1/29/25: Trump Funding Freeze Blocked By Judge, Stephen Miller Spars With Tapper, Charlamagne Confronts Vivek On DOGE Exile, US Romania Coup, Trump Envoy In Gaza

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All right, good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints. I was just telling Emily that my new favorite medium is TikTok.

Yeah.

I just learning Ryan is like a TikTok celebrity.

Love and TikTok the last couple week. Thanks, Thanks everybody, it's fun over there.

I'm going to stick around now that Trump salvaged that, but if he sells it to Microsoft or Oracle.

Or our government, have you seen that's part of that I mean distinction, Yeah, but it's on the table.

Microsoft, I don't has never made a consumer product worth using.

Oracle is basically a project of the CIA.

Uh and Shine and TikTok's a project of the ccpiece and so I guess we don't have any great choices.

But drowning in alphabet soup. Yeah, well you didn't like the Zoom. Wasn't that a Microsoft product?

The there's I forget all of their products. Microsoft the other day was like, remember how bad the Microsoft phone was?

I was like, I literally don't even remember the Microsoft phone.

I also don't remember a Microsoft phone.

That's how bad it was.

Okay, well, we do have a lot of news today, actually, just like an almost impossible amount of news. Like every time you think a Trump era news cycle is crazy, you are not at the peak. We still have not peaked, even though it feels like speaking of drowning that you're just drowning in news by the hour.

Heard your man Steve Bannon call it days of Thunder?

Is that what he's saying?

He was at an event last.

Night with bright part the whole butterworst like the you know the like yeah, this is it's this like right wing bar that's like become the like it's it's like the where Jefferson and Franklin and the French revolutionaries. It's like the French cafe version from the revolution. Yeah, so they're they're pumped.

Oh were you there?

No, I didn't go it. Okay, I'm not doing anything. This is about the only thing I leave the house for now with my wife.

That's true, that's true. But so let's well, we'll be talking.

To get invited though. That's how weird this world is.

See, that's I figured that you were on the list. He is a regular warm room listener. You got to tune in to hear what's going on. So the shutdown, obviously the Federal Aide shutdown has been significant throughout the last twenty four or forty eight hours. But there are a ton of updates pertaining to what is, what is not, what was, and what was not covered that we are going to start with. We're excited to have Jeff Stein here, who was chasing down a lot of leads yesterday as

This is going to be their big thing.

Anytime they screw up like see hoax, other hoax, other hooks.

From the mainstream media.

I'm going to do that too.

And meanwhile, people were like, I can't get into my medicaid. Why it was the mainstream media keeping the medicaid portal from working?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, So we'll have Jeff here to run down exactly what happened yesterday, what's happening right now.

We'll bring you updates on that.

We have a great immigration block just going through Stephen Miller's wild interview with Jake Tapper on CNN yesterday evening, but also the raids that happened yesterday. Who's actually being swept up in these raids? Department of Homeland Security Secretary of Christy.

Nome was suited up, she put on some gear, shut it up.

They had the photog They're ready to go. So we'll be doing a block on that. It looks like Pete Buddha Judge might finally be in a good position to win elected office on again.

Remember this is the powerhouse mayor of whatever town.

I was just going to say on the federal level, because.

There's now a setund our Notre Dame is a.

Senate seat open in Obviously Pete Buddha Judge's famous home state of Michigan, which actually a lot of people don't realize he moved to Michigan a couple of years ago, likely with something like this plant.

Yeah.

People were always saying that he's cursed because he's got such high ambitions. Yet he's from Indiana, where no Democrat is going to be elected to the Senate or the governor's mansion in a very long time. And Bjos was like, wa, do I live in Indiana? No, I do not live in Indiana. In fact, I am a longtime Michigander.

Yes, of course, he just bleeds Michigan. But we'll be talking about that. It's a pretty interesting Senate race that's shaping up.

So in vivec he's bleeds Ohio.

Yeah. Well, k was on Charlemagne and Breakfast Club and we have a great clipt and.

He was strongly suggesting he's running for something.

Yeah.

American hero Jim Acosta signed off of CNN yesterday after they tried to bump him to a later slot. We have a truly hilarious video of Jim Acosta's sign off from CNN.

Just great stuff. Excited for that one.

Did you see his Substack Live.

Oh, he want a sub stack and he said in his first Substack Live he said, I'm going independent for now, which is such a delightful way to use the phrase independent. To qualify it with for now four now, because like, well, wait a minute. It's one thing to say I'm going independent, okay, because that suggests you weren't independent before, even if you did work for somebody.

Then to qualify it with four now, yeah.

Right, because independent has such a con it has such a positive connotation.

Right, But not to people like him, to him, to him and his circle, it reads as a failure.

And for him it's four now.

Maybe he gets scooped up by the contrarian, which is the new explosive centrist.

Norman Eisen.

Yeah, maybe he will. He would love that.

You know, we should also in that block make sure to mention the hilarious Crystal is a thread where both obviously you know, very close observers of Chrysalis's Twitter feed, where he just with any set, without any self awareness, goes through things that he got significantly wrong over the last decade.

It's incredible.

So we'll hopefully bring a little bit of that to the table as well. Romania Ryan's publication Drop site had an absolutely fantastic rundown of US intervention in Romanian elections that just have a huge story that just really hasn't been.

Covered, really crazy story.

Yeah, so we're gonna do that.

And then your colleague Martazza is saying, is.

Here Yeah he so, Martaza going to talk about Steve Whitcoff going to Gaza with Ron Dermer. So this is Trump's Mid East envoy said a week or two ago that he wanted to go visit Gaza, which shook up Israeli politicized, like, what do you mean you're going to go visit Gaza? You talk to Hamas like, it's not it's not how that works. It's he's a deal maker. He's like, am I going to make a deal if

Well, that'll be a fascinating conversation with Maz. So let's dive into the news today with the federal aid grants, the federal aid, the loans, the grants, and the freeze slash shutdown on those.

Let's go to Jeff Stein for some updates.

A judge has ordered a freeze on the or has ordered a pause on the Trump funding freeze. We can put this first hairsheet up on the screen from CNBC. A federal judge paused, actually until February third, the implementation of a Trump administration ordered that would have frozen the issuance of federal grants and loans. We are joined by Jeff Stein of the Washington Post, who just over the last couple of days has been working really hard on

So, Jeff, thank you for being here.

My pleasure. Great to be on with crystalin Sager.

That's Crystal.

It's the only way we can get people on this programs.

And then we show up. Now what's going on? I guess I'm here. We'll be the hit.

Well, Jeff, let's just start with this news about the pause. Can you just tell us a little bit about what this means. I think that's a good place to start, because it's really confusing. Like at any given point yesterday, what was actually happening was confusing because people were interpreting what the White House scent and the White House was saying that they should be interpreting it differently. But actually,

What does this mean for you?

What it should mean at least is that there's no stoppage of funding, and so whatever was expected to come in you know, in the next few months would and that there would be no interruption. However, you know, in the last twelve hours or so, I've and receiving numerous TEX signal messages, calls, emails from people who say that their funding is being interrupted. And so it's eight thirty or so this morning. As soon as we get off this call, I'm going to figure out what's going on there.

And you know, the judge really was very clear.

That the vast majority of that needs to continue at least until February third. But given all the confusion and given that, you know, I've been asking the Trump.

People, are you complying with this order? And they haven't said so.

I think there was a huge side of relief from a lot of people yesterday that this crisis would be over. For some it doesn't seem to be yet provisionally, I'll say, because it's still so soon after the order, maybe things will get sorted out today.

Yeah, I think this entire four years will probably be like the last fifteen minutes of a horror movie where people keep sighing and thinking that it's over, and then boom, like something else comes out of the closet. So yeah, I would encourage people not to sigh and think that it's over, unless you know they're trying to draw some

Well, fire Orfy for a.

Sec what you were saying before Medicaid, It wasn't clear to me whether you were saying.

That no Medicaid would be cut off. Obviously a lot of this goes to.

States before it goes to individuals, and so are you guaranteeing here that no individual now on medicaid would.

See you cut off because.

Of the pause.

I'll check back on that and get back to you.

John Marlilan on the freezing federal funding, who advised the president on the legality of telling government agencies that they don't have to spend money it was already appropriated by Congress. Well, as the OMB memo states, this is certainly within the confines of the law. So White House Counsel's office believes that this is within the president's power to do it, and therefore he's doing it.

Okay, So they disagree with lawmakers who say that they don't have the power to freeze this fund.

Again, I would point you to the language in the memo that clearly states this is within the law.

So let's take the first part first, which is which is medicaid. The memo that went out from OMB said that money that's going out to individuals will not be interrupted. It also said none of this should be construed to apply to Social Security or Medicare. They could have added medicaid and did not, And as one of the reporters there pointed out, because medicaid flows first, you know, from the federal government to states, and then from states to individuals.

All these portals ended up going down.

The memo did specifically say that it excludes money going from.

Medicaid to payment providers, but they didn't.

But they either they forgot the state part or what now the White House is saying it was a screw up and we're going to fix this. What is the truth here? What can you tell us about how this happened.

It's a really good question, Ryan, that we're sold honestly trying to get.

To the bottom of.

What we don't know precisely is whether you know, we know for sure that at a minimum, they forgot to include in the order this healthcare program that seventy plus million people rely on for their insurance. And at a minimum, it's clear that this stoppage was precipitated by everything going on in the federal government. What we don't know is did someone at the Trump White House tell CMS, which runs Medicare and Medicaid, stop payments for Medicaid. I think

Well yeah, I was going to say, it's so interesting you said that, Jeff, because it did feel like something Everything is very carefully crafted that we've seen so far. This is the one thing that felt more like twenty seventeen, like they just had the they didn't have their bearings. You know, you can lever hate the policies, but they have you know, been sort of taken from years of planning at this point, and this one just seemed really haphazard.

Is the Trump administration recommending that organizations that rely on federal funding make payroll pay their rent.

In the meantime, it.

Is a temporary pause in the Office of Management and Budget is reviewing the federal funding that has been going out the door. Again, not for individual assistance, but for

So, Jeff, have the people you talked to do they share that sort of confidence or that they should be able to make payroll and keep the lights on for the next few months. I'm sure the judges order, as we've already talked about, helps, but I'm sure they still sort of feel uncomfortable and in some state of limbo.

Yeah, and just quickly I laugh when I heard part of that line yesterday because if you listen close to what she's saying, she's saying I spoke to the budget chair, the budget incoming budget chief for US vote for the White House, whose office is responsible for the federal freeze, and Levitt is saying he told me to say that the federal agencies should contact me if there's anything essential

And I guess, on a.

Sort of related note, this stop order seems to have been driven my sourcing and what they've said publicly suggests by a feeling that the Biden people had screwed them by sort of funneling money at the door, and to give the Trump people some credit, like this is not something they made up, Like there was a real effort by the Biden administration in the last few weeks to say, like whatever money like that we think the Trump people don't want.

To spend, like let's just get it out there, let's get it out there, let's get it out there.

And so they were discovering, as they've said, like I mean, I can't vouch for the accuracy of this, but they said, you know, we discovered like condoms for Gaza, which well we should true squad down at some point, but like.

Whatever, that was something that.

They didn't like like there was a real ramp up of that spending, and so.

They said like.

No, no, more, like we don't we can't track what's going on out from every agency, so let's shut it all down.

But then obviously, like that created this other huge problem.

And I wanted to pick up on another thing that she said in that clip there, which goes to the also the second question that she got from the press that we played there about the legality of this question, and we can put up the next tear sheet A four. This is a piece by Dave Dayan over at the American Prospect, which I suggest everybody read because it kind of makes the case that this stuff is actually not legal.

That they were they were.

She was going to approve or the White House would approve congressionally directed spending that was quote in line with the president's a into unquote.

That's the key point there.

People might think, like, Okay, we had a presidential election, we elected Donald Trump, he has an agenda. He should get to then direct spending in line with his agenda, and that is certainly a kind of political system that you could design and that people might support and think is a good way to run a country. That's not

They go to Congress, they.

Hash out spending bills down to the decimal points. They then pass it, and then the president signs it, and then the president has to then follow the law like these say we do we want thirteen point six five million dollars for this duck estuary in Long Island. It's not up to the president to change that. It's like

If they don't like it, they got to veto it.

So I'm curious for it because you would also flag this interesting post from a legal scholar.

We can put up a nine so people can find it.

This is on the well respected Balkanization blog blog where he kind of lays out the points the kind of elements within the Empowerment Control Act that allow you to actually pause funding, and the only ones are quote, to provide for contingencies, or to achieve savings made possible buy or through changes in requirements, or greater efficiency of operations. So, in other words, the only way the only reason the White House can pause funding is because if they think

Well, you know, this whole topic, empowerments, appropriations, the White House Budget Act, the Empowerment and Control Act, like is so laden with obscure jargon that nobody has ever heard of. And yet, as you're saying, Ryan, like, this is a fundamental question about the balance of power, the rule of law, the question of whether our president has unchecked authority to overrule existing law and do what he wants. I mean that that is sort of the core of this issue.

Your header on what's going on here.

And the White House has been very clear for a long time. I mean, the Trump people have been saying this since the end of twenty nineteen when we had the impeachment hearing over the Ukraine.

AID holds.

Their view is that the nineteen seventy four budget and Control Budget and Empowerment Control accthing like that.

Is unconstitutional.

That after Nixon's resignation after the Watergate scandal, Congress enacted a law that dictates and lays out very clearly the blog post that you just referenced sort of lays out in this specific instance, how the president can pause funding when he can or she can cancel funding exactly the parameters of this relationship, this crucial relationship overspending between Congress and the White House, and what russ Vote, the Budget chair, and Trump and his top deputy Mark Paoleta, who is

They have been arguing that the amount of money.

That Congress approves is not a ceiling on the amount of money they can It is not a floorum on the amount of money they can spend, but a ceiling. So as long as they're below what Congress tells them to spend, they are in compliance with the law. And now, obviously, like most legal scholars who study this disagree with that, they have a very distinctive view, and I would note like not a particularly conservative view. Right, this is about

Really exert much more control out of.

The executive branch in a way that you know, defies a law that's been in effect for four or five decades.

Although so it's a small counterput from the right would argue that what they would say is that Congress should take accountability of policies coming out of the executive branch. I'm sure you hear this all the time, Jeff, when you're talking to people like That's the argument that Mark Pelletta and russ Velt would make is that it's expanding the power of the executive to sort of make Congress do its job or what they believe its job should be.

Think that's exactly right.

And it's also it comes in the context of the Biden administration in numerous instances, saying we should have more authority to do something that, for instance, you know, cancels to a loan debt that the court said violated the law, and so and so. The willingness of presidents to defy congressional statutes seems to be in part a bipartisan trend. I still think this is this is beyond what we've seen, definitely,

They have to spend it any way? Essentially on the flip.

Side, like then that takes the power away from Congress to make the decision about what is wasteful.

It's I mean, and yeah, it seems to me like people, as the people in the russ vote Mark Peletta camp, understand that this is going to be kicked to the courts and are kind of eager to see how the courts decide on these questions. Let's put up some of the Democratic response here A five. Obviously, the Democratic attorney's generals have, you know, put together their efforts to, as

This is something that has been in the works.

This is like an ideological like crafted in a conservative laboratory.

Literally, always read Jeff Stein, always.

Read Jeff Steyn, and Dave Dan's piece. I think a lot of people on the right at the American Prospect would read that and say, yes, it's you know, they would disagree that it was unlawful, but they would say, yes, this is the radical revolutionary measure that we were taking. So, Jeff, what's your perspective on why a policy that's been thought about for so long was rolled out?

I think at best slappily.

Yeah, I think it's the core thing driving this to me, seemed to have been you know, Stephen Miller was on TV yesterday saying, like, we kept on hearing that we'd spent money that we didn't know was going out the door on gods and condoms or whatever, and I think that sort of fueled some of the sloppiness. I mean, the White House was like, if you read the order they sent out Monday night that we got that we reported on Monday night, it is the way it is read.

The next day, their.

Memos said the only thing affected by this pause are spending programs not.

Compliant with our.

Prior executive orders on DEI, green energy, et cetera, et CETERA huge difference between one and two, right, Like one is saying we shut down everything, then we evaluate it, and whatever is found in compliance with ore eos will be allowed to go. The second day is we will shut down only the things that are found that are found.

To be in violations of our eos.

They you know, it was like, how do you guys not understand like that these are like the same thing.

We haven't changed our messages like blah blah blah.

I's like I don't know what to tell you guys, Like I don't write these memos, like I am just reading.

They're like very clear, like ay one said that, they too said that.

So like it's it's confusing, like it's it's not it's not it's not us, it's not the press, And it's frustrating because like I don't know, I don't know how to I don't want to get myself in trouble here, but I think like for a lot of reporters, myself included, like we we know that the Trump people think that we're like unfair, that they think we're biased, that they think we're like all liberals like out to get them, and I have been working very hard to be like

I wanna I want to. I don't want to.

Be demagogued as someone who's just out here doing Trump arrangements in syndrome stuff like. I think that's really important for the media to like not get stucked out into every like thing that might not be true. I mean to just make it a very obvious point. And but then I'm in this instance where it's just like they're telling everyone that we're lying, and it's like I've been reading what you guys are putting out and it's confusing and it's hurting people, and it's it's not saying what

What I mean?

Does that make sense?

Yeah?

We actually before you get on here, Emily and I were talking about how or I was saying this, so I'm not gonna put this in Emily's mouth, but I was saying that because the there has been genuine Trump derangement syndrome from significant elements of the mainstream media. Now, whenever the Trump administration screws up and actually does something like shut down all the medicaid portals around the country, maybe accidentally what they they respond by saying, oh, this

You know. Meanwhile, so I completely understand what you're saying.

You're trying to give them a fair shake, and they are actually doing this very confusing thing and then saying that they didn't do it, and you're like, well, how there's no way to fairly report that and make you

That would just keep doing it.

I'm honestly not sure.

I mean, the the people I was talking to last summer, you know, they have ties to Clarence Thomas and the Conservatives on the Court, and I think they feel pretty good about a few of them. But yeah, exactly, Mark Yoletta, who's the lawyer at the Budget Office, he knows Thomas very well. If there's been pro public or reporting about them, you know, doing trips together and stuff. So you know, I'm guessing this is a guess, but I'm guessing that they have a pretty good feeling of where Thomas is.

And I should correct myself. Markedn't clerk for Clarence Thomas. He was sort of a sharp and the confirmation for Clarence Thomas, but has been around the circles for a long Thank you. So, yeah, that's a that's an interesting that's a really interesting point. Actually, the makeup of the Supreme Court is like tailor made if you would want to have a descent, if you're a conservative, who would want to have something like this litigated right now and

Well my pleasure, guys, thanks for having me appreciate it, all.

Right, good lucking up.

Next, he was talking about that Steven Miller Jake Tapper interview. Well, they also fought over immigration. We'll talk about that in a second.

White House Deputy Chief of stafford Policy and also a Homeland Security advisor, Stephen Miller, was brawling with Jake Tapper on CNN yesterday evening. They touched on what we talked about earlier, on the federal aid loans and grants and all of that, but also really got into an interesting exchange over the Trump administration's immigration policy.

Let's take a listen.

How do you how does President Trump make sure that the effort to deport people who are not in this country legally doesn't end up hurting America who want safe borders absolutely but also don't want to see even more higher prices and groceries.

Well, I mean, I'm sure it's not your position, Jake. You're just asking the question that we should supply America's food with exploitative illegal alien labor. I obviously don't think that's what you're implying. Only one percent of alien workers in the entire country work in agriculture. The top destination for illegal aliens are large cities like New York, like Los Angeles, and small industrial talents of course, all across the heartland and we as we've seen with the Biden flights,

I'm talking about the ones no no, no, but but no.

But I'm explaining this. It's important to understand.

Now you're kind of changing with I mean no, no, no.

I will, I will go. I will give me thirty minutes. All goes deep as you want to say, I don't will your audience.

I don't have a fair I'm talking about the ones that could that they're work in the agriculture industry.

What I mean explaining back when you're talk.

About the ones in the cities.

I swear I'll do the whole answer.

The illegal aliens that Joe Biden brought into our country are not full stop doing farm work. They are not the illegal aliens he brought in from Venezuela, from Haiti, from Nicarauagua. They are not doing farm work. They are inner cities collecting welfare.

As for the.

Farmers, there is a guest worker program that President Trump supports. Over time as well, we will transition into automation so we'll never have to have this conversation ever again.

But there's no universe in which this nation is.

Going to allow the previous president to flutter our nation with millions and millions of illegal aliens who just get to stay here.

And we are especially not going.

To allow a subset of those illegal aliens to rape and murder our citizens. So we are going to unapologetically enforce our immigration laws. And as I'm sure you will celebrate, we are going to unleash the power and might of the US government to eradicate the presidence of transnational threats.

On our soil.

Now.

Of course, the criminal status or non criminal status of people who are being deported was a topic at the first White House Press Briefing yesterday, which was absolutely packed. Let's take a look at how Carolin Lovett responded to some questions about that five hundred arrests ICE is made so far since President.

Trump came back into office.

Can you just tell us the numbers how many have a criminal record versus those who are just in the country illegally.

All of them because they illegally broke our nation's laws, and therefore they are criminals as far as this administration goes. I know the last administration didn't see it that way. So it's a big culture shift in our nation to view someone who breaks our immigration laws as a criminal. But that's exactly what they are here. They all have a criminal records and welcome to the if they broke our nation's laws.

Yes, okay, so, Brian, there's an interesting debate happening right now about what constitutes criminal because it is under US code, a crime, but it's a misdemeanor to cross the border illegally. It's not a felony if you repeat, which many people have, it is a felony, but it is still technically a misdemeanor. So and you know, you're sort of getting into a semantics game.

And then the extra layer of semantics is that overstaying of visa is a civil infraction, right, and many, many, maybe most of the people who are here illegally are here because they overstate a visa, which technically, actually like is just a civil offense, not even a misdemeanor. The misdemeanor comes from crossing the border without the right papers, that's right.

So and then I guess the question is.

If you commit a misdemeanor, are you a criminal? I mean, how many misdemeanors have you committed?

Probably a lot.

I think a jay walked the.

Right.

So that's it. It gets into this sort of semantic game. But Trump did repeatedly say that this would be about violent criminals, and so right now, what everyone's trying to do is kind of parse the amount of people who are violent criminals versus who just committed the misdemeanor of

The results of his mass deportation.

So these are quotas, and quotas, obviously is how you end up with a different kind of or you end up with percentages of you know, criminal, violent criminals versus kind of regular people who committed the misdemeanor crime of coming to the country illegally. Then you can't like guarantee that you're only sweeping up violent criminals.

As soon as.

You're you know, saying we have to have fifteen hundred daily deportations, it just gets a lot harder, obviously.

Right, And you can see Trump's mind working where he's like, I keep being told there were twelve to fifteen million illegals who like flooded into the country in the last four years, and we're removing a few hundred a day, Like Trump can do the math on that, like that that those are two wildly different sets of scales, and so.

People, if he had people.

Around him who who were honest, they would have told him like, this is this is basically what we're capable of. And he has had people around him who have said, if you want to do this in the way that you see it, you're gonna need to basically send the military into American cities all at once. And you know there are factions on the right that want to see that happen. Yeah, but I think even Trump is like, Okay, that's that's pushing it a little bit.

Much like the the.

Like black jackets and the black boots, that's one thing. The Green ones going around the city like like maybe against BLM protesters, but like just rating like the home

It's catching a murderer.

Like entire careers are made off of that, that's what you do.

Doesn't get any better than that.

No, Well, so, speaking of the optics, let's take a look at this next clip of DHS Secretary Christie Nome.

I can't believe I'm even saying.

DHS Secretary Christine Nome on the streets of New York City yesterday. You can see her. She tweets seven am in NYC getting the dirt bags off the streets. She's got I'm gonna get criticized her, she's got a blowout, she's got her outfit on, and she's ready to go.

You know, Ryan, is that a still up look?

Like usually people seven am in New York City with their hair looking like that.

It just went out the night before and went straight to the ice right very late in PR. I don't know what she was up to, but she she looked great, I'll give her that.

And she was checking out kitchens at bars until six am and.

Then checking the restaurant inspection.

Yeah, she's looking for bussers and bar backs.

So seven am in NYC getting the dirt bags off the streets.

You know.

To your point, I will say, we've all seen the polling recently. New York Times Episodes had a poll, just like the day before the inauguration last week about how Americans support the concept of mass deportations. That isn't the only pole that's found that if you just ask people right now about whether they support mass deportations, the answer

That goes my But I think I don't have any evidence for this, but I just feel like the people who are answering that kind of when a snaff of the finger, like, Okay, we didn't really see those people come in, except we saw some images at the border, and we don't really want to see them leave.

But I agree that.

They should leave, Like that's the kind of right like support for that. But when it gets ugly, you might see that slip.

We'll see Yeah, No, I mean optics wise, you want to, I mean the Christy Nome thing. You can see exactly why people who look at what happened, For example, Lake and Riley would say yeah, like, hell yeah, let's.

Get out of there.

Let's get people out of here if they are prior criminal convictions and they do so.

This is from the Associated Press.

As of July twenty one, I said six hundred and sixty two, five hundred and fifty six people under its supervision were either convicted of crimes or face criminal charges. Nearly fifteen thousand were in its custody, but the vast majority were not included in the figures of people not detained by ICE, where people guilty of very serious crimes thirteen thousand for homicide, fifteen thousand for sexual assault, thirteen thousand for weapons offenses, and two thousand, six hundred and

It gets dip puts you with what one hundred thousand or so.

Right, I was just going to say, if you want to do that, on a if you want to do fifteen hundred on a daily basis of only the most violent criminals, that quota is going to put you in a position where there are you know, just people who aren't the most violent criminals.

Still, and we're being told that there's twenty million people we need to get out of the country, and that's one hundred thousand, Like, what about the other nineteen million, nine hundred thousand.

That's the that's the part that's going to get interested.

That is the part that's gonna be interesting.

Yeah's that is the part for sure, because for Donald Trump right now, some of the toughest questions that he faced between his election ands inauguration were are you going to be rounding up like families and kids that came here were brought here illegally over the course of the Biden administration.

And this goes back to that Stephen Miller clip that we started with a where Miller does this kind of logical kind of fallacy where he says he's asked about agricultural workers, and you know, he understands that there's another implicit kind of agreement between Tapper and Miller there that most Americans like don't want ice going into the lettuce fields and rounding everybody up and hauling them to Mexico.

He's like standing up to Miller.

But what gets lost in the conversations they are talking about, they're talking about.

Genuinely two different things.

Yes, and so then Miller says, well, we have a guest worker program. And this is where I get so frustrated in the immigration conversation, because I'm a big supporter of a of guest worker programs that smoothly allow people who you know, if you've got a country where you know, you've got a lot of laborers in Mexico who want to work these jobs, like in the fields of California. But don't actually want to live here like they like Mexico.

Is just not true.

And if Miller supports that, great pass it into put it back into law and make and make that the law, and then it and then then you can raise questions, are they exploited? Okay, if they are exploited, they're now legal. They can form they can join a union.

Uh.

They the inspectors can come out and make sure that things are going well.

Uh.

And the pay that they're going to be getting is so much is relatively so much better. But that's just thrown as and then he says, oh, and we're going to use automation to get rid of that soon anyway. So, but all of it is actually just a way to avoid the actual conversation.

I think he.

Got Tapper pretty good when Tapper was asking him about like I forget exactly what Tapper what description Tapper used, but like, let us is that what they were talking about, like let us something.

To that extent.

Yeah, And Miller came back and was like, so this is just about bringing in an underclass of people too, Like that was thought. I thought that was pretty excellent. Rebuttal, I assume what you're saying that it's on a difference.

It is and Tapper should be like or Tapper's.

Well, actually with the other side to say, yes, it is actually like we don't have people.

You can't.

We've got this economic problem where we need people to do these jobs for wages that are less then you can actually live a dignified life in the United States.

But we don't need that.

And so the way you can do this, well, they don't actually live in the United States. They only live here for four months. They work here, make a good amount of money, Like just like H two B people come over here, wait tables for four months and then go back to Poland or whatever, and they made good money for Poland or they made good money for Romania, like that, Is that the best system we design in the world. No, but otherwise the price lettuce is going to double. And see how people like that.

Well Miller will have to own that. Yeah, No, I mean absolutely don't.

I don't disagree that it causes price increases, but I don't think we all need.

To like get that. I think when people look at them.

As people like Taver won't say yeah, actually you're right, like yeah, and we need So it's going to be two tiers, and the second tier is people that don't actually live here. They just come here and then they go back, and then over time hopefully you can then develop more equitable economy where you're raising the living standards of everywhere.

Well, the disorderly process over the last few years has definitely made exploitation a lot easier, which is why they've actually just like lost a certain number of even like children who have gone into the labor system here at times at a great expose on how many kids were being like forcing the exploit of labor and then we just lost custody of them. Whose Mayorkas was like DHS

We've lost track of them.

We need to adjudicate their asylum claims if they made, you know, dubious asylum claims, like judicate those, get the violent criminals out.

But then also have some system.

That makes sense, and that is way harder than actually like deporting people. And well we can talk about that too with all of the other sort of radical reforms of Trump administration is doing. Like it's that first step is kind of the easiest, is politically the hardest, but then rebuilding a system afterwards is definitely going to be really difficult. Let's move on to the Michigan Senate race that suddenly opened up yesterday. Nobody really expected Gary Peters

Yeah, he's very like the unions are cool with him.

He's like a rank and file politician who like worked his way up.

Now he's a senator pro ily sit there for life.

But you know you only make what one hundred and seventy four thousand dollars a year as a senator Boring, you spend all your time with incredibly rich people, doing like the coolest rich people things, and at some point you're like, wait a minute, if I have power over these people, they're asking me for things. Yet I got no money and here I am with twenty million dollars in my campaign account, but I can't spend it on myself.

Let me just cash app here.

You start making a couple of million dollars a year for ten years and just really live large. I don't know what he's going to do. We'll see. Yeah, I wouldn't expect anything.

Different, right, No, but it did take everybody by surprise that he announced. Peter's announced his retirement yesterday. And if we skip here to C two, we can put this access report up on the screen that former Transportation Secretary Pete Buddha Judge is quote taking a serious look at running for Peter's seat. This is from a person close to Buddha Judge.

Quote.

Pete is exploring all of his options on how he can be helpful and continue to serve. He's honored to be mentioned for this, and he's taking a serious Look. What I love about that quote, Ryan, is I hope the person who said he's honored to be mentioned for this is the one who mentioned.

Him for this.

Bis Smith.

Yeah, probably it was, Yes, probably it was probably like, Hey, Pete, let's call up Axios and just say we're honored to be mentioned, and there that will create the mention of us.

The thing about Pete is really his consultants probably don't even have to tell him that now he's on the ball.

Yeah, this guy is.

He's wanted this for a very long time, and so yeah, so it'll be mayor Pete.

How is the Republican field looking over there? I mean, I mean they keep.

Losing too very Yeah, seemingly beatable Democrats with pretty good candidates. Yeah, well, and that they went.

They've won two out of the last three presidential.

Cycles, right close races, but on.

The gubernatorial level and the Senate level, they just get waxed.

Yeah.

He It's a really good point because and I actually just wrote a piece about Alissa Slotkin yesterday for her very close race. It was very close race, very culturally, that's true.

She eked it out Yeah.

And she actually had an interesting campaign on abortion, which is where Mallory McMorrow, who many people remember was sort of conspicuously posting.

She went really viral.

This was a couple of years ago, and it was about correct me ivery mind. I think it was about like banned books quote unquote banded books.

Or something like it.

Wasn't she like Mike Staffer or something like that.

Oh was she didn't even know she was like a state Yeah she was. Yeah, but she so.

She's Brooklyn hipster who moved back to Michigan.

Moved back home.

Yeah.

Many such cases.

Have a great speech, yes, and viral.

Yeah, in many such cases.

She seems to have political ambitions and could be a rival to Boodha Judge on in this race. Wiggle was Dave Waggel was, you know, quoting her her tweets wishing Gary Peters a happy retirement yesterday with interest. Yeah.

And her problem is.

She is in the same lane as Buddha Judge, kind of the local leaning center left, where you know, you're not in the Bernie lane. And the way you differentiate yourself from establishment democrats is you're more aggressive.

In how you fight on behalf of.

Cultural issues and I don't think you can beat Pete on that because he's just the best at that.

But who knows. We'll see.

Yeah, and maybe Pete keeps his powder drive for twenty twenty eight.

This is this is back to who Republicans possibly have. I mean, yeah, maybe he does, although he could still technically, I guess he could run in twenty twenty eight.

It could, just it would look pretty weird, like you're going from your swearing into Iowa.

Yeah, well, well they don't do Iowa anymore, right, that's right.

But so the Alyssa Slatkin is out here talking to for example, the Free Press Barry Wise's publication about how Democrats just need to get back to being quote unquote normal and how she is the kind of normal person whisper because she eked out this Michigan Senate race by talking about the economy and blah blah blah, which by the way, really isn't true. She sort of tried to pivot to that, but when she was in the House of Representatives was pretty eagerly leading into some of these,

Justice and policing.

What everyone is for that?

Yeah, everyone was for that, right, but she like really leaned into it, took the initiative on it. So anyway a CIA right, Oh yeah, So like let's I mean, it's a tough race Forublicans because Democrats in Michigan are just smarter than Democrats in different parts of the country. They're forced to be because Michigan is a has an interesting demographic profile of the people that Democrats are losing. So they kind of got to that question first. But

How oak is he because of his uh Parkle tweet? Well, I'm thrown out of.

Yeah, let's take a look at his interview with Charlamine that god on Breakfast Club where Charlamne really laid into him.

Do you think you will push out of those because Trump rolled back the DEI initiatives.

No, the contrary, and you know, I would say, just to be super clear about I I have no problem with you know, framing or whatever. It was really just an actual mutual decision where you look at here was one vision on approach. Here's a differ from vision on an approach that's great. There's no right or wrong answer with a technology driven approach and a technology first approach, there's no better person.

Than Elon to run with that.

With a constitutional law focus, with the legislation focus some of the areas I was focused on, Probably the right place to do it is elected office. And so we all agreed on that, and I think that that's actually a good thing where we're able to where we're actually able to collaborate, divide and conqueror.

I behave Yeah, I don't believe you. I think you either got pushed out. You know that it's going to implode. I think that you know Elon is going crash and burn it. And you're a smart guy, and you said, you know what, let me get out of dodge and go do my governor Ohio thing.

So look, I know.

I knew that the right step for me in the long run is elected office and to pursue the vision that we're talking about here, to actually translate that to action of my own terms that's what I've been called to do. It was clear that I could not do that and serve on DOGE at the same time, even for logistical reasons.

It came to be in the government rather than.

An outside body.

I was proud to be able to spend the first couple of months offering my contributions and setting it in the right direction with its focus now, with its digital technology focus. No better person to do that than Elon in the way that he's going to lead it. And I am hopeful that there's going to be a lot of streamlining of government bureaucracy that comes out of that.

And I'm pursuing my next steps at the State.

We're all on very good terms and so I wouldn't want to speak for anybody else, but I will say that they are very supportive of the decision that I made to pursue his my next step.

Yes, I'm sure they are very supportive of the decision for that next step. He is going to need a better answer to that question. He's smooth, but way too smooth there, Right, that was some real politician talk.

Well, the part that was absurd to me was when he said he can't run for office and also serve on this Doge committee. It's like, wait a minute, Elon Musk is tweeting twenty four hours a day, faking being a good video game playerrunning SpaceX, running X Tesla, running running Testine, Neuralink, Neuralink, Solar City is still.

Part of his AI company.

Like, so he can do all this, but you can't, you know, run for a senate and also like go after seniors.

Well, it's the digital technology focused.

So that was the substance of it.

I'm curious if you have any insight into how serious that that.

That dispute was between them.

What he seems to be suggesting is that Elon Musk is going to focus on technology basically, I guess trying to analyze where you know, you know, using algorithms, analyze where money is being spent, and then using a scalpel or a sledgehammer to go after them. Right now, he's going with a sledgehammer.

You know.

We talked about an a block with you know, asking for every federal worker to consider taking this this buyout, whereas Veck was saying that he he would prefer a constitutional law approach and passing legislation. On the one hand, you could read that it's some shade of like I'm actually going to try to do this legally, Like we have a system set up where people vote for representatives who pass laws and then implement them, and I'm going to do it within that system.

By the way, that's the entire point of what russ Vote is trying to do at OMB.

So just get rid of the representative or face.

Is to force Congress to actually pass laws or take them away from the executive branch in the way that Elon Musk is trying to use executives.

Right, except already did pass laws. Rustis doesn't like.

Them that delegated the funding to the executive branch.

They did not delegate funding. It directed the funding.

The agency sell It's like if you have an Uber driver, did you delegate your destination to the Uber driver or did you direct the Uber driver? What if the Uber drivers like yeah, four oh one nine Street, how about nine o one fourth Street. This is going to the Supreme Court, Like, no, there's two different branches here that the branches the driver directed, the Uber driver has sent the money. This is exactly your job is to just drive the Uber.

This exact argument is being I think one of the reasons. One of the things that vote is doing is this is designed to go to Supreme Court to actually cash out.

It's empowerment.

We can talk about it, and we did talk about We talked.

About this with Jeff, but we should add Ramaswami. This is, according to local Cleveland paper, is actually expected to announce his governor bid in mid February. So just in a matter of weeks makes sense then why I was going on breakfast club And he's brought on some advisors from the Governor JD.

Vince's political team. Yeah, government governor yep.

So he will be in that primary with the Attorney General Dave Yost and the Treasurer Robert Sprague. And I actually think getting out of that primary is really going to be the tough one for him.

It's not guaranteed at all.

Yeah, And I wonder if he's gonna have to face questions about that Alzheimer's scam he did again, like in any reasonable society, he's in prison right now. Like for people who don't know, And we talked about this now it's cool to talk about on the right.

We talked about it years ago.

He bought in Alzheimer's drug that had already failed its FDA trials a bunch of times did his Ramaswami hype to it, which pumped the stock up really high. Promised to like, oh man, this is going to be amazing, hired all his family, pulled the rug out, took all his money out, and then the FDA rejects it for like the fourth time, and everybody who put money in based on his hype lost.

Right.

It's one thing to run in a national political or national presidential prim rate. It's another thing to run in a very localized race where those questions are just it's just sharper because there's less national noise.

So I expect that'll be a pretty significant part.

Yeah, all right, let's move on to Jim Acosta's departure from CNN.

CNN anchor Jim Acosta is out.

Let's watch his sign off.

I just wanted to end today's show by thanking all of the wonderful people who work behind the scenes at this network. You may have seen some reports about me and the show, and after giving all of this some careful consideration and weighing and alternative time slot seeing an offered me, I've decided to move on. I am grateful to CNN for the nearly eighteen years I've spent here doing the news. People often ask me if the highlight of my career at CNN was at the White House

Two and so, Acosta, as he was alluding to, has new plans. He is over at Substack, and he said he was going to be independent for the time being.

So I actually have a so I have a thought here.

So and for people who were just tuning in, Acosta was known as the CNN guy that was really going after Trump at every single briefing.

Trump absolutely loved it.

Trump called them the real beauty.

He's a you are fake news, like in his first briefing, like really setting the tone that this was going to be combat between CNN and Acosta. A costa later, you know, really cashed in on that with a book called The Enemy of the People, which was echoing a phrase that Trump shamefully used to describe the press that's and still uses this day as the enemy.

That to describe the fake news media, fake news media, not all.

It wouldn't include you because you're not fake.

News and there's real news right here.

But the thought I have is that the Democrats problem is that they hitched their wagon to a corporate structure, yes, rather than a people powered structure that is not going to stand with them when there is a rise of a right wing populist, fascist, whatever you want to call it, when there's a rise of that movement corporate America, which you have hitched your wagon to through your corporate donors over at the Democratic Party, and also corporate media through MSNBC,

So now the going is getting tough.

CNN on Inauguration Day told Jake Tapper and the rest of them covering it, we don't want to hear any pro clutching, no kind of expressions of outrage from Trump, the complete opposite of four years ago.

Did their ideology change? No, the power balance changed.

And so because the power balance changed, Sianna is like, Acosta, you're.

Out of here.

We're not taking on Trump the way we did last time. And so now the Democrats are left defenseless because they allied with people that were not actually allies of them. So that's so they when you use corporate media as your center left mouth piece, you're going to get screwed and you're going to get wiped out. Whenever corporate the corporate parents profits are threatened.

Well, when you say if the when the chips are down as they are now, I then though, think back to like twenty seventeen and the media collaborating with basically the deep state to help take down Donald Trump.

They believed it was a winnable fight. Then well the.

Chips were down to the tips were down, meaning from their.

Perspective, the trips were down.

Fluke.

They thought Trump was a fluke.

They thought that he was in kind of an emergency, and now there's sting to.

Be a threat to the stability they need for profits.

The stability. Yeah, I think that's a good way to put.

It's the same that so this cuts both ways. This is not a left or right thing. Right, the right allying itself with corporate power is going to find itself, you know, not not with not with you know, hardcore allies. If those corporate allies think that the right is going down and the right is a threat to them, well this was a little happily ally with corporate Democrats instead the hand.

Ringing in like twenty eighteen nineteen, and then definitely in twenty twenty over the Chamber of Commerce was really fascinating to watch from inside of the conservative world because they realized what was called fusionism, the three legged stool Frank Meyer, National Review.

William F.

Buckley, meaning you combined libertarian economics with strong foreign policy. That's already kind of hilarious and traditional value is also kind of hilarious that the ally with the business community and libertarian economic policy had been undermining what they were pushing on family policy for years and years, like there

And they're still losing corporate America.

See, this is what's interesting for and this is what's interesting for but also for conservatives. This is what's interesting right now is if you just go crawling back to the corporate world because you know, Mark Zuckerberg is giving you money again, and it's talking nice to you again.

Firing Acosta.

Yeah, but it's it's it's it all goes to your point. And I would recommend people watch our interviews actually with Don Lemon and Brian Stelter, because those were really rare opportunities. Like we literally played the Chomsky clip of him saying, you know, you don't need people to.

Pay you to tell you what to say.

It's you just the fact that, like you ask the questions you do, you don't need anybody to tell you to do that. You just agree with them. You're in the position you are to ask those questions because you're the kind of person that would ask the questions that you do of people in positions of power. And Don Lemon and Brian Stelter were very very much in the Jim Acosta vein of the sort of media resistance to

It didn't.

It's not going up, it's going back down after having all of these years to learn the Biden lies for years, I think, or probably that's probably the biggest reason that trusted media is dipping again to a record low. And media with people allying with people like Jim Acosta, has put itself in the situation where, to your point, you get Jim Acosta or you get like independent media or

And the key difference between independent media and corporate media is that you're not actually aliging with Jim Acosta himself as the man. You are aliging with Jim Acosta as the anchor for CNN because that's where he gets his power. And so if the parent company doesn't want him to be Jim Acosta the anchor anymore, now he's Jim Acosta the substacker yep. And so Democrats put themselves in a fox hole with corporate media and fighting back against Trump.

Is more powerful.

Well yeah, and Democrats are looking over at the foxhole and they're like, all right, you're ready to go over the top, let's charge. And they're like they just put bullet in Acosta's head and they're like, no, we're over here with this guy right now. And Trumps, you know,

You take the.

Quote that kind of conveys the message. You can agree or disagree with. It wasn't a crime what they did. Trump sued them and it was a completely laughable lawsuit. No chance this goes anywhere, Like what are you doing? You can't sue over at editing that you don't like sixty minutes. CBS settled with him, which is fascinating. So in other words, this corporate giant cut a big check to the man who's the president of the United States.

We used to call that a bribe, like that's very clever.

File a frivolous lawsuit, get a big check in response. Because CBS doesn't care about journalism whatever, they don't care either way. They have a merger that Paramount, which is the CBS parent companies, trying to merge with Skydance like it's a huge thing that they believe they.

Need for their corporate entity.

And so if you thought that CBS as Democrats, if you thought CBS was going to be part of the resistance, CBS has other things. Well forget CBS, Paramount has other things that they care about, and this merger being much more important. So they're like, you know what, Trump takes some money, sorry about our fake news media over at sixty minutes, and that allows you at it.

You're right, we won't do it again.

By the way, how's that merger looking. You're not going to keep any lean of con fans around.

Are you so?

The interview that Mark Andreesen did with Rostauf at recently where he talked about how Silicon Valley everyone sort of thought they were good Democrats and actually would put profit would put they're sort of standing as quote unquote good Democrats above tax cuts, right like they would say, we know Obama is going to raise our taxes, but it's important for us because it sort of helps us internally, personally, psychologically,

It'll definitely happen with Robert F.

Kennedy Jr. There are all kinds of reasons, like legitimate debates to be had about these people, but we know what side the media. We can predict what side of the media is going to be on basically every single time, given the parameters of the conversation if it's about like

Yeah, and the consequence of democrats allying themselves with corporate media rather than help helping to produce an actually kind of grassroots democratic media ecosystem, is that now those mainstream media outlets are not broadcasting all of the genuine resistance that is going on.

If you get your.

News from the news, which is where people get the news, either from mainstream press or from the right wing press, you're not hearing anything about this upsurge in resistance that's going on, whereas in twenty seventeen it's all you heard about. Yet I can tell you it actually is happening. So last night, for instance, you may have seen this, there was a special election in an Iowa state Senate seat. The Republicans had won that seat by like twenty one

But now you're not hearing about any of that.

And the for instance, like throughout throughout the country, people are indivisible immigration groups such are organizing all these meetings. They're getting absolutely overflow crowds, like there is energy out there. So and Democrats are actually fighting back, it's just not getting any coverage.

So put up D three here JB.

Pritzker in Illinois, and we can roll through these, you know, fairly quickly. You know, he's pushing back against a lot of the immigration push. A bunch of mayors are saying that they're pushing inst that you can put up D four. This is the Pittsburgh mayor saying, you know, they're not working with Ice.

We talked about this.

Your Democratic Attorney's General sued both over the birthright citizenship and also about the funding freeze, even as kind of congressional Democrats have been flat footed and all over the place and slash. But here's a key point that people need to remember, because I think people who watch this program don't fall into this category, but they need to understand that there's millions of people who do.

Put up D six.

This is a tweet from David Siegel progressive populist activists. He points out on Twitter, Harris's approval rating among Democrats is seventy nine to twelve.

That's now, so let me say that again.

Kamala Harris's approval rating among Democrats is seventy nine to twelve, and Bidens is only slightly lower. He writes, we desperately need to reform the party, but strategies that might succeed at doing so require recognizing that most rank and file Democrats still like the people at the top for whatever reasons unquote. So this is not to defend the seventy nine percent were saying that. It is to defend the idea that we need to be objective about what people

This is basically what Rick sand Torum, in a weird way, was trying to tell Republicans back when he was running the twenty twelve primary, that some of these allies were not really allies. And you know, obviously from a somewhat pro business perspective conservative in the Tea party era, he had to make that argument in a different way. But it took Donald Trump coming as a wrecking ball to totally set the two party system and force Republicans at least on the surface to change for a little bit.

Probably, but also we need to internalize this, they were also thwarted by Democratic voters.

Yeah, Trump was.

It gives me no pleasure to say that, But.

But that was a a primary that easily could have gone another way because Trump was one of what like nineteen candidates or whatever.

But if that had just been Trump and a couple of other people, it may have gone a different way.

If other people had been if there was a coordinated dropout effort, like there was to beat Bernie, could have easily gone the other way. All right, let's talk about this wild story of the Romanian election that's getting virtually no attention here in the US.

Told an election because they didn't like the results. That's the short version. The longer version is wild.

But it's getting attention at drop site.

There you go.

So, because news has been flying so fast, you may have missed an event in November that, in retrospect may turn out to be of truly historic importance. A presidential election was held in a European Union country. The two establishment parties lost to two outsider parties, and the Supreme Court simply annulled the election. And there was no allegation that there were any problems with the voting or the

Of the country's presidential election.

So always considered a long shot, Gregesco had been polling in the single digits just weeks before surgeing to claim first place with twenty three percent of the vote, moving on to the runoff. The result shocked Romania's two dominant parties, who found themselves on the sidelines as Gurgesco campaigned for the runoff against another anti establishment candidate who came in second place, Elena Lasconi of the reformist Save Romania party.

Others as clients.

Now the past several years, context has participated in a regionwide NGO project to investigate the quote pro Kremlin conspiracy and altright disinformation ecosystem in Central and Eastern Europe unquote. The participating groups often have similar funding streams and various

Now.

On December fourth, four days before the deciding round was supposed to take place, Romania's Supreme Defense Council released a small batch of heavily redacted documents from the country's Foreign Intelligence Service. The documents outlined allegations of a Kremlin backed social media campaign that supported Gorgesco in violation of national

Quote.

The entire electoral process for electing the president of Romania is annulled, the court announced, citing government claims of irregularities on social media. Now a week and a half ago, the court finally announced a new date of May fourth for a new election. Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Europe slash Radio Liberty, which is funded by the US, reported Romania had become the latest victim of a quote

Okay, so that's the case.

They laid out the who done it is so fun and I don't even want to spoil it for readers, but I'm going to because this is a newscast.

I'm going to tell you how this ended.

It was not the Kremlin, it was not Chairman she. What happened was the P and L, which is one of the establishment parties, did that thing where you go and support a fringe candidate to try to draw votes away from your opponent. Both major parties in the US do this. The Democrats love to boost Libertarians Senate see it's Reid Hoffman likes to do it, and Republicans are the most aggressive advocates for Green party ballot access all the time.

So what happened here?

Imagine the scenario is that basically both the Democrats and the Republicans lost, and the Greens and the Libertarians went to the second round accidentally boosted by these more roonic establishment parties.

So that's what happened.

So the funding for this TikTok campaign came from one of the major establishment parties. And what's wild, and Alex goes into this in the article, is that when they originally put out those batche of documents showing that this whole thing happened, the name of the consulting firm that had run this entire operation was redacted. So, in other words, Romania knew the name, and not only did Romania know it, the US knew it. The name of the consulting firm

They immediately knew that it was one of.

These parties, that it was this particular party that had funded this operation. Yet instead they redacted it and claimed that it was Russia, knowing full well that it was not. This was not a mistake where they're like, oh boy, sure has all the hallmarks as all the hallmarks of a Russian counter intel operation. Wasn't even that they knew with certainty for a fact who ran this thing? And

Not anymore.

Romania now is host to the most important American military base in Europe, and a right wing populist who has said that the war between Ukraine and Russia ought to end is a direct threat to American military interests visa vi that base.

And so here we are the other part of the story.

First, as I was reading this reporting, I was like, it needs like a flow chart, because the other one is relying on the assessment that it was Russia from a firm that does most of its work with NATO.

Right, right, US Ukrainian AI software company. They claim that, And this is the US funded news outlet relying on a Ukrainian NATO funded analytics firm that's used some AI that says, yep, we have concluded. So think about this back up for a second. Like the US and there's Romanian establishing parties are accusing Russia of interfering in Romanian politics.

Yeah, it's like guys blaming.

That's kind of foreign interference, Like like you're actually doing the thing that you're accusing Russia of doing.

Yes, and it's getting like no coverage in American media because it's like, oh, Romania whatever.

I think it's it's the cancelation of an election.

A NATO country when you when you don't have any evidence of voter fraud or anything, like, no allegations that the vote was tainted, Like the people went out and voted and voted for these characters.

There's zero evidence that votes were tampered with, And.

It doesn't mean I like this Gorgesco guy. He's like right wing Creek, but come on, like you guy one, it's.

If votes are not tampered with, if you cannot prove that votes are tampered with, and you're just mad that someone came in and put up a bunch of let's just say, billboards, whether they're digital billboards, physical billboards, digital flyers, or literal flyers, and you say that it was foreign interference.

It was actually Romanians.

But it's like saying that we have to cancel out, like yeah, so, but let's say hypothetically that it was Russia and it was like Russia's little Facebook campaign and the closing days of twenty sixteen election to divide Americans along the BLM lines and the LGBT lines. So those ads are still like very funny. If you go read the Senate report from twenty eighteen when they found the memes that Russia was posting, let's just say that that's

Absolutely?

Do I think there should be rules about what money you're allowed to take in elections from foreign powers. Absolutely, but people are making up their minds like you're getting you're still fundamentally getting mad with voters.

It's fundamentally about voters.

It does does raise a thorny question because there are also sovereignty questions. So I think there's a threshold issue, like if Russian TikTok thing, Let's say it was Russia and it's a little TikTok thing, It's like, get out of here, Like that's not it's not persuasive enough that you've swung the entire election. But let's say Russia came in and like ostentatiously spent a billion dollars supporting the candidate that they liked, in complete contravention of Romanian law.

Yeah, I mean, it feels like we're in the vibe shift moment now. But this is what you're going to see attacking the populist left and populist right long term as a major theme. It's going to be technocratic elites using the powers of or abusing exploiting the powers of technology,

Yeah, great story, fascinating.

The reason to subscribe to Drop.

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Subscribe to Drop some cool stuff like that. And this was published with in collaboration with truth dig. Alexander Zechik is an editor over at truth Dig.

Up.

Next, We've got Trump's real estate buddy, Steve Whitcough went to Gaza.

You made it sound like we were having Steve Witcoff on this show.

That would be cool. But even better we have Whocoff is welcome on the show anytime he wants.

That's right.

Even better, we have my drops, like colleague Martaza Hussein, who just returned from a reporting trip in series. Going to talk about that and also about this Witcough visit to Gaza. Mid East Envoy Steve Whitcoff visited Gaza today along with Netanya who Lieutenant Ron Darmer visiting the net Serene Quarter.

If we can put up this first.

Element here scooped by Barack revied as all things net Yahoo seemed to be scooped, he writes, White House. Envoy Whitcoff visited on Wednesday the nets Ring Quarter inside the Gaza Strip together with the Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dhermer, this is the first visit by a US government.

Official in Gaza for at least fifteen years.

So joining us now to discuss this and also a recent reporting trip that he took to Syria is my dropsite colleague, Maz Hussein Maz, thanks so much for joining us, thanks for having me and so Witkoff had actually floated this and I believe it was in a Fox News interview recently. Causing complete pandemonium is really political observers and

Going in there.

Uh what what do you make of Witkoff's willingness to go through with this kind of in the face of Israeli opposition.

Well, you know, I've been.

Watching very closely the Trump administration's nascent sort of approach to Israel, Palestine and the Middle East more generally because of the fact that obviously the Trump coalition continu it's very different streams of people with different views of foreign policy. And some people are the more neo con type people

A name was I think that.

May have made him do that. And now you know the ceasefire, we see people returning north to north of Gaza, We see Witcof actually visiting. These are all tentatively good signs potentially that Trump will be taking a different path they did in the first term, at least to some degree a relative degree visa vi Israel Palson. But also it seems like a repudiation of what Biden was doing.

And in that and uh, speaking of Syria, uh, and the net Yahoo administration's kind of pressure here. Uh Israel cats you may have seen this visited uh you know what they call Mount Herman recently in the Golan Heights and said that basically they're they're not leaving and they're just fortifying, fortifying it more aggressively. Do we have do we have this in English or should we just roll this as a vo? All right, so so people can

I guess that the.

First first question is kind of like what were your what were your impressions after having not been there for so long? What is you know, what is the place like on the ground.

You know, Syria was a very nice country. My family's to go with a vacation in Syria because it was just like a nice place to go. Today, if you go to Syria, it's like the apocalypse happened there beyond. You know, you see pictures of Gaza. Half the country looks at Gaza. It's just completely flattened buildings, rubble destruction. Even in the quote unquote normal areas, it's you know, people don't have food, they don't have you know, their

Well, and this is another immediate test of Donald Trump's foreign policy. And I'm curious, Miles, what you might have picked up on what people there are expecting to see or maybe aren't sure what to expect to see from the Trump administration.

Obviously his policy both towards Israel and Syria. We're kind of like.

Reading the tea leaves trying to figure out what might extrapolate from the first administration and you know, public statements and personnel to what might happen in the near term future. Did you get a sense of what people are hearing or expecting, or maybe what they're not hearing or not expecting when you were over there. Yeah.

You know, first of all, it's very interesting because it was never the case you could ask people their opinion before. So I'm having the idea of having casual conversation what you think about what's going to happen politically, domestically abroad. That was a completely new thing for people there because of a much fear before, and people just didn't weren't

We have to pay bribes all time, just day to day life.

But you know, to your point, like, what's going to happen now domestically internationally is great unknown. People are very very concerned. Many people I spoke to a concern that well, this could just be a breather before new war, could be a breather before you know, foreign powers potentially the US among them may seek to divide the country, They may seek to partition it on ethnic grounds, or you know,

For many people.

And something you had mentioned to me I found really interesting where you've said that Asade of course has fallen and fled, but elements of regime are still holding some territory and still fighting. That the war is over in the sense that it's been won by HTS, but yet the war is not actually over yet. Can you talk a little bit about who these elements are that are still fighting and could you imagine them. Let's say the

So by the time the government collapsed, the degradation of the state had been so extensive that you effectively had you know, gangs. It was basically a gang with no ideology which was controlling the country and they were involved in drug trafficking, particularly captigan, you know, other force smuggling. They're making a lot of money for themselves. And so the regime left, it was decapitated. You could say that the head of the regime fled to Russia and many

What I saw of HTS is mostly sixteen.

Seventeen year olds with AK forty seven's who were just kind of standing around and you know, guarding stuff or taking pictures and things like that, that not seeming ready to con cert control of the entire countries.

So it can take a very long time.

And to your point, this creates a very fertile environment for potential subversion or infiltration of the country. Obviously, these former regime elements they kind of don't have many options left if they were implicated in crimes and things like that, so they may seek to outside patronage. So a country that you can think of is the UAE potentially can

Yeah, it would be incredibly difficult to do it if Syria had real borders and was just fighting, you know, among the factions that were within the Syrian borders. But to your point, the instability can be kind of generated and furthered by elements that have a lot of interest in making sure that you know, Syria isn't able to kind of reconstitute itself as a as a real state. And I get somewhat related to this, I'll point out that.

YPG against ISIS.

Will be screening that documentary at drops that I can put a link in there and Mozzle be leading the Q and A with a director afterwards. But so I hope everybody checks that Out's opportunity to catch catch that for free.

OZ, welcome back to the States, and thanks so much for joining us.

Yeah, thanks for having you guys.

All right, Yeah, so these these rebels might have bitten off more than they can chew. It's it's almost impossible to see how they're going to be able to build an effective state under these conditions. And what he was saying, he was telling me before they have electricity even in the best areas, like two hours a day, which means that the food is all like an edible.

The meat is gray.

Like imagine trying to run a restaurant or a grocery store or anything when you have two hours of refrigeration. So you know, he was eating like a lot of nuts and berries and stuff or dried berries because it's not like you can not like you have access to like fresh fruit and people as he was poring out, I've been living like that for more than ten years, right right.

I Mean the other thing I just wanted to say as a takeaway from that is I'm really glad you guys are sending people at drop site into places like this where typically only corporate press can afford to go. I mean, it costs a ton of money. You need to have a reasonable assumption your reporters will be safe. It's really hard to do and to have independent eyes on the ground. I just think that's a really good sign of what you.

Guys are up to.

Yeah, really really interesting stuff.

Yeah, definitely, this was a packed show.

We fit in all the debates about the constitutionality of executives.

Yeah we did.

We solve the problem and we even got to have some fun with Jim Acostafer. But I consider that a win. Definitely, breaking points that got was where you could go to get a premium subscription support the show.

We always appreciate that. Thanks to everybody for tuning in.

We'll be back here, of course, next Wednesday with more counterpoints.

See you then, m