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So let's talk a little bit more about the direct Trump and Epstein connections.

Interesting moment on Don Lemon's podcast he had on Jeffrey Epstein's brother Mark and ask him directly, Hey, do you think that Trump during his first administration.

Actually had your brother killed?

Let's take a listen to that.

When you saw that interview with them, I think there was a couple of interviews, the one thing with Maria Bartiromo where they sat down and I mean they were glum and they're saying there's nothing there be honest with you, there's nothing there.

After years and years of pushing and also calling this somehow a Democrat according to them, conspiracy theory, and that's somehow the Democrats were involved in your brother's dad.

I don't think the Democrats.

Look well, I look at it this way.

Bill Barr when he came out that ridiculous statement, he worked for he was the attorney general.

You know who did he look he was If Jeffrey was murdered, which I believe he was, somebody did it.

So the people who were coming out with these ridiculous statements, I think are covering up for somebody, right, So who are they.

Covering up for?

You know, Bill Barr worked for the President of the United States.

Cash Berttel works for the President of the United States.

Pam Bondi works for the President of the United States.

Maybe someone should ask him what he knows.

Who do you think they're covering up for?

Who do they all work for?

They all work for Donald Trump.

Well, like I said in another interview, I wouldn't be surprised.

You wouldn't be surprised if Donald Trump was behind your brother's death.

Are you saying that Donald Trump had your brother murdered?

You believe I'm not saying that, I'm saying, in fact, that's what it was.

I wouldn't be surprised.

We know that Jeffrey had dirt on Donald Trump.

We know that that's a fact because he said in twenty sixteen with the election that if he said what he knew, they'd have to cancel the election.

He didn't tell me what he knew, but that's what he said, and I've been public about that before.

That shouldn't come as a shock.

Of course, Steve Bannon said that the only person he feared for Donald Trump's sake was Jeffrey Epstein.

Why what do you think Jeffrey's going to beat him up because of what Jeffrey knew?

And what did Jeffrey know?

Oh, I don't know.

He didn't tell me what he knew, but he said if he said what he knew, it'd have to cancel the election.

So very interesting comments there, Zagar, which.

Mark is an interesting figure.

So Mark actually some background if people want to listen to my interview with Tucker.

Tucker in twenty nineteen was like, yeah, you know, maybe he killed himself.

You know, we'll see whatever.

But he said that Mark Epstein called him, and he was like, I'm telling you one hundred percent he did not kill himself, you know, based on everything that I know about this.

And it began actually a years long relationship between Mark and Tucker basically about this issue of whether he killed himself or not, which was an exploration about the intelligence connections, et cetera.

So Mark is not a partisan democratic figure.

I just want people to lay that out and know it.

At the beginning.

I mean, in a way, he's like advocating for his dead brother, even though it was, you know, a heinous individual.

But whatever the point is is that it's an entree point to which you're aft to ask the question why who is covering this stuff up and for what purpose?

And I'll be honest, you know, for me, I always thought that Trump thing was tenuous.

And Tucker kind of put it to me and he's like, well, you know, wouldn't the Biden administration released it?

And it was like a compelling point.

And then the second part is like, it's just not really who Trump is and you know, for all of his sexual proclivities, and you can read it in it all for yourself from Stormy Daniels.

It just like it seems like pretty standard, like horny old man behavior.

But then this, you know, the way this is now being handled, combined with the totality of the reaction previously, that really makes me start to be like, man, what's going on here?

And I don't know, is it Trump himself?

Is it about his own enabling him?

Let's be honest.

You know, he hung out with him, He was a mar A Lago friend.

They were just pictures of them all being together.

So at this point I almost have no choice but to ask, like, look, maybe there really is something there.

And I don't think that's some I don't think that's a crazy thing to say.

It's not a conspiracy theory.

It's like, in the same way that we look past, let's look at the evidence about the way he said to Glaine, I wish I wish her well right about the way that that case was handled, in which they basically localized the entire prosecution to just Glaine, Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein to make sure it didn't implicate anybody else.

He did die under his watch.

All these people do work for Donald Trump.

Obviously, the you know, of faith has to be proclaimed here from Cash betel BONDI and others come from Trump himself, I would assume.

And then there's this public record now in the camera, right, it's sketchy.

I don't know another way to say it.

And you have this choice of numerous Epstein linked figures for his first and second administration.

Whether it's Bill Barr, whose dad gives Epstein his first job at a private school.

His very first job, right, yeah, who is never have a college degree?

At Dalton School, Bill Barr's father hires him, where he gets introduced to whom, to bear Stearns, where he then gets like, man, you're sending.

Me down the road.

This is important degree.

I don't know if people still teach mass.

Dalton is a highly elite Yes, it's like, you know, the pinnacle of like elite private schools.

So he gets plucked with no college degree to go teach there, then parlays that into somehow becoming this financier managing billions of dollars.

Oh, who are your clients?

We don't know, I don't know outside of Les Wexner, that's the only one we really know.

But we're told this is, you know, so lucrative and he's so extraordinary at it that you know he becomes so wealthy that he has he has actually sort of gifted to him actually from Les Wexner, the largest private residence in Manhattan.

I don't know if you guys are familiar with Manhattan, but there's a lot of.

Wealthy people there.

It's crazy.

Yes, it's on the Aubrey's side.

Absolutely wasn't didn't you tell his neighbors with Howard Lenny.

Yes, he was.

How Just by the way, Howard recently purchased a twelve hundred dollar bottle of tequila and bragged about it online.

If you're wondering engaged, you're wondering.

Yeah, So, I mean you have that.

You've got alex Acosta, who is the person who gave Epstein that sweetheart deal which really buried all of this evidence.

I mean that was critical.

And you know, Alan Dershowitz was his lawyer in all of that and has continued to receive legal fees from Jeffrey Epstein over time.

Here you've got Pam Bondi, who also was Florida who also you know there's linkages there as well, and so and then you consider Trump in his longtime relationship and the things that we know about that, and then there he is acting guilty, is fucking covering some thing up.

Yeah, you have to ask some questions about that.

Michael Wolfe, journalists who did hours of interviews actually with Jeffrey Epstein, talked about how a bunch of these linkages were just basically hiding in plain sight with regard to Donald Trump.

Let's take a listen to a little bit of that.

Donald Trump has gotten away with literally everything, and it turns out to be one of his greatest gifts.

And somehow, again hiding in plain sight is long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and Trump has just waved it away, swept it under the rug, ignored it, and gotten away with it.

Once when I was and this was in mar A Lago, I went to sit have a sit down with him, and in his aids just asked me, you know, a rough outline of what I wanted to talk about, and I had a lot of subjects, but I said, I also said Epstein, and they said and they said, you know, if if you ask about that, he'll just stop the interview and you won't get anything.

So interesting there he says, you know, Epstein, other things fine, Epstein off limits.

And you know how that interview shaping works in advanced they said, Okay, well, yeah, you can ask if you want, but that's just gonna be the end of it.

You know what the key is to do that is to ask it at the end.

The very last.

Anybody wants to know exactly strategy.

That's what I did, you know, Yeah, before I went into the Oval Ones, Sarah Sanders was like, Hey, just don't ask about this whole Egene Carroll thing.

And we're like, for sure.

And then of course when we were done and we were like.

Hey, by the way, what do you think about this whole And of course we got this iconic answer, which she ended up using in her own defamation lawsuit, citing it multiple times.

That answer.

So, yes, that's the strategy about what you're supposed to do.

And Wolfe has other things that he said as well, that Epstein told him that they were bestie for you know, a deck over a decade, and certainly they were you know, closely linked for quite a while in the early nineties and in the nineties in general.

He also has talked about, you know, photos with girls of uncertain age and staying on Trump's pants and girls pointing and laughing at him.

That's what his claim is in terms of things that exist out there.

So another interesting data point here puts the three up on the screen.

Apparently Trump held some talks on a pardon for Gawayne Maxwell, which fits with the response when he got asked about her, you know, when she was on trial, Hey, I wish her well, and fits with a very persistent pattern of getting quite squarely when asked about the Epstein files and the release of the Epstein files.

Every time he got asked about it would be like, yeah, well.

Maybe no, Actually, you've got to worry about people's privacy there.

So you know, for people who I guess wanted to hear that there would be a release, they just listened to the figures around Trump, or they listened to that first, like yeah, sure, before well I don't know, I'm not so sure.

The other ones, yes, but not so much on Epstein.

Let's put this next one up on the screen here.

This is just another indication of like the things that were said about this case before we got the memo that was just like case clothes, nothing to see here.

Prince Andrew, by the way, and everybody else, you're all let off the hook, don't worry about it.

You're good to go, completely innocent.

FBI employees had received a directive to begin working uninterrupted on the Epstein records.

Hundreds under pressure from Patel, hundreds of FBI employees, including special agents from the DC New York Field Office, have been working furiously to meet Pam Bondi's demands.

They've been hold up in offices at the bureaus sprawling Central Records complex in Winchester, Virginia houses two billion pages of physical FBI records, and older building a few miles away.

They've been working alongside analyst tasks with processing FOIA requests at the department.

So whatever happened with those hundreds of FBI employees, Like, what were they doing there?

What records were they looking at?

What are we talking about here?

For it all to be just case closed with a single page memo that you know, supposedly there's nothing going on and there's nothing to learn, and we have definitively decided that he definitely killed himself.

Yes, that's right.

I mean, look, I think it's all just totally crazy.

And you flagged this to me, this piece by Chris Hedges.

Let's put C five please up on the screen.

I mean, really, what Chris gets into is not only the list of all of the figures, including Trump himself, that are like, you know, all tied up within this, but listen, I mean when looking back also at the fact, at this point we have to acknowledge, you know, we have at Epstein who dies under Trump, We have all of these allegations and weird and sketchy things that happened, you know.

In terms of Trump's answer that specifically happen here around the Epstein scandal, he cites a lawsuit which I actually was not aware about about these like Epsteinian orgies and weird things, yeah, which you know, allegedly implicate Trump.

I had no idea what this was.

I didn't know about this either.

Yeah, this was what surprised me.

So let me just read this section to get the details, you know, very specifically correct here.

The Miami Herald investigator reporter Julie K.

Brown, whose dogged reporting was largely responsible for reopening the federal investigation into Epstein and Maxwell, documents in her book Perversion of Justice The Duffrey Epstein Story.

As Brown writes in twenty sixteen, an anonymous woman using the pseudonym Kate Johnson filed a civil complaint in a federal court in California, alleging she was raped by Trump and Epstein when she was thirteen over a four month period from June to September ninety four.

I loudly pleaded with Trump to stop, she said in the lawsuit about being raped.

Trump responded to my pleas by violently striking me in the face with his open hand and screaming he could do whatever he won.

Now, basically that lawsuit goes away.

Is it because there's no there there?

Or is it very possible about Maybe, yeah, it's possible.

It is because you know, what Hedges alleges here is more likely is that Trump was able to quash the laws by buying her silence, is what he says.

And she has since disappeared.

So, you know, again, maybe it went away because there was no there there, or maybe he was able to use his well to make it go away.

But this all just speaks to the fact that these entanglements, I mean, this was reported long ago, and these entanglements, this was all.

This is not conspiracy.

This is a thing that happened, and we have the pictures together, we have the you know, the flight logs actually came out during Gleeene Maxwell's trial.

We know we covered at the time the way that the federal garment case that was pursued against Galeene Maxwell's well, they called it like a thin case.

Or something like that.

It was meant to be very narrow.

So it just focused on like the things that they felt really confident they could prove, but meant that anyone else who may be implicated, there was not going to be discovery around that.

There was not going to be any sort of like opening the books of which other powerful people were ultimately involved there.

And then you also get the news, oh, hey, Trump was actually thinking about pardoning her because he was kind of worried about what she might say about So I think there are real, justified, non conspiratorial reasons to look at this whole chain of events and have some real questions about how exactly Trump was implicated and involved.

Here was he in the Epstein files.

I mean, there's no doubt about that.

We know that he's in the flight log So I guess it depends on your definition of the Epstein files.

But you know, the extent or the nature that I think is an open question.

But very reasonable one to ask.

Yeah, And that's just my last point on Epstein files.

And I know we've talked a lot about it, and I do understand maybe fatigue and others, but you know, this is important.

There is no such thing as a ledger that's just like client supports Israel now, because we black that's not how this stuff works.

What works is the totality of documentation, flight logs, IRS, records, state filings, LLCs passed through entities through which the money flowed in and to where it flowed out.

Now, all the public evidence that we have right now from the nonprofit and apparatus at Deutsche Bank and others shows a lot of money coming in from the world's billionaires for purposes completely unknown to us, going out to Eastern European sex trafficking rings, paying off all a lot a whole bunch of other people, and being used for purposes that continue to remain unknown, very likely for intelligence purposes that implicate multiple billionaires, very famous people, prime ministers of Israel, all sorts of the Pritzker family, the governor right now in Illinois, all of these people are implicated and they're using it specifically to fund a variety of different things, But that is not an Epstein files.

That's financial records that exist right now, the irs.

If anybody could pull our documentation right now and look at everything that we filed ever as a business, to show exactly.

The money coming in the money going out.

The government has that, but people narrowly focus and they make bombastic claims about the Black Book or whatever.

It's like, that's not I mean, yes, I want that release too, But my point is is that there's an entire vast apparatus that he was like sitting at the top of.

But there's a whole lot of stuff out of there.

So let's also not get over our skis and then, you know, be satisfied if like, oh, they released the Black Book, It's like, no, it goes so much deeper than that.

The question is why did Leon Black, a man worth nine billion dollars, pay one hundred and seventy million dollars for republic tax adfice from Jeffrey Epstein.

That's the question I want to know, And that's a much bigger question than any so called client lists.

Where do that money go for what reason?

You know?

And that's when you really start to you know, I'm quoting the wire.

When you start to follow the money, you don't know where the fuck it's going to take you.

Yeah, so that's what I encourage people to do.

How did he make his money?

Yeah?

What happened to all the videos video recordings that we know exists from both his Manhattan residents and the island, Like, there are some really big unanswered questions that remain.

And you know, one edited video with a portion missing I don't think is going to put to bed.

I agree those persistent questions.

That's right.

Okay, let's get to immigration.

Yeah, So some really interesting polling just came out from Gallup, and I would say at this point I would call this poll an outlier, although it is consistent with a trend in terms of public sentiment around immigration that we have seen reflected in other polls as well.

So let's go ahead and put this up on the screen.

According to Gallup, we now have a huge search in the number of people who say, Hey, actually I don't want immigration decreased.

I want it to stay the same, a significant search also in those who say actually want it increased, in a major decline in those who say they want it decreased.

So now the plurality of people say hey, let's just keep things status quo at the present level.

But even more significant, we actually have a record breaking number of people who say that immigration is a good thing for this country today.

So it has spiked up to now seventy nine percent of the public who say overall they think immigration is a good thing for the country.

It's worth noting this number has base has always actually been above water.

The lowest was near fifty percent.

That was in the year two thousand and two, is at fifty two percent.

But even as recently as you know, twenty twenty four, when you had sort of like a nator in support for immigration in this country was still at sixty four percent.

But you've got a huge increase there to a record breaking number of seventy nine percent who are like, you know what, on net, I think immigrants are really a benefit to this country.

They pulled a bunch.

Of other they've got, you know, you've got significant obviously partisan divides with regards to immigration, but they pulled a number of other questions, and the shifts are all in the same direction, shifting towards more tolerance and support for immigration, less tolerance and support.

For example, hiring significantly more border patrol agents.

Those numbers declined by seventeen percent.

And it's not a mystery to understand, Soger why this is going on.

People are seeing the reality of the Trump administration's immigration policy.

They're seeing these raids, including ice agents and like military year and you know, marching down suburban streets.

They're riding on horseback through a park.

They're seeing alligator Alcatraz, They're seeing seacot, the lack of due process.

They're seeing the distance between the rhetoric of hey, we're going to be targeting the criminals to the reality of no, actually, we're going to be going to the home depot, going to the seven to eleven, et cetera.

And it has caused a significant, I think you can say at this point backlash to the Trump administration's direction.

Yeah, I mean this is I warned about this in the beginning in the Trump administration.

The laws of thermostatic public opinion.

There's probably no better issue than immigration.

Whenever Trump is in office the first time around, record support for immigration, when Biden's in office, record low support for immigration.

Now right back to where it is, the question is about solving consensus and to the extent that I think that the Trump administration can be criticized the most it is for shows, and it is for shows of force compared to any sort of semblance of process and of stability.

I talked about this during la The reason people turned against a Biden administration was the reality of eight to ten million people who floate illegally into our country in an insane process.

It was chaotic, and so the promise was We're going to solve the chaos.

And on the border, it's empirically true they have I mean, their border crossings are basically ero right now, and so in a way they're almost benefiting from the success of the problem that they were truly elected to solve immediately.

On border, then it's a common question of enforcement and or deportation.

So it's one thing to have deportation or increase in the ice budget of going after criminals, increasing investigation.

It's another to send you know, active duty US Marines the streets of Los Angeles.

It's another to have alligator Alcatraz.

And then even on the question of Alcatraz, it's like one of those questions of specifically to emphasize like the alligators there and the vibe of it.

I understand tactically why they're doing it, which is the truth is that no matter how much money you spend, deporting twenty to thirty million people is like it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

A lot of it is about self deportation.

They have succeeded.

Over a million people have steff deported in the last six months, at least rough estimate from the government figures.

I'm not sure if we can trust.

That per se, but what we are watching is the thermostatic public opinion in effect.

So I guess at this point here's my advice to Democrats.

Don't overread what these things actually mean.

Last time around, they're like, see, the public is with us, and that means we shouldn't enforce border laws at all.

Eight to ten million people is good.

We need to decriminalize border crossings, free health care for illegals and all of this.

You guys have your.

Moment at this point, and you need to kind of settle on like what the status quo going forward should look like.

And I think ultimately the failure of the last multiple administrations on immigration is either punting things for amnesty while not having a enforcement, basically allowing rage to bubble up around the issue.

I think that Trump administration, unfortunately, has just decided, you know, for these big headline grabbing things as opposed to actually trying to come to sort of consensus, you know, around this, and so it is now a live ball an issue also which they've seeded so much ground on not just with Seacott, but by turning it also into an Israel issue, which actually makes it, in my opinion, much worse for them because it makes it seem capricious to the ends of their own individual priorities and not about America, because it's not just about.

The illegals here.

We're talking about the mahmun Khalil case, we're talking about the oz Turk case.

We're also talking about foreigners being detained for having memes on their phone when entering the United States under tourism visa that that, you know, the totality of that comes down to, like, oh, hold on a second, we.

Asked for law.

I mean, if you look at the rhetoric, it was law and order, and I think that what we've had right now it just strays far away from that.

To the public and specifically the Independent mind, it makes it very, very difficult.

So I actually think this is a democratic issue now where you guys need to.

Solve it for yourselves.

And I'm curious to see what, like what ground you know, that they end up with, for like, what what does the next Democratic candidate actually say on the issue of immigration.

Can't be Kamala definitely can't be twenty nineteen, it can't be twenty twenty four either.

It's got to be something authentic and kind of interesting to this moment.

Anyway.

Yeah, I think I think that's well said.

And the Israel part is interesting to me because I was seeing the same thing.

And it's not just that it makes it seem like very clear this is just like an ideological tool being used against you know, people the administration doesn't like, or their ideological enemies.

It also made it feel very personal.

It is personal, you know, quite literally, yeah.

Because it was like, oh, you can't even write a freaking op ed about this, and you're being kidnapped off the streets.

That's insane.

And so when you had that combined at the very same time with these guys, many of whom were completely innocent kill mar Bergo Garcia, of course, who was wrongfully deported with ero due process.

It doesn't take a genius either to figure out like, oh, if they get moon jew process, Like they didn't even have to prove that they were illegal immigrants, Like they could just ship down anyone that they wanted to so very quickly out of the gates.

It became no longer about oh, some sort of undefined, distant group of potential criminals.

It became like, oh, this is about us, This is about all of us.

And I think that really, you know, the kil Mar Brego Garcia case really was a turning point in terms of Trump administration numbers on this issue.

And so while you know, I think you're right, I think Democrats have to figure out, you know, how do you have your own semblance of like, Okay, this is going to be there's going to be order, because I do think people want to feel like, Okay, we know who's coming in and there's some sort of a process here, and it makes sense.

But I do also think that there's lessons for centrist here.

I mean, number one, there was this assumption that just like the immigration numbers are what they are and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it.

That's clearly not true.

People change their minds based on reality and what arguments are being presented to them, and like how the issue is being framed, and you know just what reality is at the time, So a public opinion canon does change.

Number one and number two, there was a real reluctance from centrist in particular to fight even on something like kil Maara Brego Garcia.

Remember they were like, you should just be talking about the price of eggs.

Well, now at this point, actually Trump's immigration numbers have fallen off even more than his economic numbers and are one of this sort of key sources of dissatisfaction with the public.

So that was a dead wrong analysis.

It was wrong morally in my opinion, but it was also wrong politically, and people like Chris van Holland who went down to El Salvador and you know the folks who really made this and prioritize that issue.

Again, it was the right moral thing.

It was also the right political choice and has now created a weakness for Trump on the issue where he was previously strongest, which is a classic political tactic of like, don't you go after the person's strength.

That's actually the best way to bring someone down.

So I think you had a combination of number one, this became very quickly like, oh, this isn't about them, this is about us.

Number two.

I do think the imagery that they are intentionally cultivating to try to trigger these self deportations, you know, and this is all being run by Steve Miller, that same imagery of the ICE agents always being masked, of sometimes not identifying themselves, not having warrants, the show of force with like all of this fricking military gear, the literal deployment of National guardsmen and Marines in the streets of La the way that these shows of force have occurred in just like you know, there was there's a video of like ICE agents all kitted out marching down the street in suburban Utah.

People like what are the fuck?

What the fuck is.

Going on here to arrest them?

Like landscape or what is going on?

So I think that in addition to then Seacott and the cruelty there Alligator Alcatraz and the like, it's very intentional, the language choice and the decision to sort of highlight the punitive nature of what is being done here.

I think when you put all of those things together and that sense of like this is actually creating more chaos in my community.

I think those things that have sort of like turned this issue as significantly as I don't have.

Really agree I would, but also caution for a lot of people is and this is always my problem with the talk about immigration.

They don't distinguish in the Gallop poll between legal and illegal immigration.

And I would be willing to bet that if you actually looked at the way that people feel about unchecked illegal migration, like what was happening under the Biden administration, I'd be willing to bet that those are still some pretty negative numbers.

And that's part of why for the Democrats in the future, you guys need to figure out like how you can find come to some sort of consensus on the issue.

The way that the Republicans got to where they are right now is that for basically forty years they were told amnesty is good, will do amnesty and eventual do border security, and in that time, the illegal immigration population explodes under Bush, under Obama, under Trump, and eventually they're like, no, I'm done, and then Biden of course is like fire forever, and so they don't even want to talk here about amnesty until a massive deportation effort begins to happen on the immigration side, and question for the Democrats, it's also still remains like immigration numbers have fallen for Trump, it's still one of his stronger issues.

And you know, it's not like you can't exactly get to a place where you could declare a legitimate victory.

I mean, look at the border security numbers or the border crossing numbers from the Biden administration compared.

Today, it's unbelievable in a way.

They're almost a victim of their own success because now people are looking at the deportation efforts in Los Angeles or Utah or whatever, and there's no more chaos at the border because it's a solved question.

It's like, no, you're staying in Mexico and you're not coming here.

So the question is they're around what the future looks like for our policy and look on the Trump administration thing.

I generally my problem for them at least, you know, as somebody was generally sympathetic, I like, I still support mass deportation, but the way that they had done it is such that their trust in all their information is ero.

After Seacott, YEA, because they said very specifically.

Maybe I'm a fool.

I believe them.

I was like, okay, I mean, these guys are gang members, I said.

The federal government for years has always validated gang movement.

This is not a difficult policy to be able to figure out.

Go ask anybody in the Bureau of Prisons.

There's an entire process.

How do we valid people who are in gangs?

Maybe there's some questions around that, but fine, Well, broadly, I was like, I don't think we have a bunch of an issue.

And then you look at the stuff and you're like, okay, I mean there's a lie.

And then you look at the Israel stuff and you're like, okay, well that's a lie too, And so you start to get a credibility gap on the issue such that you really, even when you are, in my opinion, sometimes deporting people really deservely you need to get the hell out of here.

Shouldn't even be here.

But then you have an open conversation where people are not even going to be able to trust some of the facts that you're putting out.

And so when you have that out on the ether, I think it's very very difficult for all of them.

But I don't know I mean, look for me, there's I had a conversation in twenty sixteen with somebody who I really respect, and he said, Donald Trump will be the worst thing that ever happened to the immigration restriction movement.

And I was like, what the fuck are you talking about?

And he was like, listen, guys, what's going to happen is they're going to go full retard.

They're going to do it in the dumbest way possible, and they're going to polarize the public against all of this.

And I was like, yeah, that maybe it's valid, but look at all these other Republicans they're all pro amnesty and all of that.

And now I'm starting to think he might be right.

But I mean, it took years for I guess, like.

What's happening about Sara?

In some ways, yeah, you're right, it's like if you you know, in some ways it's like maybe this was the enemy of the cause all along.

The counter for what they would say is nobody else has the balls to just do it.

He's in his second term, he's got three and a half more years to go.

You can get a lot of million people out of this country and nobody else will do it.

And then from that point forward it's a future question.

I guess I could see both sides, but you know, as somebody who generally like kind of likes to see some sort of consensus on the issue, I don't see it coming anytime.

Soon on this.

In this particular poll, he only gets thirty five percent approval of his handle.

Like you said, it's still a leading out.

Thirty five percent.

And among independents you have enjoing the math I'm bud at math sixty nine percent disapproval, forty five percent of them strongly disapprove.

So almost half of Independence say they strongly disapprove, and then an additional twenty four percent says they disapprove, but not strongly.

And then you only have twenty eight eight percent who approve this again Independence that I'm talking about here, who say they approve.

So you know, it's obviously highly polarized.

Republicans are very content, very happy with the immigration policy.

Democrats are eighty one percent say they strongly disapprove.

But that number from Independence to me was really quite significant, and you know they're they're not letting up.

They just passed the one big beautiful bill which is going to surge massive amounts of resources into ice and so you know, to you're talking about whatever we're seeing now.

Times however much no, I will say these organizations are often incompetent.

I think they'll have a hard time hiring and deploying, and you know, a bunch of the money will just be basically like stolen by private prison contractors who never really deliver what they promise and other consultants, et cetera.

So there will be some discount on the money that's actually allocated, but they're about to have all of the resources in the world to do whatever they want.

One of the things that I think is contributing to these very grim numbers on an issue that was previously a strength for Donald Trump is the display of Alligate so called Alligator Alcatraz down in Florida.

You just had a couple of members of Congress go and tour that facility, and there had been previous reporting too.

To back up the comments here from We're going to play a little bit of Maxwell Frost about the truly abhorrent conditions in which people are being held within this facility.

Let's go and take a listen to a little bit of what he had to say.

They opened the door.

There was about six security guards standing there kind of pushing us back, but we could see in and we could hear everybody.

And when those doors open, you know, what I saw made my heart sink.

I saw thirty two people per cage, about six cages in the one ten.

I saw a lot of people, young men who looked like me and people who are my age.

People were yelling, helped me, helped me.

I heard in the back someone say I'm a US citizen.

And as we were walking away, they started chanting, leave it that, leave it that with that freedom, and I looking into these cages, you could see, of course, it was warm and hot.

Within the tent.

People were sweating people.

Some people had taken off their their their their the top of their clothing because it was just so hot.

Some of them were drenched in sweat.

The food we saw is not enough food.

They're being fed essentially a small sandwich and a bag of chips, and not just that, but the conditions outside.

Of course, it's blazing hot, and the fact that in the cage comes from the toilet number one.

Not everyone's gonna be able to drink as much water as they'd like to because of that inconvenience, but also it's gross and it's discussing, and this is where people are being held.

So we've seen reporting indicating and backing up what he's saying there.

We've seen reporting of worms in the food.

We've seen reporting of toilets that don't flush and sewage on the floor, insect infestations and the like.

And then you ask yourself, soccer to your point, like, Okay, well, who are they sending there?

Because this is another instance where we were told this is only for the worst of the worst.

Right, let's put this up on the screen.

Miami Herald has been doing some great work on this.

Hundreds at Alligator Alcatraz actually have no criminal charges whatsoever.

So again, you know, similar to what we saw when they sent immigrants to Guantanamo Bay, similar to what we saw when they sent immigrants to Seacott.

In spite of the representation that this would be the worst of the worst, in fact, you're sending many hundreds of hundreds of people here who have no criminal charges in the United States whatsoever.

And you know, it's completely at odds with the portrayal here and some of the people who have been picked up.

It's just like, oh, they you know, how to traffic ticket something of that nature.

And I think Maxwell Frost in that particular side said that he heard people saying, Hey, I'm a US citizen, and you know, it's very Maybe maybe not, but it's just you can't trust this administration to handle any of this in anything approaching an appropriate manner, and they will just lie about the types of people that they are ultimately picking up here.

Yeah, it is difficult.

I mean I am very torn.

I'm somebody who's I mean, I don't think it's you would admit you know, you would admit this.

I'm radical on the issue.

At the end of the day, I don't believe in exclusion.

If you came here illegally, I think you should go.

I mean, I'm fine with the you know, prioritization and all of that.

But yeah, I don't know.

I personally just get very you.

Know, annoyed, Like I mean, do we have any of that raid footage of the California thing that that's the perfect example to me, Like you have a weed farm, a weed farm which is still federally illegal, where you have people who are illegal working there, nine of whom are unaccompanied minors.

Many of whom almost all are illegal, so that people in California can get high and they are working at like slave wages.

It's like, how is that a reasonable system?

Like why is the governor of California and other standing up and saying, actually, this is all.

Totally above board.

I'm like, no, this is disgusting.

It's bad for the kids.

And then it's like the only time anybody expresses in the outrage is whenever you send people who are being exploited here back to where they came from.

It's like the whole system is all fucked up.

But I don't know, people only care when they're removed the status quo seems like fine.

I mean, I don't think you support that, but you know, functionally, that's where the Democratic Party was on the immigration issue.

All this slave labor is totally okay, all of this unchecked illegal migration.

You know, you have children basically working in these like marijuana fields so that rich yuppies in Venice Beach can get high.

I'm like, I'm sorry, that's a gross like order to the way that our whole society works.

And it's like we only care whenever somebody goes and like you know, either takes care or arrests them.

Some of these people who have like serious criminal charges.

That's where you know, everyone's like, oh the cruelty of this is there no cruelty?

And the fact that these you know, these kids are like working to like pick weed so that people rich yuppies or whatever can get high.

I think that's cruel.

I think it's bad.

Why didn't nobody say anything when they were being sent here across the border.

What kind of parents is sending their kid illegally across the border to go work in a weed field?

And yet oh, these are an asylum and all, It's like, no, I'm sorry, that's bullshit.

I mean, nobody cared.

I don't really personally care what type of farm it is.

But I mean, here's the thing, though, Zabrea, is that like you're expressing a view of caring about cruelty or like human rights and dignity, And so when you see someone.

Who's being exploited by.

A system where you know, they're like, these farms are probably our labor abuses hiring literal children, which is outrageous, Like they should be prosecuted for that, no doubt about it.

But then you're taking the farm worker and you're shipping them to, you know, a place like Alligator Alcatraz or just like out of the country.

No do process to be abused and effectively tortured and held in completely inhumane conditions.

That is certainly not a reflection of any sort of concern for humanity or dignity.

I don't disagree per se.

But it's like, look, it's a stop off on the way for deportation.

You're not supposed to be here.

Like, at the end of the day, you came here illegally.

There are consequences for breaking the law.

And it's there's also this idea that there's like a statue of limitations.

It's like, oh, but they've been here for years.

It's like, okay, I mean you came here, you shouldn't have been here.

You're working illegally.

Of course you're liable to consequences for your actions.

It's like, we take you an agency away from these.

I think you have to anolge this, but I think you have to acknowledge though.

I mean, the point of a place like Alligator Alcatraz is a demonstration of horror.

I mean that's what it is intended to do, and that's the reason also for like you know, there's a freaking like helicopter that landed in the field deliver farm ry, you know, and they're coming in in these armored vehicles and with you know, the military gear and all of these sorts of things, Like it's meant to terrorize.

That's that is the goal.

It's meant to to terrorize.

And so while I think it's you know, it's it's certainly reasonable.

Okay, well, how many people can you know, can we absorb and what's the appropriate level?

Like these are questions nations have to ask themselves.

I don't think that many people find it acceptable that someone whose only crime was which is not even you know, a felony, but whatever, it's a civil infraction, but whose only crime is crossing the border illegally and who has been living, working, doing the right thing, et cetera, that a punishment commeserate with that is being like put into these horrific conditions in whether it's alligator alcatraze with other detention facilities also have you know, quite.

Important, Wow, how do you deport somebody?

I think, Okay, but that's a reasonable question.

They're not going to leave, they don't leave.

But actually, in reality, the number of people who do show up for their court hearings is quite high.

Number one numbers already here.

But number two.

You know, another option is we have these things called ankle bracelets where you are monitored and tracked and so you doesn't require like insane cruelty.

So you know, your working assumption here is that they're trying to, like, in a good faith way, and I don't even know if you really believe this, but in a good faith way deal with this logistical challenge.

I'm not talking, and I don't think that they are dealing in a good faith way with this logistical challenge.

I think there are many other routes.

Even if you wanted to accomplish the goal, which is not a goal I agree with, that would not entail mass institutionalized cruelty.

But they intentionally choose the mass institutionalized cruelty and don't look for any solution that would you know, probably create an even more like even more rapid outcome.

But that does not include.

That sort of horror, because the horror and the terror like that is a core part of that.

I don't just agree that it's part of a strategy to get them to go.

But it's also like, you know, we do this for criminals too.

You know, if you, for example, drunk driving is not I believe so right, it's not a felony.

Am I think what am I getting wrong here?

There's something about I think it's there's some type of whatever.

Demeanor, like you'll lose your license, you.

Get thrown in the drunk tank.

Now, like you get to go to prison, do you know why you do?

Or not prison?

You get to go to jail for a couple of days and you have, Yes, you eat a sandwich and a bag of chips.

That's like standard prison for food.

Why because drunk driving is bad you broke the law.

It's also I think it's not a class a felonyre or whatever.

There are all kinds of things for which we have preemptive or we have punishment in which yes, some of the treatment is part of the of the course to trying to discourage to make sure that you don't participate.

In this illegal activity.

And like that's what I'm saying is you come here illegally, you take advantage of the United States, the openness of the United States of America.

You know, there's also this talk about paying taxes total bullshit.

No, it's like yes, absolutely, oh, yes, Oh, vast numbers of thirty million illegals are filing their income taxes.

Yeah, exactly, No, No, no, there's a number.

There is a significant tax contribution.

From undogmated once again, like if you look at that statistically compared to gen pop.

And then also, even if that is the case, you're not supposed to be here at a principal level.

And if we up all the welfare and medicaid and hospital bills of all these people in our society, I'd be willing to bet it still in that negative on a social basis, just purely net in, net out.

You can make GDP arguments in other cases.

But it just comes back to like, yes, there are consequences for breaking the law.

If you want to change that law, be my guest, Biden Obama.

All these people had multiple Houses of Congress and they never did so as long as the system is currently constituted, you're here illegally.

There are consequences for doing that.

Yes, I think the government in many cases has both lied and gone too far under the Trump administration, But the core goal is still one that I think most people would want of some sort of order and the fact that we have to know who you are here, and yes that that if you came here illegally under false pretenses, at the very least, the government needs to check you out.

We need to figure out what's going on.

And my belief is you should be sent back to where you came from and perhaps in the future we can have some sort of reapply.

Now many people will disagree with me on that subject, but I just I really don't know how you could have lived through the Biden administration and the way that the permission structure came for what eight to ten million people flow legally into our country and not believe in a like a serious effort to deal with this at a law and order level.

I really just don't know how we can still come down to compassion and aside.

It's like these people are the biggest abusers of US asylum law in all of history.

They're all economic migrants.

They'll admit it if you ask them, and it's like we're just supposed to let them in and give them citizenship apparently because they quote want a better life.

You can want a better life.

Wherever you are, there are people all over the world who want a better life.

Just because you have the proximity to walk into the United States of America, you're not special.

I mean, Sager, obviously I disagree with you on the policy, but I think what the punishment throughout history for that has been has been getting deported back to your own country, not to some random third country where you may be in danger and don't speak the language and don't know anyone and have never been.

Not being disappeared, which is what's happening without even any record into you know, someplace that has been set up to intentionally like be cruel and horrific and deny you basic human rights, not to be disappeared into a foreign google slave labor gulug like Seacott, the idea, Okay.

You're here illegally, you're going to go.

You know, the country is voted and they've decided, like we only want a certain level of undocumented population.

You're going back to your home country.

That's been the idea.

The country won't take.

Ultimately, yes, why do you think they're going to be with because they don't want them back.

But that's not even true thing to do.

But that's not even true in many instances.

So for example, Venezuela, there were ongoing to go shoot.

Venezuela was accepting immigration return like deportation returns flights into that country.

So you know, you cannot You also can't act like the Trump administration has no power here to like make a deal and do some diplomacy to be able to effectuate those returns.

But you know, just on the on the numbers of how people feel about this now, and it's actually not that different from how they felt about it when Trump was running on mass deportation, seventy eight percent say that they would like to see a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who were living in the US illegally if they meet certain requirements.

So there is a there is a sort of very.

Widespread acceptance of immigration, of the being an important part of the fabric and character of this nation, of the sense of like, hey, if you're here and you did the right thing, and you were working and you didn't do anything wrong, like we should give you a chance to become a citizen.

That is a very popular and widespread view.

And like I was saying, that number has gone up, but actually in twenty twenty four it was still seventy percent.

Who felt that way.

So I think people are very on board with like, Okay, you're a criminal, you're in a gang, whatever, Yes, let's get you out of here.

But the reason that there's been such a backlash is when you go much beyond that, it does start to rub up against people's sense of actually what America is and certainly the way that they want to see people treated by their government, whether their citizen or not.

I look, that's just going to be a disagreement.

You broke the law, you came here legally, just because you happen to be here, and you know, allegedly didn't commit a crime except for the first crime that you did by entering our country, you get a free pass.

It's crazy to me, all right, It's an insult to the millions of people who spent you know, people like my parents and others who came here legally, spent thousands of dollars of their own money, going through the process of pain in the ass.

Ask anybody who's ever done it.

And oh, because somebody gets to walk here and then be basically low wage labor, they're allowed, you know, a special process just by being here long enough it's preposterous.

I mean, and that's one of those Look, I'll keep making that case forever up until the day they do eventually pass amnesty.

I don't think there's any basic fairness.

It is completely preferential treatment.

It is just like I don't know, we've debated this, you know, forever.

Yeah, to continue, Well, one last news item I do want to slip in here.

On immigration.

Let's put D five up on the screen.

There was a significant court decision in California halting what they're describing as indiscriminate immigration stops in LA and beyond.

And basically what a judge found here is that, you know a lot of credible evidence that they are just basically racially profiling, you know, roll up on the home depot, see some Latino like Spanish speakers, and just arrest them.

And we've got a number of instances.

One that was a part of this case in particular, is actually a car wash and the guy was like, I'm an American citizen.

Here is my identification, and they were like, you don't have your passport, so that's not good enough, so we're arresting you.

And they had other instances too, where you know, I mean, this seems to be the sort of approach of just like we're going to go into places where we think that undocumented immigrants congregate.

We're going to check out whether you're speaking Spanish and what your skin tone is, et cetera, and we're going to arrest you if we have any suspicion whatsoever, not based on anything other than basically like ethnicity and the location that you are.

And you have a judge who says, yes, it's racial profile.

You can't do that.

That's against the Fourth Amendment.

Okay, So we're still, you know, focused on the aftermath of those horrific floods in Texas, which I actually don't think we've gotten to hear anything from you on.

I'm interested to get your take care as well.

But we have a lot of questions about DOGE cuts to National Weather Service and Noah, the sort of pushing out of some key individuals who should have been involved in warning community members.

So you have those you know, was the forecast, Could the forecast have been better if you didn't have the DOGE cuts?

Could the warnings have been better if you didn't have the DOGE cuts?

Those questions on the front end.

Now you have a question now that you're into the recovery phase about FEMA's performance, and let me go ahead and put Guys E two up on the screen.

Here.

There's some significant reporting from the New York Times that FEMA failed to answer thousands of calls from flood survivors.

And this is directly attributable to the fact that Christy Noam at DHS, which runs FEMA, they allowed these call center contracts to lapse.

They were not extended, and so you had a loss of personnel.

It's personnel who would ordinarily be the ones fielding these calls at this critical moment.

And so you've just been hit with a flood, You've lost everything that you owned.

You're trying to.

Figure out, Okay, how do I interface with the federal government, et cetera.

Most people, the way they go about trying to navigate that bureaucracy in that paperwork is through this hotline, these call centers, and they did not have nearly the personnel in place to handle this flood of calls.

In addition, there was another program previously in place where FEMA would actually go door to door to people who had been impacted by any sort of natural disaster.

Or flood in this instance, and help them be able to organize their paperwork and figure out what they could apply for, etc.

That program has also been cut.

Christine home under fire and trying to answer for this on the Sunday Shows.

Let's go ahead and take a listen to what she had to say.

A rule that you recently implemented.

It reportedly requires that every FEMA contract, every grant over one hundred thousand dollars be personally approved by you.

Now.

Officials within the agency have told multiple news outlets that the policy led to a slower deployment of some FEMA resources, including urban search and rescue crews.

So let me just ask you, did your policy delay some of the critical response resources on the ground.

You know those claims have are absolutely false.

Within just an hour or two after the flooding, we had resources from the Department of Homeland Security there helping those individuals in Texas.

There were resources that were deployed, But I think the question revolves around were all of the necessary resources deployed?

According to reports, multiple FEMA officials said, you didn't approve the deployment of these FEMA search and rescue teams until Monday, which was seventy two hours after the flood started.

They were deployed immediately as soon as they were requested.

And when was the request put in and when did you approve it?

And is this accurate that there's this one hundred thousand dollars sign off, the one.

Hundred thousand dollars sign office for every contract that goes through the Department of Homeland Security, and that that's an accountabilit it's an accountability on contracts that go forward.

When did you get the request for these search and rescue tees and other resources immediately?

So immediate?

What does everyone will tell you They didn't.

Hill will say, well, this is what I think is really unfortunate.

And ager.

Trump of course had originally been really sort of ideologically opposed to FEMA at all, wanted to send all disaster relief to the States.

In the wake of this, he seems to be backing off of some of those more maximust demands.

But there's no question that FEMA and w National Weather Service, they have been impacted by the Dotge cuts.

And you know, some very serious questions being raised here about the impact that that had, specifically in the hourrificance.

Roll, the tape.

What did I say after the airplane disaster.

I was like, it's coming.

I was like, you don't want to do it.

It's the last part of the government that you actually want to cut Noah and the National Weather Service and all these other places.

But you know, eventually they just forget their And you know, this also gets to a basic issue of competence.

And I've also been thinking about this with regard to the Trump administration.

Actually can't underestimate how incompetent.

They have acted.

Just look at the last six months.

Elon's in charge.

Now he's not in charge with the tariffs on, wear the tariffs off.

You can't look at the current cabinet and accept in some very few cases and be like, yeah, you know they've got it, Like these are your guys who are really up.

To the job.

I said that about Chrissy nome I remember, I was like, this lady was a governor of South Dakota, which no offense South Dkota, nobody even lives there.

And now you're in.

Charge of the last largest law enforcement agency in the world.

What like, in what possible way are you qualified?

I don't think that she's handled herself good at all.

That way.

But that's my point, right, I think you know that shit matters whenever you have a full blown flood by the way, you know, I've been to a lot of those areas.

It's horrible.

I mean, it's devastating.

You know what happened there, it's still like an open question.

It's the whole National Weather Service, you know, I've been reading the TikTok about the alert went out, but it was at four am, and there's open questions about the state agency.

And you know, there's some stuff here about the camp what is it camp Mystic and how they're actually there.

Their permits kept getting delayed.

It's a slow rolling disaster actually if you kind of look at the background of the way this all happens.

So nobody's like directly attributed.

But let's not forget.

I mean, it's July fourteenth, you and I are talking right now, when's hurricane season.

People, you know, do the math.

You are only one disaster away from a catastrophic news cycle.

For the administration.

If there's even one way that the Weather Service and all those people didn't do something, and there's an I mean, remember Hurricane Sandy.

That was a disaster.

I mean it came out of nowhere, billions of dollars in damage.

FEMA shit the bet on that one too.

I can't even really think of the last time they did a great job in response to a hurricane thing, and that becomes like serious political issue which they can directly trace back to DOGE.

They have them literally bragging about it on camera, and especially now with you know now that the fact that the Doge project has basically been a complete failure.

They are they just opened themselves up for any future airline disaster, any future storm, any future hurricane, and then they don't have the best and the brightest.

Who are in charging well.

And to that point, they had someone who had emergency management experience in place at FEMA.

Originally they had a guy named Cameron Hamilton.

He was a Navy seal, former combat medic, former director of the Emergency Medical Services Division at the Department of Homeland Security.

He got fired a month ago because he dared to testify to Congress that.

He thought FEMA should continue to exist.

So he got fired and they put in his place this guy named David Richardson, who there was all kinds of reporting, so he has no background in this whatsoever.

There's all kinds of reporting about how he didn't know anything.

He was like, oh, when's hurricane season or what even is hurricane season?

I mean, just a complete matter of war on which is why you haven't seen.

Him at all.

I mean, think about the like, you know, good job Brownie situation.

At least Brownie was out there trying to do something.

This guy, we don't even see him.

He doesn't even exist, because even this administration is smart enough to realize, like, oh, it's going to be a train wreck if we put this dude down there because he doesn't.

Know shit about shit.

So that's the guy who you have running FEMA.

I mean, FEMA, I'm sure has his problems.

I have no doubt about it that you could do a better job with disaster recovery, but like you are just making it so much worse and degrading its capabilities in ways that are blatantly obvious.

Not only do you have this call center fiasco, but you also had some reporting, independent reporting as well about how the number of FEMA staffers that were on the ground were way next to nothing compared to what it would have been ordinarily in previous circumstances.

So yeah, I mean, it's just this is an area where it felt like during all the Doge chainsaw madness, they just thought that nothing was ever going to matter.

You know, it just was this sense of unreality, like we can just flash and burn wherever and whatever without any regard, like not even trying to do it in an intelligent way, and that there's never going to be any impact from that.

And this is like in the most horrific way, possibly got one hundred and thirty plus dead now in one hundred and sixty still missing reality you in the face of like no, Actually, sometimes government functions are literally life and death.

Absolutely, I mean, I you know, it would didn't take a genius or anybody even remotely familiar with everything, And I think, yeah, I think those will continue to be a noose around the neck of the administration for the next four years.

We're just you're just waiting one disaster.

I mean, look at the Air India crash that I mean that came out of nowhere, you know, a Boeing seven eighty seven and crashed in the middle of a city, according to Pilot Air.

I mean, imagine if something like that happened here today.

I literally on my way here I saw a plane it was maybe like twenty thirty feet above me as it was landing over Ronald Reagan, and I was like, I don't know about this man.

You know, no offense to Air India, but don't fly.

Oh no, no offence to it's scary offence.

Sue me.

You're the worst airlines.

Some of my nobody.

Flying experiences are on Air wid Yeah.

Sorry, Air India.

You guys got off your game.

It's terrible.

Anybody flyers, I mean maybe if they have a deal.

But honestly, at this point I'm not flying it anytime.

So anyways, thank you guys so much for watching.

We appreciate you.

I'll see you tomorrow

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