Trump Starting to Crack From the Pressure (feat. David Cay Johnston)

a Pulitzer Prize winner and a brilliant investigative journalist, best-selling author, now professor at RIT, the co-founder of dcreport.org. He's the brilliant David K. Johnston. Hi, David. >> Hey, Mark. Uh, I want you to do me a favor, please. Um, I just tell me that what I just saw was AI or someone drugged my coffee. Um, that this was not real. >> I mean, it it's it's insanity, David. It's insanity. It's so it's so unserious when he brings on Dana White in this kind of and you know this is a guy who's supposed to be president of the effing United States. >> Um it is it is as you said all about Donald's sense of himself and his glory and has nothing to do with the American people. And yet there are still tens of millions of people who think that he is the greatest president ever. Yeah, he's lost a little shimmer apparently, but uh but there's still a lot of stuff in play. And um you know, I'll start here, but we've got a lot of stuff to get to, but you know, the ICE situation with the thugery in the streets and pulling people out of their homes and pulling people out of legitimate businesses and even out of courouses and court hearings. There's this terrible story about the the eight-year-old Haitian boy who was literally meeting with immigration at a prescribed immigration hearing. His father had already been deported, so he was staying with his uncle, and now he's in detention. I mean, it is trauma on trauma for these kids and these families. It's despicable. It's unamerican. It It's so repugnant. I find it nauseating. So my question to you is with a new Congress, is there any way to reconfigure ICE, to break it up, to pull back their their their funding to in any way stop this madness? >> Yes, there are a whole variety of things that the Democrats can do, but they can't do anything until January 3rd of the kind that would really make a difference. There some things um they can absolutely cut off funding. uh they can uh uh Trump will uh veto a bill to cut off that funding. They we we shouldn't be surprised in the next Congress if there are overrides of vetos by Donald Trump. Imagine you are a continuing in office Republican. If you're a member of the House, you're up for election in 2028. If you're in the Senate, about a third of the senators will be up for election. Who you more afraid of, the voters or Donald Trump? And I don't think that's difficult for a number of them to address. Um, they're going to run investigations. One of them they need to run is where are these children who've never been accounted for? Um, what about these reports? And I have not seen serious reporting uh yet verifying this, but I'm sure there are uh serious reporters working on this. Are there in fact a bunch of pregnancies in ICE detention centers, especially of uh girls? Um and so that's one thing that they can do. Uh they can also uh make it clear that we're going to in other ways challenge the activities of ICE. And they can make it very clear that once the Justice Department is no longer in Donald Trump's control, there will be felony prosecutions of ICE officers for misconduct. They can say that loud and clear. So you're without question on notice about it. That will at least intimidate some of them. But a lot of these people who were hired would never be hired into any law enforcement agency in the country. Not the sleaziest sheriff's department in America because they have histories of committing criminal acts, of spousal abuse, of uh drug trafficking, stealing, a whole bunch of other things. Doesn't matter to the people under Stephen Miller who wants other people to hurt. I don't know what's wrong with him. his family have all said, you know, he's not well. Um, but the rest of us shouldn't have to hurt just because he does and because Donald does. >> Yeah. It's and I I think the the kind of flawed people to whom you've referred who join ICE are kind of the people he wants. You know, people who are okay working outside the lines, right? >> Yeah. That's exactly who he wants because they will do what they're told and especially they do so if they're earning the size of a paycheck they've never seen in their life. >> Right. Uh I want to ask you about this this Hegsithth impeachment um which is preceding a pace. I mean they could get a vote on it in in the next couple of days. uh Thomas Massie is um is leading it and and Hegath is pushing back and I was saying before David that Hegath just strikes me as a I don't know he's almost like a performance artist you know kind of playing uh Secretary of Defense while he makes all of these horribly uh reckless decisions with a with a blood lust he clear you know when you start blowing these boats out of the Caribbean etc. Um, but he points to all of the uh blowing the boats out of the Caribbean as a um as a positive, as not outside the law at all. He he talks about the fact that he's been following the law and and for the masses of the world to in any way suggest that he should step down or be removed as a result of these victories and victorious military efforts is um is absurd and just a political exercise. You know, this idea that the killings of now more than 200 fishermen in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific are following the law tells you exactly how incompetent and dangerous Pete Hegth is. Uh there is no law that grants the Secretary of Defense the authority to summarily execute people. Now, Donald Trump believes in sum summary execution for people he doesn't like. You know, he's he bought newspaper ads about it in ' 89. When the Central Park Five were cleared, he doubled down on it. He has repeatedly said these people should be shot or executed or uh said it in various ways. He has a terrible blood lust there. Um Hegth really needs to be asked with a forum where he can't depart and he's not going to get in one unless it's before Congress. Who gave you the authority to execute people? If you think someone's a drug dealer, you interdict their boat and you you inspect and if you find drugs, you arrest people. But we know from a great deal of work by journalists here and abroad and by governments that in fact these are fishermen. He's killing fishermen, innocent people. And uh Hegsath needs to be very careful because if he steps outside of the US after he's not in office, there's a very high risk he will be snatched by a government, even one that's an ally of the US, and he'll find himself on trial in the HEG, as he should be, for war crimes and murder. Uh again, when it comes to impeaching him, even though there's a razor thin margin in favor of the Republicans, he might well be impeached by this Congress. Um in the Senate, senators are going to face the same issue. Who are you more afraid of, Donald Trump or uh uh the voters? Now, Hegath may well resign at some point. That doesn't mean he can't be impeached. And the reason it's important an impeachment trial proceed in the Senate is that once you've been convicted upon impeachment, >> which is neither a criminal offense nor a civil offense. It's a political offense, you may not hold any office of public trust in the United States. That means he cannot become the elected dog catcher of, you know, Strange Town, Virginia, wherever he wants to live. >> Yeah. And it's interesting, too, because one of his escape hatches, as you're aware, is the Senate, right? That he might take that Blackburn seat or in some way kind of skirt these impeachment proceedings. And you make such a compelling point. The proceedings are so very important because if he actually could be convicted, he'd be that'll be off the table. Public service of that sort would be out of nowhere. >> We have over the years um since the founding of the republic had impeachment trials. almost all of them were of uh federal judges. Um uh that includes federal judges, one of whom didn't resign his seat during the Civil War and then used his position as a federal judge to wage war on the United States. Guess what? He got convicted. Uh we had the terrible judge just in recent years in Corpus Christi, Texas, who was using his position to extract sexual favors from women on his staff and who then resigned at the last moment so his wife could collect his pension. Um uh so we we've had convictions upon impeachment and I think that there's no question that the next Congress uh the House starts a new in January they'll be able to impeach Hegsth RF Kennedy Jr. and some others. Um, and in the Senate, it's going to be very interesting to watch because if the two pending Senate races, Alaska and Mississippi, go blue, that means there'd be 56 Democrats or independents who will go with the Democrats. And you only need 11 more votes, one in four of the remaining senators to convict. That not good odds given the blue tsunami. >> Yeah, right. given the the political uh winds blowing the way they are. Um the uh question as to uh congressional leadership. I just want to touch on it real quick because uh there's a call against uh Hakee Jeff and Chuck Schumer as you know and that call is largely from the progressive wing but I think even those who are Democrats or centrists who you know would have liked to have seen something done on any number of issues view Jeff and Schumer is sort of um too tepid in in in terms of moving forward on any number of things that would face the new Congress. So anyway, AOC, who's viewed as sort of one of those progressive voices, she actually comes out and says somethingwhat shocking in that she backs Hakeem Jeff in the House. Here's cut one. >> What was the mood, the vibe like in there? >> I mean, it's a tremendously exciting class. This is a historic moment for our country. This is one of the largest classes that we have uh seen. And some people have been saying depending on how many flips we have since 1932 or 1934. And what is so exciting about that is that this is a this is a mandate for change. And so I'm very very excited to get to know so many people from across the country um and and what they want to bring and change. Yeah. >> Pardon your united. >> Yeah. I mean, listen, this this is there there is a a one candidate in this race, Hakeem Jeff, and um you know, I think that everyone is far more concerned about what that leadership means, what it is promising, what it seeks to deliver, what I think and and I think that's what we're hearing from a lot of folks. Yeah. >> Yeah. So, she's saying uh uh I mean in her own uh political way, right? Well, he's he's the guy and uh it we're more concerned with agenda, but it was interesting because it's very much different than what we were hearing in the ramp up to this. >> Well, first of all, there's been no obvious candidate to replace either Chuck or Kim Jeff, >> which is what you're saying. Yeah. Number two, um there is why are you going to waste your energy on an internal fight instead of addressing the needs of the American people that have been ignored for so long, including by your own party to some degree? You need to get the work done. Uh who's going to be chair of a couple of the committees is more important, I think. Uh now if if uh Hakeem Jeff or Chuck Schumer start being obstacles to fundamental reforms that are needed so that we we get higher wages uh we get more housing, we stop these tariffs, we stop the murders by uh the Pentagon and ICE, uh that's another matter. Then they can go in and say oops, we got to we got to reset. But, you know, the Republicans would love for the Democrats to get into an intercene fight. And one of the problems progressives have long had in this country that the determined Republicans have not is not grasping that the perfect is actually the enemy of the good. >> Bravo. >> Uh you're not going to get perfect. You want to get good and you want to obtain the things you want. Politics is the art of the possible, not the art of the perfect. Uh that's just so well said. I wanted to play something for you. Um because in the uh ashes of the last election for the GOP, uh you get all of this analysis and some of the analysis feels right on you like they're really looking themselves in the mirror and some of it feels completely bizarre and yet some of the bizarre stuff is being articulated by people with real following, Steve Bannon among them. And uh here he is on the wipeout that the GOP just endured and his take. Uh let's cut two please. Tony was a Republican. Did you realize that that many people hated their president? >> Not sure it's just the president. I think it's also a purge of the Republican um kind of neoliberal New York. I mean it was a blowout across the country, right? Uh I think some of that was President Trump. I think some of it is the lack of I mean the way we view this is the lack of really MAGA policies of really doing what we committed to do particularly no foreign wars this entire situation with greater Israel and the Gulf Emirates um no mass deportations I mean if you go through the big punch list of the things that on our show we push every day uh >> you're saying there weren't mass deportations >> no there's not has not been mass deportations >> so he should have done more with us >> oh yeah 100% Do you think that's where you went wrong? >> I think it's one of the things that motivate our base, a lot of our base did not show up and particularly our base um if you look at base plus the lower propensity voters. If you look at the the look at the Nick Fuentes and in that part of the the the group that said, "Hey, not only do we not want you to u to support Republicans, we want you actually go out and vote against it." I think there definitely was some of that. >> I mean, the New York Times was writing about, you know, joking about cyanide pills in the White House. the week before the elections. Did you know this was going to be this >> I kept arguing that we have to make sure we get the electorate we want. We knew that it was we knew from all the data that we were getting from other people that you could have a blue tsunami blue wave unless you had a game day. We had gone through the early voting. We knew over that weekend what the problems are going to be. We kept hammering people that unless we have a massive turnout on election day. Uh which is kind of counter to how people vote today. Okay, you get a sense. We didn't we didn't Trump enough was the point. Yeah. >> Well, think about what he just said. We didn't appeal enough to the people who follow Nick Fuentes. >> Nick Fuentes is one of the most vicious racists in the country. Uh he represents a fringe group and we didn't do enough arrests. I posted on my Facebook page from somebody else um ICE snatching a little boy off the street and taking him away and there's a woman yelling, you know, he's a little boy. What are you doing? Um, lots of people who uh supported Trump and thought, well, yeah, there's a problem with the murders and rapists who've been let into the country by the Biden administration came to realize that no, it's the people who, you know, make it possible for uh my hotel to get the rooms cleaned and the slaughterhouse to be able to process the beef or the chicken that I grew on my ranch. And they began to see what horrible policies these were. And Bannon is quite quite right though, I think, when he says he points out that a lot of people just stayed home. Yeah. What does that tell you? When your own supporters stay home, they're not happy with what you've done. It's not that you didn't do enough, it's what you did. Do you think there's any significance, David, to the fact that uh both Marco Rubio and Pete Hegath, as embattled as he is, have gotten before cameras today and said we were following Trump's orders on uh on the war and we want to we're here. I have the Rubio cut and you can just see kind of what on Iran particularly. He talks about the fact that hey this is the president's plan and we s we follow the president's plan. Is there is there um a way in which they're trying to make it clear that this is all Trump. It's not us. >> Right. Right. Well, this is distancing themselves from what they know was bad policy. Vance has been the one clearly behind all the news stories that appeared about three weeks ago that uh there was dissent in the White House from the idea of following Benjamin Netanyahu and attacking Iran and they're clearly it's all coming from people around JD Vance. JD Vance wants to be the next president. I don't think he has a snowballs chance in hell if for no other reason than the MAG crowd and the far right on which he depends, the racist crowd that he has appealed to regard his wife as unacceptable. Um, so but I don't think that's going to happen, but that doesn't mean they're not going he's not going to try. Rubio similarly by going along with this illegal, unconstitutional and failed attack on Iran has similarly harmed himself in ways that leave him incredibly vulnerable in uh if he if he hopes to become president. Not to mention that remember he's one of the guys he read words virtually right out of my book uh the making of Donald Trump denouncing Trump and then he turns around and calls him the greatest president ever. Uh the the Republicans are going to have a very interesting two years figuring out who to run in 2028. So are the Democrats, but the Republicans, are they going to run somebody who is part of Donald? Are they going to completely reject Donald? And what happens if they decide to completely reject Donald uh within the Republican party? And of course, remember was um I think it was Lindsey Graham, but one of one of the early Republicans who was against Trump said, "If if we elect him, we if we get behind him, it's the end of the Republican party." You think, >> you know, um the stink of Trump really is powerful and just as you've said, I mean, Republicans have a big problem because that stink is all over a lot of people. And so for all the supplicants that we saw, uh, it's going to make escape kind of hard. >> Yeah. It was interesting that the only deep MAGA Republican who got back into office was Governor Saunders in Arkansas. Um, uh, otherwise, you know, none of the folks who were really deeply and closely connected, remember she was the press secretary at one time, none of them did well. Um, furthermore, as more and more data comes out, and there'll be papers by political scientists starting before long with deep analysis of the vote, one thing that's overwhelmingly clear, if only people under the age of 30, you may remember, well, you're not young enough old enough perhaps, but when I was in college, there was a don't trust anybody over 30 uh meme. Um, if only people under 30 had voted, every election in the country would have been blue because people who are, I would argue, under 35 have looked around at what's happened to the economy in their lifetimes since 1990 or 91 and have said this is not working. Uh, this is government of, by, and for the billionaires at the expense of everybody. If it was government upbeing for the billionaires and all boats were rising, as John F. Kennedy once said, a rising tide lifts all boats, it would be different. But this is a rising tide that is swamping the little boats because they're tied to the dock and can't move. And clearly people 35 and under get that and so do a fair number who are uh as old as 50 because they got wiped out, many of them. I mean the 2008-10 recession by some measures did more harm than the great depression from 29 to the beginning of 33. Um and the the consequences of that are moving through our system. I really do think we are at an inflection point. I mean we may finally be at a point where we can get universal healthcare. I mean we're the only country modern wealthy country that doesn't have universal healthcare. We we have these health insurance companies that sentence people to death for profit. And I don't folks that that's not hyperbole. Um in my book, Free Lunch, I quote a physician who testified under oath to Congress that every time she killed somebody, she got a bonus from her health insurance employer, uh Humanana. Um, there are numerous videos of physicians who tell stories about things like, "They're literally on the operating table with a patient and the insurance company says, "We're not going to pay for that." Or, "As soon as the surgery's over, you have to send the person home. We're not paying for a night in the hospital." They are killing people for profit. And uh, the Republicans went around, you remember saying they're going to be government death panels. No, there are corporate death panels from a completely superfluous and unneeded industry. Um, and you're going to hear the Republicans next say, "Well, you'll have to pay $2,000 a year more in taxes for universal healthcare." Uh, this coming year, uh, my wife and I for my health insurance for our share of it, uh, and our my employer together will spend $30,000, very close to it. That's uh $2,500 a month. I will gladly pay $2,500 in higher taxes if I can get rid of $2,500 a month in expense and turn that into salary to me, not money diverted to the health care plan. Um and and I think that game of trying to scare people, it's failing. Uh, and the Republicans, I'm sure, are going to quickly recognize that universal health care is coming unless they can find some way to scare people again. And I hope, and this goes back to the Jeffre Schumer argument, that right out of the box, the new members of Congress make it clear, we're going to, as a first step, do two things with Medicare. We're going to cover every child until they're 18 or 22. Take a pick. Um, and we're going to lower the current eligibility age down to 50. And then we'll worry about people who are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. The cost of insuring little children is buckupus. There are a handful of children born who are million-doll a year medical cases until they die. And some of them are going to live to be old age because of advances in medicine. And for the people 50 and above, having regular, reliable health care and the services they need will mean they will live longer and more productively. Um, and we can pass that very quickly. and to finance it. Um, well, I can look at a number of ways to do it, but one of them is we can cut back on the size of the Pentagon, which is way too big and is built to go refight World War II, not to deal with the present world. Um, we can take away the uh tax cuts for the rich, which really are not tax cuts. They're tax cuts for those people, but they're tax increases for the rest of us along with interest on the money that was borrowed. That's what happened here. We're being taxed more so that Elon Musk can pay nothing, the world's richest man or close to nothing. And if they act very promptly on that and institute the other changes, they'll need to institute because Medicare's rates are too low. They have been too low for a long, long time. Um uh and they'll need to hire back administrative staff and do some other things. If they can defeat the uh superfluous, overly profitable uh healthcare insurance industry, they're going to have one shot at it. It's going to be right out of the box, >> right? When you still have the political capital to do it. Yeah. >> And if Trump vetos it and they can't override it, they'll get a second shot in January of 2029. And if they have a new president, especially if the president's running that, they can get it. So they need to act quickly on the economy to improve people's lives. >> I mean, that's such a a good take that this is an inflection moment and and I love that you point to 2029 because it could be a truly powerful democratically controlled government at that point, right? I mean, apart from Scotas, you you could have president and an even greater, it seems incredible to say, but even greater presence in Congress of the Democrats. >> Well, the appointment of of Steven Miller to be chief of staff is the kind of thing that if if you wanted to start a conspiracy theory, how much did the Republicans get paid or did Donald get paid by the Democrats to appoint him? Because this is just a gift to anybody who is a decent person. That was the headline on my last text column at DC Report, you know, make America decent again. And appointing this deeply uh hatefilled, mentally ill man to be the chief of staff, it it tells us this is going to be a rough two years. Um, and really it's just who nothing better could have happened for the Democrats as a party than the promotion of Steven Miller. And it tells you, of course, that Donald is incapable of adjusting because after all, he's the greatest president of all time and he's only made one mistake in his life, according to him, which was I never should have left the White House in 2021. uh uh in my last seconds with you, I just wanted to touch on a piece that you wrote which was uh and is up on uh DC report and that is about environmental protections being rolled back, pollution protections and the environmental laws that have been gutted really under this administration. >> Yeah. You know, I brought this up with my introduction to journalism students of whom maybe two are going to become journalists. But I said, you know, the the how many of you know that the Trump administration has just made clear fossil fuel companies can spew all the methane they want? Methane is a much more dangerous gas for the environment than CO2. None of them because young people aren't paying attention to the news. And I said, "Okay, well, listen. It's not going to affect me. I'm too old. But my grandchildren who are a little older than you, my students, my one great grandchild who's in single digits, um going to affect you folks. It's going to be cancer and heart disease and asthma. And if you're not out there saying, "Uh-uh, don't do that." And by the way, what have the environmental laws signed by Richard Nixon done, the Clean Air and the Clean Water Act? They've created jobs. They've advanced technologies. They've improved our ability to apply the principles of chemistry and physics to clean the air and clean the water. And why should somebody profit off of making other people sick? Why should they be allowed to what economists call externalize their costs? Gee, I could make more money if I were to burn down your forest because the water flow out of there will have all that material from the ashes and the underground and it will help fertilize my crops. So why don't I just go burn down your forest? That's the functional equivalent of what's going on here. Um, and people need to recognize this is not just a government of buy and for the billionaire class. This is a government of by and for the lawless, the pedophiles, the drug traffickers, the financial manipulators, the embezzers, um, and the polluters. And don't forget the Epstein files. And look, there are real consequences on the end of all of that. It's not just a money grab. Uh it's >> not a game. This is not That's why, you know, I started off by saying, "Please tell me I've been a nightmare or or that was AI with Dana White who what is he gets up and he immediately shows you that yeah, he's a very successful businessman. The terrible awful business of seeing people brutalize each other, but he he treats it like it it's a joke. And of course, to Trump it is." >> Yeah. Uh, David, thank you always. Uh, you can find David's piece at dcreport.org, but there'll be a link to it under this video. >> And I'll have new videos that are going up at reality check at the DCRO YouTube channel. I've just shot five of them, so they'll play out over the next few days. >> Oh, terrific. Good. We'll link to those as well. All right. Good. Uh, David, thank >> See you next time. Okay. David K. Johnson, everybody. Love that. Yo, >> the Mark Thompson Show. David, how much would it cost to save PBS? Asking for a few friends, asks Angel within the Bay Area. Yeah. Uh, first big shout out. Thank you for a $10 super chat. Uh, yeah. It's wild how NPR and PBS both had the plug pulled by these guys, this administration. Oh, is David back with it? Oh, go ahead. >> Yeah, but let me answer that question because I'm shocked that the Democrats haven't gotten on to this. The cost of restoring NPR, PBS, and other public radio. The rest of it's all public radio or almost all. It's a penny a day per household. A penny a day. $3.65 in the coming year per household. Okay. If you're looking at it per person, that's a I did this on a fourperson household. Talking about 90 cents per person, less than a dollar a year per person to restore that. Call your state legislators. Call your governor and say, "Hey, in New York it would be 20 mil $29 million. You can't find in your budget with all the money you're giving to sports teams and General Electric and Nvidia and Elon Musk $29 million or proportional to your state, whatever it is. Just take the population of your state, divide by four, and it's a penny a day." >> Yeah. It'd be great to have it back. Yeah. Uh, as you say, there's a lot on the table, but we'd like to I'd love to see them double back to that. Good. All right, David, thanks for jumping back on with us.