place, and now as Elon Musk was getting ready to get this briefing, and for the reasons that we just talked about, there is a quiet.
But probably very, very poignant and important revolt that is taking place among the military-industrial complex, which goes back to what you and I keep talking about, which is the difference between the wealth class that wants tax cuts and deregulation and depowering the federal government.
But guess what they love, Nick?
They love the fucking military.
The military goes out, they get them resources, they take care of them, they push their agendas, they open markets.
This oligarchical class that's starting to take over, I have to tell you, Based on everything that's happening with the economy, everything that's happening with Doge, with this oligarchical coup, there are people with power and force at the state level right now who don't like what's going on.
And do you know what occurs whenever you have coup attempts and takeover attempts?
There are opposite and equal reactions.
Sometimes it takes place with protests and populist uprisings.
Sometimes the generals decide to take something into their own hands.
I'm not saying that that's happening.
I'm not saying that that's inevitable or that it's weeks away or whatever.
But if we keep going down this road, if you pay attention to what happens around the world in situations like this, if the wrong people are trying to take power and they go ahead and they push against certain levers of power that are established and have a lot of will, you start to see some really weird shit take place.
I'm just putting that out there.
I'm putting a pin in it.
I'm keeping an eye on it.
That's all I'm saying.
Well, whoever decided to leak this, I think, is the real patriot here, because they knew how detrimental this was going to be and needed to torpedo this.
So that's something, you know.
I mean, listen, I'll go to my grave saying that Christopher Steele was a guy who, in earnest, was trying to help the United States, you know, with what he was discovering.
Whether it was verified or not, I don't know, but I do feel like that was his motivation, and I feel like it's the same here.
And the interesting thing about this is that they're going to probably end up forcing the Times to give up their source.
And that's the other scary thing about this, right?
We'll talk about this in a second, about how they're trying to find out the leak was from the Pentagon side.
But the easier thing would be to put so much pressure on the reporter themselves to reveal who their sources are.
So if that starts happening, then we also have more confirmation of what state of government we have running our country.
Speaking of those polygraphs, Nick, if you worked in a place where your employer reacted to something that happened by putting everybody at the Pentagon in a room and taking polygraph tests, you personally and me personally, I don't know what our responses would be, but my will to fight against those people would be ignited.
And this is one of those situations where it's like...
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
And what we're talking about, about those stresses and that tension between these two different factions, I think that that only makes it more and more likely that more people are going to leak and more people at the Pentagon are going to turn against this stuff.
I don't think that this is the kind of thing that actually suppresses, even though that's the intention.
Well, my take on that would be that people are going to resign instead of taking a polygraph test, which makes them guilty.
So, you know, I don't know.
That's the other problem.
And it's always been that sort of weird thing where you should resign.
You know, to stand up for, you know, the Constitution.
But then if you do resign, you realize that it will completely fall into, you know, an oligarchy.
So, you know, it's really tough.
And again, the intimidation factor they're using across all these different levers is really a problem as well, where you're going to have judges, you're going to have everybody scared to do the right thing.
And then that's, we slip farther and farther into it.
So, I don't know.
I am worried, Jared.
I'm going to be out of the country in the summer, and I'm worried that they're going to go through my phone when I get back.
I think that's a very likely thing.
They could just go through my social media.
That's the thing now, like my Twitter.
Listen, I had someone I care about greatly who left the country and I was terrified that they wouldn't get back in.
That's the state of play at this point.
I mean, that is the type of thing that we actually have to worry about, is whether or not you have to hide your information or not even bring your phone or not have to declare your social media accounts.
By the way, in the midst of all of this, we've already talked about...
What Donald Trump is and isn't doing.
I hear somebody out there listening to the podcast.
They're driving their kids to school right now.
They're taking their commute to work right now.
And they're screaming, what is this motherfucker doing?
Well, guess what, everybody?
We have an update on what Donald Trump is doing.
He's taking on the important topics here, Nick.
In multiple social media posts, he has really signaled what America needs at this point.
He went after Governor Janet Mills of Maine, and you might remember that this was the governor who stood up during the governor's conference when they were talking about state funds, and she told Trump, I'll see you in court.
Trump is now threatening to withhold federal funds to the state of Maine unless Mills gives a, quote, full-throated apology and promises to never stand in his way again, which is an incredible thing for the president to say.
And if that's not important enough for you, everybody, I've got an even bigger story, which is Donald Trump doesn't like his official portrait in the Colorado state capitol.
This is a portrait that was made by artist Sarah Boardman.
He says that it is, quote, And he also took time to attack Governor Jared Polis because he hates that.
So don't worry, guys.
He's actually taking on the big major issues at this point.
Right. And again, this goes along with what you said about what the briefings are, right?
They're probably picture books without a lot of writing and just sort of images of him that make him feel better about himself.
And so I'm sure somebody was in Colorado in this building and sent him a picture of it.
Like, wait, look at this portrait or whatever.
And then he was embarrassed.
I got to tell you, it's not a bad painting.
It's pretty realistic, right?
It's fine.
Whatever. It's fine.
Oh, it makes him look soft.
That's the issue.
Yeah. I mean, he looks a little bit more like Luka Doncic than he does, you know, Sylvester Stallone from Rocky III, right?
Which they...
You know, I bet that's probably what he prefers, right?
He wants his head on Rocky III's body, oiled up in green and muscle, just like that.
And, you know, again, if this guy was more serious and more in tune with things, you know, it's almost even scarier, right?
But what ends up being worse than what we described in the whole beginning of the show is that it seems like a lot of these inmates are running these things behind his back and knowing that he doesn't really care, doesn't have the capacity to understand what all these things are versus beyond like a one...
summary of what's going on.
And so, you know, it's staggering.
He didn't even mention, like, all the golfing that he does and all It reminds me a lot.
I was visiting a friend of mine a few years ago, and his daughter was very young at the time, and we were trying to have a conversation and hang out or whatever, and she really wanted some attention, so he gave her something to play with for a while.
You know?
This is what Donald Trump is playing with.
It's the idea of going after Greenland, right?
Or making Canada the 51st state.
Or blackmailing the state of Maine with federal funds because he was personally hurt at a meeting.
Or he doesn't like this portrait of him.
It is the most surface-level bullshit.
This is what the President of the United States of America is concerned with.
And this is the work that they've given him.
It's busy work.
And he's able to, and it goes back, we talked about this so many times, Nick, it's like when he got the nomination back in 2016, John Kasich was offered the VP slot.
And he said, well, what would I do?
And he said, you would take care of foreign and domestic affairs.
And what would Donald Trump do?
He would be in charge of winning.
That's what this is.
And we're literally talking about a state being held hostage because the guy got his feelings hurt.
We're talking about another state.
God knows he'll probably escalate this portrait thing.
He'll probably try and use federal funds to blackmail them as well, which tells us we have a mad king, Nick.
That's the issue here.
We have a mad king and we have a court around him who is using him for some really noxious, poisonous, destructive, deathly things.
But this guy is going to use the power at his disposal to settle scores.
And that's it.
Well, Bob, while we do say that he's not really connected and there's a lot of these geopolitical concepts that are way too complicated for him, there are some things that do...
I think he doesn't even like...
Doing what he's doing about it, but he knows how important it is around the election.
So he tells everyone, don't bring it up until closer to the election.
Literally, he said that the other day.
But then the other thing is, with the people being deported to El Salvador in this super prison, this also engages him, and he's involved.
But I think we get to share this clip we have with him because he also has the ability to, in a very...
What's the word?
Nefarious way.
Evil genius.
Figure out ways where other people could be on the hook for this.
And this is the Marco Rubio paradox, which we've already seen set up in his speech to Congress a few weeks ago.
But they asked him about why this all went down the way it did in terms of deporting people originally and the judge had to intervene for people down in El Salvador.
Here's his answer.
It doesn't sound like this judge who the DOJ is arguing with today about the deportation fight.
He wants to know why the proclamation was signed in the dark, his words, and why people were rushed onto planes.
Because we want to get criminals out of our country, number one, and I don't know when it was signed because I didn't sign it.
Other people handled it, but Marco Rubio's done a great job, and he wanted him out, and we go along with that.
Do you think Marco Rubio gets an hour of sleep a night?
I mean, it's like Jeff Sessions back in the day.
You know that you are first in line for this.
You know what I mean?
His ability to instantly just absolutely get rid of any accountability whatsoever and to pass it on to the next Patsy.
I'm sure you noticed it too.
That speech pattern, the way that it occurs, I don't know anything about it.
Marco Rubio.
Like an immediate movement.
This is a person who is, you can say a lot of things about Donald Trump, but he's incredibly talented at passing the buck when it comes to blame.
I mean, talented is a word.
I mean, certainly we've seen this in the past where, you know, people are being interrogated by the cops or a law that they obviously violated, and then they just try to drag anybody else with them.
Well, you know, somebody else did it, or someone else is really better to do this as well.
Like, you've got to try and take the focus off of you and then put it on someone else.
And I think the fact that it's Marco Rubio, of all people, who had tried to embarrass him.
He never forgot that.
Remember when he tried to embarrass him over the size of his hands?
He never forgot that.
And whether Marco thought to himself, he might have called his family and said, you know what, this is great.
What a great guy.
We've moved on.
He's going to let me be Secretary of State.
No. He did this with Mitt Romney.
He's going to do it here with Marco Rubio to embarrass him.
But here's the problem.
Marco Rubio doesn't have to be prepared for the ultimate humiliation that's waiting for him.
He needs to be prepared for the incarceration that's going to be coming up for him.
Pin this shit on him.
That's how shit changes.
Nick, you brought up the terrible...
I don't even want to call it deported.
It's the disappearing to El Salvador.
Incredible reportage out of time where Philip Halsinger was in El Salvador when that plane arrived.
He reported prisoners attempted to take over the plane.
And by the way, fair play for them.
I think I would try and take over the plane as well.
He reported armies of troops, mass guards, physical and psychological abuse, the likes of which it's almost impossible to fathom.
One detainee he described as saying, I'm not a gang member, I'm gay, I'm a barber.
That same detainee, as he was getting his head shaved, he whimpered, he was slapped, he cried, he called out for his mother, he was slapped again.
In a truly beautiful piece of writing, he said that these young men, quote, It became ghosts in the middle of this.
I think that this is a really poignant article by Halsinger in Time.
I'm glad that we were able to get an account of exactly how this stuff works out.
But I think it also should be kept in mind that as this is occurring, Donald Trump and his administration I know.
sending them to El Salvador, meaning that this type of brutality, it is a means to an end.
It's a way of intimidating and it's a way of going ahead and trying to undercut any sort of resistance that could possibly take place against them.
And the dehumanization of this.
Now, again...
I have kind of been on the record, like, if there are people who have been convicted of violent crimes who are here illegally, then I have no problem with them being deported, which is what the law has been this whole time, and they've been being deported, you know, a whole lot.
Obama did it more than anybody.
But we, I had said this, you had said this from, as soon as we heard wind of this idea from months and months ago, that they're going to end up sweeping up people who are completely innocent.
And the effects of this will be irreparable mentally to anybody, and physically.
Now, I'm kind of curious to find out, like, what is, is there even a limit to the sentence that they're going to have in this prison?
And supposedly, the president of El Salvador has said something like, you'll be a year, but could be more, you know.
And to me, that just means, like, it just is whenever it is.
The idea that we wouldn't have any Democratic lawmakers down there outside that prison demanding to meet with these people is outrageous to me.
Even if they're not going to get in, they bring them, they bring the cameras, and they make sure that they make a scene to be allowed in.
It's just...
This is scary stuff because, again, if they're willing to do it to someone who is not a violent gang member, like they're trying to say, at some point it could easily be someone who's got a green card, someone who's here legally either way, or someone who's a citizen they don't like.
Yeah, just a couple of points because I think you nailed it.
First things first, this is the reality of authoritarian violence.
What is being communicated is that you can be swept up at any given moment.
You can be disappeared and you can be put in a place where you don't even know if you're ever going to get out.
I mean, this is a literal hell.
Innocent people, criminals alike, absolutely no due process and no care, no human empathy or regard.
And the communication that this could happen if you protest against this government, it's meant to install a dictator in your mind.
Every time before you go and protest, every time before you try and fight against this thing, you're supposed to think about El Salvador.
You're supposed to think about Guantanamo Bay.
Nick, speaking of protests and things of that nature, we also have to cover another giant story.
Columbia University agreed to the Trump administration demands in return for $400 million in federal funds.
They are now going to provide new security forces, banning of masks, an anti-Semitism policy.
Good luck with that.
An appointment of an administrator to oversee the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies.
And here's the fun part about all of this, Nick.
The Trump administration...
They've come out and said, hey, you agreed to all this.
You're not even close to getting the $400 million back.
Right. Yeah.
You know, before I forget, I did want to share something because oftentimes there is a reason, underlying reason that, you know, Trump would do something to somebody.
It's personal, generally.
It's always personal.
Yeah. And so somebody on Twitter, Eric Weinberger, was showing us, found a New York Times article where the headline is, decades ago, Columbia refused to pay Trump $400 million.
Isn't that amazing that it's the same amount?
A quarter century ago, the university was looking to expand.
It considered and rejected property owned by Donald Trump, and he did not forget it.
That's absolutely right.
And, and I, I, I want to.
And I think about these things sometimes because, you know, for all I know, the person I'm getting ready to address listens to this podcast.
I don't think it's likely.
Maybe one of her relatives does.
Maybe somebody around her does.
This is to Dr. Katrina Armstrong, the president of Columbia.
Fuck you.
Fuck you.
This capitulation and collaboration that has taken place at Columbia, I wouldn't take a job at Columbia for the rest of my life if I had no other choice.
The way that they have behaved over the past year is one of the most repugnant, embarrassing, disgraceful things that I've seen.
From the way that they treated students during these protests and bringing in the New York City cops, and then eventually, like, smearing them, expelling them, then on top of that, going along with the Trump administration and helping.
And that's the way it's going to work from now on.
They're going to get rid of troublesome, meddlesome students.
They're going to install fear for other people who are going to try and protest and push back against their bullshit authoritarian administrative policies.
And on top of that, before this whole thing's said and done, if this is allowed to continue, they're going to get rid of teachers.
They're going to get rid of unions.
They're going to do everything back and forth.
And again, it's like professional wrestling.
Oh, we feel so bad that this had to happen.
We're going to stick to our principles.
No, you aren't.
You're a fucking piece of shit.
And the fact that this has happened only opens the doors for what's going to happen in other universities, other colleges.
And I'm telling people right now, if you were an educator in any way, shape, or form, You better get up the ass of your bosses and administrators and let them know that if they capitulate and collaborate like this, that they are not going to have, not just your support, but not going to have your peace.
And that you are going to walk out and you're going to step up against this.
Shame on Columbia.
Shame on President Armstrong.
Well said.
And, you know, people would ask, you know, Columbia clearly has an endowment.
So much larger than $400 million, why would they really care?
They could replace that money without needing it from the government.
But the answer most likely is that they actually want to do the policies that Trump wants them to do.
That's a big part of it.
Yes. Yeah.
In a way that like, you know, they don't they don't have any kind of connection to their past when they were a bastion of civil rights.
And and while it was a lot of student unrest, Columbia, you know, maybe not in the same vein as sort of like as as Berkeley, but certainly or maybe with Madison.
But like, you know, that was one of those hotbeds of of counterculture and and and protests against what the government was doing.
That's a big part of it.
Well, do you think that Columbia University treated those protesters in the past during the civil rights and anti-apartheid protests?
Do you think that they treated them with a plum and respect?
You know, the university itself, and I certainly know that the NYPD and stuff would have been involved in.
They did not treat those people well.
Why? Because the universities and their administrators, in many regards, they're simply just tools of capitalist depression.
That's simply how this stuff works.
Right. And it's certainly now, I don't know if it's much back in the 60s, but now, yes, they want a campus where someone, a prospective student is going to come and visit and it'll be quite tranquil and clean and orderly and all that.
So they don't want any of the agitators there anymore.
And so that bottom line is what's going to motivate them more than anything else.
So I would think it's more than likely that, yes, they're more than happy to get that money back and more than happy to follow whatever guidelines Trump hasn't followed.
It's a wish list!
That's the wildest thing about it.
It's not that they're being forced to do this, although the $400 million is a cudgel that makes sure that it happens, right?
But if you go down the list, this is everything that a college administrator in this corporatized modern environment would want.
It's everything.
So it is.
Man, fuck these people.
By the way, speaking of rage and a need to fight back...
Nick, we're going to talk about something that's happened today.
Again, we're recording on Monday, March 24th.
Internet personality and journalist Kat Abu-Gazela.
That's terrible.
I'm going to do that again.
Abu-Gazela, there we go, has announced her candidacy for the House of Representatives seat in Illinois' 9th District.
And here's Kat giving her explanation of why she's running.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk are dismantling our country piece by piece.
And so many Democrats seem content to just sit back and let them.
So I say it's time to drop the excuses and grow a fucking spine.
I'm Kat Abogazale, and I'm running for Congress in Illinois' 9th District.
Unfortunately, this party has become one where you have to look to the exceptions for real leadership, as the majority work from an outdated playbook.
We need a makeover.
Which means we need a vision that's bigger than what we've been told is possible.
There is absolutely no reason you shouldn't be able to afford housing, groceries, and healthcare with some money left over.
You want more?
Yeah, I want it all.
Give me that whole thing.
Security should be expanded, and our inelienable rights shouldn't be dependent on who's in power.
That means standing up to authoritarians, not shrinking away when the fight gets tough.
And while current Democratic leadership might be fine cowering to Trump, I'm not.
I've spent my entire career reporting on the far right and being attacked by them as a result.
In fact, just a few months ago, Elon Musk's lawyers deposed me here in Chicago to ask about my mean tweets.
Look, I thought comedy was legal again.
This is all to say...
I'm not scared of standing up to these people.
I know how they think and I know how to beat them.
But my campaign itself is going to be different too, because I don't want to wait a year to help people.
We're focused on meeting constituent needs with one simple rule.
What if we didn't suck?
My campaign and I would rather spend our money on book drives and clothing exchanges and public I also want my campaign to be as transparent as possible.
That's why I'll be posting regular videos about the costs and steps of running for office.
We all deserve better.
We deserve human rights and financial freedom and a party that stands up to authoritarians.
We deserve to thrive.
Not just survive.
And I plan to fight for those ideals both on the campaign trail and in Congress.
If you want to know more about me and what I believe, you can go to catforillinois.com.
I do need to mention that campaigns cost money and ask you to contribute what you can.
But I promise your donation will not be wasted on old, ineffective tactics.
No spammy guilt trip texts, no focus groups to test my views, and no grifty consultants who care more about their paycheck than actually winning.
It's time to challenge the status quo.
And if our leaders won't do it, We will.
I'm Kat Abogazale and I'm running for Congress because it's time for Democrats to do more.
Donald Trump...
Okay. Nick, how's that treat you?
You know, we talked about this in the past, is that leveraging your popularity on social media is going to be the way that you get into politics now.
And if you don't know about Kat, she's been around for a long time.
And she was doing a lot of clips of exposing the hypocrisy of Republicans for a long time.
And, you know, getting into that discussion and being able to do a really effective job doing that.
And also, you know, triggering a lot of people to respond to her.
So she gets it.
She knows how to do it.
And she's also very smart and has put together a lot of other videos.
I've been following her since the beginning where it started with tweets and texts and then she went into video and has understood how to be able to fashion something out of this.
So, yeah, I think this is a good template for what you need to do to get into politics now.
So, full disclosure, I contributed to her campaign today.
And I don't like talking about things like that.
I don't like rallying money for people, but I think right now it's actually important to do that.
I think to make a splash in this way and to state things as plainly and openly as she is stating here, I think not only should we reward that with support, because I do think that something like this is necessary.
She's primarying Jan Schakowsky, who's 80 years old and has been in Congress for 26 years.
You know, I think it's important to show that there is a desire for this.
Not just for new blood in Congress, but like somebody who is willing to call this thing what it is.
Which is what Donald Trump and Elon Musk and the right wing is doing.
And also how the Democratic Party has failed.
And they have failed.
So if there is going to be some sort of a pushback, this is how it works.
And for me, this was like drinking the coolest...
Coldest glass of water on the hottest day of the year.
I needed to say this.
I would love to see how she's going to develop this campaign, how she's going to react to things, but this simple and just straightforward, honest assessment of what's going on and a declaration of principles, I think that this landed so well, and I think there's a reason why people are encouraged by it.
Oh, I agree.
I think it's just the start.
I mean, I wouldn't be surprised because she was able to, you know, people did, you know, respond.
And that's the thing is you need to have the sort of, cultural personality is not the right term, but you need to have that magnetic quality that people would respond to.
And that's what she has.
This actually gives me an opportunity to bring something up that I think is interesting.
I want to show you what the 9th Congressional District looks like, which is just north of where I grew up in Illinois.
It's part of Chicago.
Evanston is the main part of her congressional district, which is just north of the city of Chicago.
But look at the shape of this.
Yeah, and for people who are listening to the audio podcast, it looks...
Like a cartoon duck that like went through like a reality distortion shield.
It is an interesting district at the very end.
And there's like a really thin area that connects two different pieces because, you know, obviously, you know, even the Democrats will do this.
They'll create congressional districts that will maximize their ability to win.
And so they're going to carve out little sections because in reality, to properly district for, you know, for elections, it kind of should be in a grid, right?
Some version of like, you know, lines.
You're talking about a country that works, but yes.
Yeah. And so, you know, so I just found that really fascinating because I wanted to kind of wrap my head around what the 9th Congressional District looked like.
So this is the other thing that you have to deal with is that you have this strange snake of a shape with a weird, you know, vulture looking thing, whatever it would be.
And that's what we're dealing with in our politics as well.
But either way, this is the template.
And I'm excited for her.
I mean, Jan Schakowsky is like, yeah, I remember her from when I was still living in Chicago.
So I'm always for people getting to whatever age they get to that's a little older than.
You know, it's probably time to just enjoy your life and let somebody else fill that void and find some other ways that are perhaps more optimal to help govern.
What does that mean?
25 years old.
You can go down to Enterprise and get yourself a rental car for the weekend.
She's been there too long.
And here's the other thing about what you were just talking about, this gerrymandered district that involves Evanston, which is the home of Northwestern University.
If Kat is able to win this primary, she'll go to Congress.
That's the bottom line.
And there's a reason why Schakowsky has been in Congress for so long and why so many of these people have been in Congress for so long is because they don't get serious primaries.
They don't actually get challengers because they are beholden to the entirety of the Democratic apparatus.
I thought about running for Congress back in 2016, Nick, and you know what I found out very quickly when I talked to the people that were around the Democratic Party?
They weren't particularly interested in winning.
They didn't have much, you know, desire to really put on much of a show.
They didn't think about new politics, you know?
They were still thinking about the old ways that you do things.
You have to adapt and change with the time, and we need more people to start primarying these people who have been in office for so long that they aren't as effective anymore.
They probably don't even understand what it's like to be a constituent at this point.
Like, I think that this is, it's a bold move.
And I, for one, from what I've seen so far, I'm very enthused by this, and I just want to have a personal statement in the middle of this.
You know, I do this podcast.
I write over at my Substack Dispatches from a Collapsing State.
I do a lot of this stuff.
In my other...
In which I'm working with non-profits, we're looking for candidates.
We're looking for people who are willing to fight against this thing.
And that is going to be the only way that the Democratic Party starts to understand that and starving them of donations unless they're doing shit like this.
And I am very enthused by this.
And where we're at right now, I hope she unseats Schakowsky.
And I hope that she ends up going to Congress.
That's how I feel about it today.
And for sure, it's one of the most reliably Democratic congressional areas in the country, basically.
And so, yeah, if you win that primary, you're going to win the seat.
And, yeah, I guess my only, it's not a thing, I'm cheering for her, is that we need more people in more contested congressional races, you know, in places that are closer to take that power back and win it for Democrats.
Well, I mean, it would do a world of good to have some people on one side of the aisle that actually wanted to do some shit and actually wanted to fight.
So, I mean, I think every contest is important.
And the Democratic Party, we've talked about it ad nauseum, they haven't been competitive in a widespread way since Howard Dean was the chair of the Democratic Party.
I mean, it's been that long since we had a 50-state strategy.
Well, I said we.
I'm not part of the Democratic Party.
But it's been that long since the Democratic Party has had a 50-state strategy.
And they have simply continued to play out this trench warfare.
And I am all for cleaning out almost every single person who is currently within the Democratic Party and replacing them with people who have actual principles, actual vision, and actual fight.
Yeah, and she's young and has energy.
I mean, I don't know if she's 30 at this point.
I don't know if she's several ages.
And, I mean, I'm already envisioning this notion of a wave of young congresspeople coming in who are very young and very motivated in a new way of...
What generation are we now?
What generation are they?
I think that would be Generation Z. The Gen Zers.
And you know what might end up happening is they'd end up forming caucuses inside the Democratic Party that could ultimately just turn into a different party in and of itself, a separate party, not even calling the Democrats anymore.
That is in play.
And I mean, unless the Democratic Party starts to figure this shit out, like they're in real trouble, like I keep talking about.
All right, Nick, that is a load of stuff.
Oh my God.
All right, everybody.
We will be back with The Weekender on Friday.
A reminder to go over to patreon.com slash muckraigpodcast.
