How the army of dissenters came for Trump

Pete Hegseth is a deeply damaged Defence Secretary and he is going to face continued calls for impeachment. Stephen Miller has been appointed the Chief of Staff and last night the House To be the minority leader of the Republicans in the House. Republicans elected Another absolute MAGA flamethrower. jacketless Jim Jordan. I mean, they're quite significant moves, aren't they? Is it possible that Stephen Miller thought he was the right person to be the chief of staff and he got Trump at his most vulnerable and pushed himself into the role? I mean, do you feel that Trump was actually a rather passive player in all this decision making? The News Agents USA is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world. The person speaking is Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. The person she's speaking about is the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, who won his first battle last night. But as you can hear, the Democrats are not going to let this lie. Yeah, Republicans have turned their back on a first chance to impeach Pete Hegseth. Are they still tied to Trump? Welcome to the Newsagents USA. The Newsagents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. It's John. It's Maitlis. And it's Miles. And last night, friends, the U.S. House of Representatives took a vote to table a resolution to impeach U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Now, that impeachment didn't come. from the new Democratic majority. They're not in office until January 3rd. It came from the right. It came from a Republican. Thomas Massie of Kentucky brought eight articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth. But in a last-minute bid to make it go away, Republicans tabled the resolution, leaving open the possibility, as you heard from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of it coming back. Once Democrats take that House majority, John, this was interesting to watch play out because the vote was sort of on a knife's edge. And while the administration was signaling that they would stand by their man, a lot of folks were speculating about what might happen if Hegseth was impeached. Because here in the States, that doesn't mean he is his immediate removal from office. It would kick it over to the U.S. Senate to decide whether to actually take him out. But the perception was if the political damage... Was that bad? Trump might throw him overboard and try to confirm a replacement before Democrats take power. Yeah, and we should bring you the numbers on that vote because, as Miles says, it was pretty tight. It was 211 to no versus 204. And the only Republican Who voted to go further with this method to impeach was, as Miles says, Thomas Massie. Now, Thomas Massie is the Republican congressman who kind of fell out quite badly with Donald Trump over his efforts to get Trump to release the Epstein files to the point where Trump then turned around and said, I don't want you standing. I'm going to have you primaried. And he wasn't even allowed to re-sit for his own. race in these past midterm elections. So I think it's fair to say there is a bit of beef from Thomas Massie. When you look down the list of the impeachment articles, I think it's fair to say that some looked pretty watertight, you know, don't go and invade. Venezuela, don't start attacking boats off the coast of the Caribbean, don't kind of kill civilians on day one of a war with Iran. But some of them looked slightly more flaky. And I don't know whether you think, Miles, that, John, that this was. This was a sort of normal Republican response to something which wasn't quite watertight enough as a first go at impeachment, or whether it suggests that at least this particular Congress is still really tied in to the president. Trump said the vote is an exoneration of Hegseth, and actually he can now run around holding this up as his first win, literally his first win. Yeah, it is. Well, it may be his first win in the past week, but it's kind of not the end of it. I think the interesting thing about Hegseth is that he is seen as this kind of MAGA. He's great on Fox News. They love him in that area of America. But we've just seen what America thinks about MAGA in the widest possible sense with the midterm elections. And I think that. I still think that Trump will get rid of Hegseth. I think that if the House had voted to impeach Hegseth last night, then Trump can say, OK, he's going to take the rap for Iran. He was the cheerleader. I mean, he was the one who really wanted to go hell for leather on this. I know I'm the commander-in-chief, but it was really Pete and Netanyahu and Rubio also very keen on it. And Trump would be able to put some distance. And Hegseth could have been a bit of a heat shield. For Donald Trump, and I still think that ultimately, Hegseth will go over this. And he's come out defiant and he's come out saying, you know, kind of all the MAGA talking points that you could possibly imagine. And saying, you know, tying himself to Donald Trump as closely as possible. But I still think that Hegseth is a vulnerable target. I mean, they did try to do this with Lloyd Austin, the, you know, Biden's Secretary of Defense as well, didn't they? I mean, and that and that sort of seemed to go nowhere. Has this got the feel of something that just happens every time, Miles? Well, look, two things are true here. One, Pete Hegseth is a deeply damaged defense secretary and he is going to face continued calls for impeachment. But another thing is true, which is we have seen a spike in recent years in American politics of hostile congresses trying to impeach the cabinet secretaries of the rival party. If that party is in the White House, this happened during the Biden administration. Almost with Lloyd Austin, but it officially happened with Alejandro Mayorkas, who was the DHS secretary under Joe Biden. He was impeached by the House of Representatives. He was not removed by the U.S. Senate, but he became only the second U.S. cabinet secretary ever to be impeached in the history of the United States. And the fact that we've now got the third potentially. Coming up, not more than two years later, shows you that this is becoming a bit of a trend. Now, Donald Trump, as John noted, could have headed all of this off by taking advantage of this window before the Democrats take Congress to go get someone else confirmed. There's been a lot of names floated around. There's a Republican senator from Iowa named Joni Ernst, who's very popular among her colleagues, some of whom have been kind of whispering to the White House. We can get you a very fast vote if you move quickly. We can get you someone like Joni, first female secretary of defense. But the administration seems to be closing that door. But that does mean that if Donald Trump ends up throwing Hegseth overboard, he's going to have a much harder time putting a confirmed. Person in that job. Why does that matter? Well, because confirmed officials tend to have a lot more latitude and also the administration can't just put whoever they want into the acting position. There are laws about the order of succession in the Pentagon. So the universe of people Donald Trump could have run the largest department in the federal government shrinks and shrinks and shrinks once he's not able to confirm his preferred choice. I mean, one of the interesting things about Trump is that he... He doesn't want to give a scalp and make it look like he's bowed to pressure. He probably recognises that Hegseth has to go. It's just that he doesn't want to be seen to be kind of kind of baying, you know, falling, dropping his knee to the mob and therefore kind of saying, OK, I accept, I accept. And he will probably choose, you know, it'd be a time of his choosing when Hegseth eventually is kicked out. But, I mean, Miles, look, as you say, we are talking about... The kind of the old house at the moment on January the 3rd, it all changes. And we've seen two important indications in the past week of how that is shaping up. And you you said on election night, he sounds conciliatory now, does Donald Trump. But let's see what happens in the next days or so. Since when Stephen Miller has been appointed the chief of staff. And last night, the house... Republicans elected Jim Jordan, the man who never wears a jacket, Jacketless Jim Jordan. To be the minority leader of the Republicans in the House. Another absolute MAGA flamethrower. I mean, they're quite significant moves, aren't they? Republicans are preparing for war. And I'm no Nostradamus. I said that on election night, knowing that Donald Trump has rarely spent much time on the peace path. He prefers to be on the war path. He prefers to be fighting his selection. Stephen Miller, who I worked with for two and a half years, was probably the biggest indicator of any that Donald Trump would go as hard as possible against the political opposition until he's gone. And then the elevation, yes, of Jim Jordan in the House is sort of the alley oop, if you will, to emphasize that this is the direction that Republicans are going to go. And you can't separate what has happened with Pete Hegseth. From that, in fact, in a lot of ways, you could say this is the first decision of the Stephen Miller White House, which is to stand by Pete Hegseth. I honestly think if Susie Wiles had stayed in that job, you would have just enough voices around Donald Trump who would have said, let him go. Let's do the practical thing. Let's get another defense secretary in. Let's change up. Let's try to push away from the Iran war. Stephen Miller is not that type. Stephen Miller is the most. ideologically stubborn and fanatical person I ever worked with in the Trump administration. And now he is running that administration day to day. And I have no doubt that Stephen was someone who put his thumb on the scales and said, we're standing by Hegseth. Let's fight these people. Can you take us into the Stephen Miller mindset, Miles, because a lot of our listeners will know him as the architect of the ICE immigration policy. A lot of our listeners will know him as the guy who called Democrats domestic terrorists. You've described him as deeply ideological on a day to day sort of office based basis. What does that actually sound like? What does he do when he comes in? Well, it sounds like if you're in the job that I was in, late night phone calls every single weeknight to the point that your spouse starts asking you questions. Hey, why are you on the phone with this Stephen guy all the time? And I've had to assure her, I don't want to be on the phone with Stephen Miller late at night, but he is a ferocious micromanager. And someone who's very, very involved has his tentacles in the departments and agencies down into the offices and the sub offices because he knows that's how you get things done in Washington. And that's something that made Stephen very formidable. And very effective is that he understands the government bureaucracy and he is willing to jump down into meetings where they would never expect him. Think about the most junior staff at the most remote office in government. Stephen was the type of person that would surprise them on their morning phone call and show up and say, this is Stephen Miller at the White House. Right. And the people who've never met anyone from the White House are shocked that it is the actual Stephen Miller. There to tell them what to do and issue an order from the president. Now, the reason that was confounding on a daily basis is there's a hierarchy in Washington, D.C. There's chains of command. And Stephen would very frequently, almost daily, go around those chains of command to issue orders, which led the cabinet secretaries who. Actually oversee these massive departments and agencies to go to the White House furious that Stephen Miller was going around them and issuing orders and directives, in many cases, contrary to their own. That's the type of bureaucratic infighter he is. He's also a fast talker. He's very intelligent, and like I said, is more than anything, deeply, deeply, deeply loyal to Donald Trump. I will tell you this, almost every single breathing person that I met in the Trump administration criticized Donald Trump in private, okay? None of these people couldn't see him for what he was, couldn't see his insecurities, couldn't see his moral degeneracy, depending on your perspective. Stephen Miller. Never showed daylight between he and Donald Trump in our private conversations. And that's why he's sort of the last man standing in the bunker type of character. Donald Trump knows that, too. He can smell dissent a mile away. And Stephen has never expressed it in his presence. And I'll add one thing to that. My biggest worry about that, of course, was when you have a president like Donald Trump who has a deep and abiding inclination toward illegality. A loyalist who never says no becomes someone who facilitates illegal activity. And that's always been the concern about Stephen Miller is that he accelerates Trump's worst impulses rather than stabilizes them. I think if you've been brought up on a diet of the West Wing, And you've got a picture of the chief of staff as Leo McGarry, who was this kind of amiable person who understood the art of political compromise and deal making and that you had to scratch someone's back in return for them scratching yours and that this is the way government got done, which I think has a degree of truth in it. And other chiefs of staff that I've met over the years have also kind of been that conciliatory figure as well as being the enforcer, but have had a bit of personal charm. I was with a diplomat on Monday night who was in Washington for a long time and was just staggered that you would get rid of Susie Wiles for Stephen Miller, given that, you know, you want to keep things running and you want to keep people happy and you want to keep things moving along. I mean, is it possible that Stephen Miller thought he was the right person to be the chief of staff and he got Trump at his most vulnerable and pushed himself into the role? I mean, do you feel that Trump... Trump was actually a rather passive player in all this decision-making. I don't think Trump was necessarily a passive player, but I think he was very receptive to the possibility of a Stephen as chief of staff, because he knows that that represents putting an arsonist in charge instead of a firefighter in charge. And Donald Trump doesn't much like firefighters. He really likes the people who carry the flamethrowers on their backs. And Stephen has one fused to his spinal cord, bureaucratically, if you will. You know, to the... To the notion that Stephen lobbied for the job, I don't know that firsthand, but what I can tell you is Stephen aggressively lobbied for jobs and greater responsibilities when I was in the administration and would often do it by just seeking private time with the president to make his case. I'll give you one example. Partway through the first Trump administration, there was a lot of concern that the president's immigration agenda was just becoming one giant lawless and potentially impeachable mess after the debacle of family separation and related issues. It became clear that Stephen's influence was corrosive and potentially presidency wrecking. And so, you know, at the Department of Homeland Security, we tried very hard to separate ourselves from Stephen's edicts. Stephen went to the president and made the case that he should be in charge of immigration policy and not the Department of Homeland Security that under law is supposed to be in charge of immigration policy. And he managed to secure Donald Trump's assent. He gave me a phone call. I can tell you where I was. I was driving on East Capitol in Washington, D.C., this beautiful avenue by the United States Capitol. It was nighttime. I get a phone call from Stephen Miller who called to report to me that tonight was his coronation by Donald Trump. That was the word that he used. It used is, this was my coronation. Donald Trump had put him in charge of immigration policy, and he was calling to tell me he was calling the shots now. And that sort of verbiage stuck with me, and I thought about that the night that Miller was announced as White House Chief of Staff, that he probably saw it as his coronation, kingly power. That's the way that Stephen Miller views his role around the president, And he has been. The greatest advocate for the expansion of federal power in modern American history. I think why this is so interesting is because the Democrats are also starting to choose who they want in their leadership roles now. In the House, in Congress, which they will now control. And it has been fascinating over the weekend hearing some of the newly elected ones who haven't yet taken their seats like Adam Hamilton in Kansas and also Annie Andrews in South Carolina, as well as one of the old handers, Alyssa Slotkin in Michigan, all start to question whether they want Chuck Schumer back in the role of Senate majority leader. And for various reasons, these three, and there may be others, have said, we don't want to play into the sort of old establishment. We don't want somebody so old. We want to bring in a younger generation. Maybe missing the fact that he is somebody who understands. The politics of how the Senate runs. And I remember listening to Adam Hamilton saying, we want to bring bipartisanship. We want to bring friendliness. We want to work with Republicans. We want to try and get things done. Well, of course you do. You're a new senator. You still believe in the possibility of actual consensus and triangulation and the ability to get things done. But it is interesting that if Trump is arming himself, as you say, with arsonists, whether it's Jim Jordan, whether it's Stephen Miller, then the Democrats need to kind of mentally adjust to that, don't they? Yeah, I think what's interesting about the move to get rid of Chuck Schumer, look, he is 75 or 76. I think he's just about to celebrate his birthday. He is old. But he's also very wily. He knows how to make things work. He was the Senate majority leader in Trump's first term for some of that period and had, you know, pretty kind of explosive relationships. Him and Nancy Pelosi going to the White House and walking out of meetings and then standing outside the kind of, you know, outside the West Wing and talking to reporters about what had gone on. He also has played an absolutely brilliant role. In the Democrats success in places like Kansas and Alaska and Ohio, where his pick of a candidate, you know, someone who would appeal to ruby red Republicans, was incredibly successful. So I do think it would be kind of harsh. I mean, hilariously, the Democrats are now saying, oh, they should have put more money into Mississippi, into Florida. You know, actually, you get greedy at the scale of the results. And you say, we didn't need to spend that much money in Georgia. We didn't need to spend that much money in North Carolina. We could have got three more. They might yet get at least two more. Yeah, but I wonder whether that's a kind of a gap between expectations now, do you think, with some of the senators coming in? Well, hopefully the Miller appointment is a wake up call for them and also the elevation of Jim Jordan in the House of Representatives. It seemed when Democrats were standing by Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries in the House that they were going to walk into a knife fight holding a pineapple or a strongly worded letter or something along those lines. Pineapples can be deadly. Yeah, sure. If you don't bring it in as a gift of friendship. But, you know, I think they're starting to wake up to that. There's probably going to be a little turmoil for the next couple of weeks within the Democratic Party about whether they have the right fighters in the right positions. I would also say, though, that there's a risk of some progressives overstating the importance of that. I mean, every majority leader in the Senate or speaker in the House. Has had their sort of foaming at the mouth bulldogs on one side that they can deploy and their peacemakers on the other side. And that person has got to be able to decide when to deploy that character and when not, when to cut deals and when not. So, you know, for Democrats, is it the end of the world if they end up with sort of traditional hierarchical faces? Not necessarily, because the bulldogs will still have their have their role. But you can see that conversation happening. Happening within the Democratic Party, but I can also tell you what the next phase is going to be, which is that when they select their leaders and inevitably the moderates or the progressives are going to be upset, the onus is going to be on all of the Democrats to fall in line, rally around the new leader and go towards the new administration unified. And that's something the Stephen Millers are also paying attention to is. Are there ways to divide the Democrats to make it easier for them to pick off votes and forestall oversight from a new Democratic Congress? Well, to that point, let's hear from the newly elected senator for Michigan, Abdel Al-Saeed. Can you imagine being Pete Hegseth right now? Like, why are you still in your job? I mean, it's an open question. Like, Pete, like, really, just open question. Why are you still doing this job? You are really bad at this. You are failing your responsibility. You have mishandled this war. And nobody really actually understands what it is you're about. Every day you're talking about fighting a new cultural war, but, like, you're supposed to be waging an actual war that is actually illegal on its own terms. So just resign. Make it easy for everybody instead of, in the end, getting taken out because that is clearly what's happening. So, Pete, just take it from me, like, you're not good at this. This is now a moment for a refresh, says Abdel Sayed, and I think it's fair to say that this time a week ago, we did not know the scale of those democratic victories. We did not know the height of that blue wave, and the effects are only just starting to be felt, sort of permeating all kinds of walks now of American life. As you said, The ripples are being felt across America from what happened last Tuesday evening in those midterm elections. And for people who were at the forefront of the fight for upholding democracy and decency in American life and crossing Donald Trump, it has been deeply uncomfortable. And on Thursday, I was on a train going up from Washington, D.C. to New York on the Acela And I read this fantastically moving Substack about what this person's life had been like and how it had changed when Donald Trump won re-election in 2024. And the author. ...was Miles. And Miles, look, we've spoken to you a number of times and we've kind of talked about some of what has happened to you. But the scale of kind of, I don't know, the effect it's had on your family, on your business interests, on all sorts of things, it was really laid bare. And I could feel the exhalation of breath, but also the sense of pain that you'd gone through over the past couple of years. Well, you know, I talk about this publicly with folks, not. For sympathy, but to give people an insight, give them a data point on understanding how the Trump presidency has been materially different than anything we've experienced in the United States. And I say that the man has twice blown up my life because he has when I quit his first administration and decided, OK, people need to know how bad it is inside the Trump White White House before they go vote. I knew that there would be. Retribution. What I perhaps wasn't prepared for is that it would affect every facet of my life. After I came forward, Trump had gone out there and, you know, blew a dog whistle to his supporters and said, you know, he should be prosecuted, make his life miserable. He should be fired from his job. He went from rally to rally demanding that people come after me. And they did. We were doxed, harassed and threatened. My siblings had people taking photographs outside of their homes of my nieces and nephews and sending them in threatening manner to us as if to suggest that my nieces and nephews might face physical threats because I had voiced my dissent from the president in 2020 during that period that I'd come forward against Trump. On election night, I was in a safe house in Northern Virginia under armed guard with a pistol under my pillow because it had gotten so bad. In the span of several weeks, I lost my home, my job, the marriage I was in at the time, my personal security, and my life savings, all in one stretch. And even one of those things, I think, is enough to tip someone over the edge. And send them on to a multi-month retreat away from the world. All of those things happened at once because that's what it looks like when the president of the United States wants you ruined. And that was just the first time it happened because when Donald Trump got reelected four years later, he made it his mission. To go after the people who had crossed him, whether it was James Comey or John Bolton or Letitia James or myself, he found different ways to upend their lives. And he came back and he declared me guilty of treason and opened a federal investigation into me and revoked my security clearance. And that started the whole process again. For four years, I'd rebuilt my life. And people ran scared from us because they were very worried about getting in Trump's crosshairs by association. And then once again, the business that I had built blew up. There were threats, direct threats coming in against my daughter, against family members. We had to take stalkers to court and get restraining orders against them. People who were close to us, people who stood up at our wedding with us, the best man in my wedding abandoned us I could go on down the list. Again, I don't say any of that for sympathy, but it's so that people understand how high the price of dissent has gotten in the United States. And my story is just one now of hundreds or thousands of people Donald Trump has sought to silence since he came back. And so the experience has been very, very personal as much as you try to create that distance. But I think something felt very different the other week, A country that was in total fear of his return, so afraid that they were literally abandoning their friends and their colleagues who were in Trump's crosshairs, was suddenly much more defiant, much more awake, much more willing to speak out. And because of that, I really feel like the price of dissent in this country has gone down. It's easier for ordinary people to speak up, and it's easier for families like ours to breathe a little bit more clearly. Miles, we speak a lot about moral courage on this program. And I guess in some ways, when a president like Trump turns against you, you think, well, that was always going to happen. When it comes from your own circle, and you described Really painful encounters with some of your best friends. And I don't say this to embarrass you and I don't you don't want to make this particularly personal, but it did get personal. You mentioned your best man. You mentioned a friend who actually tried to buy you off, tried to make you sign an NDA to distance himself from you. And I cannot actually imagine. What what that must feel like, you know, there was a it's two things happened at the same time last year when this all went down one, my wife and I were very personally distraught by all of the immediate betrayals in our life, you know, people who are the types of folks who say to you, I'm I'm ride or die, right? I'm with you no matter what. Ironically, those tended to be the first people who flaked and said, literally, in some cases, they said to us, hey, we need to keep our distance until this all blows over. And you're like, what does that mean? You're not going to text message or phone call with us because the president has called me out? You've known for years I've been standing against the guy. You know, those were difficult. But the other aspect of it was sort of dispassionately, sociologically. My wife and I were awestruck by this phenomenon. We never imagined, and we think we know what it's like to be in the rough and tumble of American politics. We never imagined we would see this level of social fear. Emily, it got so bad, for instance, that... We had a nonprofit step forward and offer a legal defense fund for us to be able to get the lawyers we would need to fight a free speech battle against the White House. And we were in Chicago and we were trying to do a fundraiser in Chicago for the legal defense fund. Three different restaurants in Chicago. Turned us down to host the event. We weren't asking them to publicize that they were helping do a fundraiser for an enemy of the president. We just wanted to pay them to serve Diet Cokes and appetizers. Three different restaurants said they could not do that. And one of them, the manager, was very clear to us as he said, I'm worried about my employees being targeted by ICE. That was the level of social fear, Fear early in the Trump administration, people wouldn't even accept your money to serve Cokes at an event that could associate them with hostility toward Donald Trump. That's very, very high in terms of the price of dissent and the level of social fear. When I go speak to student groups around the country, though, I often say to them, Bring your economic lessons into this social experiment because in Econ 101, you learn that when the price of anything is too high, whether it's pencils or whether it's coffee mugs, there's only two ways to lower the price. You can either decrease demand. Okay, if you decrease demand for coffee mugs, then the price is going to go down. They're going to try to sell more of them. But when it comes to dissent in the truth, we don't want to decrease. The demand for it. So the only other way to lower the price. is to increase the supply. And that was evident to me last year that if we were going to get out of this moment where people like me and our families and our extended families were threatened and attacked and harassed for merely exercising our First Amendment rights, it required more people to be unafraid to do that. And to me, it was not a foregone conclusion last year that the United States would lower that price of dissent and that people writ large Miles, you said a moment ago that you, you know, in the first term when you went against Trump, you knew there would be retribution against you. If you knew then. The scale of what that retribution would look like and the way it would upend your life and having to cope with the things that you've just described kind of in vivid detail, would you have done it? Or would you have just thought, you know what, I don't need this. I mean, you know, I'm going to walk on the other side. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I'd absolutely do it again Again, in the heartbeat. There is the unrepeatable feeling of freedom. When you release what's on your conscience, and this is not a lesson just for dissenters against a president of the United States. Everyone experiences this in their lives. Everyone has been in a position where they feel like someone else has wielded power over them to shut them up, whether it's a workplace complaint or a personal issue or some other transgression. And that can be so corrosive. It can take your life, if not actually, then at least figuratively consume so much of your internal space with that anger and that feeling like someone else has literal control over you. And Donald Trump did that very well to his lieutenants. I mean, look, he's made it very clear in his public life. Turn against me and I can and will ruin you. He himself has said the purpose of his revenge investigations against people like me and Comey and others is literally meant to win in the court of public opinion against them, not to actually achieve convictions in a court of law. And his aides have said that these folks are meant to be made an example of. And so you see that when you're in his orbit, you see that he wields that power. You're afraid. You're afraid to come speak out. But like I said, that's an experience that everyone has had. And I would never, ever, ever, ever take back the counter experience, which is feeling freed from that and feeling like no one can ever wield control over me again. Has it come with costs? Of course it's come with costs, but they are far outweighed by that sense of freedom. Well, as Emily just used the phrase moral courage, I just want to... Take you to something that on political playbook that I've read about today, that Alex Karp, the CEO and co-founder of Palantir, the tech company worth billions. that was decrying the Democrats as totally irresponsible, declaring his company being anti-woke and has had billions of dollars in federal contracts, has now done an interview in the past couple of days where he's talked about the Democratic Party as being very progressive and that he's always acknowledged that I've been a Democrat my whole life. And you just think, for ****'s sake. I mean, it's just... Absolutely bloody shameless, isn't it? Oh, the Democrats. Oh, I better reverse course now. Democrats are back in power. Well done for leaving it a full week. Well done. I mean, incredible, isn't it? This has been a hard thing to watch over the past 10 years. I don't know Alex terribly well personally. I'm good friends with someone who used to date him. And we've all seen these characters in Washington. You both certainly have. There are thousands upon thousands of them. Who are political chameleons and who go whichever way the wind blows. And certainly when Donald Trump came in, the wind wasn't just blowing. It was a category five hurricane. And they some of them even changed their entire visages. I mean, Emily said this when we were atop the building in front of the White House reporting after the election that some people have literally done plastic surgery to remake their faces to look more MAGA. I mean, that is the extent of the sycophancy. that we've seen, and also the fear. I mean, another anecdote would be earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Donald Trump was giving away his favorite shoes because he wanted his acolytes and his lieutenants to wear the same shoes as him, these Florsheim Oxford shoes from Chicago, but he wouldn't ask them what their shoe size was. He would just give them a pair, and even if they didn't fit and they were floppy, expect them to wear them. And we saw pictures emerge of Marco Rubio in these floppy shoes that didn't fit him walking around on Capitol Hill. That, to me, symbolized the level of fear in Washington, people willing to just camouflage themselves in whatever the leader wanted so that they wouldn't be presumed to be a dissenter. Watching a lot of these folks come change their tune with the Democrats taking power, I think is going to expose that moral rot in Washington, D.C. But this time... Americans will not forget because ordinary American voters had vastly more courage than the Alex Carps of the world. People with everything to lose, people who knew that liking a tweet contrary to Donald Trump could get them investigated for terrorism still did it anyway. While the Alex Carps of the world, these rich people and the billionaire class. Coddled Donald Trump and went and tried to seek his favor in every way possible. That is a contrast that this country will not soon forget. Good Lord. Ten and a half years in prison. He grabbed a boob. He kissed a lady. He sniffed a lady. And he had backdoor sex with a woman who licked his backdoor. Before she was even introduced to him. That is the right-wing podcaster, Megyn Kelly, giving us her first take on the conviction of the rapist, Russell Brand. He kissed the lady, he grabbed a boob, and he had, in her words, backdoor sex. Reducing anal rape to something that sounds like a cozy chat where you'd put the kettle on. It is staggering that in 2026 you can still hear those views affected. It is staggering that this is coming from somebody who is right in the middle of calls for Trump to release the Epstein files. And yet suddenly you understand the power that Russell Brand wielded within the magosphere and why they are all now running to his defence. Tone deaf as it sounds. It is unbelievable. Megyn Kelly herself is a lawyer. She came to fame, actually super fame, when she was on Fox News and challenged Donald Trump in one of the first presidential debates in Cleveland, Ohio. And Donald Trump was incredibly rude about her. Afterwards, and that propelled her to even greater fame, but now she's realised that there is a market to be cornered in rage and anger on the right-wing magosphere, as you say, Emily, and I think it's the kind of total, look, you know, our judicial system is not perfect. But Russell Brand was tried on criminal charges, and a jury of eight men, four women, found him guilty of rape. Unanimously. Unanimously. And you have to say, that is how justice works. And the idea to say, oh my lord, how terrible. I'm sorry. It's the law of the land. He broke it. He's been found guilty. Move on. I think it really shows you how severe the political tribalism is, that folks feel like they have to defend the indefensible. And Emily, you signaled this by bringing up the Epstein files. We have gotten to such a place where people are willing to pervert their entire morality and worldview to defend. pedophiles and to defend pedophile protectors and now you see in this case another example of defending a rapist because of that rapist's political allegiances and there's always for people to understand some of the psychology here there's always been a big big chip on the shoulder of people in the conservative movement. I came up in the movement and that chip was People didn't feel like they had celebrity boosters, right? You've got sort of the B team and C team of celebrities that say they're Republicans in the United States. So anytime anyone of any degree of fame expresses support for GOP causes, or in this case, joins the MAGA movement, there's a level of excitement inside the GOP that's tough to describe. They like that they've won a celebrity or two over. And clearly... Are not even willing to let those people go when they're accused of heinous crimes and convicted of heinous crimes. That shows you, I think, the degree of the tribalism. So true that I remember the McCain convention in what, 2008, where the only sort of famous face was John Voight. Do you remember? It was Angelina Jolie's dad. And it was like, oh, yeah, he's the one. He's the he's the Hollywood one that comes to the Republican convention. And it's true. But now, you know, they they love Sydney Sweeney. They love Russell Brand. They love they've got a whole sort of pile of them. And I think that's such an interesting observation. You cannot let somebody go. Even when they have been convicted of rape. Because if you could, then arguably you wouldn't have been able to stand by Donald Trump himself. And we'll be talking more about Megyn Kelly's views on Russell Brand on our daily episode of the podcast. But we'll see you next week. Bye bye. Bye for now. Bye. The News Agents USA is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. This has been a Global Production.