Episode 4065： Investing Into A Healthy Country
Episode Stats
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Summary
In the wake of President Trump's picks for the Justice Department and other key Cabinet posts, some are questioning the motives behind them and whether they are part of a larger strategy to destabilize the White House. Alex Blumberg and Nickels Schulte break down what they think of them, and why they think they should be confirmed.
Transcript
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Together, Trump's candidates constitute an attempt to wreck the American government.
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All three of Trump's most high-profile picks, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, and Matt Gaetz,
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are defined publicly, both by the things they've said in the contempt they have for the role of
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the departments they're now going to lead, and the views that they have that are in stark contrast
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to many of the Republicans who have now been asked to vote to confirm them to lead those agencies.
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Here's how Steve Bannon reacted to the choice of Matt Gaetz as A.T.
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Matt Gaetz is the fiercest of the fierce warriors. He is the firebrand of firebrands.
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He's going to hit the Department of Justice with a blowtorch, and that blowtorch is a guy named Matt Gaetz.
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I could say a lot of things about Bannon, but at least he says it all out loud, right?
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Trump's picks are part of this project that Bannon has described for years now publicly
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as the destruction of the administrative state, the fulfillment of a vision Bannon has been fighting for for years.
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We're going to burn some of these institutions down to the ground because you know why?
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I think that the first time that Steve Bannon ever said the phrase, and it actually is the deconstruction
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of the administrative state, which is the same thing as the destruction of it, but I think the
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first time he said it out loud to everybody in the world was in February of 2017 at CPAC,
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where he was, the Trump forces were ascendant at that point.
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Steve was in the White House at that point, and he was, I think, interviewed on stage at
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CPAC by Reince Priebus, or at least was on stage with Reince Priebus, but I think it was Priebus
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talking to Bannon, and Bannon talked about the big priorities in the Trump term.
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He talked about nationalism in terms of foreign policy.
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He talked about nationalism in terms of economic policy.
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And then the third thing he talked about was this deconstruction of the administrative state.
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And, you know, it's a, the one thing you can, Steve is not only someone who's been saying
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this out loud forever, for, you know, through that entire, from the moment they walked in
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the doors there in January of 2017 until now, when he was out, when Trump was out of office,
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he's also someone who's very, he's, who is unlike Donald Trump, an extraordinarily well-read
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And, and when I say sophisticated, I don't want anybody to think that that means I think he's
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a good thing in terms of some of these thoughts, but I mean, he is someone who has thought a lot
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He's read his, he's read his Lenin, and that's what this is really.
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And I think to your point, Nicole, I think there's a lot of things going on with these,
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with these, some of it is directed at the media, and that's the frame that you were just putting
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on it, which is to create chaos in, in terms of how we cover it.
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But it's also, I really importantly, these are tests of the Republicans in the Senate.
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It is not a coincidence that, that Trump dropped the Matt Gaetz announcement to basically break
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up John Thune's welcome party, his victory party, as having won as majority leader on
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the, on the Senate side, on the Republican Senate side.
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It was, it was like dropping a, a turd in his punch bowl at his party, basically, and sort
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of saying, okay, um, this is the most unacceptable, or among the most unacceptable people you could
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Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people.
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Here's the one that I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people.
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I know you've tried to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to
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And where do people like that go to share the big line?
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I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
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Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
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If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
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It's Monday, 18 November, Year of the Lord, 2024.
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Okay, we're going to have Jeff Clark is going to do a reprise of the little bit we had on
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Because we have to talk about the big fight is the confirmation fight.
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They're getting to the judges fight, which we will talk about in the second hour.
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I guess what they're taking to be a radical idea about the president forcing both houses
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of Congress into recess where he would put some of these nominees forward.
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Really, Pete Hexeth and Matt Gaetz drawing the fire.
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I think it says a lot when you see Nicole Wallace and Hallman and all of MSNBC in the focus on
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Right now, Christy Noem and believe it or not, RFK Jr. getting a pass, which I guess is some
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We're going to talk about Tina Peters out in a nine-year prison sentence in Colorado.
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The NBC News is doing some amazing reporting on the Justice Department and the lawyers there
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And also, we're going to go to Silicon Valley, talk about venture capital.
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Brian Costello is going to be here talking about the venture capital firms there and their
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She was a vice presidential candidate with RFK, came forward and supported President Trump.
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Nicole, the reason I wanted to have you on here is to kind of kick this off.
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We haven't had a lot of opportunity to really focus on what RFK is doing over HHS as he
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But in his whole thing of make America healthy again, a huge aspect of that that nobody's
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talking about and that we pray President Trump is just as aggressive as he's been on
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these other nominations is the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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That merger, when we talk about make America healthy again and everything RFK is going to
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do with big pharma and big medicine and that whole biopharma, biopharmaceutical industrial
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complex, you're coming at it from a different angle and that's agriculture.
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The nomination for head of the USDA is happening right this moment and there's an opportunity
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for the first time ever to get somebody in there who's a real farmer, who's going to look
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out for the small family farms and who's going to revitalize our soil systems.
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I came to agriculture through a very narrow lens of looking at climate change and this
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is almost 10 years ago now and I'm a technologist here in Silicon Valley and I looked at every
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one of the climate schemes that they had brought up that were being brought up and sold as these
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green energy programs and none of them made sense to me looking at just the science and
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If we just look at carbon through this myopic lens of we have excess CO2 in the atmosphere
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and that is allegedly leading to a heating and climate change and climate change patterning.
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If you just look at it through that, you actually, and you spend time on the science and you realize
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the opportunity of soil and you realize the many, many benefits of tending to our farmland.
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There's about 900 million acres of farmland in the United States and you look at the history
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When you don't take care of the soil, you get the dust bowl.
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When you don't take care of the soil, people go hungry.
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When you cut down American farmland, you get inflation, you get expensive food products
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And we saw that during the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns.
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So you can't talk about any of these really big issues like inflation or climate without
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You can't talk about health without addressing the soil.
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In this country, we use an enormous amount of glyphosate.
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Glyphosate has been tied for decades now to all kinds of autoimmune issues and cancers.
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In fact, Bayer and Monsanto, Bayer acquired Monsanto, has paid out over $11 billion in damages
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due to people getting sick from glyphosate and farmers getting sick.
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And these very well-defined cancers that have been defined and linked conclusively to glyphosate
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You cannot address so many of the issues we have in America without addressing the USDA.
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Tom Vilsack, the current head of the USDA, he was the head of the USDA under Obama as well,
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is it's even hard to call him a commodities guy.
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He's just he is somebody who is a puppet who's put in there to keep this whole system running as it is.
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He's made no major changes to say that he's dedicated anything towards things that liberals
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care about, such as conservation, is, you know, we've seen no movement there.
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The farm bill is something we don't hear much about that we really ought to be listening and
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paying much more close attention to in terms of what's going into it.
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These are five and then 10-year bills, budgets.
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The next one that's up right now is going to be the first 10-year farm bill that exceeds a trillion dollars.
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So, you know, this is stuff that we have to be paying attention to.
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The farm, calling it the farm bill doesn't even make sense.
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It's over a trillion dollars mostly going to the SNAP program.
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As you know, this is a populist nationalist show with a huge mega audience and we always try to support
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But when you have 900 million acres, and we love family farms and the family farmer and
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the little guy, but isn't that just fond nostalgia for an America that's passed?
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I mean, to feed America and to feed the world or to help feed the world, don't you need massive
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Don't you, isn't this something that scales up and why people, I think, appreciate the
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fact, you know, your show, Back to the People and all your things are related to family farmers
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I've looked at the science and when you take care of the soil, you get long-term yields.
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You get higher yield in the density, nutritional density of the food.
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So if you really do want to feed people, you have to tend to the soil.
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And look, if there's large-scale production that is producing high nutrient-dense foods,
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But those nutrient-dense foods have to actually translate to healthy people.
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And that's not what we have going on right now.
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We have commodities, massive commodities, that a lot of it results in high-fructose corn syrup,
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We know causes all kinds of dysregulated behavior in small children.
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I mean, I'm not sure how to reference this idea of nostalgia.
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I'm talking just strictly efficiency about if we want to invest dollars in to healthy people,
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Actually, you know, in the latest consensus of the 900 million acres that we have in the United States,
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we're farming only about 500 million acres of them.
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And, in fact, here in the state of California, where we produce half of the fruits and vegetables in this country,
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half of the fruits and vegetables come from the state of California.
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And the state of California currently has a plan to cut water down 40% to farmers,
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which means we're going to lose 40% of the fruit and vegetable production coming from the state of California,
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I mean, so this is merely looking at it strictly through the lens of, you know, not flowers and bunnies and things.
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I'm looking at it strictly from a business lens.
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No, we have nostalgia for the small farmer, too.
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But you come at it from science and from technology.
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You know, one of our anthems here, one of my favorite songs.
00:14:10.640
These cabinet nominations, and I think Nicole Shanahan's got some recommendations.
00:14:16.540
As she tries to shake up the United States Department of Agriculture in the MAGA Revolution,
00:14:22.360
President Trump is a blunt force instrument for change, an anti-systems person, as is RFK, Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Gaetz,
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and the rest of their compatriots now into the Department of Agriculture.
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Incredibly important as it works together with HHS to make America healthy again.
00:15:02.400
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00:15:07.760
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00:15:14.100
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RFK Jr. is putting together his team at HHS and getting ready for what will be a firestorm by Big Pharma and Big Medicine when he comes forward to end that nomination process.
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I had a chance to spend a few minutes with RFK Jr. at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, and we caught up with the great Tony Lyons.
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Nicole Shanahan was the vice presidential candidate running as an independent on the ticket with RFK.
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She's very focused on the agricultural department.
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First time you've been on, and I want to make sure our audience is very focused on family farms and the small farmer.
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The current head of the USDA, this is his second turn in the barrel.
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He's been the governor of Iowa, which is obviously one of the states that are the breadbasket of the country and the world.
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Are you saying – and he's a guy with a liberal perspective, progressive.
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Are you saying he's failed to make the changes that a Nicole Shanahan or the people she supports to head the USDA would make?
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I mean I think most of the audience would find that shocking.
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He's worked for Obama, arguably the most progressive president of modern times.
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He does not have the perspective you have that you think is a cornerstone of make America healthy again, ma'am.
00:17:57.040
Yeah, it's hard for me to categorize Tim Vilsack as either corrupt or uninformed and quite stupid.
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I think that there's a great deal of corruption that has been hidden under the mask of progressive values around conservation and climate management.
00:18:25.960
And I'm really concerned, having seen some of the actions under this administration, how they have treated farmers around this country like criminals.
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We've seen more raids of small family farms, organic farms.
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We've seen raids of Amish farms in this country.
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I've seen, you know, I've seen the words conservation and aquifers floated around.
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But when you actually look at the behaviors here in the state of California, we've been out of a drought for the last three years.
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I have a full map of every farm in the state of California and how we should have been investing in those farms and restoring those aquifers.
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Instead, they're paying farmers to fallow their lands.
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They have a pilot program here to fallow their lands.
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And we know that California is a test bed for these policies.
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And if they work here, they spin them out into the rest of the country.
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Tom Vilsack has very much been a puppet of what I think is this climate death cult that looks at human and human needs through this very negative lens.
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And they are blind to this whole other body of science, the body of soil science that says if we restore the soil organic matter, S-O-M, soil organic matter of our soil by like 5%,
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we can pay off an enormity of our carbon debt and our emissions debt.
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And we get the added benefit of feeding people healthy, nutritious food.
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Because when you increase the soil organic matter of our lands, it goes directly into the seeds and the roots and the leaf.
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You're very focused on this, on the current, what's going to happen in the USDA.
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Walk us through, who do you recommend that, if you were talking to President Trump right now,
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who do you recommend that President Trump and his transition team put forward as the new leadership in the USDA?
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You know, the beneficial remark that I'd like to share right now, full of optimism,
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is that we have a list of 20 people who would all be amazing, amazing leadership of the USDA.
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These are people who work with other farmers and train other farmers in need and help turn farms around who are going into debt.
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And we have got some of the best farmers in the world in this country.
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But if I'll give you some names, amongst those that we think would just be wonderful,
00:21:26.020
And if you know Massey, he's tried many times to present bills that are very pro-farmer,
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very protective of the family farm, and really all about food freedom.
00:21:38.360
If not Thomas Massey, we've got this wonderful farmer, Jimmy Emmons,
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who is loved by the left and loved by the right and loved by every farmer he meets
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and is just this jovial, wonderful, brilliant man who's a farmer and a soil scientist.
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He was a farmer first, became a soil scientist.
00:22:08.560
He'd be a great deputy secretary at the USDA or ahead.
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Um, he's a Republican member of the Tennessee State Senate.
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Also a farmer, also understands the bureaucracy.
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He understands where the money is, where the bodies are buried.
00:22:28.480
And, and I've published it on my ex, uh, who I'd love to see out there.
00:22:34.000
Um, and I just, you know, the, the thing we have to remember is we have every tool to turn
00:22:40.120
And this is something that's going to impact every budget item related to the government.
00:22:49.800
Uh, we'd love, um, the audience loves learning nomenclature.
00:22:54.320
When you've used this term food freedom, what does that mean?
00:22:58.060
It's the right to grow our own food and it's the right to, um, be able to afford a lifestyle
00:23:11.680
Um, one of the, you know, biggest issues around food freedom today is that we aren't able to
00:23:20.120
grow, for example, dairy products the way that we'd like to.
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Um, we are now on the precipice of being forced to inject our cattle with the mRNA vaccine.
00:23:34.820
So just like we talk about medical freedom for humans and the desire to not have mandates
00:23:41.220
telling us what we have to put in our bodies, food freedom is an extension of that.
00:23:48.020
We want the ability to eat meat that isn't, um, that full of these inputs.
00:23:57.980
I mean, let's talk about the Nuremberg trials, right?
00:24:00.460
The idea that humans have a right to be fully informed about what they're putting into their
00:24:13.140
So MSMEC, the Progressive Channel, if they would say, in fact, when they see this tonight
00:24:19.480
or tomorrow, they'll say, look, if you let a nutcase like Bobby Kennedy take over, um,
00:24:25.640
HHS, every kid's going to have measles and every other disease.
00:24:29.080
And if Nicole Shanahan has her way at the USDA, you can be drinking raw milk and other dairy
00:24:34.100
products and getting all kind of, uh, uh, bacillus and diseases in you that, that these people
00:24:43.380
They want to take America back to the 17th or 16th, 15th or 16th century.
00:24:53.100
And Shanahan's almost as dangerous as Bobby Kennedy.
00:25:00.740
In fact, we are just on the frontier of probably one of the most exciting, exciting scientific
00:25:10.360
There is so much life in a handful of healthy soil, and we're going to understand how that
00:25:18.340
soil interacts with our health and can actually feed us in ways that, you know, we haven't
00:25:28.720
Um, I, I think that if you talk to a PhD here at Stanford university, um, who's studying
00:25:35.840
ecosystem science and you ask them, what is the most interesting breakthrough area of the
00:25:43.880
They're going to tell you it's this microbiome.
00:25:47.280
There is this whole world of life under our feet and we can solve so many of humanity's
00:25:54.520
greatest issues, um, by exploring, uh, the majesty of soil.
00:25:58.720
Um, Nicole, you've got to know, you've got a foundation, you have a venture capital fund.
00:26:09.480
Cause I'm telling you, the audience is fascinated about this.
00:26:12.000
We're a huge believer in, uh, the family farm and the, uh, and the little guy, uh, particularly
00:26:17.820
against agribusiness and this farm bill, which you're correct.
00:26:20.960
It's, it's not simply that snap is food stamps, but the food, they're not really buying food.
00:26:28.460
And this is what's destroying the health of the country.
00:26:30.480
So I think you and you and, uh, I would talk to Bobby though, about, about eating the big
00:26:34.760
max on, uh, on president Trump's plane coming back from the UFC.
00:26:37.540
I guess he gets so jacked up in the gladiator arena.
00:26:42.340
Um, where do people go for all your platforms and the following you on social media, ma'am?
00:26:46.860
Well, first of all, I'd like to put a plug in for big max.
00:26:52.640
And, uh, I, I grew up eating McDonald's and it's, it's really not so much the fact that
00:27:07.760
It's the, um, dough conditioner in the dough that is linked to all kinds of GI issues.
00:27:16.680
And, and I, and, and, you know, frying French fries in seed oils, it'd be much better if
00:27:23.860
we could fry our French fries and beef tallow, um, or coconut oils.
00:27:28.160
I mean, there's so many, there's so much we can do and innovate around in terms of healthier
00:27:35.180
And especially with, you know, these branded American, um, nostalgic things.
00:27:44.320
So, um, but to answer your question, uh, you know, check me out on X.
00:27:51.180
Many of the posts, majority of the posts are my own.
00:27:54.700
And that's me just, you know, sharing what my heart wants to share and, uh, getting information
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Jeff, Julie Kelly, we're going to get Julie Kelly in a moment.
00:29:32.920
NBC News is reporting that Merrick Garland was stunned and shocked about 5 November's results
00:29:40.940
and that their senior lawyers in the Justice Department were weeping openly about the results,
00:29:51.400
They say we didn't do anything wrong, but Trump and these evil people like Jeff Clark
00:30:00.640
Look, Steve, I spent a total of six and a half plus years at the Justice Department in
00:30:08.800
I can tell you and the audience with great assurance that at no point did I ever break down weeping
00:30:14.480
about any election results or even any case results were supposed to be adults at this
00:30:22.360
I was about to say men, and I recognize that maybe that's a little bit, you know, too male-centric.
00:30:28.400
But still, look, I think these reports are amazing in that they show the nature of the people who've
00:30:37.360
And, you know, I don't have a lot of sympathy for them.
00:30:40.540
I hear that they're making arguments of, you know, well, we're going to have to be bedeviled
00:30:48.000
I've spent the last four years being bedeviled by those things just for doing my job at the
00:30:54.660
And, you know, if there is some turnabout on that from the new Congress and from any
00:31:01.400
investigations that might take place, you know, that's what they signed up for when
00:31:06.320
they started weaponizing the Justice Department against their political opponents, Steve.
00:31:11.900
It was pretty – they're freaking out about this proposal you put forward to actually get
00:31:17.980
– to get to that point, we've got to get Matt Gaetz and Todd Blanch and people actually
00:31:25.200
And all day long, they're talking about, oh, they're going to block this, although
00:31:28.000
it's pretty evident no other Republican congressmen have come forward – well, first
00:31:32.420
of all, I don't think anybody's come forward and said they actually will not vote for Matt
00:31:35.600
Murkowski and I think Collins have indicated that he's got a tough sell.
00:31:39.500
But walk us through – and if Denver can put up his report, at least the eight-pager,
00:31:47.720
Walk us through this eight-pager because the president – there's two things out there
00:31:52.180
President Trump's talked about this Act of 1998 that he's prepared to use, and you're
00:31:57.520
offering him another alternative in case we can't go through the normal process of
00:32:02.220
advice and consent in the Senate to get his nominees across the finish line.
00:32:06.420
Let me start, if I could, Steve, by talking about English law.
00:32:15.380
Eventually, the parliament made inroads against the first one especially.
00:32:19.820
But the king could have the power to dissolve the parliament or to suspend it or what was
00:32:28.420
And the framers, in their wisdom, completely appropriate, since they wanted to have three
00:32:34.060
standing branches of government that were co-equal, they denied to the president the
00:32:41.700
It's a body that continues in existence from election to election.
00:32:46.500
The president doesn't have the power to do that.
00:32:49.280
But they decided that some form of the power to prorogue essentially would be conferred on
00:32:54.940
But they put another check and balance on it, Steve.
00:32:57.860
They put on it the idea that the president can order the two houses of Congress into a
00:33:04.840
recess if the two houses disagree with each other as to whether to go into that recess.
00:33:11.660
And so if that disagreement between the houses exists, the president can send them into recess
00:33:19.440
And there are arguments floating around from the Wall Street Journal, from Ed Whelan, for
00:33:34.460
We're coming up next April, folks, the 250th anniversary, so that's a quarter of a millennium,
00:33:41.440
of the shot heard around the world, Lexington and Concord, next 19 April 2025.
00:33:47.500
Has this ever been even talked—has it ever been tried anywhere in any presidency?
00:33:53.880
And has it even been discussed, what you're talking about?
00:33:57.740
Well, this is where one house would say, I want to go into recess.
00:34:01.800
And the president can use that one house saying they want to go into recess.
00:34:05.260
So this kind of is a reveal, but why Mike Johnson, who has nothing to do with confirmations,
00:34:12.580
said out of the blue, oh, well, I support the recess nominations process.
00:34:19.580
So Johnson could put the house into recess, and Trump could use that house recess to force
00:34:26.100
the Senate to force, if Mitch McConnell and John Thune didn't want to do it, to force the
00:34:30.700
house into a recess and then put his nominees through?
00:34:33.540
Short answer is yes, and what the president's given in the Constitution is a tie-breaking
00:34:38.380
If the two houses disagree with each other, the president can send them both into recess.
00:34:50.380
And it goes to, you know, normally, right, the houses decide for themselves when they're
00:34:55.920
Well, the Senate has not been out of, was never out of session the entire first Trump
00:35:04.220
Mitch McConnell did not trust, this was a, the only reason he did that was because he
00:35:08.700
did not trust Trump to slide in a couple of nominations, correct?
00:35:13.180
They created this pro forma process where they basically gaveled themselves in, and they were
00:35:20.760
supposedly in session, but they really weren't in session.
00:35:24.800
But the Supreme Court upheld that in this case called Noel Canning versus the NLRB.
00:35:29.780
And so, you know, now it's well established that the Senate can use these pro forma adjournments,
00:35:36.400
and they're not, you know, pro forma coming into session when they're actually not there
00:35:42.020
The Obama administration tried to say that during those, you know, sessions where they're
00:35:47.080
really not available, they're actually in recess, and therefore President Obama had
00:35:54.380
They said that as we read the Constitution and its history, a recess of three days or less
00:36:02.620
is clearly insufficient to trigger the recess appointment power.
00:36:06.400
For recesses 10 days and longer, they said that that is long enough, then the power definitely
00:36:13.220
And then they said that recesses essentially between the three days and the 10 days presumptively
00:36:17.620
are not long enough in order for the president to use the power.
00:36:20.800
So if the president wants to use the power and not have it be questioned, a recess has to
00:36:27.780
And what, and that, could the House say, I want a 10-day recess?
00:36:32.140
And the president can force the Senate into a 10-day recess, and then he can put certain
00:36:45.620
Ed Whelan at National Review, put up a National Review online?
00:36:54.520
Ed Whelan was at the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department.
00:36:58.180
So Office of Legal Counsel is the internal law firm for the Justice Department.
00:37:04.020
When you give them an executive order, they write essentially an opinion letter and helps
00:37:09.100
with the, make sure it's constitutional, correct?
00:37:19.980
I've worked with him and, you know, I think he's a good guy.
00:37:25.780
Look, you know, Ed, our kids had even played together at one point when we were both younger
00:37:32.420
All of our kids were playing out in the house in Arlington.
00:37:44.100
I think maybe he thinks he did, but I didn't think it was a very effective response.
00:37:48.240
So one of his responses, which he had launched before me, and now then he kind of used it
00:37:53.940
and put it in motion against me as well, is this idea that there would not be a disagreement
00:37:58.700
between the houses about recess, but rather the Senate would simply decide to stay in session.
00:38:04.040
So this seems to me to be quite a semantic argument, Steve.
00:38:09.000
So let me indulge your viewers and you to use what one of my law professors used to call a homely
00:38:14.480
analogy, by which he would mean he would try to take some complicated legal subject and turn it
00:38:24.480
I'm over a friend's house, and we're shooting baskets, you know, against the backboard on his
00:38:30.660
driveway. And I say, hey, you know, this has been fun, but why don't you come over to my house
00:38:36.240
and we'll play air hockey? And, you know, he says, no, I want to keep playing basketball and
00:38:43.700
shoot the hoops, right? Well, what Ed is saying is that, you know, there's essentially an agreement
00:38:48.980
about, disagreement about whether to keep shooting hoops. There's not a disagreement about whether
00:38:53.920
to go over to my house and play air hockey, right? But in reality, they're just the flip side of each
00:38:58.440
other, right? A recess and a continuance of the Senate in session are just, you know, binaries,
00:39:04.340
like two different sides of the same coin. So to say that it's a dispute about staying in session
00:39:10.020
versus in recess, it's inherently a dispute about whether to take a recess. Therefore, if the two
00:39:14.800
houses disagree, whatever the Senate tries to say, like, well, we're not disagreeing with you about
00:39:19.160
a recess. We just want to stay in session. I don't think that's going to be good enough to stop
00:39:23.660
the president from using this power if he wants to. All right. Your scheme or your proposal here
00:39:29.700
to the president, would you use it after he tried? What was the act in 1998 that today he actually said
00:39:37.760
if I believe he said on a true social or said, if John Thune does not move my candidates,
00:39:45.400
my nominees through quickly on an orderly process, I will use this, what, the Avoidance Act of 1998?
00:39:56.360
So that statute's called the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, Steve, the FBRA. And it arose out of
00:40:03.640
disputes with a Clinton official, Lonnie Chen, who seemed to serve at the Civil Rights Division forever
00:40:11.220
without Senate confirmation. And so they put this act in place. But before I kind of unpack that act
00:40:16.120
a little bit, let me say, look, whenever you're dealing with relationships between the political
00:40:21.020
branches, you're dealing with a situation in which, you know, deals can be made, right, in which
00:40:27.020
arrangements can be struck. Maybe the president talks to the Senate and he, you know, leads senators,
00:40:33.700
and there are a few people that he wants to try to get recess appointed, you know, maybe,
00:40:38.840
and there are others that he makes an agreement, you know, they'll go through the full process or
00:40:42.540
whatever. These, these kinds of things may be taking place behind the scenes. And I think the
00:40:46.580
framers anticipated that before you go to the cudgels about something that might actually show up in
00:40:51.200
the courts, you exercise those softer persuasive, you know, tools that you have. All right. So now
00:40:58.040
about the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. So, hang on, because we're going to go to break. You can stick
00:41:02.940
around, right? Sure. What the, what the left is saying on TV and the Democrats are that these
00:41:12.220
appointments are in your face to actually take the government and start to tear it apart. And they,
00:41:20.260
defenders of the established order, are going to use the powers in the constitution of the Senate
00:41:27.720
basically being the human resources department. And that the FVRA option that President Trump,
00:41:34.420
I think, tweeted out earlier, and that Jeff Clark's idea are kind of these radical
00:41:40.160
tools that one reaches for when one can't get a cabinet nominee through a standard process.
00:41:52.340
Quick response is this case that I discussed with you, Noel Canning, which is the leading precedent on
00:41:58.260
the recess appointments clause. It's one where Obama was using it. He tried to put people on the
00:42:05.900
National Labor Relations Board during, you know, one of these short kinds of non-recesses because
00:42:12.640
they didn't go for long enough. I didn't hear anything from the Nicole Wallace's of the world
00:42:17.120
or the New York Times about like how terrible it was that Obama was trying to put recess
00:42:22.040
appointees in. It's only when they think their ox is being gored that they magically turn around.
00:42:27.100
Indeed, there was, I retweeted it today, there was, somebody put clips of Lawrence O'Donnell,
00:42:31.720
and I think it was Nicole Wallace, but it might have her wrong, but at least Lawrence O'Donnell
00:42:36.140
put out clips saying, you know, there's a constitutional power called the recess appointments
00:42:39.860
clause, and the president clearly has this power, right? So, you know, it's time for those
00:42:43.900
clips to get jammed back in their face, right? If Obama's exercising the power, they're totally good
00:42:48.480
with it, but if Donald John Trump wants to, they say no. Okay, hang on. We got a lot to get to.
00:42:53.100
Julie Kelly's going to join us. We got Brian Costello about the venture capitalists and business
00:42:58.040
with the Chinese Communist Party. Now, maybe an investigation is going to go on. We're going to
00:43:02.640
talk to Tina Peter's lawyer. Jeff Clark's going to stick around. We've got a lot going on.
00:43:06.100
Birchgold.com slash Bannon, or go to Bannon at 9-8-9-8-9-8 to get all the information from
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Do it today. Action, action, action. Here's your host, Stephen K. Mann.
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Okay. Mike Lindell joins us. Mike, we missed you this morning on the morning show. The audience is
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hankering for a deal. What do you got for his brother? Well, as you see, the bathrobes came in,
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and best products in history. I'll tell you, you can't beat the new robes coming in, everybody.
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So thanks, Steve. And thanks, War Room Posse. You guys have been absolutely amazing in supporting
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our employees. Mike, we love you. And you did such a great job on election integrity. We actually won
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in a landslide. Thank you, brother. Got a lot of work to do. Paper, ballast, same day voting. I got it.
00:46:58.220
And count the same day. Can we play the call over for Julie Kelly? Let's go and play it.
00:47:02.720
Yeah. How has the choice of Matt Gaetz changed the equation or has it?
00:47:08.340
It has. And that's the difference. There was worry about congressional investigations.
00:47:12.980
They expected that. But the choice of Gaetz, which was, I think, a real surprise to many people inside
00:47:17.760
the DOJ, you know, signaled everywhere, yes, that he, you know, he's a lawyer, but he's had no
00:47:23.180
experience prosecuting cases. But most of all, he is a firebrand loyalist, a very vocal supporter
00:47:29.000
of President Trump. And it's seen by people as a choice. It's someone who trusts, who Trump trusts,
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and someone who, given the ethics investigation, sort of owes Trump. Trump is sort of protecting
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him by giving him this new job just before the ethics report comes out. So it has raised fears
00:47:46.040
that there could actually be criminal investigations and prosecutions by the Trump administration of
00:47:56.140
That plays much, much longer. We'll play that maybe in the next hour with Jeff Clark.
00:48:01.980
Julie Kelly, NBC News is reporting that Merrick Garland was shocked and stunned by the results,
00:48:09.360
that senior officials in DOJ were weeping on Tuesday the 5th in the evening as the results
00:48:17.240
came in. And now they're petrified. One of the segments all day long in every show,
00:48:21.980
one segment is about the fear inside the Justice Department for, of course, these uncalled for
00:48:32.100
Yes, I think it's legitimate. I've talked to people who are closer to DOJ than I am who say
00:48:36.800
that the fear and terror is real, not just among top DOJ officials, including Special Counsel Jack
00:48:44.480
Smith and his team. We could talk about his being a flight risk and leaving as Mark Zaid is recommending
00:48:52.220
top targets to flee the country around Inauguration Day. Just crazy talk. But that even lying prosecutors
00:48:59.660
are terrified that they are going to be investigated, which they should, for violating the 1A,
00:49:06.120
4A, 5A, 6A, 8A constitutional rights of January 6th defendants conspiring with the FBI and federal
00:49:15.260
judges to deny due process to Americans, most the overwhelming majority of whom had no criminal
00:49:22.020
record, committed no crime, but nonetheless had their lives destroyed at the hands of this bloodthirsty
00:49:28.860
DOJ led by Merrick Garland, Lisa Monaco, and of course, the D.C. U.S. attorney, Matthew Graves.
00:49:34.740
So the fear is real. It is gratifying to see the tables turn on this vengeful DOJ who has destroyed
00:49:43.000
so many lives over the past four years. And I'm sure that they're shocked, Steve, because I was in
00:49:51.060
courtrooms leading up to Election Day, seeing how they're treating J6ers. There was no indication
00:49:56.860
that they thought for a minute Donald Trump would win, that the January 6th, what they call the Capitol
00:50:02.520
siege investigation, would end, that pardons would take place, and furthermore, the tables turned,
00:50:10.060
as you said, the hunted becoming the hunters, which is precisely what's happening.
00:50:16.760
Mark Zayed, the lawyer, he's actually saying that Brother Jack Smith should exit the country
00:50:24.280
starting the afternoon of the 20th of January. Am I correct in saying that that's what he said?
00:50:29.180
He did not say it specifically, but Mark Zayed, as you know, the lawyer who represented Eric
00:50:36.240
Kiaramella, sorry, it's been a while since I've said his name, the so-called whistleblower in
00:50:43.460
Ukrainegate that prompted the first impeachment of Donald Trump, also Mark Zayed, just a long-time
00:50:49.100
dirty, dumb operative, openly recommending that people who fear prosecution, and this is DOJ officials,
00:50:57.400
but also past officials from the national security state, John Brennan, Jim Clapper. He also listed
00:51:03.500
Liz Cheney, this article in Politico listed Liz Cheney, to leave the country around Inauguration Day.
00:51:10.080
Now, why would he say that? Is he saying, well, these officials, former and current, should wait to see
00:51:16.520
what Donald Trump does on Inauguration Day, sign executive orders related to pardons or investigations?
00:51:23.580
Also, his acting attorney general and acting DCUS attorney, more importantly, will really decide how to
00:51:31.580
investigate those offices, right? Main justice, the special counsel's office, and then the DCUS attorney
00:51:38.020
investigating what happened in that office with those prosecutors and investigate. Are they going to
00:51:42.980
wait to see what happens the first few days and decide from there if they're going to become
00:51:47.080
fugitives and not return? Keep in mind, Steve, where was Jack Smith and David Harbaugh, also one of his
00:51:54.520
top prosecutors in a classified documents case that I covered? They were at the Hague in 2022,
00:52:01.620
overseeing the war crimes trial of the former president of Kosovo. Mayor Garland dispatched them here
00:52:11.060
Julie, just hang here for one second. You'll hold through the break. Tina Peters' lawyer,
00:52:17.100
Jeff Clark, will still be here. Tina Peters' lawyer is going to join us. And Brian Costello,
00:52:21.540
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