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COMMENTARY HEATHER COX RICHARDSON ... OCTOBER 10TH, 2025 Heather Cox Richardson: This Week in Politics \| Explainer PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_Uz0daxOSo
This Week in Politics \| Explainer Heather Cox Richardson Oct 10, 2025 591K subscribers ... 398,284 views ... 16K likes From Politics Chat, October 9, 2025 You can watch the full chat here: https://youtube.com/live/7UgFQT-QIl4 Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack... You can also find me: Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heathercoxr... Resources: https://redwine.blue/ https://www.commoncause.org/take-action/ https://www.congress.gov/members/find... 00:00 - Are Republicans ready to turn on Trump? 06:18 - Why is Marjorie Taylor Greene breaking with Trump? 11:29 - What about the 25th Amendment? 18:00 - What happens to voting: two things happening right now 27:58- What’s with Miller and plenary power? 32:37 - What we can do moving forward 34:45 - We are not helpless 36:04 - Keep your communication lines open and varied 38:04 - We are not helpless 44:52 - National Guard troops do not want to be deployed Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess Transcript 0:00 Are Republicans ready to turn on Trump? So, we'll just kind of treat this like an ask me anything and see what you think and see what you came up with because I haven't I haven't even looked at these. All right. Uh, what do I think of Eric Swallwell's tweet about how there are more than 100 Republicans ready to throw in the towel on their Trump loyalty? Great question. And I think that Swallwell's tweet was really interesting. Um, so what Eric Swallwell, who is a Democratic uh, representative from California, was doing in that potentially anyway, I think was putting pressure on Republicans because here's where we are as a country right now. The president of the United States is clearly deteriorating mentally and probably physically. And everybody is aware of this. This is not some deep secret or conspiracy theory. Watch them yourself and see what you think. So, this presents a real political problem for a lot of Republicans, especially people who have been counting on the votes of mega Republicans because what 1:01 happens when Trump is no longer able to do his job. Now, at the same time, you also have two major three major problems for the Republicans. One is uh the the economy. 22 states are now sliding toward a recession. The tariffs are sending prices through the roof. Um the the deportations are making things very expensive and the renderings of people to other countries are making things very expensive. Um job growth is way down and and people are really hurting. And now we're just about to have these um these higher prices cutting uh uh kicking in on the Affordable Care Act markets. The economy is a real problem for the MAGA Republicans. But another real problem is the attacks on immigrants and I'll talk more about that in a little bit I'm sure. But those are very unpopular. But then there is also the issue of the Epstein files. The Epstein files are what Swallwell was 2:03 articulating in that tweet that Republicans are backing away from the Epstein Files. And in a way, that's kind of a no-brainer. The Republicans in power would not be trying so incredibly hard to keep the Epstein files under wraps if there was nothing damaging in them about prominent Republicans, including President Donald J. Trump. And we know that there are things in there about Trump, both because the Wall Street Journal said so earlier this summer in an article and because when asked about it on Capitol Hill, um is what is today? It's Thursday, so it must have been earlier this week. Um, Attorney General Pam Bondi said refused to answer whether or not she had seen photographs of Donald Trump with um inappropriately dressed or undressed um what the the Senator White House who was questioning her said was young women. But of course, we know that the people 3:02 who are uh were being trafficked in the Epstein circles were children. So, um, so she refused to answer that with a no, which seems like if somebody said something like that to you, have you seen these photographs? You would say if it were if you hadn't seen him, you would say no, right? But instead, she attacked um, uh, White House and sort of said, 'Well, you're uh, you're slandering him.' But she never said no. And that's I cannot tell you how crucially important it is to listen to what people say, especially in this administration, because often we make the mistake, those of us who try and answer really honestly to things of hearing what we expect to hear. And in that case, if you listened uncarefully or casually, you heard her saying, 'Well, you're slandering him.' Which sounds like a no. But it is not a no. No is no. And in that case um that was 4:06 really revealing that she refused to say that she she could she couldn't answer that question. No. So the answer to that obviously is yes. She those photographs at least the implication is that she has seen them. Well, why would you want to protect that when you know even if you are a MAGA legislator that many of your MAGA supporters care deeply about the Epstein files. That's one of the reasons they supported Trump um and and the release of those Epstein files. So, if you're a MAGA Republican, you're in real trouble here. And Swallwell's not wrong, I suspect, when he says a number of Republicans are ready to jump ship because um he is hearing that directly from colleagues, I'm sure. But those of us who are sort of on the peripheries of the um of Congress hear that, too. But 5:01 we also hear that um that people are waiting for the courts to take care of things, that they're hoping that Trump is not going to is going to be incapacitated. They're just sort of hoping somebody else is going to take care of it. So my sense is it is certainly possible that Swallwell was just saying straight up this is the truth. I think more likely he was putting pressure on Republicans to say come on guys, there are hundreds of you out there. There's a hundred of you out there. Just freaking do something. And you know that that is a real problem for the MAGA Republicans because uh House Speaker House Speaker Mike Johnson is refusing to swear in Adelita Graalva, the new representative from Arizona, who will be the 218th vote on the discharge petition to bring the release of the Epstein files to a vote. And they're obviously putting a ton of pressure on the four Republicans who have signed on to that to take back their signatures. Why would they? I mean, you can pressure them all you 6:02 want, but why would they cover it up when actually you're on the right side of this question, not only morally, not only historically, but in terms of MAGA voters. So, um, so that I think is what Swallwell was all about there. Um, oh well, this comes goes right in with, uh, with the question about Swallwell. Why Why is Marjorie Taylor Greene breaking with Trump? 6:23 is Marjorie Taylor Green taking a different position? Again, really interesting because um Marjorie Taylor Green wanted to run for Senate in Georgia and she wanted Trump's endorsement and he would not give it because she cannot win or at that time she could not win as a Senate candidate in Georgia because she's such a fringe candidate and she's in a district that is very heavily skewed toward Republicans. So they were like ain't happening because you can't win here. She has backed. She's obviously angry about that, but she is also looking at where her best political advantages are. And if you notice, she has come out for the release of the Epstein files. Now, she's come out for um the the extension 7:05 of the ACA premium tax credits, which will help stop this incredible spike in in health care premium, insurance premiums. She has also um come out against the shutdown. She says the Republicans should uh should get back in session for the shutdown. And all of those things that she has identified have as me as much as 80% of Americans behind that. So she's reading the tea leaves and she's saying, 'Listen, Maggie just told me, Trump just told me I can't get any further with him. So I'm going to see where the wind is blowing and it's pretty clear the wind's blowing over here.' And that's a really important bell weather. Similarly, Joe Rogan has come out against Joe Rogan is a really popular podcaster in what they call the um it's the bro no the the manosphere the manosphere. Um and he was instrumental in convincing a lot of young men to vote for Trump. Now he's come out against uh what Trump is doing. A lot of uh similar people in that um 8:07 manosphere sort of podcast world have come out against Trump recently and against his behavily against him but against his policies. Rolling Stone just had a big piece on it a couple of days ago and again they're looking where their audience is and probably also personally embarrassed that they um you know one of the things about politics if you really do it deeply and like my the friend I spent time with today and I study it. I mean this is what we do. This is what we do in our spare time. We read books on it. We study it. We look at situations etc etc. People just coming in sometimes don't see the whole picture. And it sounds really good to have a really quick fix and of course this makes sense and they jump in. And if you're a scholar, you can have an adviser who says, 'Wait just a second. Let me explain to you the backstory and what's going on here.' But if you're a podcaster who sort of was playing with politics for the first time and is watching what's happening, you you feel burned. And this is what they said. One 9:05 guy, and I forget which one he is, said, 'I wish I'd never gotten involved in politics.' That's the wrong takeaway. The the right takeaway. if you are surprised by where we are is wow this is more complicated than I thought and much more important than I thought so I'm going to do it right going forward anyway so these people are are realizing this because again what can Trump offer them at this point I mean what literally what who is he bringing on board who is he who is he bringing to their audiences who is he bringing to the voting booth his popularity is plummeting and you know really he's making this authoritarian grab I'll talk about in a minute but there's no reason to stay behind him at this point unless you are ideologically committed to what his administration is doing and there actually aren't a lot of Americans who are so um so you see that and interestingly enough I did take a look in the car at um when I was parked in the in the parking lot I don't look at my phone in the car just FYI people always are worried about that I can't um 10:02 drive and look at anything that's not an option except the road um um I I saw that Oklahoma Governor Um Kevin Stit, Republican, came out today against Trump's mobilization of the National Guard into Chicago saying this is bonkers. You can't do this. And if Biden had sent the Illinois troops into Oklahoma, you all your heads would have exploded and it's just as bad if Trump does it. And that's that's again that's important. That's Oklahoma. It's Oklahoma where the um the commissioner of education has just basically been forced out of office after not only having a porn on in his office when people came in but also the stuff he was pulling and now they're digging through his files and it looks really bad. So if you're out there in that MAGA world as a politician and you're still hoping to have a political career, they're starting to take steps to say, 'Oh, never mind. We would we didn't really mean all that. Now we're backing off.' 11:01 And you see it in um you're also seeing it in Lieutenant Governor Jeff Duncan in Georgia who has switched parties and now is a Democrat and said and now has come out against all the stuff that he was for before. Now people have said that's opportunistic. He doesn't really believe that. Maybe, maybe not. The point is that he sees the winds changing and that's that's what's happening happening there. All right. Um okay, the here's another question on the similar lines. Okay, these are all interesting. 25th Amendment. The 25th Amendment about What about the 25th Amendment? 11:32 getting rid of an incapacitated president that actually takes the coordination of the vice president and a number of cabinet members. And it's got a lot of steps. Really interesting. The history of the 25th amendment. And I'm going to go down a little bit of a rabbit hole because I I find this I I think this is important. People I should write about this. Maybe I have written about it. Everybody thinks we got the 25th Amendment because of Kennedy's assassination. and and because of Kenned, you know, after Kennedy's assassination, they realized they had to make a lot of changes to the vice presidency. But we actually get the 25th amendment because Eisenhower wanted it. 12:04 Eisenhower is Dwight Eisenhower is a Republican president after World War II. He's the guy who was in charge of the forces during World War II, a great strategist, etc., etc. All right, so Eisenhower had health issues. He went in office. He had um a number of stomach ailments. Now I can't remember what they were. He also had I believe a mild heart attack. Maybe it wasn't so mild a heart attack. And he was he had surgery as well. Sorry, off the top of my head. I don't remember what his illnesses were, but he recognized that he would be incapacitated. But even more than that, he had been a very close study of the military leadership during World War I. and he recognized that there was a major leader during World War I who was mentally unwell um during part of his commanding career um probably from overwork, too much time on the front lines, whatever. And he made bad 13:03 mistakes that cost people their lives. Eisenhower really took that to heart and he realized that underlings in any capacity, either military or political, had to have a system by which they could say to a superior, 'Dude, you need to sit this one out.' And so he started the ball rolling for the 25th Amendment. And and if you think about our history, I'm sorry, you're getting me in a real history mood today. We have certainly had presidents who were not okay. And the the person that people always point to is Nixon, especially in the last days when he was drinking heavily and very very erratic. But what they did is they had people around them, Nixon Ed Kissinger, for example, who could say, 'Don't pay attention to what he's doing. He's been drinking or um don't you know he's this guy's over tired or whatever.' In this case, we don't have that. Trump doesn't have anybody surrounding him any longer who is able to do that. Instead, 14:02 we have something very different, which I'm going to get to in just a second. But so, what about the 25th? If in fact, um um uh Vice President JD Vance and members of the cabinet went to uh invoke the 25th around Trump. Um it would just cause a tremendous meltdown. I am certain people are thinking about it because remember what we see, what you and I see on TV is Trump at his best. That's when he's got makeup on and he's got um whatever they're putting in his system to keep him coherent and so on. That's him at his best. So imagine what he's like when he's not at his best. So I'm certain they are concerned about that. But there is, I think, underway in the administration a contest to um to curry favor with where people think it is important to curry favor. So, you're starting to see a lot of jockeying and some people 15:03 really, really, really sucking up either to Trump or to Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff. I'll talk about more in a second. and others who are kind of backing away a little bit and you know you're you're watching them kind of jockeying for a position in a future JD Vance um presidency or a presidency in which other people hold power and I don't have anything brilliant to say about that because I'm not watching that all that closely in this moment but I promise you people are thinking about it and in fact you had somebody like Christine Gnome today coming out uh secretary of um Homeland Security coming out and saying um you know, everybody is lying except Trump. He's the only one telling the truth. Oh, come on. Right. So, what she is doing there is supporting Steven Miller. Um and and really throwing her eggs in the Steven Miller basket. So, I'll tell you more about that in a second. So, is the 25th going to be invoked? I would not hold my breath. Um 16:03 and I have I hope I will have more time to say more about that in a second. Oops. I just I'm sorry. I just hit delete on somebody. Sorry about that. So much for your comment. That wasn't I didn't intend anything by that except I hit the wrong button. Um yeah, here's another question here where uh universities in Florida, the legislature is considering it hasn't passed it yet, telling Florida universities that they need to um name roads after Charlie Kirk. And that's a really interesting thing. First of all, it's ridiculous. But second of all, Charlie Kirk was a right-wing provocator, right-wing a uh activist. Um, first of all, that ain't going to change no undergraduates ideas about anything. Anybody who's trying to do this is not doing it to teach undergraduates anything. That that they are not paying attention to what's the name of the streets are. Um, they they don't pay a lot of attention to um to what's in a classroom, things like things that matter like that matter a lot to alum alums and they matter a lot sometimes to donors, but the students do 17:06 not notice that. But what that does sound like is an attempt really to circle the wagons around the idea of um of uh this this radical right ideology and to insist that this is what people are going to be teaching in in universities which of course is been part has been part of the recent attempt on the part of the administration to try and get I believe it's nine universities to agree essentially to give a leg up and really push um right-wing ideology. It's not conservative ideology at all, which by the way is already taught on campuses. It's right-wing ideology. And um maybe it'll pass, maybe it won't. It's I I think it's ridiculous. And I think it's, you know, absolutely contrary to everything that a legislature should be doing, but it's not going to change a single undergraduate's mind. I promise 18:00 What happens to voting: two things happening right now you. Here's a question that I'm going to tie a bunch of stuff together with. Somebody Terry asked um if they continue to get away with declaring major cities war zones, will it stop the voting process? Okay, so I'm going to back up a little bit here. I just threw out Steven Miller's name. I also throw out Christine Gnome's name. And I think there's something that that so far I haven't seen in the questions that is important. And maybe it's because you're seeing it everywhere else and you don't need me to talk about it, but there's something really two really important things that go hand inand maybe three that are all operating right now. First of all, Donald Trump is not apparently I'm sorry, I just hit delete again. Um, Donald Trump is apparently not in control of the administration. He's pretty openly not able to answer anything that's going on. He throws questions to other people. Um, if you hear him in interviews, he just sounds bonkers. You know, he's not calling the shots. Two people at least are the ones running things. One is or appear to be. One is Russell Vod at the office of office office of management and budget 19:05 and I'm not going to talk more about him today I don't think but the other is Steven Miller who is the white house deputy chief of staff white house uh uh um adviser Miller is according to the Guardian the one who has ordered the strikes on the Venezuelan boats a report out today says that he thinks this is a way to convince people that immigrants are terribly dangerous at a time when as I mentioned before uh the Trump administration is deeply underwater on its attacks on immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, because during the campaign, Trump said that he was only going to go after, you know, the criminals, the rapists, the murderers. But what people didn't understand, and when I I had an argument with somebody who was voting MAGA over this, what people didn't understand is the Trump administration considered anybody who had entered the country illegally a dangerous criminal because they had broken the law about not coming in without documentation. Now, that is not 20:03 a felony, by the way, but they considered anybody who was undocumented a criminal. And that's what they did in the first term, and that's what they meant in the second term. But you had to read between the lines. Now you're seeing it played out. And people don't like it. They they do not like losing their neighbor of 30 years. They do not like, you know, watching mothers being torn away from their children. They do not like this. So you still see Trump and Christine Gnome and um and people like Miller talking about how immigrants are, you know, criminals and terrible and so on. And yet support for immigration now because of these attacks is the highest it's been in years and years and years. People are like, 'Wait a minute. We're a country of immigrants.' And a little bit of a rabbit hole here. I just want to Well, never mind. Although that's killing me. I might come back to it. Um, so he's apparently trying to convince people that these these people in these boats are bringing 21:05 in, as Trump said, enough drugs to kill. I think Trump said 30,000 people. Well, there's a real issue here in that the drugs that tend to kill people in the United States, the illicit drugs because some of these drugs can be used in in in um therapeutic ways as well. But the illicit drugs tend to be fentinyl which comes from Mexico from c from um from um precursor chemicals that are made in China. And that's what the Biden administration worked to do was to break that that cycle so that China would crack down on the shipping of um precursor chemicals. And the uh administration that both the min Mexican and the American administrations were cracking down on the financing of what are essentially at this point factories building fentanyl in in Mexico. But the people that the US has been targeting it 22:01 have been from Venezuela, which does produce um I think it's cocaine. I'm sorry, I'm not really good on on I'm better on the on where the interventions are than where the actual drugs are grown. But in any case, they do produce drugs, but it's not fentanyl. They produce something else. And um the at least one wife, alleged wife of one of the people who died said, 'My husband was a fisherman.' And of course, they're being struck way farther than they ever could have gotten across the water to the US in those small boats. So it doesn't add up. I mean, the the the administration has never said they had never shown any evidence to lawmakers or to the public that they're actually hitting drug dealers. They're just showing these videos of these boats blowing up and they are truly horrific horrific videos. I would urge you not to watch things with all the trauma they're already going through to not to watch the things that really you think will will be a 23:03 problem for you. I do try and watch them because I feel like I'm keeping a record and I need to see things, but they are they are profoundly profoundly disturbing. So, um, the if Miller's in charge of that, Miller also not wants to get rid not only of undocumented immigrants, he wants to get rid of people of color altogether. And, you know, he has this fantasy of this sweep of stopping immigrants, of turning America into some version, fantasy version of his past. We have always been a country of immigrants and and the country by the way dates from the constitution. Uh although we certainly have a precursor to that but um we've always always been a nation of immigrants. His family is a nation of immigrants. I mean his family is a family of immigrants. And when people 24:00 talk about it, it always gets me when somebody like Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity talks about this great past before those people arrived because in the 19th century, Irish Americans were literally not considered white, nor were Italian-Americans. And so this idea of there was some pure white, I mean, whiteness really is a construct. I'm not going to go through that. But this idea that that anyway, all right, that was the rabbit hole I wasn't going to get down. Anyway, Miller is is really going after the purification of the country in his words or in his ideology into a white um a white Christian nation, which it never has been, by the way. It just never has been. We had Muslims in one of the the first uh non- indigenous people to set foot on what became the United States of America was a black Muslim man named Estavanico. Um which someday I'll do a video on. But anyway, I'll stop. But he has this 25:06 fantasy of going back to what he thinks of this this white world. But the problem with that is it involves getting rid of the Democrats who are protecting the idea of a multicultural democracy. So one of the things he is doing is he is trying to declare war on democratic cities, on cities where people of color vote, where women vote. And in order to do that, they've tried a number of different things. And one of the things that Steven Miller is really pushing is the idea of Donald Trump invoking the Insurrection Act. The Insurrection Act is under title 10 of um the US Code. The US Code is our laws. They're available online if you ever want to look. Um they're pretty complicated, but they're not um they're divided up, so you can find this stuff pretty easily. And the insurrection act gives the president 26:01 power to override the posit which is from 1878 and says that the government cannot use federal troops against US citizens to enforce you know normal law enforcement. You can override that with the insurrection act which is actually sort of a boiled down series of laws from a long period of time. Trump desperately, I'm sorry, Miller desperately wants Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act because, as he says, that gives Trump any power he wants. It gives him plenary power. I'm sure there's a question here about that. Um, what what this is all about is that there is a German political theorist named Carl Schmidt. I've talked about him before, named Carl Schmidt. and he looked at liberal democracies and was he he wasn't keen on how liberal democracies worked and he said that liberal democracies and this reflects the constitution under which the VHimar republic worked but he said if you have 27:06 an escape clause essentially that says you have um you can create an exception that's where the power in that constitution really resides it's extra constitutional you can go outside it and I've talked a lot about about how this administration is going outside the constitution because you can declare an emergency and then do whatever you want and if you can do that you can make everything an emergency and you can get rid of liberal democracy well Trump has announced I believe it's eight emergencies declared eight emergencies since he took power a tariff emergency an emergency at the border and so on to garner all this power but if he invokes the insurrection act according to Miller he can do anything he wants. That's the plenary power. But somebody asked the other day, I mean, sorry, asked here. Um um why did Miller do that the other day What’s with Miller and plenary power? 28:02 when he was talking to CNN and he said, 'Well, as we know, under Title 10, you know, if Trump invokes that, he has he has plenary power.' And then then um u Miller just stopped. But the it wasn't a technical difficulty. Miller's eyes were still moving. He wasn't there wasn't it didn't go dead. Um, why did he just stop there? Well, maybe he had a brain freeze, which by the way I did once on a radio show. I completely forgot everything. I couldn't re I couldn't remember anything. My mind went completely black and um and I'm just looking around my kitchen like, what am I doing here? So, it can happen. It's only happened once, but like literally I still am sitting there thinking I'm on a radio show and I have no idea what to say next. Uh, it was a that was a book tour probably 20 years ago. So maybe he just had a brain freeze. Or maybe he was playing to the one person who is his main audience. He is constantly on TV. Trump watches him and he is feeding 29:07 Trump these stories about how terrible the country is and how much power Trump has. and leaving that last word plenary power and then stopping. That's what everybody heard. That's what Trump heard. And that um that is clearly very much on Miller's mind. He wants he desperately wants Trump to invoke the insurrection act. And that would give him the power to use the troops against the people that the administration is calling traitors, is calling uh unamerican, is saying, you know, they are now saying that anybody who speaks up against Trump is Antifa, which isn't even a thing. It's it's a it's the idea that you don't want fascism. I guess I'm Antifa, right? Um, and they're they're running this these this whole idea that there's this organized group of people who are 30:00 somehow a conspiracy theory, which is just bonkers. I'm sorry, it's just bonkers. So, that idea of of getting Trump to agree to invoke the insurrection act is part of what's going on with these they are clearly showing him videos of Portland in 2020 when he talks about boarded up um plywood windows, for example. That was actually the case on the the main square of Portland in certain places in 2020. It's not at all the case today. I mean, there's just there's, you know, before the the judge who just had took on a case about the uh deployment of National Guard troops in Portland said, you know, there there were 20 people at the ICE at the ICE facility and they were, you know, giving you the middle finger. That is not an insurrection. That's protest. you know, there's just no reason to call out any kind of troops. So that whole concept of creating an insurrection and saying you can put troops on the streets because of that is to go back to that question very much about 2026. It is 31:05 very clear to everybody that this administration is profoundly unpopular and that when it goes, not if it goes, when it goes, we're going to look at an entirely new country. And so those people who are wedded to the idea of their ideology of Christian nationalism or of white nationalism in um Miller's case or even just of power even just people who want to be making bank on this administration as a number of them are are doing everything they can to hold on to that power and this is part of the whole attempt to keep the um the idea of there being an insurrection going on in Chicago or Portland. Why those cities? Somebody asked here. Because um Portland uh I think they thought might be easy after 2020 to get people to turn out and create a situation that might look as if it were an insurrection. LA similarly, Chicago 32:03 because it would be a real prize for Trump because JB Pritsker is there and because he has um he he resents JB Pritsker so profoundly. Um what is my take on the judge whose home exploded after she ruled against Trump? My take on the judge is she's a good judge. My take on her home exploding is we don't know. Uh this is why we have investigations. It sure looks bad. Um but um home fires, as anybody who has experienced something like that, I have not personally. I have seen one uh knows they they they often behave in bizarre ways. All right. So I'm going to go here 32:39 What we can do moving forward um uh because it's time for go. I'm going to leave you here with um um with what we can do about this moment. Um a lot of you picked up on me saying that you should pick me up on YouTube as well as on Facebook because I am trying to be available in every possible place be just in case something happens to one 33:03 of the channels. And by that I mean um what happened to Twitter? you know, I was very active on Twitter and then it got taken over by the radical right and I um I still read on Twitter. I don't post there anymore um because it's it's a it's a cesspool. Um so I'm on Blue Sky, I'm on Facebook, I'm on YouTube, I'm on Substack. Um uh I'm on Instagram. Uh and I think that's it. I'm not on Tik Tok. That person on Tik Tok is is an impostor. um with the idea that if one of those sites goes down or becomes a place where none of us want to be for one reason or another and by the way all of the places that I have talked about have really good things going for them and really bad things. No system is pure. Um I I just am keeping a lot of options open going forward in case something happens. You should do the same. You should have multiple ways to get 34:02 information and you should have multiple ways to reach your family and friends. Not because something is going to happen, but in case something happens, you know, you you you want to have something there. And I remember when it was clear that Twitter was going bad, a number of us who didn't know each other in person DM'd each other, uh, sent messages to each other and said, 'I don't want to lose contact with you. Where are you moving?' and and that sort of idea, making sure your people are available through email, through other channels, through whatever, it's just smart. It's just smart in a world where I always give new technology two years. Figure two years something dies and you move on to something else. Um, so that's why I do that. You should do the same. But what can we do in this moment when we have a small cabal seemingly in the We are not helpless 34:49 White House trying and in in Congress trying to get rid of our democracy? And the answer to that is that we are a thousand% not helpless. The Democrats who are trying to stop this are not in power. They are though holding hearings. 35:04 They are constantly proposing amendments to slow down the passage of legislation that would cause trouble. They are now standing up for the preservation of the premium tax credits that will keep the Affordable Care Act uh premiums lower and with luck keep it in place. This is obviously a stealth attack on the ACA or Obamacare because the Republicans have been trying to get rid of it forever. And project 2025, which um vote uh Russell Vote of the Office of Management and Budget is trying to um to get rid of. Um they're trying to do all sorts of those things, but we we can do an awful lot of things. So, first of all, before I talk about the visible quick things we can do, please do not forget that next month there are 52,000 elections across the United States of America. find what elections there are in your town. Whether they're for anything from the school board or the 36:04 Keep your communication lines open and varied the the um the people who manage the sanitation department or the town offices or judges, important judge cases coming up or um whatever whatever you've got in your state, show up now. Get out the word now. Make sure people know those are things are happening now because off-year elections are often determined simply by turnout. People aren't paying attention. They think everyone's looking at 2026. If the Democrats who are standing against MAGA put up a big show in 2025 and win a lot of races in 2025, that's really important messaging for 2026. That says to people they've got to moderate their stances or drop out. It also gives more fuel to people who are jumping into races. And if you're watching, you're seeing people are jumping into races all over the country. 37:01 Are they all going to get the nominations? Absolutely not. Does not matter. Their voices are really important because they are articulating the ideas that we want people to think about. Encourage those people. Um, but don't become so wedded to somebody in a primary that you won't vote against whoever does win I mean sorry won't vote for whoever does win the primary. This is the year when we're just throwing all the hats into the ring getting all the ideas and they're going to be articulated in a concerted program going forward. But get involved in those races today this minute. And there are all kinds of organizations across the country that can help you do that. All right. But if if you're when you're not organizing for those races and when you are um when you're not sort of cheering on those people trying to stop the takeover of our country, um what else can you do? So, first of all, um the visibility brigades that are over the 38:01 highways, but also the card campaign and that I advertise, but there are more than those. There are ones that are We are not helpless 38:07 specific to states and so on. those things and and speaking up in those uh targeted um visible ways. Boycott of Tesla for example or obviously the the the boycott over Jimmy Kimmel was incredibly effective. Those boycots, those targeted boycots get people's attention and they make it clear that MAGA is not invincible. So, Jimmy Kimmel being returned not only to the major channel on which he performs, but also on Sinclair and I think it's Nextar, I can't remember what it is. Um, that was a really big message to those who were saying, 'Well, we have to go along with what Trump wants because that's what our viewers want.' It was a really big message that no, it's not what your viewers want. Um, you better stick with us because we're the ones who are actually the ones who are able to to afford your product. That mattered. So 39:02 that on a daily basis, those the boycotts, the visibility, the getting the word out, all the organized things really matter. Now, we have coming up on October 18th, another No Kings Day. That's going to be really important to get out. And somebody asked me, what's more important, the big cities or the small towns? Well, in the United States, we actually have an organization that counts. Unfortunately, it takes about two months to come up with its final count. Um, but visible visibility in the cities is a really big deal. But one of the things that's been really important about the protests since Trump is that they are also taking place in small towns, especially rural small towns. That's really important. Turning out a 100 people or 50 people in a small rural town where people think everybody is MAGA. really important because it makes people realize they are not alone and they start to make connections and they start to realize that um that they're 40:02 not alone that this idea that MAGA is all powerful is simply wrong. So if you can show up for those peacefully, crucially important in the United States and maybe in other countries, I don't know their history, that protest movements are peaceful. And I can tell you the history, the ideology behind that, but crucially the history is that in the United States when protests turn violent, the the the middle people who are not involved in politics turn against the protesters. And you need them to change society. That's really really important. Think of um the the civil rights protests in the 1960s that showed up on television. You know, Bull Connor turning fire hoses on children and uh and attacking them was phenomenally powerful to northern middleclass families who didn't care at all really about what was happening in the American South till they saw it on 41:00 their TV news shows. So, um so that's going to be really important. But even before we get there, the administration is trying to convince Americans really hard. I mean, literally, they held a round table at the White House yesterday on on Antifa. Kristine Gnome is out there saying all this ridiculous crap about how I don't know, they found Antifa's the founder of Antifa's girlfriend. I mean, we need to remind people that that's not true. that they are the administration is trying to sell them a lie that is not true. And the way that you do that is you film your town, your city, and say we're not inviolent here. That that frog who was protesting at the ICE facility in Portland. That was incredibly important because it's really hard for ICE to look like they're fighting, you know, some terrible, you know, armed group when you got a frog dancing, right? Videos matter. videotape things. Videotape what is happening to the people who are being snatched off the streets. But now here's 42:06 another really really important thing going forward. Videotape it and post it. I'm sorry on social media. Make sure people see it. But here's another thing. Somebody called into um C-SPAN today when they were doing an interview with Mike Johnson, the speaker of the house, and she was uh is uh the wife of a service member who deployed twice into I believe it was Afghanistan and has special needs kids or medically fragile kids and she will not be able to afford their medication. they will not be able to afford their medication if the House doesn't get back into session and work on ending the shutdown because right now um the the there's a problem with military pay because of the shutdown. And her words about what are you doing? You're making six figures a year and you're not bothering to show up to do your jobs and my children could die. That was incredibly 43:04 powerful. And putting on social media what you care about, who's getting hurt, is a great way to remind people of what this country stands for. But also, one of the things that happened after um something Haggith had done, I think, was older white men started to put on um on social media along with family members and other people about what it meant to them to grow up in a world where either they had served or their their fathers had served to serve the United States of America and why they were going to stand against the rise of authoritarianism in this country. I think I watched every single one of them. I shared so many of them. Blue Sky cut me off. I thought they were fabulous. I love listening to people talk about their history and their principles. And we can all do that. We can flood the zone with again 44:06 short videos saying you know my dad was at Guadal Canal or um you know my son you know went straight from college into the service because he cared about protecting our country or my daughter flew helicopters um in you know in Iraq or I was a nurse in Vietnam. that that idea of protecting our country and also not just that way but also in our schools. You know, I teach kids how to read. I, you know, I make sure kids have a meal. Those sorts of reminders of what this country is all about are really important right now when you have somebody trying to tear all that up and turn us into a military dictatorship. National Guard troops do not want to be deployed 44:52 And that, by the way, I just another word here. The National Guard troops do not want to be deployed the way they are. And it's important to remember there's a big difference between ICE and 45:03 Border Patrol and the N which are there voluntarily and um the the National Guard troops who do not want to be there and and the military doesn't want to be put in this position either. So this idea that it's the US against, you know, it's us the people against the military, it isn't yet. I mean, certainly Hegith wants it to be that way and so does Trump and certainly Miller does. We're not at that stage yet. We are still at the we the people stage and that's really where our power resides and those of us who care about protecting democracy so far outnumber those people who don't. Now is our time really to flood the zone with the stories about what we do, what we care about, why our ideas about this country matter. Um because now is the time when people's decisions are being made for the next year or so. And it's funny that people say stuff and don't realize it's 46:00 important. Somebody said to me the other day, you know, that they're taking down some of the navigational buoys near us. I had forgotten that. I had been really into it when it first happened. And then, you know, now I've spent the last several months on the water. You need to know where the navigational buoys are, right? Not necessarily because you're navigating around them necessarily, but because that's that marks where the the ledges are. And you need to know that even if you're in a small craft and the idea that we can all rely on GPS is just wrong. My phone doesn't get GPS where I'm talking about. Those things matter. And if once she said that, I thought, you know, I care about that, too. We need those navigational buoys. How expensive are they really? Is it worth it so we can give $20 billion to Argentina and bail out a friend of Scott Bessins? I don't think so. We need to do that because this regime is going to end. When we don't know, but it is going to end and we must be very clear on the other side of that what we want the 47:03 country to look like. Because if it is still chaotic, we don't know who will jump in and scoop it up and say, 'Oh, we need this. We need this. We don't need that.' What we need to do is make sure we are very clear about what the future looks like and what we want in it. And now is our time to articulate those things that we think are valuable. And and everybody has a say in this. And we're not all going to agree. Some people are going to get what they want and some people aren't. But we can probably agree pretty broadly on things like public education and health care and jobs and clean water and clean air and renewable energy and all the things that will bring America into the 21st century with a more complete and just multicultural democracy than we have ever had Four.

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