On today's show, we discuss the latest in President Trump's campaign of retribution against former FBI Director Chris Wray and his supporters, as well as the ongoing investigation into his former attorney general nominee, Merrick Garland, and his former FBI director, James Comey.
00:00:00.000The rule of law and efforts from Trump supported by a compliant administration to create workarounds so that the rule of law effectively does not apply to him.
00:00:09.320Since taking office, the president has tested legal boundaries by deploying troops to American streets, used emergency powers to justify sweeping tariffs, even though no emergency existed.
00:00:20.360Greenlit military strikes on alleged drug boats without congressional approval and told the Justice Department who it should target.
00:00:27.000The latest officials on that list, former Attorney General Merrick Garland and Trump's former FBI director, Chris Wray.
00:00:34.360In order to achieve these goals, according to The New York Times, Charlie Savage, Trump follows a two point plan.
00:00:40.020Quote, the first is that Trump has told executive branch lawyers that they may not question any legal judgment that he or Attorney General Pam Bondi already decided.
00:00:49.500The second is that Trump has been declaring that as president, he has determined that the factual and legal scenarios exist that are necessary for him to exercise various extraordinary powers.
00:01:01.360The president's campaign of retribution and he seemingly has found enough officials in the Department of Justice and U.S.
00:01:08.740to carry out his attorneys to carry out his bidding.
00:01:11.220Yes, I consider the presidency today as a presidency of revenge and retaliation for personal offenses against the president.
00:01:26.680That is, personal offenses, in his view, committed by his political opponents, whom he now calls his enemies from within.
00:01:39.600But this prosecution of the former FBI director is part and parcel of the same plan for revenge and retaliation against all of his political enemies.
00:01:54.500And that plan is now underway and we've not even begun to see the end of it yet.
00:02:03.060As you know, the president has accused former presidents of treason and and everyone else in the Democratic Party of of wrongdoing against America.
00:02:17.200I guess how planned out was it really?
00:02:19.620Yeah, I think it's important to look at the four year interaction where Trump is not in office and he's at Mar-a-Lago.
00:02:26.620He's sort of stewing over what he views as, you know, his false claims of the election.
00:02:31.440But he has a lot of folks around him, Stephen Miller, Russ Vogt, a number of others who spend that four year period determined to have a playbook, a blueprint the next time that will not be stopped.
00:02:42.900If he gets back in by all sorts of all sorts of forces that stymied them in their mind unfairly in the first term.
00:02:52.000And Trump, I would say, had his own ideas for what he wanted to do when he came back in.
00:02:56.640But he was given so many of these ideas by the policy advisors that are now in the White House.
00:03:01.260You know, someone told me that when they went down to Mar-a-Lago to see him after the election, they were stunned at how many executive orders, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them and all sorts of plans they had stacked up ready to go.
00:03:13.020I mean, I don't think you can overstate the importance of the four year period where he's out of office and you have all these folks around him who really are eyeing the chance to come back and sort of have their vengeance and do it the way they want to do it this time.
00:03:26.940And I think also, you know, Trump is a much more savvy president, I think, this time and how the government works.
00:03:34.860I mean, in the first term, there were lots of things he did not know how to do.
00:04:19.040I think that there is a slightly different way of viewing the situation, which I think is helpful, which is a rule by law, which is Trump's use of the law to protect his friends, give them pardons and to punish his enemies.
00:04:39.060Same things we thought are illegal are still illegal.
00:04:41.260We can get away with certain things and not certain certain things.
00:04:44.400But within this particular class of people that the president has chosen to point his attention to, they get punished for preferential treatment, depending on his whims.
00:04:54.760It's not the way that the government is supposed to operate.
00:04:57.320Under the historic trade deal with the prime minister that is signed today and private sector agreements that were signed moments ago, we'll be increasing our commerce very, very much further.
00:05:11.240Japan's going to be investing five hundred and fifty billion dollars into the United States.
00:05:16.080It's an it's an amazing thing and they're happy and they're going to they're going to love it.
00:05:22.520It's going to be a great, great for everybody.
00:05:25.140But building up an allied industrial base and, you know, one of the things that makes me so happy is they'll be taking some of our product.
00:05:35.200I don't think I'm saying anything that's very secret.
00:05:37.760They've been typically slightly closed as a country.
00:05:40.060It was not easy to come in, but they're taking some of our cars and some of our a lot of our different thing, rice, which is actually a big deal, because, as you know, they wouldn't do that.
00:05:53.000And they're taking corn and they're taking the Ford 150 here, the big thing, some of our cars.
00:06:09.720I think, number one, it is for there to be public awareness, right, so that we can pre-butt the misinformation and the disinformation that he is going to spread to try to create an environment that allows him to create mischief, like I said, in 2026.
00:06:24.560The second thing, though, is we need to broaden the aperture.
00:06:27.740You know, in your last segment, you talked about privacy and the fact that they're building a national database.
00:06:33.180Well, my law firm is also involved in eight cases where the Department of Justice is trying to collect voter data on every single American.
00:06:42.900Every single American who's ever registered to vote, the Department of Justice is trying to collect that data from all 50 states.
00:06:49.760They're not collecting it to make elections easier.
00:06:51.680They're not collecting it to make people safer.
00:06:53.740They're collecting it because as they head towards 2026, they want to be able to weaponize that data along with a lot of other information that they've collected for a lot of bad reasons, including to try to make the 2026 elections less free and fair.
00:07:06.420So what we need to do is we need to be prepared for that fight.
00:07:12.600But most importantly, we need to know it's happening so that we can explain and contextualize this to our friends and our families, our clients, our customers, our bowling partners and our bridge partners.
00:07:22.920But tonight, I'm more confident than ever that the friendship between the United States and Japan is strong, as strong as it can be.
00:07:32.260And it'll soon be, I think, greater than ever before.
00:07:35.620By figures like Steve Bannon, who, again, mileage varies on how seriously to take his media strategy.
00:07:42.720But that is sort of infiltrated actual conversations with real people such as yourself concerns the question of whether Donald Trump will, in fact, try to be president for a third term.
00:07:57.540Well, that question, whether Donald Trump will attempt to succeed himself in the presidency, is on the minds of virtually every American today, only 10 months in to his second term.
00:08:16.800The president's been in office approximately 10 months now.
00:08:22.320He began talking about a third term two months into that 10 months.
00:08:30.060And he and his allies and supporters have continued to talk about it up until yesterday when the president himself spoke to the issue and Steve Bannon also spoke to the issue.
00:08:44.020During that 10 months, Donald Trump has seized, he has sought and he has actually seized near absolute unchecked power in the United States.
00:09:02.620That is unchecked by either the Congress or the Supreme Court, the several states or the media itself.
00:09:14.020There's no question at all that, as of today, Donald Trump has all the power he would ever need to run for a third term and be seated as the next president, whether or not he actually won that election.
00:09:36.900This is the primal scream of a dying regime.
00:10:50.060Plus, a brilliant article in Unheard today.
00:10:54.780That's the British publication, but covers MAGA quite closely and covers the United States quite closely from a kind of a British perspective.
00:11:03.320A really brutal article on Marco Rubio and the neocons and this collection of Marco's donors down in South Florida that are driving this issue in Venezuela.
00:11:16.220You know, yesterday, Comer, and I realize he's no, we're no big fan of his efforts because it's usually a lot of talk and very little action,
00:11:25.560although he does discover good things in the Biden, during the Biden regime, he did a good job in oversight and at least coming up and getting some information.
00:11:36.740Now, he never executed on anything and that was a huge problem, but you got Ludic, you have all these guys, you know, Mark Elias,
00:11:44.680they're all sitting there about how Trump is so terrible and how Trump's a dictator.
00:11:49.780The House Oversight Committee ruled yesterday that none of the executive orders are pardons executed by the auto pin are legitimate.
00:12:03.220And this is what I said for years on this show about the illegitimate Biden regime.
00:12:08.020And we haven't even gotten to the part of showing and adjudicating how they stole the election.
00:12:14.680But I said the liabilities here in the in the chaos and confusion is going to cause in the American legal system are going to be monumental because this guy was not a legitimate president.
00:12:26.340And now we've had the House of Just Not War Room, you know, banging on the table, yelling into the microphone.
00:12:31.460They've deemed that that the auto pin and there's a story in the New York Post absolutely brutalizes people around Biden for what he actually knew at the time.
00:12:44.340He had like an index card written down.
00:12:47.080That none of the pardons and none of the executive orders that he wrote with the auto, but the sign with the auto pin are legitimate and have to essentially be unwound.
00:12:59.180We're going to see where that goes to the House and what's going to happen with this.
00:13:03.260But this is monumental and referrals over to the Justice Department like this afternoon.
00:13:43.480That President Trump, because of the implementation of his Article II powers, and this came from, Josh Dossie had it, the years in the wilderness where the Russ votes,
00:13:55.480the Stephen Millers, the Dr. Roberts over at Heritage, the Senator DeMintz and Mark Meadows over at CPI, all these, you know, Brooks Rollins' team at America First Policy Institute.
00:14:07.200All these groups came together to think through what Trump's second term would be after the victory.
00:14:13.240The Precinct Strategy, Turning Point, all the other grassroots organizations would take care of the politics.
00:14:17.940But you had public intellectuals in those four years come up with a very detailed plan.
00:14:23.880That's why we hit the deck plates running.
00:14:26.000That's why you could flood the zone with real executive orders, ones that will be held up in court.
00:14:36.240But as President Trump steps into the decision, which is many people, most people can't do, he steps into the decision and drives the action as the protagonist.
00:14:48.180The progressive left collapses before us.
00:14:53.400Ludic sitting there going, hey, if I had to call it today, he could do it.
00:20:18.260Before we get into the details, the New York Post has an amazing story about a Democratic think tank.
00:20:24.060It was the lead story this morning on The Post.
00:20:25.800It just said, hey, you've so destroyed your brand with working class folks that you basically have pitched yourself to the credential class.
00:20:35.680And there's not enough votes there to win national elections.
00:20:38.640In fact, they said that this is the Democratic Party.
00:20:41.580Their obsession with LGBTQ and climate change got in the way of the issues of economic populism.
00:20:50.420This is one of the reasons that Mandami, who's a Ugandan citizen, a Marxist jihadist, has put a little bit of lipstick and talk about affordability and thrown in some populist policies, none of which he can execute as mayor to really get people's attention.
00:22:06.480We constantly hear things like he was elected to fix Biden's economy.
00:22:13.480What is he still doing, you know, talking about Israel, talking about Ukraine?
00:22:29.160You are never going to convince Americans that whatever is going on in Israel or whatever is going on in Eastern Europe is more important than whether or not they can afford eggs at the grocery store.
00:22:39.220They want you to refocus all your all of your efforts on the domestic economy.
00:39:49.320So, I mean, I don't have many tears to cry for them.
00:39:53.440But, you know, the bottom line is that people are thinking about voting for somebody like Mimdani because, I mean, if you look at that chart, if you put it up right now, you'll see.
00:40:03.780And cost of living, inflation, can I get a better paying job, even health care, which has been a number five, number six issue for years.
00:40:11.700It's back in the top three now, which, I mean, the reason why we do rank distribution like this is because it gives us a deeper understanding of not just one issue.
00:40:20.240That's the number one issue that people are voting on, but a much deeper understanding of what issues collectively are circulating in people's minds when they go to, you know, to pull that level, fill in that bubble.
00:40:30.580And they're all economic issues, Steve.
00:40:33.500I mean, this is – I mean, the good news is, you know, that study that you cited, I reviewed that the other day actually, you know, climate change, the environment, all of these woke issues that the Democratic Party chooses to focus on, they're way down at the bottom.
00:40:47.440But somebody like Mondani caught fire because he did – he struck a nerve.
00:40:51.480He's talking about the issues that people want to hear right now, and we may not like the solutions from him.
00:40:58.660But again, at the end of the day, I think corporate republicanism, corporate democratic – you know, whatever, those parties are dead.
00:41:09.260They have gone the way of the dodo, you know, and we're either going to end up with left-wing populism or we're going to end up with right-wing populism.
00:41:16.300That's the trajectory this country is on.
00:41:19.340Well, he puts a veneer of populism on it and talks about affordability, but he's really – if you look at him, he's really a Marxist, right?
00:41:28.360He's the red-green alliance, and that's why he's got – he's dominating because he's got progressives, and clearly he's got 38 percent right now.
00:41:38.060And maybe the numbers are going to be wrong on election day.
00:41:40.260He's got 38 percent of the Jewish vote.
00:41:42.160He's got the overwhelming majority of the foreign-born vote.
00:41:46.140This is where all these immigration – all the illegal aliens and particularly all the H-1Bs, it's all coming home to roost.
00:41:55.020And in these big cities, it's going to be Mondami's – it's going to be Mondami's policies.
00:42:00.100Before we let you bounce, anything else you got, Richard?
00:42:02.440When is this study coming out because the numbers are shocking, and it just shows you what President Trump – these are his core issues, just a little more refocus on this.
00:42:12.860After he finishes stopping the Third World War, we'll have tremendous benefits.
00:42:27.700But we did do an oversampling of trans and binary because of the – I don't want to say talking points.
00:42:35.420And we wanted to see whether there was validity to some of the claims that you'll hear from people on the right dealing with political violence.
00:42:42.460And, you know, spoiler alert, there is validity to it.
00:46:52.380And it's directly tied to how – and this is interesting because the public still does cite the media and political organizations as the reason for this.
00:47:03.980They understand where these feelings come from.
00:47:07.480But it's tied to how in danger you personally feel from the other side, from the views of the opposing side.
00:47:15.020So when we looked at different demographics like transgender issue, right, we saw a slew of mass shootings that occurred but also just online behavior that we've all witnessed toward the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, which we ask people specifically about.
00:47:34.280There's this idea that, you know what, I think these people are a danger to me, so they had it coming.
00:47:40.220I mean, that is the prevalent mindset on that side.
00:47:44.360And we flatly ask people whether or not they blamed the mental health of the perpetrators, whether they blamed other things in society or the people themselves for getting shot.
00:47:55.420And what's terrifying is that, again, it is in line with this concept that, you know what, if Donald Trump didn't say these things, he wouldn't have gotten shot at.
00:48:07.280This is – and they're tolerant to that.
00:48:09.980So in other words, let me try to – and I know I'm trying to do this, but we don't think like this, so it's hard for me to get other people to understand what we found.
00:48:17.080But these people basically think these are not bad acts because they think that in the future they'll probably have saved somebody's life.
00:48:27.000So in their minds and in the story that they are telling themselves in their own heads, these people, the perpetrators, aren't the bad guys.
00:48:34.500They're actually the heroes of these stories in their minds.
00:48:37.540It's twisted, but the sad part is it's getting to the point where it's overwhelming.
00:48:42.760So just to give you a stat, a little less than one in five, which is still a big number, would express to us that they think that it's actually the fault of the victim, that they were victims of political violence.
00:48:55.900But when you look at trans demographics, we had to oversample it.
00:48:59.060There's not a lot of trans-identifying people in this country, but we had to oversample it.
00:49:03.220When you look at them, Steve, half of them think that they brought it on themselves, right?
00:49:08.380And whether or not we asked other questions, you have to pry true feelings out of people.
00:49:13.320We asked something along the lines of some people just hold political views that are so bad that violence against these people should be tolerated, all right?
00:49:24.180And when you're getting numbers, half of a demographic that strongly agree with that statement, you have a big problem in this country.
00:49:32.060And that's the kind of numbers we got from trans, people who identify as trans, even just your run-of-the-mill Democrats, Steve, are twice as likely to say that they strongly agreed with that statement than the rest of the country.
00:49:44.040So this is – I don't know what the solution is because they know where it comes from.
00:49:50.520They know they're hearing this stuff in the media.
00:49:52.600They know that political organizations put together these clips and disseminate them on social media intentionally to get these feelings to rise up in people.
00:50:05.540So I don't – and what I mean by that is they know they're being played.
00:50:09.340But do they – are you saying the more it becomes evident to them that they can't win elections fairly, that they're increasingly getting violent and that they believe that violence is actually a way to either even the playing field or to get retribution and or to potentially win?
00:50:30.340I do think that they're starting to look at violence as a remedy because the more they lose, the more fear they say they have because the more they lose, the less power they have in government to exercise, whether it's police state power to protect them from all these perceived threats or just to advance their agenda.
00:50:49.740The more they lose, the more dangerous they're actually going to get.
00:50:57.080Again, I don't know what the answer is, but the more elections people on the right win, the more unsafe they're going to say they are.
00:51:04.400The more unsafe they are, the more violent they're going to get.
00:51:07.260That's how – and they – that's how they rationalize it, and they think that's okay.
00:51:12.580So it's becoming – it's – it is mainstream too.
00:51:16.140This is what I – the warning I issued online yesterday when we put some of this out is that this isn't something that's isolated to, like, a lower educated part of the population or a socioeconomic class.
00:51:30.040I mean, you're going to see it and you're going to be – you're going to find these people in lawyers' offices.
00:51:34.060You're going to find them on Wall Street.
00:51:35.560You're going to find them running for office in the state of Virginia.
00:51:38.220They think it's okay, and this is something that grows up right underneath our noses, Steve, and we just – not enough of us said something about it as it was happening, and now we have a real problem, a big problem.
00:51:51.280Well, this is why the GOP was just a – you know, just was too soft to fight back on this.