Trump CRACKS DOWN On Free Speech! w/ Matt Taibbi
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So Donald Trump made a big stink last night about how he brought free speech back to America. Now, what I say about free speech is that, yeah, I don't think...

Elon Musk is a free speech warrior. I don't think so. I think he's he's happy to suppress when he has to for his own interests. Right. But it's not as bad as it was. Right. So that's what I say for people like me who want to tell the truth about covid. I was allowed to tell the truth about covid. I was allowed to tell the truth about Syria. I was allowed to tell the truth about Ukraine. So it was it was a big deal for me. But no, I don't.

In fact, Steve Bannon was on the show and he made the same point. He's not a, you know, he's a tech, he wants to be a tech overlord. He doesn't really care about free speech. But Donald Trump has convinced people that they're for free speech because they're for certain speech, right? But here's the bad part.

He put this out, I think, yesterday. He said all federal funding will stop for any college, school or university that allows illegal protest. Agitators will be imprisoned or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or depending on the crime arrested. No masks. You're not allowed to wear a mask so they they can now digitally identify you and put you in a database. Thank you for your attention to this matter, which sounds very scary. In fact, I

What this is a response to is him being everybody in government, including Donald Trump. The way he talked to Zelensky is the way a lot of MAGA wants him to talk to Netanyahu. So this is all about his subservience to Adelson. It's about his subservience to Israel. And so this organization, FireOrg,

We defend and promote free speech for all Americans in our courtrooms, on campuses, in our culture. They had a couple of tweets about it, and they say,

They go on to say, as FIRE knows all too well from our work defending students and faculty rights under the Obama and Biden administrations, threatening schools with the loss of federal funding will result in a crackdown on lawful speech.

Schools will censor first and ask questions later. Today's message will cast an impermeable chill on students' protests about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, paired with President Trump's 2019 executive order adopting an unconstitutional definition of anti-Semitism and his January order threatening to deport international students

for engaging in protected expression. Students will rationally fear punishment for wholly protected political speech. Now, we already talked about at the top of the show, Matt, about your great work exposing the censorship industrial complex

and you're very sensitive to this because you're a leading journalist and you've had the irs try to intimidate you into not saying certain things and i've been censored i've been you know my own tax dollars have been used to sponsor vox ukraine media which did hit pieces on me to try to get me demonetized and kicked off youtube so i'm sensitive to that and so so trump might want to

Protect certain speech, but now he's doing this, which is just the opposite. And so you being sensitive to something like this, how would you respond to it?

Well, I'm against it. I mean, when he signed the executive order and then there was the anti-Semitism Awareness Act that got passed last year and then this thing this year, which is really just an extension of that, it's to me a clear First Amendment issue.

you know, normally what they would do, right? Like if you wanted to, if you wanted to be a real

really aggressive about Palestinian protesters and stay within the letter of the law, you wouldn't say that we're throwing you out of the country because of your protests, right? They would just, they would round people up who had committed crimes and then they would deport them, which is what they're doing in other areas. But you can't say that you're doing it for that reason. I think the Trump by doing this,

um is making a huge political mistake or a potentially huge one the democrats have gifted the first amendment to the republicans yes for for a generation really i mean like they were so bad on this issue um that they could run on this forever all they have to do is is just show basic respect for the institution and this is

You know, it's clearly not in the spirit of the First Amendment. You have organizations like FIRE that I think fought very bravely for speech when the ACLU wouldn't. And, you know, they're now turning on Trump. That's not what they want. You know, I think they have to be more cognizant of...

you know, what they have here. I think J.D. Vance is somebody who understands the speech issue and is more instinctively in tune with it. But, you know, they have a blind spot about this one issue, and that's unfortunate. You know, the problem is, Matt, is that the Democrats agree with him.

Well, right. That's, I was, I was about to say that, like the, the reason that you're not going to get pushback from the other side on this is, you know, you, you watch that 60 minutes segment, those exact same laws are the ones that got Roger Waters in trouble, right. You know, for advocating for Palestinians, you know, really what they just do is they, is they,

define anybody who supports the Palestinian cause as being pro Hamas or for advocating terrorism. And then it's any one of a dozen different laws that can come into play at that point. You know, they went after all sorts of politicians in the UK for being quote unquote anti-Semitic when really what they were doing was protesting the behavior of the Israeli government and

Palestinians are often kind of the canary in the coal mine for speech offenses. Like they're kind of the first people who they try out some new horrible tactic on because they have no lobby. But but that's it. But you're absolutely right. There is nobody on the other side who's going to stand up and say you're really wrong about this. So Caitlin Johnstone tweeted out, she said, if you support freedom of speech,

You now have an ethical obligation to oppose Israel, even if you didn't before. Western government support for Israel is the biggest threat to free speech in our society today. Civil rights are being stomped out throughout the Western world to protect Israel information interests. And speech is being suppressed in support of Israel more aggressively than with any other topic. We're not seeing this level of all-out warfare against free expansion in any other area. So,

I disagree with her about that, though. Well, I mean, for instance, look, Israel is not terrible on speech, right? They have been going back to 2015 to 2016. Glenn Greenwald did a

a story about how Facebook had to make a deal with the Mossad in order to operate in Israel and how they abided by, I think it was 95% of their recommendations. But absolutely the most dangerous thing right now with speech is the European Union

which has already passed a law called the Digital Services Act, which is a comprehensive official censorship law that mandates that every platform abide by the recommendations of thousands of these credentialed content reviewers called trusted flaggers.

uh they they have to be in an agreement with them or else they suffer crippling crippling penalties and go out of business and that law is the model for what they want to impose everywhere in the world they've done it pretty much everywhere in every Western democracy except the United States and yes Israel's bad but Europe has already has already imposed the model

for like a true dystopian kind of speech control, you know, that can be imposed at scale. So I'm more scared of that than I am of Israel, but I understand her position. - So the threat that Trump is making is that he will defund colleges of federal funds. And here's a brief video from Glenn Greenwald to explain why that's incorrect, that's an unconstitutional position. Let's listen.

What is going on? Okay, here we go. Universities or there should be that's independent of the free speech point, which is that once the federal government or any government decides to offer a benefit that's optional, it doesn't have to provide it, but it decides it's going to, it cannot then condition receipt of that benefit on you're expressing a particular view, you're affirming a particular view, or you're refraining from expressing a political view.

This is basic First Amendment doctrine. You had all these people defending the Trump administration's attack on these universities for allowing anti-Israel protesters saying, oh, obviously it's not a First Amendment violation to deny federal funding of a university because the government doesn't have to provide funding to universities in the first place. It's true. The federal government doesn't have

to provide funding to universities. But once it decides to do so, it cannot then punish the universities by withdrawing that funding only for universities that allow a particular view to be expressed or a particular type of protest to take place and not any other. That is a clear violation of the First Amendment. There's so many court cases on this. There have been efforts, for example, to deny property tax exemptions.

to people who refuse to sign a vow saying they're not in favor of overthrowing the government of the United States saying, oh, you only get a property tax exemption if you sign a no saying you don't support the overthrow of the United States government.

But people who sign that loyalty pledge to the U.S. government will get property tax exemptions. Obviously, you don't have to provide the property tax exemptions. But the Supreme Court said once you do, you can't condition it on a loyalty oath to the United States government because that is a violation of free speech. There have been all kinds of other cases like that where there's funding to legal aid lawyers and they try to say if you're a lawyer and you challenge any welfare reform laws in the

American courts, you will be ineligible for receiving legal aid. The only lawyers who can get legal aid funding from the government are those who support welfare reform or who stay silent on about it. The court has denied that is unconstitutional. There was an effort to say any news outlet, public media company that gets federal funding has to refrain from editorializing about anything. The minute they try to editorialize about something, they lose their federal funding. The Supreme Court said that's unconstitutional as well. That's because once you offer a benefit

you can't then deny that benefit as punishment for a particular view. And it's so obvious that that has to be the principle. Just consider this hypothetical. The US government, or let's say a state government, opts to provide unemployment benefits to people who get fired, lose their job. Obviously, it doesn't have to provide unemployment benefits. It decides that it's going to.

Imagine a law enacted by a state, say Massachusetts, that said if you support Donald Trump or express support for the Republican Party, you will be ineligible to receive unemployment benefits. The only people eligible to receive unemployment benefits are those who take an oath to support the Democratic Party. Everybody would immediately understand why that's unconstitutional.

And yet you could justify that law based on the same distortion, the same warped rationales that's being offered for the Trump administration's actions this week, which is, oh, look, the government doesn't have to give you unemployment benefits. You can't claim that it's a violation of your constitution if the government takes unemployment benefits away from you.

And the obvious answer is the state has the right to terminate unemployment benefits programs for everybody if it wants, but it can't withdraw them or deny them as punishment for a particular view, nor can it condition receipt or the right to have those benefits on affirming a particular view. So the fact that federal funding is optional doesn't mean the government has the constitutional right to deny it to certain universities that allow a certain type of protest. This is all independent, by the way, of the creepy phrase that Trump officials, that President Trump used to justify these attacks to serve Americans.

pro-Israel donors, which is, oh, we're just going after illegal protests. What is an illegal protest? Obviously, if somebody breaks the law, they're going to get arrested. There have been hundreds or thousands of protesters on college campuses throughout 2024, including huge numbers of Jewish students who were protesting the Israeli war in Gaza. They got arrested. But there's no such thing as an illegal protest.

And if you're going to deny federal funding based on quote unquote permitting illegal protests, you can't just have that be the case for hate speech against Jews or hate speech against Israel would have to be applied universally. Otherwise, it's clearly unconstitutional as an attempt to punish institutions for permitting a certain kind of protest expressing a view that this current government dislikes. This is not controversial. This is not in dispute. It's entirely clear. There are multiple Supreme Court cases on it. Just common sense tells you that you can't condition the receipt of a benefit by

on the requirement to affirm a certain view, nor can you withdraw that benefit as punishment for expressing another view consistent with the First Amendment. So, you know, I remember when I was at the Rescue the Republic,

By the way, I mean, I'm sure everybody would agree with what he's saying. I don't think, like he said, it's not controversial. And, you know, you pointed out that this is a real blind spot for the Trump administration. I don't know if it's a blind spot or just him intentionally serving his donors and the APEC lobby, because the APEC lobby has the ability to, you know, make him lose his control of the Senate and the House, right? So he has to, he's got to, he's serving as, you know, Bob Dylan said, you got to serve somebody. Right.

And so that's who he's serving. I think he's doing it consciously, and I think he knows it's a contradiction to his free speech stance. But when I was at the rescue, you make the point, it's politically...

disastrous, I think, for Donald Trump to do this. He'd be much, it would make him look like much a stronger man if he allowed protests to happen and just kind of make fun of it if he wants or kind of point out how it's non-American or they don't, whatever you want to do. But he should tolerate it because it makes him look weak and authoritarian because that's what it is. And when I was at the rescue of the Republic, I made a strong defense of, you know, you have to

Freedom of speech means freedom of speech that you hate. And it includes pro-Palestinian protesters, because if they can take the rights of them away, they can take ours away. And that's what this is all about. We're all here because we had our freedom of speech taken away during COVID or other or another way. And people cheered.

And so that was Donald Trump's audience. They cheered that. Right. And I saw people in the audience, lots of MAGA people who are pro-Palestine or not pro-Israel. They had, you know, pro-Palestine posters in their hands at that Rescue the Republic rally. So, I mean, do you see I mean, I don't I see this as how do you see this playing out?

Well, I've given up a long time ago trying to figure out Trump's political strategies. Every time I think he does something that is politically disastrous that he'll never recover from, somehow it works out in a way that's different than I expected. I do feel very strongly that they should not be punting Trump.

away the good

The good standing they've gotten on the speech issue, they fought hard to be taken seriously on that issue. And people like Jim Jordan and Rand Paul have gone through a lot of grief for the Republican Party to be taken seriously on this issue just to throw it away on this issue.

And I can't, I find it's very hard to believe that this is a calculation that's meant to

to guarantee control of the House and Senate. Trump, I think, has always understood that his support is really his voters. That's his base. So if he's making that calculation, it's a wrong calculation. But sometimes he will do things like this

It seems to me it defines the law openly because he wants people to see that he's willing to cross a line in a certain direction. I know I don't agree with him on this one, but there are times when he will do that.

But otherwise, this is illogical to me. And I think it's a perilous thing for the party. The other stuff that he's doing in terms of these mass cuts and these other drastic changes that he's making...

some of which are probably not going to survive legal challenge. He needs the absolute support of his voters in order to see that through. And if it falls apart because of something like this, then there's a problem, you know, then he's got nobody but himself to blame, I would say. And just to put a button on this, FIRE says if the college violates anti-discrimination laws like Title IX,

six or title nine, the government may ultimately deny the institution federal funding by taking it to federal court or via notice to Congress and

and an administrative hearing. It is not simply a discretionary decision that the president can make. Likewise, students who engage in misconduct must still receive due process, whether through a campus or criminal tribunal. This requires fair, consistent application of existing law or policy in a manner that respects students' rights. President Trump needs to stand by his past promise to be a champion of free expression. That means for all views, including those his administration dislikes. So,

you know we'd like to see that it's uh i haven't seen anybody do it in my lifetime and the problem is that the opposition party agrees with what he's doing and saying and so there will be no you know a powerful opposition to it except grassroots right right and you know not everybody in the world is a you know a first amendment lawyer right so the the nice thing i mean this particular branch of first first amendment law can get

pretty pretty weedsy for some folks and it extends into places where even sometimes i roll my eyes at it like for instance the the business with the ap credentials like that falls under the same principle um like if you're going to give credentials to anybody you you have to you you can't deny them because ap doesn't use the word words gulf of america now i don't think like

credentials matter. I think journalists who whine about credentials are pussies. And I find the whole issue kind of laughable. But if they took it to court, AP would win. I think you'd have to concede that. But I don't see that as a crime against humanity. But on the other stuff, you know, like denying federal funding to colleges over Palestinian protests, like

Like you can't you can't do that because that that will undermine any claim that he has to being a champion of the First Amendment. Hey, you know, here's another great way you can help support the show is you become a premium member. We give you a couple of hours of premium bonus content every week, and it's a great way to help support the show. You can do it by going to Jimmy door comedy dot com, clicking on join premium.

It's the most affordable premium program in the business. And it's a great way to help put your thumb back in the eye of the bastards. Thanks for everybody who was already a premium member. And if you haven't, you're missing out. We give you lots of bonus content. Thanks for your support. This happened last night.

It's strange how the Democrats, liberals who are now illiberals, have gone from being defenders of staunch defenders of free speech to being staunch defenders of censorship and authoritarian fascists in that way. And then now they've also become pro-war. And here's Donald Trump calling it out last night with Elizabeth Warren. Let's watch. With no end in sight.

the united states has sent hundreds of billions of dollars to support ukraine's defense with no security with no other thing so now those are democrats applauding that they're just endlessly supporting a proxy war uh by that has been instigated by nato the west and americans economic hitmen well watch what it goes on do you want to keep it going for another five years

Yeah, you would say Pocahontas says yes. Pocahontas says yes sounds like if Disney Animation did porn. Anyway, I'm just, she puts the poke back in Pocahontas. But let's watch her clap. And there she goes.

And there she is just clapping along because my theory is her mighty native bloodline. She knows intuitively that if the tribal leader says something, you can't beat him. You should join him. That's what I think is happening there. So that's Elizabeth Warren clapping like a seal.

for the war machine and she's supposed to be you know of some big liberal champion and there's trump calling her out for it it's so easy for donald trump to get to the left of these people because they're all authoritarian tools of war and here's bernie sanders just uh yesterday he tweeted this out for 250 years the united states has supported democracy which is laughable

Especially what we know now about USAID and the NED. I mean, we've all known that, but now regular people are getting to know that stuff. He says, now in the middle of a horrific war that Putin started...

Again, he's just he's being a historical. Trump is turning his back on Ukraine and democracy. Democracy and democracy. Ukraine is not a democracy. It's now a dictatorship. He's outlawed the opposing political parties. He's outlawed the opposing any skeptical or critical media. He's killed and jailed journalists like Gonzalo's Gonzalo Lara. Yeah.

American American journalists. That's right. And it was such a it was so egregious that he got community noted on Twitter. It said even under Obama in 2015, the United States was providing weapons and or military training to 73 percent of the world's dictatorships as classified by Freedom House. The U.S. is the number one supporter of dictatorships in the world.

And so there is that. So just to let you know, I just want the listeners. Here's the leading scholar, international scholar, Mersheimer. And he's going to tell you what Trump is doing in Ukraine is the right thing. I mean, he just he has no real option here other than to go along with what President Trump wants. And as you and I have said on countless occasions,

Actually, what Trump wants is what's best for Ukraine. Zelensky doesn't realize that, and most Ukrainians don't realize that. But what Trump wants to do is shut down the war as soon as possible. And that is in Ukraine's interest. It's not in Ukraine's interest to continue this war. And although...

Zelensky thinks that's the case, he's just dead wrong. So in a very important way, I think that what Trump wants to do is good for Ukraine. So, I mean, even here, Primo Radical shows you that the people in Ukraine want their elections. Then Zelensky won't give them an election. And he says, when does criminalizing opposition and canceling elections equals democracy?

So how did this, again, my question is the same as before. It's a little different. How did liberals go from being staunch anti-war, anti-CIA, anti-war machine to being people who are sitting there applauding endless war, which we all know now is a proxy war that was instigated by NATO in the West?

It's amazing. Just think about the difference between now and the Bush years when the average American liberal actually agreed with the Colin Powell position that you can't go in.

to a war without a clear objective. You know, you break it, you own it. There has to be a goal. Soldiers need a goal, right? And we can't just go to war just to do it.

Ukraine is a slightly different situation because it was a country that was invaded, right? But this is a situation that can't be won militarily. Barack Obama made this exact same decision in not going to Crimea, right?

For the very sensible reason that it was always going to be more important to Putin than that area is going to be to us. And so they're not going to lose that war. Russia is not going to be defeated in this conflict.

Ukraine can't defend itself at all by itself. So what we're being asked to do is to support in perpetuity an incredibly bloody, dangerous war that not only involves a huge loss of life in Ukraine...

But puts us in real jeopardy of getting into a global conflict with a nuclear power. And what's so funny is that when you mention that now, and that's called a Russian talking point. You know, if you bring up the nuclear clock, which has been...

part of American society since what the 50s or 60s. That's now called a Russian talking point. Worrying about nuclear war is a Russian talking point. It's a Putin talking point. But it's true. We had NATO countries firing missiles into Russian territory and only because they decided not to expand the situation

Are we not in some kind of a shooting war with the nuclear power? It's astonishing to me that people who, you know, people I marched with, I remember in 2002 against the Iraq war, are so for this. They're rabidly for this. And it's a mystery to me.

I mean, is it to you? It just shows you how weak minded people who I used to think weren't are. People who I thought would be able to see through the war machine, the censorship machine. And Trump broke their brain. And that's just there's no two ways around it.

Trump broke their brain. And so now anything that they can, you know, if Trump, if Trump said he liked vanilla ice cream, they would say vanilla ice cream is Putin ice cream. And that's it. They, they look what happened with COVID. I,

I mean, they became the you know, they went from being my body, my choice. And and to people, people used to protest GMOs in their food. We're now wanting to take your kids away if you didn't want to inject them with an experimental medical treatment with no long term studies. They wanted you to lose your job. They wanted you to lose the right of travel if you wouldn't take this big pharma product.

So they're no longer my, they're not for bodily autonomy anymore. They're pro-abortion. You've seen that shift. I've seen it. They say pro, which is like being pro-amputation. Like, I'm pro-choice. Being pro-abortion is a dark thing. There's no way around that. And so, yeah, that's, to me, it's just Trump derangement syndrome. But, you know, the fact that Bernie Sanders, you know,

It's like, is someone else writing your tweets? I mean, what? So so he was never what we thought he was. I'm Elizabeth Warren. I didn't know much about. But at Bernie Sanders, I you know, he used to start every speech with sounds like you're ready for a revolution. And he just turns he turns into, you know, Lindsey Graham. I mean, it's just like at the snap of a finger and he he doesn't have any shame. And it turns out he has no dignity and he at all. I mean, at all.

If you're willing to do that, there's no bigger, I mean, I don't want to be hyperbolic, but that's scum of the earth activity when you're cheering on the slaughter of innocent Ukrainians for an economic hitman's war in Ukraine. That's so, there are no leaders in the Democratic Party. There is no point to the Democratic Party, but we're not ruled by parties, we're ruled by oligarchs.

And they control both parties. And they can't control Trump as much. And that's why they tried to kill him twice. That's why they Russiagated him, impeached him twice, and did January 6th, and then did 92 felony indictments, right, while George Bush walks the earth a free man. So that, to me, that's... Again, I'm just...

I turn to you because, you know, you're you're much smarter, wiser, more educated man by myself. I'm a nightclub comedian. And I just like, is there a way out of this? Like the Democrat, there's just no snapping these people out of it.

Yeah, I don't know. First of all, I would gladly trade places with you and be a nightclub comedian. But that sounds like a much better job to me. But no, I mean, you bring up Bernie. Bernie is probably the politician that I know best personally of any in the world. Like, yeah, in 2006, he invited me to spend...

the better part of a month following them around in Congress. He never wants asked to be off the record. And, you know, I've had dinner with him socially. He's gone out with my family. I had an image of him

that was, I guess, completely different from the reality or I'm just confused about this recent turn. There's only one explanation that I can really come up with because my impression of Bernie always was that he was a person of integrity, I thought. I thought he was doing these things not for money, not for fame, not for the usual politician reasons.

But I did have a conversation with him once where he said some interesting things about kind of his affection for the Democratic Party. And he talked about.

sort of very passionately about what it meant to him when he was a kid, you know, growing up in poor in Brooklyn and how nobody he knew was a Republican. Everybody he knew was a Democrat. And, you know, Joe Biden had been a friend of his when he when he got to the Senate, you know, from the House. Biden had been a mentor to him, told him how the how the place worked.

And I think there is a part of him deep inside that believes kind of in the classic lefty way in party politics. All right. In other words, you know, party before self in a way that Americans don't really associate with. That's the only rational explanation I can come up with for a lot of this stuff, because

On so many other issues, Bernie, and he will say this openly, that he and Trump were really mining the same territory politically in both 2016 and 2020. But now he's just gone over into this red baiting, you know, sort of John Brennan style version of what the Democratic Party is. And there's no other thing I reason way I can account for it. Can you? I mean, I don't know.

No, I it just reveals the worst. You know, he's just he would have been much better if he got out of politics after 2020 because his legacy is just garbage. No, he's just turned into the thing he's used to be fighting against. And he's he is the monster. There's really no other way to put it.

And he's and he was so close to that's the funny thing about it. He had them by the short and curlies where he really did. Yeah. And he could have he could have he could have demanded things. He could have extracted concessions. You know, if he had a little bit of Matt gets in him, he could have did something.

Uh, but he doesn't, he doesn't have that in him. And, uh, you know, I've had other people, you know, I've seen Michael Parente talk about Bernie Sanders and how after, uh, you know, the bombing of Kosovo, he stopped talking to Michael Parente and things like, so Bernie's always been kind of a cuck to the war machine in a way. And, um,

It's that that is just it's just disgusting. There's nothing there's no that's just again, that's John Brennan stuff. That's not stuff you would expect from somebody who calls himself a progressive or represents the working man or anything. It's all the anti that.

You know, every every bomb that's produced, every gun is taking, you know, as Eisenhower said, it's taking a meal out of the poor kid's mouth. And it's just and he doesn't care about any of it. I don't know what he's doing. He's he's trying to not be. Well, as he as he told Chris Hedges, I don't want to be end up like Ralph Nader.

And now Ralph Nader is saying the same stupid shit that Bernie's saying. It's amazing. Ralph Nader still thinks that there's communism in Russia. Did you see his latest tweet? Oh, I didn't see that. What did he say? It drives me crazy when people say that. What did he say? Yeah, he was referring to Russia as a communist. And yeah, it was just like, dude, what? I don't know. But and...

I almost tweeted about it. I almost said whoever is running his Twitter account should be fired, but I just let it go. I mean, that's a 40-year-old error. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's been a while, or 30 years, or whatever. It's been a while. Yeah. Yeah. Since they tore down the wall, and since the vulture capitalists took over in Russia. Yeah.

So I'm here with Matt Taibbi, and last night Trump had a State of the Union, and they did some quick polling. And so here's CNN doing some quick polling, and you can see how it didn't go well for CNN. You know they instantly regretted this. But I'm going to show you in a minute how they spun it. It's crazy. So the reaction to Trump's speech, 44% of the people were very positive,

somewhat positive was 25%. Now, if you add those together, that's 69%, right? And that's an overwhelming majority of people who were somewhat to very positive about the speech. And then there was 31% that were negative, right? So, I mean...

To the results, what was your reaction to Trump's speech? 44% of speech watchers in our Instant Poll tonight say they had a very positive reaction to Trump's speech. 25% somewhat positive, 31% negative. And that is not the guy who got caught jerking off on a Zoom call during COVID. That is a different guy who looks like that guy.

That's the guy who he he used to sell bed. You're killing me, Larry, in Los Angeles. That's who that guy is. So so Mews says CNN instantly regretted this poll. The vast majority of Americans think Trump's policies will move the U.S. in the right direction. Look at that. Trump's policies will move us in the right direction. Sixty six percent said yes. Thirty four percent say no.

um here even cbs views of trump's speech 76 they had it even higher 76 percent approved 23 percent disapproved those though to me i was like those are really big numbers time trump spend on issues that you care about 63 percent of the people said a lot uh 28 percent said a little and nine percent said none at all that's everybody at rachel maddow's house

And also, does Trump have a clear plan for inflation? 68% said yes. So whether he does or not,

People liked it. Trump's plan among speech watchers, waste and government spending, 77% like it. Immigration and the border, 77% like it. Ukraine and Russia, 73% liked it. And tariffs, 60%. So this overwhelming majority of people, in fact, even CBS News concluded, poll on Trump's 2025 joint address to Congress, large majority of viewers approve. Approve.

So, but I want to play this for you, Matt. I don't know if you've seen this. Here's how they, here's how CNN found a way to make that not good. In fact, they made it, they made it, you're not, maybe you won't believe this. Hold on to your, here it comes. And what about to his modern day predecessors? How does this 44% very positive stack up? Again, it's the bottom of the barrel here. 51% in 2021 when Joe Biden gave his first joint address.

were very positive. Donald Trump himself was at 57% in 2017, and you see that Bush and Obama even higher than that. So this was not Donald Trump's best speech, but obviously still the plurality of speech watchers had a very positive reaction. So that's the bottom of the barrel. That's how he spun it. It's the bottom of the barrel.

I mean, this is how media works now, right? If you go to PolitiFact and something is totally true, then the judgment needs context. Yeah. And when you read the context, they find some way to tell you the opposite of what the actual fact is. But those numbers are extraordinary, as you mentioned.

because they must include Democrats. They must include a pretty healthy portion of Democrats in order for Trump to even sniff those kinds of positivity numbers. Remember, this is somebody who never really broached higher than 50% approval rating as the president the first time around. So the numbers are different now. People are looking at his whole presidency differently and

those issues that you showed, I think that's really the key thing, which is that the Democrats don't really have a, um, uh,

a strategy for returning fire at the moment. There is no place, there's no winning theme for them. And they're grasping around to try to find something to attack with. And it's been bizarre watching them cycle through kind of the same old, same old and seeing each one of those strategies fail. They have to rethink who they are and I don't think they're capable of doing that. Yeah.

You know, as my friend Russell Dobular says that the Democrats, well, during Clinton, he he decided, well, if you can't beat him, join him. So he when he became president, him and Al Gore did the Democratic Leadership Council.

which was just them saying to Wall Street, hey, we're as easily corruptible and viable as the Republicans, so please come do it. In fact, the Democratic Leadership Council had legit board members of the Koch Foundation in the Democratic Leadership Council. And so that's when Bill Clinton did things that even Republicans couldn't do, like pass NAFTA.

deregulate Wall Street, explode the prison population as he guts welfare. And he was about to privatize Social Security, except the Monica Lewinsky scandal stopped it. And people still pretend that he's some kind of friend of the working man, and he's not. And so there's, as Russell Dobler says, there's no point to a left party

that is beholden to Wall Street. And so that's why we've been talking about gender affirming care and trans and white supremacy and Nazis and dictators and all that stuff because they can't actually advocate for workers

Because they're beholden to Wall Street and you can't be beholden to Wall Street and workers at the same time. And it's just like Chuck Schumer said in 2016. We don't care if we lose blue collar voters because for every blue collar voter we lose, we're going to add two and three white collar suburban voters. And you can repeat. And he said that. Oh, and that's been their strategy. Their strategy was to become the party of Republicans. We're going to appeal to the Republicans. And so that's why it's flipped.

RFK has talked about this, that the parties have flipped. More people who make less than $100,000 voted for Donald Trump than voted for Kamala Harris. They're now the party of the working class, not because they're going to represent their interests, but because they got nowhere else to go. And I remember after Trump got elected in 2016, I interviewed a Waffle House cook from Virginia, and his name was Nick Smith. And I said, why would you guys vote for

Donald Trump, do you really think he's going to help you? And he said, we've known that Donald Trump was a loudmouth Yankee who should have had his ass kicked a long time ago, but at least he's offering us something. Hillary Clinton came and said she's going to close down our industry.

And he didn't. And so where we they got it's you know, they're like Mayo in the officer and the gentleman. They got nowhere else to go. Right. And so they're put they've been pushed. And if the left doesn't offer solutions to workers, they're going to be pushed into the hands of the right wing. And that's exactly what has happened. So that I think that. Go ahead. No, I think that's right. And, um.

I mean, it may even be worse than that. I think one of the things that's come out, especially lately with this Ukraine issue, and then also with Vance's speech to Munich,

and to the Munich Security Conference about the censorship issue is that the dividing line, yes, it's left and right, but I think it's really more pronounced along the lines of people who support a kind of a globalist vision of government and people who think politicians should take care of their own countries first.

and then worry about their imperial responsibilities. And the Democrats have become a party of imperial responsibility. That's what they're all about. That's why they're all cheering for the Ukraine effort. That's why, you know, they automatically side, you know, with Europe on the censorship issues. That's why they were working so hard to fold us into laws like the Digital Services Act or, you know, the...

code of practice on disinformation. I think they believe in this vision of a kind of government by committee that knows better than everybody else. And the average American just doesn't believe that. They want to see their president, even if he's deeply flawed,

motivated to fix their particular problems first. And Trump, you know, that's what he does. You know, you may disagree with how he gets there, but he is clearly saying in almost everything he does that, you know, I'm going to advocate for people who actually live in this country and vote in this country. Zelensky had his meeting and he said that we're far, far away from

Having an end to this Ukraine war and that you can't negotiate with Putin because he breaks every agreement he ever made, even though that's not true either. And now this is March 4th. Zelensky ready to work under Trump's strong leadership after regrettable showdown. So now he's, you know, Mr. I don't know, Mr. Blow Monkey needs another cookie.

And I think that's his Secret Service codename, Blow Monkey. And repeat, Blow Monkey needs another cookie. And so now this is the tune he's speaking now after this happened to him. Your country is in big trouble. Can I answer? No, no. You've done a lot of talking. Your country is in big trouble. I know. You're not winning. I know. You're not winning this. I know.

You have a damn good chance of coming out okay because of us. Mr. President, we are staying in our country, staying strong from the very beginning of the war. We've been alone, and we are thankful. I said thanks in this cabinet, and not only in this cabinet. We gave you, through the stupid president, $350 billion. We gave you military equipment, and you men are brave, but they had to use our military. If you didn't have our military equipment,

If you didn't have our military equipment, this war would have been over in two weeks.

Now, I don't always get hard from watching a video, but when I do, it's this video. And so Zelensky leaves White House without signing the minerals deal after the Oval Office blow up. So this was, by the way, this was that was all orchestrated. That was all planned ahead of time in case you don't know that he went and he had a meeting with Democratic leaders before he went into this meeting. He got bad coaching and.

So he now he's so that and then Trump said this after that everybody has to get into a room, so to speak, and we have to make a deal. And the deal can be made very fast. It should not be that hard a deal to make. It could be made very fast. Now, maybe somebody doesn't want to make a deal. And if somebody doesn't want to make a deal, I think that person won't be around very long. That person will not be listened to very long.

because I believe that Russia wants to make a deal. I believe certainly the people of Ukraine want to make a deal. They've suffered more than anybody else. So here's a very Corleone way of putting things. I'll just say, who do you not want to be right now? You don't want to be a horse that belongs to Zelensky. That's what I'm saying. That's absolutely true. And so after that,

Now, here it is. He's ready. It's oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I acted like that. I'm proud. I promise I won't do it again. Let's work together. And so this is from the BBC overnight. It was announced that the U.S. President Trump suspended deliveries of military aid. So he cut him off.

What followed was a barrage of reaction from Ukraine and its allies, Russia and the United States. Four hours afterwards, however, the key players stayed quiet. Ukraine's President Zelensky and U.S. Donald Trump were up and active, but both steered clear of mentioning the pause. This then mid-afternoon, Zelensky shared a lengthy statement in which he expressed a willingness to consider a partial truce if Russia...

agreed to do the same. He also thanked Trump personally for his support for Ukraine and said their fiery meeting in the Oval Office was regrettable. It's time to make things right. Let's make things right. Now he sounds like...

uh al pacino in scarface let's make this right ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer nobody wants peace more than ukrainians my team and i stand ready to work under president trump's strong leadership to get a peace that lasts the president we are ready to work fast and to end the war wow

As our North American correspondent Tom Bateman puts it, the key question now is whether Zelensky's statement will be enough. And so just to give you the rundown, clandestine did a great rundown. He said Friday, Zelensky throws a fit, refuses to sign the minerals deal at the White House. Saturday and Sunday, Zelensky runs off to London to beg for money from Europe that they don't have to give. They gave him two billion dollars. That's nothing.

I mean, if the $300 billion we gave them hasn't done anything, they're losing to that $2 billion. They're just going to take that and buy some more vineyards in France and Italy with it. They give him a minuscule amount of funds and tell him to go beg Trump for forgiveness. On Monday, Trump says that if Zelensky does not come to the table ready for peace, then he will not be around very long.

Hours later, Trump cuts off all the weapons sales, aid funding, stockpiles, etc. until Zelensky is committed to a ceasefire and a peace deal. Today, Zelensky is ready to commit to a peace deal. First thing this morning, you just witnessed the art of the deal play out in real time. Trump is holding all the cards and forced Zelensky to submit. Zelensky was trying to play games and keep this war going. So Trump dropped the hammer on him. Trump essentially told Zelensky, you either work with me or you're going to die.

on stopping this war, and we will let Putin kill you. So that's, we should check and see if he has all 10 fingers. That's all I'm saying. So what do you make of Zelensky's turnaround?

Well, as you say, it was clearly orchestrated. Not only did he meet with people like Chris Murphy before he went in, but I think even more conspicuously, the instant that meeting was over, there were prepared statements from almost every European leader pledging support for as long as it takes to

to stay with Ukraine in the war. So those statements had to have been prepared. They couldn't have been... You wouldn't compose on the spot a statement contravening American foreign policy and then just sort of tweet it out.

So this was a planned thing and as that clandestine notes, he ran off to England, he jumped in the lap of Keir Starmer and Starmer promised him that he would stay with him until the end and then gave him $2 billion, which as you say, wasn't enough.

So I think he was probably playing out the string to see how much he could get out of the Europeans. And it turned out to be not that much. The Europeans were very happy to see this thing take place because they wanted to see Trump showing up a little bit. But in the end, America doesn't have anything to gain or lose in this situation. Really, all Trump was saying is,

okay, if you're not going to do what we want, we're out and you're on your own and see how you like that. Well, he didn't like it for more than 10 minutes, it appears, right? So he either takes a deal that he considers insufficient or he's going to be overrun and

And logically, and this is what's so crazy about this time period, is that people have been trained not to think in terms of what's logical about all this. He has to make a deal. It's in everybody's interest. Everybody wins from a deal being made. And not only that, we all knew what the parameters would be of this deal three years ago. When it started, at this show, I said this war is going to end however Russia wants it to end. That's how it's going to end.

And it's just amazing that I knew that and Zelensky didn't and everybody in Europe didn't know that. But maybe they did. Well, no, but Jimmy, don't you think that's...

I mean, I think that's fascinating, right? Because common sense, and you're absolutely right, it was clear to everybody how this was going to play out from the start. Now, I mean, some of us, including me, didn't see the invasion coming. I thought it was, I didn't, that was a little bit of a surprise. But once it did come, there was no way that this was going to end.

that didn't involve Ukraine losing some territory and then eventually having to sue for peace that it wasn't going to like. The Russians were not going to give up. There's other things that happened in the interim that

you know russia wants to extract a little bit of a pound of flesh for everything from the maidan revolution to the orange revolution to things that took place in the donbass they wanted they wanted to see ukraine punished for some things and they weren't gonna they don't mind losing a few soldiers to make that happen so this was always going to be the end game they were always going to lose those two provinces and

You could have guessed that this was the general end. And people like Mearsheimer did years ago. And now it's going to end that way. And everyone's going to say that it's like a tragedy. We're here with Matt Taibbi, former Russia resident and athletic wear enthusiast, who also is the host of co-host of America This Week podcast. And of course, his great sub stack,

Racket News. Hey, become a premium member. Go to JimmyDoreComedy.com. Sign up. It's the most affordable premium program in the business. All the voices performed today are by the one and only, the inimitable Mike McRae. He can be found at MikeMcRae.com. That's it for this week. You be the best you can be, and I'll keep being me.

Do not freak out.