3/24/25: Glenn Greenwald Debates Saagar On Deportations, Bernie Rallies Thousands As Schumer Flails
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Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to

our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. We have the bro show, Ryan. People live for the pound, as they say. We've got a great show for everybody today. Man, this is tough. Crystal's on spring break with her children this week, so she's having a great time, and we hope that she's staying offline, even though we know

though we know. - She's not. - That she's almost certainly. - She said she's gonna be living on TikTok. - She's gonna be making a lot of TikToks. Okay, so if you wanna see what she's up to, you can go and follow her TikTok account. Let's see what we got here, the toughest part of the job. We're gonna talk about deportations. I know everybody wants to hear more of that, except this time we've got-- - That's it. - That's it, that's actually right. - That's the whole show. - The whole show is just deportation. I'm joking, I'm joking.

We've got Glenn Greenwald on the show. He's going to yell at me. I'm joking. We're all going to talk about it. We're going to talk about it. And we're going to have a great conversation around some of the legal issues, due process, what all of this means, how it could be done differently, the implications, et cetera. I'm really excited to talk.

to Glenn about that. We're going to talk about the rallies that they covered a little bit on Friday. Bernie Sanders really barnstorming the country, bringing tens of thousands of people to various different rallies. Some of the biggest rallies he's actually ever done in his entire career. Interesting juxtaposition with Chuck Schumer and the Democratic strategy. We're going to talk about corruption. Elon Musk's Starlink is set to get billions of dollars in government

contracts. We are going to talk about Steve Witkoff, who recently appeared on the Tucker Carlson show. Sounding a little bit of a different tune now on the Israel conflict. Appears that they definitely got to him on this one as the war continues on the ground there. We're going to talk about the economy, some various different signs inside of that. Perhaps the most troubling one to me is the fact that you can now finance your Uber Eats order. Can't think of a single worst financial decision, and yet I'm sure it will be overwhelmingly popular.

Finally, we're going to talk about soda. Ryan, you and I just love this story. You know, a bunch of conservative influencers allegedly got caught taking money to shill for big soda on food stamp programs. So we can talk about the efficacy of that, but also more what it says about the growing, you know, right wing influencer dumb as we see it interact with the corridors of power. Right. Shall we do that?

Okay, let's go ahead. Glenn Greenwald is standing by. Let's get to it. We're very excited now to be joined by friend of the show, Glenn Greenwald. He's here to yell at me and he's here to school me. He's here to educate me on my misgivings, my wrongs that I've made here on the show. But more importantly, he is here really as somebody who I just look to so respect so deeply on these issues. He's thought a lot about it. So Glenn, it's really great to see you.

Great to see you, Sagar. I obviously have a lot of things to yell at you about. If we did them all, it would take three hours. That's right. We're going to focus on just one or two. That's right. We're going to focus just on one or two. Let's start with Tom Homan here responding to criticism that these migrants from Venezuela who were declared terrorists by the Trump administration were deported to an El Salvadorian prison with no due process. The response there from Tom Homan is that many victims of illegal immigration and crime

themselves were not given due process. You had a very interesting response to that. So let's play the clip and then we'll hear your take. Let's take a listen. How do you determine or how do your people in the field determine that somebody is a gang member?

Look, there's various methods. I've noticed in the media, a lot of them don't have criminal histories. Well, a lot of gang members don't have criminal histories. Just like a lot of terrorists in this world, they're not in any terrorist database, right? We only know the information that's in databases based on, for instance, most terrorists we arrest that are identified as a gang member are later identified through a Title III investigation or through an undercover operation. They're not in any terrorist screening database. We know that.

A lot of gang members, I started as a cop in 1984. Many gang members don't have a criminal history issue. We have a count on social media. We have a count on surveillance techniques. We have a count on sworn statements from other gang members. We have a count on wiretaps and Title III's. Everything involved with criminal investigations come into play. So just because someone hasn't been arrested and charged with a crime yet doesn't mean they're a member of a gang.

But how do you, I mean, what we've heard from lawyers representing some of these people is that they deny that they're members of this gang. Or either, you know, Trend de Aragua or MS-13. Do they get a chance to prove that before you take them out of the country and put them in to a notorious prison in a country that they're not even from? I mean, do they have any due process at all? Look, due process. Where's Lake Irani's due process?

Where were all these young women that were killed and raped by members of TDA? Where was their due process? Well, the people that did that should be prosecuted. The young lady that was alive on the subway, where's her due process? Well, sure. The bottom line is that plane was full of people designated as terrorists, number one. Number two, every Venezuelan migrant on that flight was a TDA member based on numerous criminal investigations, on intelligence reports, and a lot of work by ICE officers. Glenn, what do you make of that argument?

First of all, it's kind of weird because the older you get, uh,

the more you realize that history really does just repeat itself and not by century, but even by decade. We're back in 2002 where we're hearing all of the arguments from the Bush and Cheney administration that they have the right to do anything they want to people. They and they alone have decided are terrorists. And that includes putting people into prison indefinitely with no due process, torturing them, kidnapping them, rendering them, whatever else they wanted to do. And,

And when people objected and said, wait a minute, these people don't even have an opportunity to go into court and disprove or contest the accusations that you've made against them, that they're not part of a terrorist organization. What we heard was, oh, don't worry, we vetted these people and we can assure you that these people are not just terrorists, but they're the worst of the worst.

As it turns out, many, according to Colin Powell's chief of staff, Larry Wilkinson, most ended up not being part of any terrorist organization. They were picked up randomly. The intelligence was wrong. Sometimes vindictively, people reported them to the U.S. military. All kinds of reasons the government makes mistakes.

And that's the whole point of due process is we don't trust just one branch of government to do something as cataclysmic as throw people into a dungeon for life without even bothering to have to present evidence that they're guilty and giving the people who are so accused the opportunity to contest it.

And the other point that he made that makes absolutely no sense, and a police officer should know this better than anyone, is due process is most necessary for people who are accused of horrific crimes. Lake and Riley's killers didn't just get thrown in a dungeon because the government decided that they were guilty. They were given lawyers, formal charges, went through all of our judicial procedures, were found guilty in a court of law and sentenced to life in prison without parole. So the idea that

Of course, no murderers, no kidnappers, no rapists give their victims due process, but we still give due process to the people who are accused of criminality before we can punish them because the founders knew first and foremost that humans are not infallible and they're going to make mistakes. And we've made mistakes all the time, even with due process. We've convicted people

wrongly and unjustly. Imagine how many mistakes get made when you just hand over the power to government officials in the executive branch to declare who is and is not guilty with no opportunity for the person who's accused to disprove the charges. And that is exactly what's happening. Glenn, I think what's made this so difficult for me is it feels dispositionally as if the law is something that is being almost used

in a process way, not just due process, but it's one where it feels as if the Constitution and the law seems to apply only for deportation, but it didn't necessarily apply, let's say, when people were being allowed into the country and then were victimizing people who were here. It does feel, at least to me, as if this argumentation and this love of due process, etc.,

only comes into play whenever it's the, you know, supposedly sympathetic group here, let's say of migrants, when we don't necessarily hear the same for, let's say people who are coming here illegally committing crimes, then it's like, oh, well, of course, this is something that is naturally to happen. They have a lower, let's say crime rate than the natural born population, the implication that you shouldn't even worry about. So for people like me who have really complicated feelings about this stuff, how should we feel, uh,

watching this and trying to balance those two issues of wanting, let's say, mass deportation, the selective application, let's say, of concern. What would you say to those critics? Well, the whole reason Trump has made this a signature issue of mass deportation, and he won twice, and polls clearly show, in addition to that, that people support mass deportation, was because the idea was that people entering our country illegally have done something wrong, have done something criminal.

So the idea is, oh, because they didn't give us due process or they didn't get due process, we should now relinquish due process is essentially to say, let's copy and replicate and adopt the worst abuses of the policies that Donald Trump for a decade has been most harshly criticizing. I think the bigger point, though, is that when Donald Trump has stood up for a decade now and argued for mass deportation,

Typically, mass deportation, not just typically, but almost in every case, means that you take somebody who is in your country illegally and you send them back to their country of origin. You send them back to where they're a citizen or where they came from. That is always how deportation works.

The reason this has become so controversial is because the Trump administration is not picking up Venezuelans or others and sending them back to their country of origin. They're sending them on purpose to a third country that these people have nothing to do with. They're not citizens of El Salvador. Most of them, if all,

Not all of them have never been to El Salvador. And the reason we're sending them to El Salvador is because we know they have a repressive prison system, probably the worst in the world, where they're not only going to be humiliated and tortured and stripped of all human rights, but it's extremely unlikely that they're ever going to leave. So this is a radical departure from what we think of and call deportation. This is consigning somebody not just to life in prison, but to one of the

worst prisons, life in one of the worst prisons that people very rarely leave. And if you don't believe that the government, the US government under the Constitution owes people the right of due process, of a hearing, of an opportunity to disprove the accusations, not before we deport them back to their country of origin, but before we send them on purpose to a hellhole of a prison that they're likely never going to leave, prison for life, without even an inkling

of a process, a requirement the government showed the evidence and the opportunity of the person so accused to contest it, then you don't believe in due process at all. Then you simply believe in an authoritarian government that can just accuse people in secret of being guilty. And that's the end of the story. And that has never been the founding value of the United States. You mentioned the Benjamin Franklin quote that I had cited where he said it is more just

to allow 100 guilty people to go free than to punish wrongfully a single innocent person that comes from Blackstone, which is the foundation of American and British law. Thomas Jefferson is attributed to say something very similar, but certainly all of his writings and all of the founders' writings.

That was the idea. You know, let me just give you a quick example. We impose limits on police officers that make it more difficult for them to catch violent criminals. They're not, for example, allowed to just burst into houses where they suspect that somebody guilty might be there. They first have to go to a court, get a warrant.

And we require that even knowing that sometimes it's gonna mean that violent criminals get away because we're putting barriers in front of the police, but we're a country of liberty. We've decided we would rather have those liberties even if there's a cost to it. And due process is exactly that. And it's something foundational to the United States and it can't be waived simply because people are frustrated with illegal immigration, especially when it's not sending them back to their home country, but putting them into a,

horrific prison in a dictatorial country in El Salvador where you've seen all the video of things that they do to these people that would never be permitted in the United States. And there's also that famous quote, you know, people who trade liberty for security will get neither. And just to sketch in how that unfolded in this moment, we can just very quickly run through a couple of the examples because we're talking about it.

the question on principle, but also in practice we see exactly what unfolded. Roll A2 really quickly. This is just like a gay barber who is like, we're asking people to just use their common sense. Does this dude look like a

from the Trend de Aragua gang. It's like, no. He looks like James Charles. One of those gay beauty influencers. He is a makeup artist. Trend de Aragua is like welcoming with open arms, openly gay, flamboyantly gay hairdressers who fled Venezuela claiming persecution on LGBT grounds. You think that's a likely member of a Trend de Aragua gang?

Or shouldn't there at least be a hearing about that first to determine if he's guilty? Let's hear the charges. So then A3, this is one we wrote about over at Dropsite. Herce Barrios, Reyes Barrios, he's a professional goalkeeper.

who protested the Maduro regimes, kicking off his opposition from the presidential ballot. He had a hearing scheduled for April 17th to make his case for political asylum. He was actually removed from maximum security prison after his family was able to get an affidavit from the tattoo artist. It was like, no, this crown is related to Real Madrid, his favorite soccer team. And so that

ICE is finally like, OK, we'll let him out of maximum security prison. Very quickly, they instead they just deporting him and taking him out. DHS stood behind that one in a comment to us saying, you know, we feel like the tattoo was was gang related at the same time. And you can put up a four while I'm while I'm talking about this. They have acknowledged, actually, this is just a bunch of other people whose family are saying, no, these are just tattoos. These guys have nothing to do with gangs.

DHS has said 101 of the people, this is for his autistic brother. This is like the autistic awareness and acceptance symbol. 101 of the people that were deported, they don't claim were in a gang. Yet every time we come with evidence that this guy is not in a gang, DHS responds...

They're actually in a gang. Now, I don't really have a question because I agree with you on this one. I'll just be a potted plant for the rest of this conversation. Just wanted to add that. No, I think this is all fair. And this is what I think makes the difficulty. Again, I'll just explain. For me, I feel as if that the law was not applied for several years. Millions of people illegally entered our country.

And, you know, any often the discussion for those years, if we brought up someone like Lake and Riley or the victim of crime in that respect, it was, oh, well, that is simply the consequence of Ryan, let's say, in your case, of our meddling in Venezuela, almost as if we deserve it.

right, for that to happen. And or lawlessness of not, you know, taking the names of many of these people or, you know, not pursuing deportation or detainers or the willful either, you know, expulsion from, let's say, from prison during without bail. And it seems as if, you know, here, you know, we can highlight these examples, right?

Of course, of which, look, it is clear that there were terrible mistakes done. I don't even disagree with you, Glenn, on a human level. And I think I am coming around to your point of view. It just does feel, in terms of, let's say, the sympathy and who we decide to look at these things has eroded much of the discourse around this. And so both at an emotional level and also with

with what Ryan is saying? Because I'm sure there are a lot of people who listen to this who probably initially had my response as well. What do you think that they need to hear both about not only equal application of the law, but why it is so important what you're saying?

So I do absolutely agree that we have democratically ratified a program of mass deportation. There's all polls showing across political lines that people believe that the massive inflow of people into our country who aren't documented, who have no right to be here, who cross the border illegally is a huge problem and needs to be rectified. And again, I think Trump has won a democratic mandate to mass deport people who are in the

I don't have any doubts about that, whether I agree with that policy or not. That is the Democratic decision. There is a process in place, though, that is designed to do that. You can deport people. Obama and Trump in his first term and Biden in his first term

deported a lot of people and you can deport a lot more legally using the legal mechanisms that are set up. The problem with Biden was not that there aren't legal processes sufficient to deport a lot of people. The problem is the Democrats had no political will to do so. They were controlled by pro-immigration groups,

But if you want to, you can abide by the law and mass deport at the same time and minimally safeguard human rights and the ability of people not to be wrongly accused. And I don't think we would even be having this debate, Sagar, if not for the fact that Trump gets in. There hasn't really been mass deportations, by the way. No, there has not. That's very important. There has not been mass deportations. Right. Yeah.

And what we're getting instead are distractions from kind of exploiting the idea of mass deportation, first to go after people who are in the country legally, green card holders and visas, who are being expelled for the crime of criticizing and protesting against Israel, which I know you do not –

support. And so part of that is an exploitation for a completely different issue. But the other part is deportations are not about sending people to prison for life. We've never regarded life in prison as an appropriate punishment for people who enter our country, especially in a country that's not theirs. That

is only appropriate prison for people who are proven to have committed violent crimes. And there's a lot of doubt about whether the people sent to El Salvador were in fact guilty. And even if there wasn't doubt, even if they all seem kind of guilty based on this very

tenuous art of interpreting people's tattoos, which, by the way, liberals did with Pete Hegseth in a way that turned out to be completely misguided. There was a New Yorker fact checker, Talia Levine, who accused an ICE agent of having a Nazi tattoo. She had to quit because she misinterpreted the tattoo. These are very, very thin reeds on which to...

proclaim somebody guilty. If it had just been the kind of deportation that Trump was promising, I don't think there'd be a controversy. The problem is, is that these are not deportations in the traditional sense of the word. And we should have learned from the war on terror that if the government says, trust us, everyone we're punishing is guilty, you don't need a hearing, you don't need to see the evidence,

We know for sure people are going to be wrongfully accused. And there's a big difference between just sending them back to their home country, although that can be pretty devastating for people here a long time, are married to an American citizen as Mahmoud Khalid is, but it's still way worse to send them to a dungeon in El Salvador with no due process. This is Doug Gottlieb for the Doug Gottlieb Show. The Toyota Tundra and Tacoma are designed to outlast and outlive, backed by Toyota's legendary reputation for reliability.

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It's time to put America first when it comes to spectrum airwaves. Dynamic spectrum sharing is an American innovation developed to meet American needs, led by American companies and supported by the U.S. military who use the spectrum to defend the homeland. It maximizes a scarce national resource, wireless spectrum, to protect national security and deliver greater competition and lower costs without forcing the U.S. military to waste $120 billion relocating critical defense systems.

America won't win by letting three big cellular companies keep U.S. spectrum policy stuck in the past, hoarding spectrum for their exclusive use to limit competition here at home while giving Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE a big leg up overseas. For America to lead, federal policymakers must build on the proven success of U.S. spectrum sharing to ensure national security, turbocharge domestic manufacturing, rural connectivity, and create American jobs. Let's keep America at the forefront of global wireless leadership. Learn more at SpectrumFuture.com.

Glenn, what is the legal process that the government has to follow, let's say? Like, I know this happened with a lot of Gitmo detainees where we're like, okay, we want to send them back, but then their country's like, no, we don't want them back. So, and this was some of the wrangling that I'd seen as well, that while the Venezuelan government has agreed to accept some deportation flights, let's say in the case of many of these migrants to the United States, if they did not want to accept them, what process must the government follow? Because it does feel a bit preposterous that if the government doesn't want to accept them,

that they have to, let's say, stay here on the dime of the US taxpayer? Well, Guantanamo is a perfect example. You may remember that at one time there was in excess of 1,000 detainees at Guantanamo, again, who we were told were the worst of the worst, the incorrigible terrorists who would never be recuperated. And now there's fewer than 40 people. What happened to all of those people?

Apparently they got released because the government realized or they proved in court that they weren't actually threats, terrorist threats. They didn't belong to a terrorist organization. And sometimes their countries didn't want them back, but the US used diplomacy and was able to place them all throughout the world

They didn't get sent back to prison. They were put into other countries. Some of them are like in Caribbean. The United States is a very powerful country. We have all sorts of ways diplomatically to do deals with other countries, including with Venezuela that has now said they're going to accept the deported Venezuelan citizens. So this was not, Sagar, an attempt to just be like, oh, we don't really have anything to do with them because Venezuela won't accept them. This was a huge rush.

That was designed really to be deterrents to say, if you come into our country illegally, we're going to make examples of these people and we're going to make videos of it with them being humiliated and stripped of their humanity. And it was done in a very rushed fashion. There was no real attempt to diplomatically negotiate with Venezuela or anybody else who might take them.

The whole cruelty and horror of the process, again without due process, was part of what they were purposely trying to do. And that is not an appropriate means of the justice system to make, you know, that's what monarchs used to do is they would cut off people's heads who they heard were criticizing them and then hang them in the town square as a warning to others who might do that. That is not American justice. That has nothing to do with our value system. It's a huge assault on it.

And I think there's obvious ways for the US government diplomatically to get these people back to their home countries. Last question for you, Glenn, for me is why does due process for illegal immigrants matter? That's something that I really struggle with is just this idea, you can come to the United States,

You can violate our laws. You can then receive better treatment than you would in your own home country. And we're almost like a victim of our own compassion and of our openness when we didn't enforce the law and then are required to enforce the law once you are here illegally. Why do you think that it matters?

And I did not even realize until I started listening to you that the precedence for due process for people present in the country illegally goes all the way back to the 1800s. So it's pretty clear that we have been grappling with this question for a long time, but it's obviously been politically controversial. So why do you think it matters, even for illegal immigrants, for, of course, people like Mahmoud Khalil and others?

The Bill of Rights was never intended to be, and the courts have never interpreted it as a kind of list of privileges that only a certain group of human beings possess, namely American citizens. In fact, the 14th Amendment was deliberately written to say that any persons inside the United States, not citizens, but persons, not even legally here, but just persons in general, human beings, have the right of the equal protection of the law. They have the right of due process.

And that's why this is not some invention of liberal courts in the 1960s. As you say, it goes back to the 1800s. And again, when the United States put, obviously, all non-citizens in Guantanamo, the Supreme Court in 2008 ruled that

Even though they're not citizens, because they're under U.S. sovereignty, they have the right of habeas corpus, the right to go into court and to demonstrate that the charges against them are illegal. And the reason is the Bill of Rights is not a list of privileges assigned to particular people. It's a constraint on the U.S. government with regard to everybody under their control. And the reason is, is because it's simply so...

so inherently morally unjust, horrifyingly unjust to do something like throw someone into prison for life without any opportunity for them to prove that that is an unjust punishment. Deportation itself, real deportation, sending them back to the country of origin, has a very minimal standard of due process. It's just a kind of immigration court within the Justice Department. And as long as they're here illegally and the government can prove that,

They'll they'll approve them going back to their to their country of origin. You don't have to prove guilt or crime. The crime is entering the country illegally. We're talking about something much, much different here. And I think that's the reason it has become so alarming. And it's not just alarming in these cases, but as a precedent that will obviously expand outward in a way that we saw happen repeatedly in the Cold War, the war on terror and every other abuse of civil liberties. The only other point I'd make is.

These are radical ideas, free speech, protection of people who are accused of crimes, due process for every person whether they're a citizen or not. Like we are unique around the world in defending these liberties.

It it's then like I said, it is like you go to other countries. They're like this full First Amendment thing you have. This is a radical idea. And it's just not accepted in a lot of other places that you have these liberties. And so in dark times like this, you got like that's when you really have to defend them or then or then we're just like, what are we then anyway? So that that's my that's that's my only point. I don't know if any final thoughts. Glenn, any final thoughts here?

No, I think that I think it's a crucial point. And I would just add one thing, which is that one of the ways that governments traditionally try and get around the constraints on them from the Constitution is to try and say we're in wartime and therefore we can't afford those. And as I'm sure you know, this 17 that this Aliens Enemies Act was invoked only three times in history. The War of 1812, World War One, World War Two.

where even then it was very sketchy courts were very skeptical of the right to deny due process based on it. The idea that mass immigration is some kind of a war in the traditional sense where Congress declares war against a foreign power, that in itself is extremely dangerous because that is what we saw in World War II, an attempt to impose a war paradigm on what really was a criminal problem of international terrorism that we could solve with due process in courts.

And if you just allow the government to declare war willy-nilly and therefore all the powers that go with it, the Constitution is just going to become illusory because the government can just get around it by saying, oh, we're at war. We're at war against this problem, this problem, this problem. And that, I think, is maybe the most dangerous theory that the Trump administration is promulgating.

Well, Glenn, you've always given me a lot to think about. I think you have convinced me, but it's a difficult emotional process to get here. And I really do thank you for coming on the show, for being willing to do this, and for just continuing to always stand up when you believe. And you're one of my heroes that's out there. So thank you. Thanks, Agri. I appreciate you having me on knowing that I was going to yell at you. Well, it's good. It's good for me. I think it makes me stronger, right? All right. We appreciate you, Glenn. Thanks very much. Good talking to you guys.

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All right, let's go ahead and get to these rallies, and then afterwards we're going to talk a little bit to Dave Weigel, reporter at Semaphore, who actually was on the ground for some of these, and he spoke to the participants involved. Let's put the first part up here on the screen. This is just some images that came out of these rallies all across the United States as part of the, quote, Fight Oligarchy Tour by Bernie Sanders. I mean, look, you've got to respect the game. Crowds matter.

As we learned in the 2016 presidential campaign, both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump were able to bring out just tens of thousands of people who aren't really normally engaged in politics. And what's fascinating about this one, Ryan, is not only the sheer crowd size,

but also the makeup of those crowd sizes. So a perny AOC rally, you and I have been covering this for a while. You know, it's got a certain aesthetic. It's got a certain group. My people. Yeah, they're fish heads, as Ryan can announce. This time around, though,

There's some moms there. There's some people there that are traditionally part of the progressive left-wing movement. And something that we always respect here on this show is not only crowd size but the ability to build new coalitions. I mean, Donald Trump was a very effective actor. Bernie, in his waning days, arguably the most impressive feat of his political career so far.

And you have some right wing commentators, influencers, whatever you wanna call them, who are throwing cold water on this and saying, according to our cell phone analysis of these characters who are out there protesting, these folks have also gone to Black Lives Matter protests as well. Like, A, if you're American

and you're remotely in the center or the left, you were at a Black Lives Matter, there were like 20 million people or something. - There were a lot. - It was basically everybody. - That's right. - And they said, and it's not grassroots because we have identified that this organization Indivisible was involved with helping to organize these rallies.

Indivisible is an organic grassroots organization that does get some foundation funding, but that doesn't mean it isn't a membership-based and powered organization where you have an Indivisible and Chevy Chase. All of these little tiny neighborhoods have Indivisible chapters.

Those are generally normie Democrats. They came out of the Women's March era. So the fact that they are at a Bernie AOC rally does not undercut the kind of potential that it shows. It actually fuels it because it's like, oh, now you've got the normie Dems who are showing up at a Bernie rally. That's –

That's a change. Well, Ryan, as you and I know, oppositions always like to downplay the grassroots element of it. Like they said with the Tea Party. Exactly. And so let's take it back to 2010. And so I was a student here in Washington. We were awash in crowds. We had the Glenn Beck rally. I'll never forget. That was actually while I was moving into my dorm, my freshman year dorm.

I was stunned. I was like, oh, my God. I was like, something is happening here in Washington. The entire city is taken over by all of these like anti-Obamacare protesters, Glenn Beck's rally. I mean, that was hundreds of thousands of people. What was the comment? Oh, they're being bussed in by the Koch brothers. And it's like, yeah, that might even be true. But guess what? They're still showing up to vote.

Like, as most people know, like, it's pretty rare to actually physically being paid to go to a protest. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. It certainly does. But at a mass level, no, that's not true. Providing organization, buses and all that is a longstanding part of all political coalitions. The Donald Trump campaign used that to great effect, of course, trying to make sure that your rallies are always crowded. This is like standard political stuff. The fact is, is when you have all these people here, it means something. Now, we don't know what yet, but it definitely means something to me. One fun irony, though.

The only person who really flagrantly actively paid people to be part of their political operation is Elon Musk. Yeah I will pay you $100 and it worked out right? That's right So it's hilarious that he would be like pointing fingers at this but you're you're so right and at the time I remember the left saying this is all Koch brothers stuff and and

And my argument to the left was this type of cope screws you because you need an objective, clear-eyed analysis of your opposition or else you're not going to see what their assets are and you won't be able to come at them and defend your own position. And the Cokes were funding the right for decades at that point and had never managed to bring hundreds of thousands of people out to the mall. So the fact of the money

sometimes necessary to get the people out there, but it's not sufficient. Yes. You have to have actual organic energy. Yeah, people need to be pissed off. People need to be mad. People need to be politically engaged. And these foundations were funding Indivisible to the tune of a couple hundred thousand dollars two years ago, but they weren't pulling 40,000. If all this money mattered, Joe Biden would be president of the United States or Kamala Harris would have gone. Exactly. People matter. Actually, they matter more than anything.

And so we've got this, some clips here from Bernie Sanders, which I think if I had to, you know, as people here know, I've got the softest part of my, of all the Democrats, it's Bernie. Bernie for me, he's the OG. I have a very difficult time saying anything bad about him. Especially when he goes the anti-immigrant route. Yeah, that's right. We'll talk about that. Especially his old school stuff. I just think the guy, I don't know, there's something about him. He tugs at my heartstrings. And something I appreciate the most about Bernie is to me, Bernie just feels American.

And that is what really hit home in some of these speeches. Let's take a listen. We don't want a king in the United States. We overthrew a king. Money, they control our economy. They own much of the media and they have enormous influence over our political system. But from the bottom of my heart,

I am convinced that they can be defeated. We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us, too.

our communities, each and every one of us, choosing and voting for Democrats and elected officials who know how to stand for the working class. Our job is to break up the big corporate monopolies that are screwing us every single day. Bring down housing prices for good. Bring down grocery prices for good. Require good living wages for a full day's work. Put power

power back in the hands of everyday people from Arizona to Texas, all across America. - All right, so very, I mean, look, you have to respect it. And like I said at the top there, for Bernie, I remember his most effective political ad, the America ad, 2016. Also here, you know, coming, bringing back to the spirit of the American Revolution and/or the labor movement, something that he's very intimately familiar with and he's been rolling on for quite some time. And I do think that that is a very potent political message.

And it's, I think, important for him, you know, with the oligarchy tour there, not only against Elon and some of the political feelings, but in terms of like where this movement can go. Because again, as you and I know, the reason why the Tea Party was funded to the tune that it was, was to specifically direct grassroots anger, which let's all be honest, people didn't care about Obamacare.

They just hated Obama. Well, they wanted to take that feeling around that and channel it into an agenda that was well-planned, right? So you could give, this is where leadership really matters at a political level, not only in terms of the organization at the top,

But electing and selecting candidates that specifically agreed, let's say, on the debt ceiling or Obamacare and all that and telling them what their mandate was. So, yes, you need to fight. We need to fight specifically on a set of issues. Now, last time around, the Donald Trump resistance of 2017 was built physically around Donald Trump. It was specifically built around, oh, we need to impeach Trump or show he's not democratic. That doesn't mean anything.

And especially if it's built on a bullshit lie, which is what Russiagate was. This time around, though, if you have an actual critique of what a policy level is, that will lead you. That's the decision tree from which everything happens if and when you do get elected in 2026 for the midterms. What type of hearings you call? Are you going to be doing Russiagate hearings or are we going to, let's say, a Starlink hearing? I can tell you which one's going to be more politically palatable, by the way. It's definitely going to be the latter one.

Yes, and that was Greg Kassar at the end there. I didn't know he had that in him. He's actually not bad. I'll be honest, after he was on the show, I wasn't that impressed by him. Here, I was like, he's not bad. We had him on a Friday show. Yes, and he's in his element when he's...

fighting the billionaires and the oligarchs. Did you see John Ossoff? Yes, I did. I was stunned actually to see, because I'm like, okay, that's where my critic hat comes in. It's like, all right, dude, we're talking about oligarchs and billionaires. It's like, come on. Let's remember a little Mr. Ossoff's career here in Washington and exactly who got him elected.

Hold on now. I'm an Ossoff hipster here and I'm an Ossoff defender. When he was a Hill staffer- He used to go to your parties, right? Yeah. We can say this at this point now, I know. Lee Fong knew him well and he was one of the Hill staffers who was the most aggressive against surveillance, civil liberties, the NSA, CIA. He was a threat to that national security, that deep state. Yeah.

He was also working, he was also doing like documentaries in Africa about colonialism and corruption and prison conditions.

I think the Ossoff you're seeing now is the actual one. Not the politically curated Ossoff. Not the Obama impersonating one of the 2017 House race. But his last couple of Senate runs, he's been... If that's the Democratic Party, that's a cool Democratic Party. So if you missed Ossoff, he was saying...

He was making the point that the the Trump cabinet I think is worth something like 60 billion dollars before you get to like Trump and Elon Musk he's like they are the elites that they're telling you that they're coming after and I don't know if it's too late. It's so part of this almost feels like a

Poignant like now you now the Democrats are finally getting it when you know There's been room on the left for this and there's been a hunger on the left for this class-based Bernie Sanders the the millionaires and the billionaires the 1% that analysis the Occupy to flowing out of the Occupy Wall Street analysis. That's

It's been there and then it got diverted, you know, first by the Hillary Clinton campaign and then by the kind of Great Awokening from 2017. Well, I don't think it's an accident. The Great Awokening actually happened the exact same year as Occupy.

That was the exact time that we both had the Occupy Wall Street movement and you had the Great Awakening. The Great Awakening is a term that actually does have meaning, by the way. You can go and look at the skyrocketing use of, you know, quote unquote, work woke terminology that does not an accident. Also that 2015, the Obergefell case happens in the entire landscape of social politics in America changes. Our system is so, our capitalist system

is so good at protecting its own interests that it's able to kind of produce these antibodies to humans

threats to it. It spotted a real threat to it in the form of Occupy and Bernie and this energy. And the antibody was this Great Awakening. Yeah, that's interesting. And so now it has the antibody faded, but it might be too late. Like now maybe the oligarchs are in firm control. Well, I think what makes it too late are not only the decade. We have a terminal condition at this point. We not only have an 11-year legacy here of the Great Awakening, which is, if you think about that, that means that an eight-year-old at that time.

at that time, now grew up and became politically conscious in a quote-unquote woke period. And attitudes have significantly changed amongst, we didn't, unfortunately, didn't on Thursday and have time to go into the analysis there, the best analysis, the 28 million survey of voters, and specifically how different white college-educated women are than the rest of the population, white college-educated women, of course, being one of the bedrocks of the Democratic

and especially with the divide in income and in class that we now see, where a lot of lower income Americans and/or non-white Americans find themselves Republicans or at the very least Trump voters and Trump, not as Trump skeptical, whereas like resistance in and of itself is kind of cringe and is basically what the home of the liberal base. Now, a lot can change, of course, you know, people change all the time. - And think about what the Great Awakening left us with in 2015 as Sanders is rising.

The big problem that was associated with him, according to all his critics, too many young white men who were angry, who were supporting him. Bernie bros. Now the problem Democrats has is they are all Trump supporters. Yeah, you're right. It is funny because that prototypical Bernie bro is now the prototypical podcast bro.

who is the Republican voter. Working with his T-levels or whatever. Literally the Joe Rogan pipeline is real in Rogan's case. I would say actually in a lot of these guys' cases, people who are, I know quite a few of them, they're not Republicans by any means. They don't really care about tax policy or something like that. They're much more either radicalized on social issues and or just very anti-establishment. They feel like the left is just too deeply tied to the overall commanding heights of establishment.

And I understand. Yeah, and they gave up on the idea that there could be collective change in this country. And so they've channeled that energy inward. They're going to work out more. They're going to worry about the different supplements they take. Because Trump is what? Trump is a wrecking ball, right? Right. It's like, well, that's all the best that we can do. It's kind of a screw you to everybody. It was interesting now. The media is taking notice. Here we have ABC News' John Carl talking about Bernie Sanders and his rise. Let's take a listen. All right.

How's the Democratic Party doing challenging this? Eh, they gotta be a little tougher. Quit being a bunch of doormats. It feels like we're left stranded when everything feels like it's crumbling.

So you can see people are mad. But Bernie, this is again, got to appreciate the guy. Bernie has an actual worldview. He doesn't just go with the tides. Okay, he does sometimes, if we're all being honest. On Ukraine, on pro-life, a few other things, especially on BLM, etc. Guns, yeah. But on immigration, he's always had something to say. And that's why there's a lot of people on the left, they don't know what to do with this Bernie, the guy who he's always been. Let's take a listen.

Is there anything that you think Trump has done right? Yeah. I mean, I think cracking down on fentanyl, making sure our borders are stronger. Look, nobody thinks illegal immigration is appropriate. Oh, interesting. OK. And people were like, oh, what about you in 2020? Yeah. The inauthentic Bernie on immigration was was the 2021 Bernie.

who went with the Democratic tide, which was produced by the Democratic outrage at kids in cages and child separation and Stephen Miller. - Well, it was such an insane moment too, because that was when this idea that Elizabeth Warren makes up a story about how Bernie was sexist to her like eight years ago or whatever.

That had actual currency. It was like actual currency, not only in his campaign, but in the broader media environment. And I would say, at least with a limited portion of the Democratic base. Now, those people who watch this show always thought it was bullshit and that it was an invented smear. But let's not make it up. It was a scandal at that time.

in terms of the moments. - It was going right into Iowa. - Same in particular when we think about the campaign in 2020 was really just a meeting of forces that were really, in my opinion, just not meant to coexist. Like you come off this great awakening, Me Too, all of these other social, in my opinion, like insane periods, like literal temporary mass psychosis,

mirrored, or sorry, paired with an original like economic populist campaign of 2016, which had nothing to do with any of that. If anything is like diametrically opposed, I would say that the great failure of his 2020 campaign was the inability to reject a lot of

that and to return to his roots, the America ad, and also just not being able to prosecute a K. This is his own personal failings, in my opinion, where he's independent. He calls out the Democratic Party. But Joe Biden, I mean, if we'll all recall, my great friend, Joe Biden, you're like, well, what's up with that? You know, it's like you can't, it doesn't work that way.

Or if it does, then you're actually just one of them, which is what I think a lot of people also feel. Also, one of the reasons why, you know, his campaign and his willingness there at the end basically just endorsed Biden for nothing. Remember what he said? He's like, Joe, I understand that you also want to cancel or raise the $15 minimum wage. And he's like, yes, Bernie, I do. Didn't happen, right? That's one of those where, and then didn't really hear much about it, you know, the entire time. He was a good soldier for four years, which is a weird role to see him in. I think a lot of people felt betrayed by that.

Oh, yes. Yeah, you know he his image took a big hit on the on the left and but you know I think people are like don't expect him to run for president again, so There's a little bit more grace and also there's nothing else to cheer for and so I think I think AOC is stepping into that as well like she also You know took you know has been has taken, you know, huge huge hits from the left for years. Yes, but

There's nothing else out there. And so a lot of people are like, all right, well, she's saying the things again. Right. But why should you have trust now? Because she said it before. And then she ran for the oversight thing. And she was a good soldier. She endorsed Biden. She even defended Biden after she was more vociferous in defense of Biden than Nancy Pelosi. I don't think you're going to get a world where people blindly trust either. Right. But I think it's like if you're involved, you need a horse. There's nobody else riding.

This is it. Right. All right. Well, yeah, as I always say, you go to war with the troops that you have. These are the troops. We've got Dave Weigel standing by. He's going to break a lot of this down for us. He's got some great reporting on the subject. Let's get to it. This is Rob Parker from The Odd Couple with Rob Parker and Kelvin Washington. The Toyota Tundra and Tacoma are designed to outlast and outlive.

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Joining us now is Dave Weigel. He's a fantastic national political reporter for Semaphore, great friend of the show. Good to see you, Dave. Good to be here. Thank you. So Dave, you wrote some really interesting stuff here about Tim Walz. We just talked a lot about Bernie Sanders, but Tim Walz is also holding town halls and meetings, and he's been on somewhat of an apology tour, I guess you could say. Let's put it up there on the screen. Walz on governing under Trump. I'm not going to enable him. So what did you learn,

at this rally or in Wisconsin, Tim Walz was there. It was an I told you so tour. It was an apology tour. What is his theory about where things went wrong? And also how is he positioning himself vis-a-vis Bernie and AOC? - Well, he doesn't really have answers to what went wrong. That's part of it. It was this town hall style event. The questions were a little bit coordinated, not coordinated, but vetted before they were asked.

The crowd was all Democrats or a couple of mega I didn't see them at a friend from a Wisconsin paper saw MAGA people trying to get in they weren't in So it wasn't it was asking what went wrong without bringing people in whom who voted against Democrats And the wall general theory a little bit of self-serving which is that he has a political style a very blunt political style sometimes goofy often goofy that he thought would have was hemmed in by the Harris campaign and

The policy part of it is he just thinks Democrats didn't do enough when they had power to convince working class voters that they're on their side. That rhymes with what Bernie's saying. And that's irritating to lots of Democrats because they look at the Biden agenda and say, we actually did it. There's the faction of Democrats say, we listened too much to the Warren staffers and the Bernie staffers and did as much as we could of your policy agenda. And the Teamsters went from endorsing us to unendorsing us, even though we shoveled money at them and saved their pension. Yeah. So he didn't have answers. He just had a

they should have listened to me more and they should be more populist, TBD or victory. What is the kind of Bernie Warren wing response to that? Because it is the case that they pushed through basically whatever they could. Like certainly under Ron Klain, Bernie was calling Joe all the time and-

And it was, you know, Joe Manchin slowing things down, Sinema slowing things down. What does the Bernie wing say to that? It's mostly that part. It's that Sinema and Manchin slowed this down and real populism hasn't been tried. What if we were defending right now, it expanded child tax credit. What if we were defending right now dental care as part of Medicare? That's kind of the Bernie answer because his speech is...

shorter than some of the speeches he gives, his policy agenda is not just, you should have elected me. It is,

implying we can build on some of what Biden did, but not saying, and Biden did some things right. The only times he mentions Biden is criticism of the funding for Israel's war machine. That's all he does. Interesting. Anyway, he brings up Biden. But it just says, yeah, and we need to keep building and doing more progressive things, but no mention of the Biden agenda. Dave, how are you thinking about this moment? So I know you and I talked a little bit, and I was like, man, this Midas Touch thing, like, again, as somebody who does this for a living, I'm like, this is crazy. And I don't see a lot of elite media grappling with that.

I think it's because not only of the outside, but they're not like capital D Democrats, as in they're not like, yay, Schumer. They're like, no, actually, Schumer, screw you. How are the people in Washington, Tim Walz and all those other people, are they picking up on that? I can see that with Bernie and with AOC. They're aware of this burgeoning online resistance, but I don't see the bubbles up here yet. The difference between Democrats on their strategy is really fighting or defending

building right now and fighting later. That's basically it. And that's another harmony between Walls and Sanders, and frankly, people showing up, 'cause what was interesting in these crowds, the Walls crowd was all people who voted for Harrison Walls. The Bernie crowd, remember the first eight people I talked to in Greeley, which is the University of Northern Colorado, probably the most conservative district he campaigned in over the weekend.

the first eight people had not voted for him in any of the primaries. And I was kind of, I wouldn't say I was looking for people who might not have, but I was saying, oh, you're a woman in your 60s, you probably, you know, you have resistance gear, you probably weren't a huge Bernie fan. And they weren't. They liked AOC, but they said just Democrats aren't doing enough to fight. Where are they? Why are they not stopping this? Why can't they stop this? Why can't they filibuster? And that was the question I had for Walls. You dealt with this, you got elected in 2006, people were furious that you didn't cut off funding for the Iraq war. And he had an answer, but...

The answer there was, yeah, just take the L and win the 2008 election and fund the war in the meantime. And that's just not satisfying. These Democrats, they look at Trump and say, not only is he rude, does he offend our values, but he wins a lot of what he wants. He's not trying to do anything like repeal Obamacare. Wouldn't win that right now. But he wins, and they want someone who wins, and that's the difference. It's not...

Have you scored your Medicare for All plan? Are you convincing me that at the end of the day, you actually scored a hit on Trump in some way? And so you were seeing a lot of these people then that are into that funny category that I started seeing emerge right after AOC won, who were like normie Democrats who were like, I don't like Bernie, but I do like AOC.

Like which is the reverse of some people on the left who are like I like Bernie but I don't like AOC and in both cases like they pretty much are saying the exact same things more or less some emphasis varies here or there so

Are those people now who are like I don't like Bernie, but I like AOC They kind of like Bernie a little more because he's maybe less of a threat and he's not gonna probably run for president and Could you imagine these like centrists aish whatever you want to call them resistance Democrats Really getting behind AOC as the as a party leader type figure. Oh as a party leader. So I

Some of that, yes. Like how do they see her? As a Senate candidate, sure. But I started to ask some people at the Greeley and the Denver rallies. And I always feel, I feel a little bit, even though it's part of the job, I feel weird asking normal people about presidential elections three years in advance. But okay, it'll be in the conversation. I'll leave this rally and people say she's running for something.

And I was struck, the same people I was finding who had strange new respect for Bernie or AOC, they were already worried that she was not electable nationwide. Like, oh, she's not white guy and maybe that won't work and she's said some left-wing things, maybe that won't, they really were snake bit by the Harris experience. And that's,

A bit ironic that Kamala Harris, who the ungenerous version of what she did in 2020, endorsed a lot of left-wing ideas that she couldn't commit to or believe in, and they haunted her for six years. That was the worry they already had about AOC. But as a leader in the party, yes, they were cheering for their own senator. She was shouting out every senator who voted against the CR, for example. Oh.

They liked that. She was saying there are Democrats doing the right thing. We were talking about a handful of Democrats who who are not doing the right thing and a hundred percent majority of Republicans doing the wrong thing to get rid of the content of her speech. There was I'm a working class person who Republicans make fun of because I'm working class.

and I know these policies work, and we need to get Republicans who are bad for them. So there was nothing she said that was even testing. Like, are you with me on this? Are you willing to go and endorse this policy I ran on 2018? Even when they talked about green jobs, it was a green jobs program. They did not mention the word Green New Deal. And she already was... I wouldn't... I'm not trying to say it's cynical, but she already was not mentioning the sort of bingo card jargon that made a lot of sense to people in 2019. Like, you didn't say Medicare for all. You didn't say Green... She wasn't doing that. She was saying, here is a...

almost, here's an inspiring populist democratic agenda. Take it if you want it. And I'm here to give speeches about it because I can get crowds. That was what the opera was. Interesting. Let's compare that to Chuck Schumer and his theory of resistance. Let's take a listen. We'll get your reactions.

Our plan, which we're united on, is to make Donald Trump the quickest lame duck in modern history by showing how bad his policies are. He represents the oligarchs, as I said. He's hurting average people in every way. And we are, through oversight hearings, we're exposing what he's doing. Through the courts, which I mentioned, we're exposing what he's doing.

We've had some real success in through legislation and through organizing in all the districts throughout the country. So that I believe that when because the Republicans are already nervous, a lot of them said don't hold town hall meetings. I believe by 2026, the Republicans in the House and Senate will feel like they're rats on a sinking ship because we have so gone after Trump and all the horrible things he's doing. And they will know it, see it, hate it.

So Dave, that's like the process theory of resistance. That's not working for a lot of these voters. No, and he answers the questions that are asked and he doesn't pivot because the interviewer might say, but tell us what you're doing to fix this problem in the party. But there's not the democratic agenda there. And that is when Schumer was on the rise and Schumer and Rahm were in this

kind of the same train going together in 2004, 2005, they, they led with policy. They said, well, the Iraq war is unpopular. That's taking care of itself. But we need to come up with some sort of agenda that we can run on everywhere in the Ohio river Valley and in six for six, six for six. And they're, that's a deep cut, man. Yeah. Oh yeah. I thought I had deep cuts, but that's a good one. Uh,

In the Schubert view of things, yeah, you do this, you make them unpopular, they come back and say, if you're ready to come back to Democrats, here's our offer. And the progressive populist version is, they already assume that Trump's bad. There's all these voters who, less than before, but who assume this thing is not going to go well. They want him to break up the system. They'll be ready once the system's broken up.

for something else. We need to tell them right now because they look at Democrats and don't take it seriously. And that was the other part of what Sanders was saying more in interviews. He said this to Times, he said to me that he's just trying to find more candidates to run for office. And he had, in Denver, he said, AOC is an inspiration. People can do what she did, find their friends, run as maybe independents. Not independents running as a spoiler and electing a Republican. Independents saying,

The Dan Osborne model in Nebraska, although it didn't work. The Sanders model, which does work. There might be people who just think the party is so toxic that you need to run outside of it. And that is not fixing the party's problems with Trump. That is saying we need to replace the Republicans with whatever chess piece is available. It can be a Democrat, can be an independent. The whole Trump bad thing, all right, people know that. We're not getting anywhere with that argument.

Well, I'm probably gonna say that I've talked a lot is that half of these speeches are about things Trump is doing, but they're focused on he is firing FTC commissioners. He is firing federal workers to enrich his friends and his donors. It's much more coherent than he'll become unpopular later. Yes, very smart. Now, the last question here is exactly about that point. I don't remember specifically.

at this time in the Tea Party, did they have announced candidates? How soon should we start to look for those primary races, which became such an important part of the narrative? - You know, very good question. I think candidate filing in these Virginia races this year, that's wrapping up without much of a challenge, the internal party.

It'll be later this summer, we'll see some of that. I wasn't, even with Sanders and ASC, I wasn't seeing much of a tumult for we need to primary a lot of Democrats because they're just aren't, look at the CR vote in the House and the Senate. Is there somebody gonna make primary Brian shots over that? Right, exactly. They're not giving them a lot of material to do that. Westworth, the Tea Party at this point had people,

all these problems on the record for TARP, right? There was something you could easily go out and tell people they screwed you on TARP. Such a good point. I didn't think about that. Not the litmus test. Yeah. There's not the same litmus test for their candidates, but I'd say later in the year, uh,

And the challenge of getting the progressives through the primary process, Justice Democrats are still trying to do that. These groups are still trying to do that. But they really are trying to win an argument first so that even the moderate candidate is going to end up like, look, there's all these people who are not on TV every day but voted with Maxine Waters on everything this year. And that's more of the thinking. How do we have a coherent, popular agenda that is rooted in Elon Musk is trying to rob you that somebody can run it in a plus four Trump seat?

We're not necessarily gonna say you didn't sign our petition. We want to win that argument so that every time, every Republicans are being asked, they're being asked if they support Doge in a negative way. Everywhere they go, they assume the Democrats gonna tax the rich and give us benefits.

So yeah, long answer to your question. I would say in a few months, but Justice Democrats recruitment was starting much earlier, a couple cycles ago. Right now they're looking at the field and saying also, what is crypto, what is APEC gonna do and try to undermine us? We need a robust theory for these candidates before the money comes in and makes them unelectable. - Yeah, smart. - Yeah. - All right, Dave, thank you so much for joining us, man. - Thank you. - We appreciate it.

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