Greetings from Occupied LA!
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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. Tommy Vitor. On today's show, the Trump administration has finally facilitated the return of Kilmer Obrego Garcia, but is now charging him with human trafficking. We'll also talk about whether Trump and Elon will ever make up in the latest internal drama at the DNC. You'll also hear Tommy's exclusive interview. I'm just calling it exclusive with Governor Newsom a little later in the show.

But let's begin here in occupied L.A., where Donald Trump has deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to help deal with a few protests that got out of hand after two big ice raids at workplaces in downtown L.A. and Paramount, which is a heavily Hispanic suburb about a half hour south of here. I think to understand the full context of what happened over the weekend, we should start with a story we briefly covered last week, which is the story of a man who was killed in a car accident.

which was Stephen Miller calling an emergency meeting of top ICE officials in D.C. so he could tell them that they're, quote, horrible leaders for not hitting his completely arbitrary goal of 3,000 arrests per day. And he also berated them for focusing only on criminals and not places like Congress.

Home Depot or 7-Eleven? Also a quote. He then fired two top ICE officials. And sure enough, this weekend, masked ICE agents showed up in the parking lot of a Home Depot in Paramount and started arresting everyone they saw.

They also raided a clothing company downtown. When word got out on social media, some people showed up to protest. ICE then fired flashbang grenades and pepper spray and things devolved from there. But by Saturday afternoon, the confrontations died down. And even the libs at the LAPD put out a statement commending people for demonstrations that remain peaceful and concluded, quote, without incident.

And that's around the time that Trump decided to federalize the National Guard over the objections of Governor Newsom. First time that's happened since 1965. The Guard showed up to empty streets on Sunday morning. By afternoon, there were protests downtown. By evening, some had turned violent and destructive.

Law enforcement told CNN it was a few dozen protesters responsible for the chaos, which included lighting a few self-driving Waymo cars on fire. Trump was asked about all this on Monday, including his immigration czar's comments about arresting public officials like Gavin Newsom. Trump said as he was getting on the helicopter to reporters, well, if I were Tom, I would, referencing Tom Homan. Trump was again asked about this later in the day at an event. Here's what he said. A crime has he committed? No.

I think his primary crime is running for governor because he's done such a bad job. When you were talking about unrest in American cities, you said, quote, we have to go by the laws. We can't call in the National Guard unless we're requested by a governor. What changed now? Why is this situation different to not consult with Governor Newsom about this? Well, the biggest change from that statement is we have an incompetent governor. Are you going to deploy Marines in California? We'll see what happens.

So apparently he is deploying Marines. There's over 700 Marines in Southern California that should arrive here within the next 24 hours, apparently, even though Trump said in that event we just heard from that things are moving in the right direction. Guess not. Before we get to the sitting president calling for the arrest of the governor of our largest state,

which is what Trump was responding to at the beginning of that quote. Let's start with just general reactions from you guys to the protests since we all live here. Love it. You stopped by one of the protests earlier today. What was the vibe and how different was it than what people might be seeing on TV? It's pandemonium, John. What was your fire starter of choice? Well, here's the thing. Molotov cocktails are a lot like fish tacos. They just don't travel well. Yeah.

So use them or lose them. You know, and John, I understand that that Waymo never came that you were waiting for. And so I went down. Did you take a Waymo? That would have been very funny. Take a Waymo, leave a Waymo. By the way, this is the first time a lot of the country is even hearing about Waymos. I was realizing this on social media. Some people are like, what the fuck's a Waymo? Like, yes, we have self-driving cars here. They're Waymos. They're from Google. And it's really weird when you see them.

And there's just nothing funny about calling a Waymo to a protest to set it on fire. That car just sort of humbly navigating through different crowds of people just to get to its attended recipient only to be set on fire. There's nothing funny about that. Coming to a Fox News segment near you.

But so I went to the... We were against this, Jesse. Yes. And Greg Gutfeld. So SEIU had a big protest downtown because one of the people arrested over the weekend is David Huerta, who is one of the leaders of SEIU. This to me...

whatever dozens of people may have been setting way most on fire and leading Fox wall to wall. This was thousands of people. Every local labor union was represented. Unite here was there. SEIU is there. Uh, UFW is there. I saw roofers unions and, and other unions, uh,

of different people. There are American flags, there are Mexican flags, there are resist fascism flags, all kinds of flags, extremely peaceful, exactly what you want to see, exactly what Fox News is not playing. That is the lion's share of demonstrations that we are seeing across the country. That is the lion's share of participants in this moment, in these protests. And it was inspiring. It was a lot of people celebrating.

And, you know, I'm sure there are people there saying things that I don't agree with people. It's a big motley crew of all the different progressive organizations in the city representing the whole range of beliefs. And that's that to me is what's the main demonstrate kind of demonstration you're seeing in Los Angeles. Just not going to be what Fox News is going to play. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think it's important for people who don't live here to realize, A, L.A. is huge. And even when you're just, you know, confining this to downtown and Paramount, like downtown, and Mayor Bass was saying this as well, even when you're downtown, it's only a few streets. Yeah.

here and there that were, you know, I was around, I was East side near your place and I was West side all over the weekend. Like you would not have known if you hadn't read the news or like followed along that anything was going on in Los Angeles. Los Angeles County has what, 10 or 11 million people, the biggest County in America. If you were, you know, it's New York and Philadelphia are as close to each other as different parts of this County. It is massive. It is massive.

The paramount protests on Saturday was reportedly 300 people. And that's the one that there are a lot of the scariest images that came out of that. The Fox has been playing all day. The LAPD has 9,000 sworn officers, 3,000 civilian employees. They have over a dozen helicopters. They have a SWAT team. They have a mounted police unit with 40 horses. They can handle a protest of 300 people. The idea that you have to send in the National Guard to put down a protest of 300 people is ludicrous.

Well, and again, the LAPD Saturday afternoon put out that statement. There was like, we commend everyone. And this was without incident. And we're so glad this all worked. And we're on standby in case anything changes and don't worry. I mean, they're not going to put that out. The Los Angeles Police Department, if they are worried or they didn't think that it was peaceful. Also, the situation in Paramount.

If ICE had done like there is a ways if ICE wants to detain undocumented immigrants and put them through a process. We've had this like for years and years it's been done this way. It was even in the first Trump administration. The raids weren't quite like this.

let alone all through the Obama administration and the Biden administration. When you go into a parking lot and, you know, these are reports from people who are on the ground in Paramount and you just have masked agents pouring out of vans and arresting anyone they see, anyone they can grab. They're saying that they're looking for specific people. And then, of course, afterwards, DHS has this thing like, oh, we got a lot of criminals and this people's like, yeah, of course you found a few people with criminal records, right? Like that's

But the idea that you're just going to start grabbing anyone you can in a very Hispanic suburb, of course there's going to be a reaction there. Yeah. It's also – all of this is about stoking a –

small subset of people to create the images they want to allow them to escalate further. Even the deploying of the National Guard, it is meant to be inflammatory. And then what are the guard there? Oh, they're just there to guard federal buildings. They're not actually participating in anything. He's calling in the Marines. For what purpose? To what end? They're not allowed to make arrests in U.S. cities. What are they actually deploying these people to do? And it seems to me what they're actually trying to do is, first of all,

create more chaos on the streets in Los Angeles and also use this as a pretense for doing it not just in Los Angeles but in other cities across the country. The ice guys you see on film, on TV, like either they're dressed like they're like Navy SEALs, like special forces

forces cosplay or there are people not in uniform with like no badge, no discernible markings to suggest their law enforcement with a mask on trying to fucking tackle you. Could you imagine what your human reaction to that would be? These people like brutalizing like random civilians on the street, throwing them to the ground, no idea if they're citizens or non-citizens. Like the idea that this is a

an okay way to do policing of any kind is crazy to me. Yeah. And by the way, in Paramount and at the clothing company downtown, people were saying that they were grabbing and arresting people who are citizens and

And you, again, Dan and I talked about this last week, but you give them your ID, you give them, even if you happen to have your passport on you, they assume that it's fake. And so they just detain you anyway. So there's an incredible amount of fear in communities that are heavily immigrant or just heavily Latino. And so that's sort of the

backdrop of all this. So Newsom is now suing the administration for taking over the California National Guard without his approval and cooperation. The White House memo federalizing the guard is quite broad and basically says the president can deploy troops in any city, any state, any time, including not just the guard, but the U.S. military. Trump himself said, quote, we're going to have troops everywhere. We talked about the Marines he's now mobilized that are apparently coming here. What's your level of alarm over this? And what do you make of Newsom's legal challenge?

I mean, I think the fact that you had all these governors from like Andy Beshear to J.B. Pritzker, sort of a range of moderation to liberalism, signed a joint statement about it suggests that they're pretty worried. And I don't know, I think Newsom is undoubtedly right on the merits to challenge Trump in the courts. We are not under invasion. This is not a rebellion that needs to be put down. And it's a dangerous precedent. Whether or not he will win this case, given the makeup of the courts, I have no idea. Yeah. Yeah.

It's not an invocation of the Insurrection Act, right? And they were very careful to – the administration has been very careful to say that it wasn't, right? And it basically relies on a statute that authorizes the president to federalize the National Guard if there's an actual or threatened rebellion, quote, against the authority of the government of the United States and to use the Guard to protect federal property and functions, right?

So that is what the Trump administration is relying on. And they're saying that this is the so-called protective power of the president. And so if they're using the guard purely to protect federal property, which is what they were doing yesterday, they were surrounding the federal building in downtown L.A. Apparently they didn't have like live ammo in their rounds and they were just there to protect and they're not allowed to do law enforcement actions. So they're not allowed to arrest. They're just –

Now, what Newsom is basing the challenge off of is that it says this should be announced. If the president's going to do this, it should be announced through the governor's.

Now, it doesn't get so which is and he's saying, well, I didn't give cooperate. I didn't give consent to this. I'm not cooperating. And the administration will probably say, well, just because it says it's announced through the governors, it doesn't give an explicit veto to governors on this. So I think that will be the contention. It is a little fuzzy. I think the legal rationale here. Yeah. Look, I'm not leave that to the strict scrutiny squad. It's more just the competition.

the just bending of the meaning of words, right? Like, you know, you see all these different, they're calling it a rebellion, an insurrection, invasion. It is none of those things. That is not what is happening. It is protests, some of which are, you know, leading to, you know, small groups of people are causing disturbances and violence and some chaos. That is what Trump wants. I'm sure nothing would make Donald Trump happier than to have, you know,

a national guard around a federal building suddenly facing an onslaught of protesters. He would love that image. He would love to love to see that. Now, put the National Guard piece of it aside. There is no justification for sending Marines into an American city. We are not under invasion. We are not seeing a rebellion. There is no... LA is not on fire, as the Fox has been saying, because it's not in our office all day long. None of that is true. And I saw Kevin Roberts, who runs the Heritage Foundation. He posted...

uh, their favorite image, which is, you know, I feel like was done and created in a lab to, to be on Fox news, which is a masked guy standing on a burning Waymo waving a Mexican, a Mexican flag. Like it was like, did they ask chat GPT to create this image for them? Fine. But, but, uh,

you know, seems like this is what happens when you have an invasion in your country. We must have mass deportations or we won't have a republic. Like these guys have become such just so fucking cowardly. And like the America is not as fragile as all that. We're fucking fine. Like the LAPD can handle some protests, even protests that got out of hand.

Like America can handle this problem. And the idea that like we have that, that therefore some random guy is waving a Mexican flag and therefore we need mass deportations. We need to go after the Home Depots and the Seven Lives. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. The logic is also a bit off because, um,

We didn't have burning Waymos and people throwing things at cop cars from overpasses before the National Guard got here. And then the president said, all right, I'm taking over the National Guard. I'm federalizing it. Sent in 2,000 troops. And then we had Sunday night where we had the Waymos. So even their 2,000 troops couldn't do anything. Even the LAPD on Friday night and Saturday had the situation under control. And again, Stephen Miller's goal of 3,000 arrests a day is the key to understanding all of this. Yes.

That is what's driving ICE to arrest people with no criminal history who are often literally in immigration courts for hearings because they're trying to be a part of the process and do the right thing. And then they're getting arrested after, you know, they walk out of the courtroom where an immigration court just said, you know, their case wasn't dismissed or whatever. And Stephen Miller knows that those kinds of arrests

are going to be unpopular. So he has been pushing for months and months and months for fights with big liberal cities like LA because they desperately want this story to be about the dude on the Waymo burning the car. Yes. And apparently in the last month, I think...

about 25% of ICE arrests that people had no criminal record whatsoever. And that is a new record. Even in the Biden administration, it was something like only 6% had no criminal record. In the first Trump term, it was like 10%. So it has just skyrocketed just in the last couple weeks for exactly what Tommy's talking about, because Stephen Miller, look, they want a million deportations a

a year. And they think they can only get there with 3,000 arrests per day. Nowhere near 3,000 arrests per day were happening in the first Trump term and certainly less than that in Biden and Obama's term. So they're just trying to arrest. This is not about criminals. It's just not about criminals anymore. This is about arresting anyone who is not a citizen and who doesn't have documents to be here. So the Newsom arrest thing we should talk about

You know, Tom Homan, the immigration czar, he has made these threats before, like public officials who stand in the way might get arrested. And then someone said, oh, does this include Bass and Newsom? And he said, yeah, they're not above the law either. He later clarified to say, well, they haven't violated the law, so I wouldn't arrest them. But Newsom was asked about it. He said, go ahead, make my day, come arrest me kind of thing. And then Trump was like, well, if I was Tom, I'd arrest him.

And then Newsom, you know, then replied by saying it's an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism. Thoughts on this whole thing? Yeah, like, you know, I'm from a simpler time when arresting an elected official was seen as a very serious thing. You didn't just idly threaten that you did it because you had evidence of corruption, of malfeasance, like a serious crime. Or inciting an insurrection against the Capitol. Right, for example. It certainly wasn't something you debated publicly and you screamed from the helicopter, sure, I guess.

That is insane. They've already arrested the mayor of Newark. They've already charged a sitting member of Congress. They arrested David Huerta, who's currently detained for, I don't know what they're claiming exactly the charges are, but it's basically for nonviolent protest charges.

as part of some of these ICE raids. So they are doing it already. Whether or not they ultimately charge Karen Bass or Gavin Newsom and go that next step, it's almost beside the point. They are charging elected officials. They are doing it. And a reporter asked Trump, well, what was Gavin Newsom's crime? And he said, running for governor. Yeah, that was the clip that we... Yeah, which he meant as a dodge. He meant as a political attack. But taken literally, he is saying...

Gavin's crime is opposing me politically. And for Trump in that moment is kind of like out right wing crazying Tom Homan, his immigration czar, who is the intellectual father of the original family separation policy. He is, as you mentioned, he's threatened to arrest a bunch of other Democrats. He threatened to prosecute AOC for informing migrants about their rights. ICE is a completely out of control organization. He is an out of control right wing leader who wants to scare the shit out of people and militarize immigration enforcement.

And by the way, that's all true. And yet Homan, he makes this comment that basically I will arrest people if they obstruct even Karen Bass or Gavin Newsom. That becomes a news cycle. He kind of walks it back, right? He's like, I wasn't saying specifically them. I'm just simply expressing that if you break the law, no matter who you are, I'm going to arrest you now. Obviously, that is the way that they would exercise that is extreme. But he does that kind of semi-correction and then Trump just undercuts it immediately. No, we should arrest him.

crazy. We should say, too, that, you know, the mayor of Newark, Raz Baraka, not only were his charges dismissed, but the judge yelled at the prosecutors even like, oh, you're dismissing the charges now after you arrested him because, of course, they're crazy. So, you know, some good news there that I think arresting public officials for no reason whatsoever is probably not going to work out in Trump's favor, which is why I'm sure Newsom was like, go ahead, come make my day, arrest me. Yeah, I guess like

A Newsom mugshot, I think, and then interviewing Charlie Kirk kind of cross-cancel each other out. I think he had a good mugshot. I think he wants it. I think it would be good for him. Should he do, like, the glare? Like, face down? Think about your face. Someone on Twitter said, I think these two can work it out, Newsom and Tom Holman, when Tom appears on his podcast.

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This Supreme Court term asks the question, what if the highest court in the land had the overall vibe of a contentious Real Housewives reunion, but also with the power to destroy democracy? Yes, that is exactly where we are. The Supreme Court is setting fire to decades of precedent, handing presidents near dictatorial powers. And now the conservative justices are turning on each other. It's chaotic. It's dangerous. And yes, it is kind of hard to follow without a legal degree.

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All right, let's talk about how Democrats and the broader Trump opposition are reacting to these immigration raids. Clearly, Trump and Miller and the rest of the assholes love seeing images of burning cars and violent protesters waving Mexican flags. Clearly, Democratic officials can't control what random anarchist morons do and have all pleaded with protesters to remain peaceful. That said, are these protests a good idea? Could they be better organized? Could they be better message? What do you guys think?

I feel like what we're seeing is kind of three kinds of protests. You have spontaneous demonstrations where there are ICE raids. We've seen that across the country. That kicked off with a, or at least became sort of, I think, more kind of in the public awareness when that started in San Diego. Then you have, like,

massive, nonviolent, organized protests led by unions, led by progressive organizations. And then you have, I think, people taking advantage of these moments and that are more anarchistic, not interested in being part of any kind of movement, have no real political goals, just sort of in for the fight that pops up every time you have any kind of large scale protest movement. The spontaneous protests at ICE raids, I think, are

really important. I think it registers community disapproval. It draws attention to what the administration is actually doing versus their rhetoric. And I do think this is going to become increasingly important. It

If there is community response in this way, it means that the raids will have to be conducted with more personnel and more resources. It just makes their job practically more difficult to conduct the level of raids that they want. Now, those images won't always, I think, be the kind of images we would say are like the pristine, perfect messaging to reach undecided voters. But what we've seen, and this is true in the civil rights movement, is that the specific tactics of

of a protest or a movement don't need to be popular to be helpful in reshaping a public debate in a positive way. And so I think all the attention on what the administration is doing at a Home Depot, at a restaurant, whatever happens in those specific cases, which is not up to any kind of, you know, there's no message discipline for a mass response, ultimately nets to people understanding what the administration is doing.

Yeah, I mean, these protests are rarely popular in the moment, but they're incredibly powerful when they are nonviolent, have clear goals, and are so big that they're impossible to ignore. And I have a huge amount of respect for anyone who goes to a protest, especially the people who put their bodies on the line and physical violence.

safety on the line and their legal status on the line to be a part of a protest. But obviously there are smart and dumb ways to do it. We don't need to repeat that burning away Mo is not smart, right? Just think to yourself, is, uh, is Stephen Miller going to be delighted or unhappy about what I'm doing right now? And then, you know, act accordingly. Um, the, the one thing I just have noticed about protest movements is

especially on the left over the last decade or so, is at some point it became an article of faith in progressive movements that every movement has to be about every one of the large bucket of issues. And I think it was a sort of a misunderstanding of the concept of intersectionality, which is a phrase that was coined in academic literature in the 80s about overlapping power structures that led to discrimination. But I think it's evolved to mean progressive organizations or movements that

think they have to talk about every one of a big bucket of issues because the issues are connected, even if the organization was founded to do one thing and not talk about another. And I think that is wrong. Like, I think you need your movement to be focused on a specific outcome and designed to be as broad as possible to bring in as many people as possible. For example, the largest and most powerful movement to combat climate change should not force all the people who are a part of it to agree on Gaza.

And the most effective movement to end the war in Gaza should include people on the left and like the isolationist right, like Thomas Massey, who agree on Gaza but disagree on climate change. And I think – Are you referencing some of the Palestinian flags that we saw in these protests? Yeah. Like you just see different signage and flags and representations of different issues pop up everywhere. And it just – I think people are probably doing it in good faith.

But it muddles the message and it just gets plucked up by Fox News and right-wing organizations and coded as scary left. And like you said, there's no controlling who attends a protest or what people say there. And we shouldn't pretend that we can try or act like we have to take ownership over the comments from every asshole at a Democratic protest because Republicans certainly don't own everything said at a MAGA rally. But it is frustrating. Yeah. I think...

We can't control or do anything about, you know, random anarchists, morons causing violence and chaos. And, you know, we can plead with people to stop when they get arrested for it. You should say, yeah, of course they should be arrested if they're breaking the law. Right. I think what happens is like if there isn't a big, loud, organized, peaceful protest movement that is explicitly anti

committed to nonviolence as not just a political strategy, but a moral imperative. The vacuum is filled with what the right and Trump and all those people want to say the protests are about and the more violent, chaotic protesters. And so part of this speaks for need for like us to and, you know, everyone's been trying to

build an opposition since Trump came back into power of like a real organized, peaceful protest movement. I mean, and you saw that today when you went down there and we've seen that in other parts of the country, like throughout the last couple of months, it's starting to build.

But this just, I think, highlights the need for it because it's really hard to break through with a peaceful, organized protest because it's not as exciting to cover. Right. And the right certainly doesn't want to cover it. And Donald Trump doesn't want to acknowledge it. And neither does Stephen Miller or any of those people.

But that just means that it has to be even bigger and even louder. And it has to – again, you have to repeat over and over again that nonviolence is the strategy here, right? Because you're right that civil rights movements, a lot of that was not very popular when it was happening. But by the time you get to Selma and there was incredible violence visited upon the protesters at Selma, but because they believed in nonviolence as a strategy, they did not fight back.

Polls taken right after Selma showed people overwhelmingly, including white people, a plurality of white people, on the side of the protesters at Selma, not on the side. And that's what actually turned it. Now, that took a long time, but like it just it requires a level of discipline that I think we have not had to maintain yet. Well, I think part of it, too, is.

The answer, right, is, oh, you think that these protests need to be bigger and they need to have a more clear nonviolent message. And that needs to be obvious that it represents the vast, vast majority of people participating.

you're not going to get that by posting about it or beseeching people online. You got to show up. And like, you know, the protest I was at today, far bigger than any of the more violent demonstrations. It was a bunch of different people. And also, by the way, the message was very clear. It was about freeing a man who represented the kind of overreach that the Trump administration was demonstrating in the raids it conducted over the weekend and in the arrests and in the deploying of the National Guard and now the Marines. But

But the way we show that this movement is largely peaceful, nonviolent with specific goals and aims is for everyone to come be a part of it and show just by numbers. And so like what I hope comes over the next like this is what we're seeing right now is I think the first phase of how we kind of respond to Trump. It is a mix of protest as protest.

awareness raising as demonstrating power and community and also about specific practical actions to slow or stop the administration and what it's trying to do. And we just have to keep building that muscle. I think the unions are going to be central to this. I think it's really powerful when you see people just saying stop arresting workers when it's about people's jobs, whether they're

undocumented or not, whether in the union or not. These are not criminals. These are neighbors. These are people just showing up to get work. I think that's really powerful. It was powerful when the leader of the building trade spoke out on behalf of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. And I think like we got to figure out how to let those those unions and those moments kind of become a nexus where more and more people feel obligated to show up and participate. Yeah. And know what you're getting yourself into, right? Like you you

One challenge with these immigration raids, and this is different than shipping people off to Seacott without a trial, is the president has broad authority to detain and ultimately deport people who are undocumented. And you also can get arrested if you impede –

federal law enforcement, including ICE agents, from carrying out their operation. And this is how they're getting people. This is how they this is what they're charging David Huerta with some other people. So you stand in front of a building that ICE is trying to raid like you're going to get arrested for that, you know, and they do have the authority to do that. So, you know, there's peaceful protests. There's a whole good reason for them to be peaceful. But unless you want to be arrested because it's civil disobedience, you should know what you're getting into. The other part of it, too, is, you know, if you go back to the protest of the Iraq war in 2003, you

a whole range of messages, I am sure some of which would have been seen as incredibly unpopular. You're at a protest today, it's a mix of people saying uphold the Constitution, abolish ICE, get ICE out of LA, whatever kind of, it's just gonna be a wide range of messages, some good, some less polling well, whatever the fuck.

But what you really need is for the leaders and organizations all to kind of have a clear set of goals that they're kind of rallying around. And that becomes the kind of middle of the message. And there are people on other sides of it saying all kinds of stuff. But there needs to be a clear kind of tentpole goal. That's the more important conversation to be having on social media and through the press because it is both frustrating and sort of funny that –

People who are listening to us right now, people who are reading pieces in The Atlantic and The New York Times and social media, they're probably not the people who are lighting the Waymos on fire. So when everyone's giving warnings, they're like, we must be peaceful and don't do this. It's like, yeah, everyone you're talking to is good. And the people who are lighting the Waymos on fire probably aren't like looking through The Atlantic at the latest piece about how we're giving Trump everything he wants.

Have you heard in the Daily? Put that Molotov cocktail away. The big Apple Bomb stands, I think. Also, by the way, there's all this like, oh, you know, wave the American, people on Twitter saying wave the American flag, don't wave the Mexican flag. It's like, fine. But like, if you're at these protests, there's a whole bunch of flags. They're American flags. They're Mexican flags. And like, it is fucking like, people can be proud of being Mexican and want America to be a great place that is their home. It's all a little bit like. But again, it's like, I see that on Twitter. People are like, oh, the Mexicans.

I'm like, what do you want Democrats to do about it? You want to go to the protest, rip the Mexican flags out of people's hands and stick in America? Like we can't organize. Like, what are you talking about? You can be proud to be Mexican in America. You can be proud to be Jewish. You can be proud to be whatever you want to be. All right. Irish people in Boston. Yeah. All right. So if the confrontation in LA hadn't happened, uh,

The immigration story right now would be the news that the administration has brought Kilmar Obrego-Garcia back to the United States, despite arguing in court and in public for more than two months that it could do no such thing. Obrego-Garcia will not, however, be getting the chance to challenge his removal in court. Instead, he's behind bars and facing federal human trafficking charges brought by the U.S. attorney in Nashville.

His lawyers are asking a judge to hold the federal government in contempt anyway, saying the charges are made up and that the government is just trying to save face. We also know that a top federal prosecutor in Tennessee resigned over the decision to seek the indictment in the first place. First of all, what do we know about the details of the indictment and how likely are these charges to stick, do you think? I mean, I think it's important to separate out details in the indictment from what he was charged with because what

initially when I read all the reporting on it, I was like, oh my God, this is horrible. This guy's like a kingpin. And then you get into it and the federal grand jury only charged him with conspiracy to transport and the transportation of undocumented migrants. It is all around that one traffic stop we've seen videos of. But the prosecutors use the indictment to make all these allegations about guns, drugs, trafficking, violent acts. And then Pam Bondi gets up at the

podium. And she accused Abrego Garcia of trying to solicit nude images from a minor and helping to kill another gang member's mother. But none of that was part of the indictment, which is completely inappropriate for a prosecutor to do. So I think just like stepping back, no one should trust this DOJ or administration.

at all. A lot of the facts here seem to come from these alleged co-conspirators who are listed in the listed like CC1, CC2. Mainly one. I was really reading it. It's like they got one guy clearly. And that guy's probably in jail. Yep. And jailhouse informants have a tendency to lie if it helps their case or helps them get leniency. So I want to see the evidence. He should be tried in a court. He should be a jury should decide what happens next.

It is pretty notable, though, that this prosecutor in Tennessee resigned rather than bring these charges. It's also pretty clear that they gathered this. They put a ton of resources behind gathering all this information. And all that happened after they sent this dude to El Salvador to rot in a prison. So, like, none of it makes it okay. And by the way, when Greg Abbott sends a bunch of fucking, you know, undocumented people from Texas to other states, he is treated like a conservative hero. Not a trafficker? Yeah, not a trafficker, I guess. But anyway.

Yeah, I just we can't trust this indictment. We can't trust the administration. Look, we have we have no fucking idea. But we should assume this is a political prosecution. That's why this guy resigned over it. We have no idea where this information is coming from. By the way, is it coming from the United States? Is it coming from fucking Seacant via Bukele? Like, we have no idea. All we know is that they spent weeks trying to get to this point because if they were going to bring him back as ordered by a court, they did. They wanted to do it with this indictment so they could wave it in the faces of the of the woke mob.

So I just think we have to wait and see. Yeah. And they had the legal authority to deport him to a country other than El Salvador at the start. They chose not to do that. They also, if they could have brought these charges, these human trafficking charges at any time in the last several years, it was based on a traffic stop in Tennessee in 2022, which is why this is happening in Nashville. And

They pulled him over. They saw that he had a bunch of people in the car. They didn't have luggage. The cops that pulled them over was like, maybe is it – he says he's bringing these guys to a job. Are they undocumented? But they let him go and did not charge him. And so now they've gone back and they basically have – they have the traffic stop and they have this one co-conspirator who's been talking.

You can tell from the indictment they don't have a lot. It's like a lot. It's an overly written indictment that's suggesting a lot of things, but there's not a lot of... But we'll see. The Attorney General of the United States going on television to say a bunch of shit that is not actually charged, that is insane. Insane. But the broader point I think that's salient here is...

If there is evidence and if a jury convicts him, then that's due process. That is what everyone was asking for. That's what his family was asking for. And the idea that they could just send him to Seacott and then they couldn't do anything to get him back after we were assured. Pam Bondi was like, he's not coming back to the United States. Christine Noem said he's never coming back to the United States. Stephen Miller said he's never coming back.

And then, sure enough, Bukele was like, oh, I'm not going to... I don't want to send it back. And then Bukele has this weird tweet where he's like, well, I said I wouldn't smuggle a terrorist back. But because they asked for him, sure, I'm going to do it back. So they're all lying. You know, it's all fucking...

farce. Yeah, it's just worth saying. They can bring, you know, they've tried to make all kinds of claims about Kilmer, Braylon Garcia. They've made no such claims about Andre Hernandez, Romero. I mean, they've claimed his social media shows in a gang, which is just made up. His makeup brush is a gun. Yeah, it's bullshit. They can bring Andre back whenever they want. That is the main takeaway from this. They can bring him back whenever. And a lot of others. And a lot of others. I mean, I do think this opens them up to, like, a

A court's going to say, okay, you brought him back. Where's Andre? Where's all these other people that mistakenly – there's another one that they admitted to mistakenly sending to the wrong place. So it's probably not going to help them in court here. I do think they probably saw that they were going to lose in court ultimately. They didn't want that fight. So they're like, let's bring this guy home. Let's figure out a pretext. And they threw all these resources at –

gathering the spurious information to throw into an indictment. So that doesn't directly help Andre and others who are still rotting in hell in El Salvador, but it does suggest that public attention and legal pressure helps and is important. Yeah. Very good point. On the Bukele point,

I just think this is a complicated story, but I do think it's worth talking about and Democrats talking about it. Like why this partnership with El Salvador is not actually a good thing. It's actually disgusting and it's going to benefit gangs, which is that Trump wants us to be about being tough on MS-13. So he says, okay, so to be tough on MS-13 and these gangs, I cut a deal with Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador, to send these Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador to rot in this hellish prison there. But according to federal prosecutors here in the United States,

Bukele's political rise was built on working with the exact gangs that Trump says he is getting tough on. The gist of the deal was these gangs rounded up votes for Bukele in El Salvador. In return, they got special favors and they agreed basically not to leave the bodies of the people they murdered in the streets, which is what they've been doing before. Now they just do forced disappearances. So Bukele is getting a political benefit by essentially allowing people to be disappeared. So

Nine of the highest ranking MS-13 leaders are on trial in New York for terrorism charges. Part of that indictment mentions their work with Bukele. According to lots of news reports, one of the reasons Bukele made this deal was to try to get those leaders back from the U.S. so that they cannot testify against him. One of them was already sent home. There's a report that court documents say Trump is willing to negotiate to get the rest back and consider dropping charges on them. So I just think like Democrats who want to fight on this,

It's not like we're standing up for Obrego Garcia or not. It's that Trump is holding this up as a new model to combat gangs and organized crime. When in reality, this is Trump cutting a dirty deal with a dirty leader who is an accomplice and beneficiary of these gangs and the shit they do. Yeah.

He wants to be like leader of the world's autocracies. Yes. That's what he's trying to do. Instead of leader of the free world. And he's like, it's Bukele's one. So he's looking for these, you know, South American, Central American, wherever you can find them, Eastern European tin pot dictators that he can cut deals with and control because then the United States is bigger and wealthier than them. That's what's happening here. Pots of America is brought to you by Aura Frames. What do you get the man who already has everything or says he doesn't need anything?

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This Supreme Court term asks the question, what if the highest court in the land had the overall vibe of a contentious Real Housewives reunion, but also with the power to destroy democracy? Yes, that is exactly where we are. The Supreme Court is setting fire to decades of precedent, handing presidents near dictatorial powers. And now the conservative justices are turning on each other. It's chaotic. It's dangerous. And yes, it is kind of hard to follow without a legal degree.

That's where Strict Scrutiny comes in. We're legal scholars who make sense of the court's biggest decisions with clarity, context, and a healthy dose of raised eyebrows. Because if the Supreme Court's going to act like a Bravo cast, someone needs to read them and the Constitution. New episodes drop every Monday. Follow Strict Scrutiny wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube.

All right, let's talk about another immigrant who Trump may send to Seacott, Elon Musk. So the three of us haven't had a chance, guys, to talk about the breakup of the year. And there were a few developments over the weekend. Elon appears to have deleted his Epstein file tweet and the one calling for Trump's impeachment without explanation. But it seems like Trump didn't notice or care. He told NBC on Saturday that he has no desire to mend fences, that he, quote, assumes their relationship is over.

and that Elon would face, quote, serious consequences if he tried to fund Democrats running against Republicans who vote for Trump's bill, as Elon threatened he would. Trump was asked about Elon again on Monday, and he seemed to soften his tone just a bit. Let's listen. On Elon Musk, do you plan to speak to him on the phone anytime soon? I haven't really thought about it, actually. I would imagine he wants to speak to me. I would think so.

If I were him, I'd want to speak to me, but maybe he was already called. You'd have to ask him whether or not he's already called, but I'd have no problem with it.

Tommy, I was so sad you were on vacation when this went down. I was like bothering you on vacation. I couldn't believe that you missed this one. What was the famous tweet? Like I was just in a hipster coffee shop and they were all talking about how great Trump is. Okay, so I was at a wedding in France. I was cruising around Provence. I was in hotels and looking at like foreign newspapers. Literally, I overheard people being –

It was being talked about everywhere. It was the cover of every fucking paper. Was it Bridget McCormick? No, I asked him. It is a distraction from me getting hit in the face. I asked a cab driver if he liked Macron and he said he wanted Napoleon to come back to France to take him out because he had done a great job setting up the sycamore trees along the avenues for his troops.

Tomas Friedman. Tomas Friedman. It was like, it was everywhere. It was an all-consuming global international story. So what is your take? Give us your take on the whole thing. What, you think these guys are going to be friends again at some point or what? Like, it's too narcissist with a marriage of convenience. So probably, right? I mean, the question I have is,

Is Trump going to go full Putin? And is he going to start treating his oligarchs like an ATM machine? I want to see if that is going to happen. Because Elon pledged, I think, $100 million to Trump-aligned super PACs and causes. And I wonder, is Trump going to start to squeeze Elon if that check doesn't clear? Is that price going to go up? Like, who knows? Another point that was clear that we all knew is that these people are just children. The most powerful people in the world are fucking children.

children and they are mentally unstable and yet they're making all these decisions and the other thought I had reading but this story was If Elon Musk had put out a statement that said the New York Times report about my ketamine abuse was 100% accurate it would not have done a better job of confirming that reporting than his behavior over the past few days and

It was completely out of control. Well, and we're learning from the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic all did sort of longer pieces behind the scenes of how the relationship unraveled. And we learned that Trump thinks he is a drug addict, that he was using drugs, that Trump thinks he's a child, that the relationship broke down over many things, but especially over after Trump died.

gave him that send-off in the Oval where he gave them the key, the key to the White House, which I guess he must have changed the locks already now. After that, they left and someone had handed Trump a folder of information and it was about the nominee to head NASA that it was Elon's buddy who had been at SpaceX.

And Trump was like, look, he donated to all these Democrats. And it was like a room full of people. And Elon and Trump basically embarrasses Elon in front of everyone by saying we're pulling his nomination. And Elon was like very mad about that. And so and it's that combined with Elon thinking I didn't get as much as I wanted out of Doge. And now it's all being erased because there's going to be a bill that adds trillions to the deficit. So it matters even less. And so all of this sort of led to Elon being pissy about this.

Yeah, I wish it mattered less how these guys get along. Yeah, right. There's a, it's funny because it's like, oh yeah, there has been a lot of reporting about ketamine. Just doesn't have a kind of, Elon's tweets do not have a ketamine vibe. They have other drug vibes, kind of like an upper vibe. Well, there was some Adderall in that. Yeah, Adderall in the story too. That wouldn't surprise. Yeah, he went to fucking 10. I was sort of just thinking about it, like kind of with some time and, you know, it's,

Trump saying like, I won't call him, but he could call me. Like it, I do think like 30,000 feet,

Elon needs Trump more than Trump needs him, right? Would you rather have Trump on your side or Elon Musk as a Republican? It's no question. It's Trump. Would Trump like to have hundreds of million dollars dumped into various political operations? Of course. But Elon Musk needs the hundreds of millions from the federal government much more. So it doesn't surprise me that we've seen Musk slowly kind of calming down. I mean, these are very fragile men that cannot handle an ego bruise like this, right? To be embarrassed in front of people. They're not

It is a kind of immovable object versus an unstoppable force just in terms of their fucking narcissism. It reminds me of Dorinda and Luann when Dorinda insulted Luann and didn't want to apologize. And so she didn't even get to go to the lobster bake. That's tough. That sucks. Yeah.

I totally buy that Elon was furious about Jared Isaacman, who was the next NASA administrator, getting his nomination tanked because Elon and SpaceX are wholly dependent on NASA choosing them to be their lead.

launcher of choice. Well, they want to go to Mars and NASA wants to go to the moon again. And so this was the big divide. Men want to go to, anyway. I buy that the EV tax credits getting stripped out of the big, beautiful bill upset Elon because again, that speaks to his financial bottom line. I don't buy for a second that Elon really cares about the deficit or debt. I think he's like made this part of his identity because he wanted to be the doge bag in chief. Yeah. And now he feels humiliated. But yeah, like clearly there was a huge piece of ego here. I can,

I could buy that it's something that the All In besties and Elon and some of the Silicon Valley types care about just because it affects interest rates and they like to borrow money and all this bullshit. But, like... So it's still a selfish reason. I don't think it's, like, some... Well, I don't think... But, like, you know, look, he...

he has put his ego, like it can be selfish insofar as he has staked his personal reputation on cutting the deficit. And so it, look, he would have been better off not posting kill the beautiful bill. He did not, he did not benefit personally from posting that Tesla stock tanked. It caused this whole rift. Like he would have been better off shutting up about that. And so he did like, I think like stake his personal reputation on stopping this bill and reducing the deficit. It's just that it's all kind of fucked up because it's

personal, it's egotistical, there does seem to be drugs involved, and so you're like, everything is at a 10. Did you see J.D. Vance went on Theo Vaughn as this was happening, and Theo Vaughn reads him the tweet, and J.D.'s like...

Oh, I had not seen that. Yeah. Just like Cash. Cash Patel on Joe Rogan hearing it for the first time too. Why is our FBI director doing Joe Rogan? I know. That was my... These guys have 10-year terms. They're not supposed to talk to the press. Oh, yeah. Put that on the list.

put on the list. Hey, the norms we got to bring back after. I will just, one connection just between what Elon's doing, what Vance is doing, and the protest is they've now turned, you know, you've seen Miller do this, J.D. Vance have done this. They're now saying, stop the invasion, pass the one big, beautiful bill. They're trying to make the kind of the immigration money that's a small part of the spending in this bill, the kind of the next argument for why they need to pass it, which is, of course,

bullshit, but I just think it's worth noting that they think this is, they're trying to use these protests not just to stir whatever animus they can on immigration, but to help them pass this bill. One last little thought. The Epstein piece of this is notable, I think. Like, Elon accuses Trump, says he's on the Epstein list, then he deletes the tweet. It just, it speaks to the fact, and we all know this, but it's worth repeating, that these guys don't care about the victim's

At all. They don't give a shit about Jeffrey Epstein's victims or the people harmed This is all about going after Bill Clinton or whatever other Democrat they think they can harm as part of the release of these files They know that Trump was friends with Jeffrey Epstein. They do not care They're just angry that like Dan Bongino and Kash Patel are now telling them that they're like weird Epstein fantasies are not going to be fulfilled with some you know cache of video files somewhere of Bill Clinton, you know and

Doing stuff. Doing whatever. Also, when Trump at this event today was just like, you know, I just we had a great relationship and I wish him well. I just I wish him well. Someone posted that. And then Elon responded with a heart. It's like so it's a heart for the guy you think is.

You accused of being a pedophile and said should be impeached, but now it's a heart. So we should believe what you say and take you seriously. His position over the last week is I am singularly responsible for electing a pedophile president of the United States. That's his official position. Who I now want impeached because he was mad at me and because of a bill that's going to increase the deficit.

Fun side story here. There's also been lots of speculation and memes about Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller, who left her Doge post to keep working for Elon in the private sector. And the House Democrats, they tweeted a chair in the corner of a room. That's all I'll say because I saw the tweet. Anyone want to comment on that? Anyone want to comment on that?

I will say if Katie Miller is working, like when Katie Miller said she was going to go leave to work for Elon and Stephen Miller was going to be at the White House, that was like, they're a fucking power couple. Oh, yeah. The two leaders, you know, the two most powerful billionaire, the billionaire and the billionaire, one inside, one outside. We're working together. It's

It's got to be a little bit weird to have you both have, you're both the sort of, you're very, let's say, mission oriented. And then all of a sudden your bosses are fighting and you're working at cross purposes. Interesting. Well, you know, during his, all of his fashy tirades over the weekend, Stephen Miller, one of his tweets was like, we will take back America, you know, and someone posted an Elon quote tweet of that saying, I already took your wife or you could, something like that. And then it said deleted.

and someone asked Grok if it was real, and Grok said it was real, and then Elon had to correct Grok that it wasn't real. Someone's dumbass AI had to get corrected by the founder of the company. Look, live by the Grok, die by the Grok. That's right, that's right.

Anyway, Elon unfollowed, then refollowed Stephen Miller on Monday. So that's big. Just to continue with the Real Housewives theme there. Greatest country in the world. Most powerful nation in history. There's one person unlikely to reconcile with Miller, and that's the journalist Terry Moran. ABC News suspended Moran on Sunday after he posted, then deleted a tweet where he called Stephen Miller, quote, a man who was richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. I had to say that fast. I didn't want to just leave that hanging. Yeah.

And he also called him a, quote, a world-class hater. Normally, this would have come and gone with the avalanche of tweets, but Trump allies like J.D. Vance chose to single Moran out, calling his post a, quote, absolutely vile smear that was, quote, dripping with hatred for Miller. And now...

Terry Moran has been suspended. What do you guys make of that situation? Again, J.D. Vance calls that an absolutely vile smear, but he has not a lot to say about Elon Musk accusing his own boss of being on the Epstein list. Yeah, that's a good point. It just shows what a game this is to all these people. Like, they just, they, yeah, Terry Moran probably shouldn't have tweeted that.

It had a little rosé in one hand, phone in the other vibe. I was like, I'm into it. Go wild. I was like, Terry, welcome to the resistance. I had retweeted on that as well. You probably fucked them. Not to get them in trouble. It was fantastically written. It was spot on. I guarantee you that Stephen Miller will...

he'll print it out. He'll have it framed. It will end up like put on the wall in his office at some point. He'll view it as a badge of honor because he is a world-class hater. He is a full of invective and hatred and has been for a long time. He's proud of it. He's a proud asshole. Also, what a baby. Like, oh no, you made fun of me and now I got to get my way. I was to get talked to his boss and like, this is,

- It's so embarrassing. - It's so embarrassing. - It's like, they're canceling it. They wanna get this guy canceled. And now it's just from the White House podium, we're gonna get this guy canceled. I do think you can see that just by looking at him, because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate. Like what is going on? It was like an Italian Marxist writing from jail. It was like wild. - All very good points. - Yeah, sure. - But yeah, I know, I don't, it rang true.

Again, you know, Terry just did a pretty effective interview with Donald Trump recently where he was pretty hard on imagining the response from the White House is coming from that more than the tweet itself. But yeah, I think that's right. Led with his chin there a bit. All right. So while the Republicans have Trump versus Elon, Democrats have a much lamer internal feud going on right now. DNC Vice Chair David Hogg versus others at the DNC.

I'm like mad that we're finally covering this because I had to finally find out what the fuck is going on. I was like annoyed. Me too. I mean, I sort of knew. It's actually, it turns out when I dug into it, I'm like, oh, it's not much more than I already. That's the other thing too. It's like, there must be more to it. There's not. There's much less than meets the eye. Right. That was interesting. That was a discovery. So this,

This all started when Hogg announced in April that his organization, Leaders We Deserve, would funnel $20 million towards younger challengers to entrench Democratic incumbents in safe districts. Then on Sunday, Politico's Holly Otterbein published audio from a May 15th Zoom call between party leaders. Here's DNC Chair Ken Martin addressing Hogg and the controversy. The other night I said to myself for the first time, I don't know if I want to do this anymore.

And again, I don't think you intended this, but you essentially destroyed any chance I have to show the leadership that I need to. So it's really frustrating. Only thing worse than a Zoom call is a sad Zoom call and a leaked Zoom call. What do you guys think?

Nora Ephron once told a story about being with Steve Wynn, who was having vision problems the moment he accidentally put his elbow through a multimillion dollar painting. And she said that she felt as though she had witnessed an intimate moment, something she wasn't meant to have seen. And everyone just felt so embarrassed. They didn't know what to do because he was trying to cover for it. But everyone knew how kind of, and he said something like, oh, I'm glad I'm the one that did that.

I felt a bit like that listening to this call. Like, this is an intimate moment that I don't really wish to be a part of. I'm sorry that I've heard this. I wish I never had. It sounded like couples therapy. It really did. Look, I want to say first, David Hogg, I don't know, Ken Martin, David Hogg's been on the show. We worked with him on political things. He's a super nice guy. He's been really helpful to us. Like, I'm not trying to be pejorative here, but I think...

First of all, my big takeaway from hearing all of this is if in this moment we as Democrats can't get our shit together,

at the DNC, everyone should just quit. Everyone should resign and we should start over because like this is crazy that we are this ineffective and rudderless at the DNC in this moment. On David's specific thing of primarying all these incumbents, I mean, when they pitched him coming on the show to talk about it, my response, I think all of our response was like, well, which incumbents?

Right. Like I'm totally open to primaries of people that are bad at the job, ineffective, too conservative or too liberal for like whatever it might be. But we can't just primary people because of their age. Just for the fun. Or suggest that like all young people are are inherently better. Like I want a younger party. I want more young elected officials. I want more digitally with people who are good at communicating. But like I look.

Well, one thing we find great older representatives and senators. I just think the devil's in the details, right? Like on the one hand, we've got the eight most recent members of Congress to die. We're all Democrats who were pretty old. On the other hand, that before she announced she was retiring, they said they weren't going to challenge Jan Schakowsky. Nancy Pelosi is not on the list. She's in her 80s. And I understand that.

That if you want to spend $20 million to primary Democrats, that's great. I understand people inside the DNC saying this is not the right place from which to do that. Yeah, I can understand Ken Martin's frustration. He's new at the job. He's trying to rebuild basically a party that's gone through some things. I want to know from it sounds like there's a lot of animosity towards David Hogg that is like,

more than we know publicly. There has to be because, like you said, I could see why they'd be annoyed with him, but sort of the level of annoyance towards him from a lot of folks at the DNC and people on the party that I respect, I feel like there's something else there that we don't really know what's going on. Maybe people will tell us after this. But I also think that, you know, they're also all accusing David Hogg of leaking the Zoom call and leaking the audio. And then David decided to screenshot

Holly's from Politico, all her texts to him asking him to comment on the tape and the story, and he's not responding. So he's trying to leak that to prove that he didn't leak, which is also pretty tough when you're doing that. And people don't believe him anyway. They think that they're going to vote this week, I believe, to decide whether to hold a new election.

election for DNC vice chair. Right now, it's David Hogg and Malcolm Kenyatta. And then there were three women who were running against them. But there's supposed to be rules for gender parity in some of the officers. If they won't follow it, right. Yeah. And so that was originally what the re-election, what the re-vote might have been.

you know, been responsible, been for, but now they don't know. Now it's people think it's more about hog and, and if they revote, will he lose? Because now people are pissed at him. It's just a lot of messy drama that I feel like we don't need. I know. It's sort of funny too. It's just sort of like, Oh wow. The DNC is really kind of like take the knives out. They're going to fuck this guy, David hog and replace him because they're mad. That's how a party should work. Oh, they're doing it for gender parity. It's like, okay, I guess, but it's like, I wish it was just more out in the open. Like, what are we doing here? Yeah. Like the, the, a

A lot of people feel like there is a leadership vacuum in the Democratic Party right now. There's a big article over the weekend about where's Obama, right? Like everyone's sort of scrambling about for who in this moment can step up and lead and communicate for us. That leadership is not going to come from the DNC. It's not going to come from Ken Martin. It probably wouldn't have come from Ben Wickler if he'd won, right? It's going to come from the guy standing on top of the burning Waymo with the flag. That's our next DNC chair right there. Yeah.

I didn't come into a gut feel near you. Once again. We gave him so much material. I know. But again, like we need, the place needs to be run competently. We need someone doing the nuts and bolts of organizing and infrastructure, technology investments, like raising money. And if like,

we're crying at the Zoom calls. Like, that's a bad place to be. Well, this is my... Like, I do think that the DNC chair position... Like, Ken Martin's got a lot of work to do. Like you just said, all the internal work, the rebuilding, and he's been doing that for years in Minnesota and is, like, for what everyone says, really good at it, and he seems great. You also need, like...

someone whose basic full-time job it is to be out there, public, talking, great communicator. And I think it's hard to do both jobs. And I think we're running into that a little bit. And especially with now David Hogg, people will be like, who's running the DNC? Probably some Americans are like, David Hogg? Like, they don't know, right? Because it's just, you know...

Well, we have Fox News on in our office 24-7. The things you see are this story gets covered. Whatever violence is in the streets. If there's a trans fencer out there that offended someone at Fox News. Riley Gaines. Yeah, Riley Gaines was booked today. You would think that Joe Biden is still president if you watch Fox News. Autopen, big character. And then whatever Trump did is great. And then once in a while, one of us for a couple hours.

That's a fun part of it. So let's just not give them more fodder. This week, we can give them more fodder. Yeah, we can. Exactly. All right. We're going to take a quick break. But before we do that, LA folks, come see Love It or Leave It live.

Just added some new show dates through October. Take a waymo. Head down to Dynasty Tape Writer. You've committed through October? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Live show audiences get to see Lovett's most unhinged rants. That's true. And the stuff that his celebrity guests ask us to cut in post. That's also true. What do you guys have coming up? We have so many awesome guests lined up in the next couple of weeks. So come to Dynasty. We have great shows coming. That's all I'm going to say.

Grab your tickets now at cricket.com slash events. And if you can't make it, there will be a fresh pod in your feed on Saturday. Pod Save America is brought to you by Helix. We love Helix mattresses here. I got a couple. You got some. Truly great mattress. Everyone has ever slept on it because it's in our guest bedroom. Has been thrilled. Super comfortable. They send it to you in a box. Couldn't be any easier. It's so easy. It's easy. And then they're very comfy. I have not heard any complaints about Helix mattresses yet.

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This Supreme Court term asks the question, what if the highest court in the land had the overall vibe of a contentious Real Housewives reunion, but also with the power to destroy democracy? Yes, that is exactly where we are. The Supreme Court is setting fire to decades of precedent, handing presidents near dictatorial powers. And now the conservative justices are turning on each other. It's chaotic. It's dangerous. And yes, it is kind of hard to follow without a legal degree.

That's where Strict Scrutiny comes in. We're legal scholars who make sense of the court's biggest decisions with clarity, context, and a healthy dose of raised eyebrows. Because if the Supreme Court's going to act like a Bravo cast, someone needs to read them and the Constitution. New episodes drop every Monday. Follow Strict Scrutiny wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube.

Our guest today is the governor of California, Gavin Newsom. Thank you so much for joining the show. Good to be with you. So, Governor, we talked earlier in the show about the protests over the weekend, the incidents of violence, President Trump taking over and deploying the California National Guard. We are talking now at about 4 p.m. Pacific on Monday. So far, the protests today have seemed to be pretty peaceful and calm. Do you think things are now under control?

for the moment, but they're not about to be. He just called up another 2,000 National Guard, so it's now 4,000. And we're getting word that he's looking to operationalize that relationship and advance significantly larger scale ice operations in partnership and collaboration with the National Guard. We're on the other side now of the red line. And I haven't even mentioned the

the self-evident major escalation, which is next level. And that is the Secretary of Defense just moments ago tweeting out that he's, quote unquote, deploying 700 active military to Los Angeles. And unless he'd just done it, I have not seen the Insurrection Act formally advanced. But by definition, this would require the Insurrection Act.

Yeah, I mean, I saw you have now filed suit to protest the federalizing of the California National Guard. These 700 Marines were apparently being sent to Los Angeles. Is there a legal avenue for you to challenge that deployment? Well, unless he opposes the Insurrection Act, just blatantly unconstitutional, it's not even a close call. And so we're going to immediately try to seek a TRO, an injunction to stop this completely reckless, immoral, yes, but completely illegal and unconstitutional act

And I'll remind folks, this is an act not just against the people here in Los Angeles, against the people here in the state of California, but against Americans all across this country, against the principles of our founding father that did not live and die to watch these authoritarian tendencies in action. And let me be now even more specific. The absurdity of this

cannot be understated. There were 2,000 National Guard that were, quote unquote, deployed, of which only 315 actually were mission assigned. 1,700 have no particular role or responsibility. Yesterday, local law enforcement had to protect the National Guard.

The additional 2,000 National Guard men and women that President Trump now is redeploying are being taken away. It's the 79th Infantry. I know these folks well. You know these folks well. These are the folks. These are the National Guard men and women that have been out there protecting you here in Southern California during the fires, after the fires.

We are now taking many of them off assignments on forest management, protecting communities, vulnerable communities against summer and wildfire season. We're removing them from task forces that we've created to deal with fentanyl interdiction. I have 394 National Guard men and women down at the border. I imagine they may even be pulled for this theatrical display of

of toughness by a president of the United States who's unhinged and has now crossed a red line in this country. And he has nationalized this order. This is not an order against this state. This is an order that can be imposed now all across the United States.

Yeah, I mean, I saw you release this statement with a bunch of other Democratic governors who sort of span the political spectrum. I mean, what is your message to people living in 49 other states who think, eh, this is just Trump going after crazy California where all the liberals are, like, we'll be fine? It's a preview of things to come. It's a coming attraction. I mean, look, I mean, I'm sure you guys have been saying it. I mean, this is what he did to create the conditions that led to the insurrection on January 6th.

In the Orwellian nature of this, how about this? I mean, this is the guy lecturing us about protecting law enforcement that pardoned all the people that attack law enforcement in our institution, democracy, symbolically and substantively. I mean, you can't make this stuff up.

So we're at a remarkable moment. This, I think, is a much bigger moment. You know, I know I'm in the middle of it, so maybe I'm the last person to objectively make this case. I think it more objectively needs to be made. But my sense is this is an even more profound moment than it appears. We're on the other side now. Posse comitatus, the other side of truth and trust now with the military, the

Turning the military against the American people. That's how people feel out here. And the devastation for me is, again, I love these guys. I mean, I'm not making this up. I've been so proud to work with these guys as commander in chief, as governor of the state of California, 18,000 of them that used to be under my command, 4,000 less today doing extraordinary work.

keeping people safe, good family people live in our communities. And now they're pawns in this game. And it's a very dangerous game.

Speaking of dangerous games, I mean, Trump's borders are Tom Homan threatened to arrest you. He later seemed to walk that threat back. But then at a press conference earlier today, President Trump was asked what crime you committed. And he said, quote, running for governor, which sounded to me like the president United States suggesting that a governor of a state having different political views than him is a criminal act. What was your reaction to that? I talked to him on Friday night.

And he never brought up the National Guard. It was a very, you know, it was unbelievably collaborative conversation.

A few hours later, he came out talking about new scum, et cetera, in essence, talking about defunding California. And then, of course, this assault on the rule of law, decency, democracy, constitution. But I never, I mean this, I'm reacting to what you just asked, I never, ever imagined the president of the United States of America ever saying that about a political opponent whose crime is being elected.

and who happens to be governor of the state of California. And this was day three of these guys bloviating about arresting me. And I made the point, can we just get it over with? So you get your scalp, you can do your tough guy thing. You know, you're strong. They're just weakness masquerading as strength. They're cosplaying. I mean, Kristi Noem, the same one who was on with press secretary Sean Hannity just a few months ago, decrying the assault on freedom

And her state rights, because Biden administration allegedly was looking at potentially federalizing her National Guard. I mean, this guy, Pete Hexa, literally just sending out a tweet saying he's deploying Marines, these remarkable young men and women on the streets of an American city, weaponizing the Marine Corps against its own citizens just by the chill that it puts. And I just, I pray sanity, sanity.

uh, can take shape here. I pray that they do not incite the kind of violence that they claim they seek to avoid. I can't believe I'm asking this, but if you actually are arrested, is there a plan for what happens? You know, what's so absurd about that question is I've actually thought about it. And the fact that I'm actually answering it by saying I thought about it. And not only did I think about it,

that we've already processed what that may look like, that if they do get a federal warrant to arrest me, that the very act, if I chose to fly back to Sacramento from LA, could be grounds then for them actually having cause to arrest. The fact that we're even having that conversation with our folks and have had that conversation with our folks in the United States in 2025, I mean-

So that's everything you need to know about who's in the White House right now.

Yeah, scary stuff. You had some harsh words for President Trump in this interview. In recent interviews called reckless, immoral, that he's putting people's lives at risk. There was a report last week that the Trump administration has been preparing to cancel what CNN described as, quote, a large swath of federal funding for California. So basically to punish the state of California for political views held by parts of the state. Are you worried about retaliation by the White House? Well, I mean, this is across the board defunding

of police public health public safety defunding he wants to defund california it's you know sure it's a larger assault on knowledge an assault on culture um on speech uh censoring historical facts rewriting history um not even allowing certain history to be taught pete hex at west point um

These guys, this difference. Originally, to answer your question, originally we thought it was just continuation of an attack on knowledge, institutions of higher learning, the UCs, which have more patents than any other system in the world. There's no Silicon Valley. There's no internet, GIS, GPS. I mean, go through the list. It's our conveyor belt for talents, economic engine.

of this country these institutions of higher learning pushing out the boundaries of discovery uh research and development it's a secret sauce it's what defines the game we play from the game played elsewhere not just in california the united states america so he's going to go after nsf funding it's going to go after nhh funding he's going to have to some dod grants and we were told he was going to do that at 7 00 a.m east coast time on friday he delayed that

And now we understand he delayed it because he wanted someone to go on the computer and look at the prompt. And everywhere that California appeared, he then wanted to take that line item. And if he had any discretion whatsoever, you know, push the boundaries of that, just eliminate the funding. So he's coming. This was all happening before that first protest. Before that first protest. So this is about something. It's about opposition.

He's already taken out Speaker Johnson. There's no second branch of government. There's no oversight coming from Congress. They're gone right now. It's only up to us to take that back in 18 or so months. He's trying to take out judges that he doesn't like and decisions he doesn't like. He's right on the edge of that, or some would argue he's already crossed that line. But he wants to take out dissent.

And the fact that we assert ourselves and we punch above our weight, we filed over 22 lawsuits and counting. The fact that we use our moral authority, not just formal authority. The fact that we have the audacity to get elected and disagree with them. This is what this is all about. It's an authoritarian playbook. I hate that word because it's so loaded and people turn out to now. But just is by definition. Google it. Look it up. What's the definition? And we're experiencing in real time.

Well, and with also look, what's strange about this is my takeaway from watching him interact with you is that he likes you. It might be a grudging respect, but you know, he, I think he doesn't like people that, uh,

a coward in front of him, like Speaker Johnson. He, I think, respects people that throw a punch. But it's surprising to me that you guys would have this 20-minute call and he would not bring up this imminent decision to federalize the National Guard and then he would lie about it. And I think you said in an interview that he's lost it. He is not the same person I dealt with four years ago. Yeah, he's a different guy. And I mean, look, I still revere the presidency. I said I'm not going to break confidence except to say, I mean...

Well, maybe your jaw wouldn't drop about what we talked about because you know this guy as well. I mean, we're sitting here. It's roughly, I don't know, 1.30. I don't remember what time it was his time. And we're having the conversation we had. I know it's – I say you can't make it up. You kind of can't make it up except –

It's kind of familiar. And you kept trying to go back to the substance of what the matter at hand. I was back and forth with his chief of staff right before talking to the mayor, talking about whatever needs they need. We have abundance of law enforcement resources available.

I mean, L.A. County's got 88 cities. The vast majority of them have police departments. CHP has tactical teams and units. And we have mutual aid well established. And we're in the process that first night of figuring out what may be needed over the weekend, talking to his chief of staff in a collaborative way, engaging her directly. And, you know, I give Susie the benefit of the doubt, Susie Wiles.

And he calls and I thought, all right, good. We can have now a substantive conversation about this. We could talk as well about why he may have delayed the defunding of California. No interest in any of those conversations. And which leads you back again, the question, what the hell did you talk about? And maybe that's for a memoir that I can write from prison.

Yeah, let's hope not. Speaking of memoirs from prison, Stephen Miller, he tweeted, LAPD has not been authorized to arrest the insurrectionists. They are just corralling them from one location to another. What authorization would LAPD need to arrest anyone committing a criminal act? What the hell is he talking about? Anyone that commits a crime should be held to account period full stop.

I can't stand these antagonists, some of these sort of anarchists that are running around right now. They not only should be arrested, they should be prosecuted aggressively. People attacking police officers, CHP officers, smashing cars, jumping up and down on cars and breaking windows and using Molotov cocktails, threatening law enforcement, putting peaceful, peaceful protests, protesters' lives at risk as well. They're a disgrace.

But that's what they're inciting. They know what they're doing. This is what we told them. This was our concern that these guys would start coming out of the woodwork. So they need to be aggressive. And I think we had 50 plus arrests just last night as it relates to some of that. And trust me, tons more coming. All those videos were coming.

We're coming. I'm not the mayor of San Francisco. I'm not the mayor, excuse me, of L.A. or San Francisco, let alone mayor of California and the governor. CHP made arrests. That's what I can directly command. But LAPD is also making arrests and the sheriff's office is making arrests. And there were a number of them and there's going to be a lot more than there needs to be if that kind of outrageous behavior continues.

There are a lot of well-meaning people, I would include myself among them, who are terrified by what Trump is doing, what ICE is doing to communities all around the country, but then also watching those protests and wondering, should I be a part of this? Is this helpful? Should I go down there right now? Or is this giving Stephen Miller and Trump the images they want to get looped on Fox News for the next month? How do you think about the way well-meaning activists should engage in protests in this moment?

I was just down in the neighborhoods and meeting with community leaders and they talked about mass panic. I mean, that's their words, not mine. Tears in their eyes. 30 years I've been doing rapid response networks, legal aid. They've never seen anything like this. They were talking about six or seven operations that occurred earlier today. A number of Home Depots all throughout the county.

how people literally are walking the streets and being threatened. They're being asked for their papers. People are now walking around with their passports. They showed, there was assertions that there were checkpoints. I'll be honest with you, I didn't know if that was overstated. Turns out it was true. They have checkpoints in certain cases, which ICE has denied. Complete bullshit. We've seen it, where they're literally stopping people asking for papers, their cars, walking to parking lots and

not just down streets, car washes, obviously these Home Depots. We've got unmarked cars near schools now. We've got people not showing up for graduation, not showing up for graduation. These kids not showing up for graduation, their families, their grandparents, mixed status families in some cases, others that are here legally that are scared to death

And they asked me, they asked me exactly the question you just asked. There's one woman, she said, what's your advice? Should we quote unquote, this is the question, should we stay home or is it okay to walk out, get to the grocery store? And I literally paused, I'm like, I honestly, I said, right now, I want you to stay home. I'm worried about you. I'm honestly worried about you. What the heck? How did I answer that way? That's the moment we're in. That's Stephen Miller's

United States of America. This is what they want. And that's how serious it is. Kids, kids, kids, attacking kids. And by the way, you're talking to a governor that has collaborated. I'll take the hits. I've collaborated with ICE through our California Department of Corrections 10,000 plus times. I have no problem dealing with going after criminals. This is not about that.

But these are law-abiding citizens. These are good human beings. I mean, God is my witness. We were talking about a young lady who, thank God, found her father down at a detention, a federal detention center, found that he's still in California. He's been living here 27 years as a taxpayer.

That's who they're going after right now. They're lying to you that this is just about criminals. If it was, we wouldn't be having this conversation. We'd be having a very different conversation. So forgive me. I really do worry. And I want to see peaceful protests. We need peaceful protests. But we've got elements now coming in that are intentionally trying to create chaos and putting people in harm's way.

And it's my biggest fear when we start to militarize our streets. And they know this. Trump knows this. It's what he wants. He wants that engagement. And he wants that friction. And I just pray that we can keep people safe and that people are thoughtful as they peacefully protest.

And Governor, thank you so much for your time. Final question. I mean, the flip side of that question about should people protest? How should activists act? Is how should ICE be acting? Right. It's their job to deport people. It's their job to enforce immigration laws. What's the appropriate role for ICE in this moment that they should be playing? Just look, I've said this before.

On many occasions, and it goes to quote unquote, the sanctuary question. We have never, California's law is crystal clear. We do not impede federal law enforcement's right to spend federal dollars on federal operations. That's their role and responsibility. And so that should be protected to the extent that it legally is required.

And those that seek to put anyone in law enforcement in harm's way, that is not appropriate. And they should also be held to account. We cannot indulge that. We cannot allow for that. And so I just look, I want people to act civilly, responsibly.

And I, you know, if it was any other administration, we would be having collaborative conversation on the right way, not the wrong way. The Obama administration, there were plenty of, I mean, I was on the receiving end back mayor days, supervisor days of Democratic administration, not just Republican administrations, even first Trump administration. There's a right way of doing things and there's a wrong way of doing things. And they're not interested in having a conversation about doing the right way. That said, there are a lot of good people

that work for these organizations that are being used

by people that have not their best interest at heart either, and that are trying to sow chaos, sow distress and division. And so it's just trying to find that balance. And I pray we can find it good people that need to do the right thing in the right way. And all of us, I think, need to do a better job calling out the people that don't.

Agreed. Well, Governor, thank you very much for your time. Let's hope that things stay calm as they have been earlier today and President Trump cuts the bullshit. But thank you so much for coming on. Thanks. Cut the bullshit's the right phrase. That's our show for today. I'll be back in the feed on Friday with a new episode. Dan's on vacation, so we'll be having guest host Nicole Wallace. Talk to you then.

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