Trump LOSES IT With DERANGED Speech

The whole point of giving this speech is to empathize with the American public and say, look, we are working, but we understand we feel your pain. This was not a feel your pain speech.

He can't look you in the face and say your price of drugs are down when you're paying more for drugs or more for eggs. The 1776 warrior dividend, that is literally New York strip steak for his base. All the stuff he criticizes Biden for, he's living, Katty. This karma is a bitch, Katty.

Hello and welcome to The Rest is Politics US with me, Katty Kaye, with a slightly hoarse throat. Had a bit of a cold this week, annoyingly, before holidays. But you, Anthony, dressed for the holiday season. I'm glad about that.

I'm dressed, okay. Okay, my shirt says

Santa they are the naughty ones. Okay, that would be you and our producers caddy. Not me. I have been an angel all year

Okay, I am at the top of Santa's nice list good. It's early in the morning. If you had your coffee yet I've told my first Trump Ian lie today Okay, and here I'm coming in with a coffee caddy and coming in with a coffee. Oh my lord. Okay, so Cady, let's talk about lying, okay? Who's the liar in chief, Cady? Who's the greatest liar perhaps of all time? Well, I think we may be getting

into that because we are gonna talk about the President's speech to the nation. He gave a Oval Office address to the nation last night for 20 minutes on the state of the nation. It was a kind of mini little state of the union types of thing before he goes off on his holidays to Mar-a-Lago. I think it was given because he's feeling under pressure, the polls are down and this was an attempt to kind of get back on track and we will mention a couple of the lies that he made. And then in the second half we're going to talk about the article that has been rocking Washington DC

and it's a vanity fair profile of Trump's chief of staff Susie Wiles in which she is perhaps a little bit more candid than she intended. Can we go through that speech last night and just quickly run through a couple of the things that he said that are patently not true. So first of all Trump said inflation has stopped, wages are up, prices are down. The whole point of giving this speech I think and the speech he gave in Pennsylvania recently is to empathize with the American public and say look we

are working but we understand we feel your pain. This was not a feel your pain speech. Inflation has not stopped. The most recent data shows that prices increased three percent year on year in September. Prices are not down measured by inflation rates. Data shows that they've actually increased. Wages are up a little bit. There were good things that President Trump could have actually spoken about. Wages are up a little bit, but he kind of buries it in the absolutes of inflation has stopped.

The most odd thing I think in terms of what was true and what was not true, he claimed that he's working to slash prices on drugs and pharmaceuticals for Americans by as much as 400, 500 and even 600%. Now I'm not an economist but a 600% price cut in drugs doesn't that mean that if I go to the pharmacy they're giving me money Anthony? Well

they tell him that you know in the in the meetings with them they say you can't say 600% because the math doesn't work right and he says he's gonna say 600% because what 50% isn't big enough no 50% is a big event it sounds better and he did this to us and and again, wasn't in the White House long, but he had a Rose Garden speech. I was standing in the Oval Office. He walked out to the Rose Garden and gave a speech. I think the number was like 85% benefit improvement. He said

96. He came back in. I said, why just say 96? He said, well, sounds better than 85. I said, but you're going to get another four Pinocchios from the Washington Post. I don't care. Repetition is the mother of memory. That's what Donald Trump to take this. If I tell people that I've slashed their drug prices by 600%, they're going to believe that? Because one thing American voters do know is how much money is in their pocket and how

much money they're spending on their insulin or statins or whatever it is that they take.

So that's the big debate. That's the Marjorie Taylor Greene response. We go to the supermarket, what you're saying isn't true. It'd be one thing to say that I've closed the border and not one person has passed through the border, even though there have been people passing through the border.

People may or may not accept that. But they can't say, he can't look you in the face and say your price of drugs are down when you're paying more for drugs or paying more for eggs, but caddy He did something last night that people should really focus on And that is he was trying to get the culture war in there Okay, he was talking about immigration He was talking about crime. He was talking about men in women's sports.

We've had 10 transgender identified people play sports in high school in a 330 million person populated country. And he was also doing something else which he's escalating in Venezuela. We have said this weeks ago, I think Maduro is gone, he's escalating in Venezuela. We have said this weeks ago. I think Maduro is gone. He's escalating, but he was also downplaying it.

He was downplaying it last night. Guys, you're already here watching. I mean, come on, make it official. Hit the subscribe button. It's either down here or up here. I don't know where it is, but it's somewhere.

Could you hit the subscribe button, please? Help me and Cady, turn on the notification bell. It would be a shame if you missed the next episode. Not a threatening, it's a polite way of saying, please subscribe. Yeah, because there had

been speculation that he might use this primetime address to actually announce a policy change, right? some big news Which is sometimes what prime time addresses are used for is to announce a big moment

You don't want to do that because remember he's the forever war ender But he's starting a war with Venezuela, and he's trying to get maduro removed He wants to get into Venezuela with us oil And he wants to return, and by the way, this is a terrible thing for me to say, because I know regime change hasn't worked for the United States, but I would like to see Venezuelans do better than they're currently doing. If you look at their

economic data, the country over 30 years has been blighted. I'm not saying this is the right way to go about it. This is exactly the hypocrisy that other people would say about US foreign policy. But, but, but, Cady, he did a lot of things last night. Okay. So, because I know Trump, the 1776 warrior dividend, that is literally filet mignon, New York strip steak for his base. Okay. Here it is. I'm serving it up medium rare, extra rare for the real, you know, meat, gun-toting meat eaters.

So that was the bonus checks that he said that one and a half million veterans are going to receive. He didn't talk about, I mean, he says he'll pay for it from the revenues from trade tariffs.

Well, that was another, see, that's another point. This is how Trump's mind works. How does that work? So here's how Trump's mind works We took in money from the tariffs, even though we're running a huge deficit. We're gonna give this money to the Warriors So he's trying to tell his base that my tariff policy works and let's talk about lying Let me ask you the following question. How many people in the United States believe that the country pay the tariffs, Katie Kay. How many people?

I mean, the polling suggests that American people believe that they pay the tariffs and that the tariffs are not good either in the short term or in the long term.

Okay.

Do you think 20?

Do you think 20 percent?

I think it's about 20 percent. Yeah. Okay. So that's his base. His base is 20 to 35 percent and he's feeding the base, feeding the base. And it's not clear to me how this is gonna work for him

in the midterms, but that's the stuff he was trying to do last night. Your healthcare provider is a villain. I am your hero. Your veterans are gonna get some money. You guys love veterans.

I'm gonna give you that. But the other thing he did, he had more, whatever he was taking last night, I'm not saying this is factual. I'm just making an editorial observation. He looked pretty amped up. He looked like he was on the same stuff that Joe Biden looked like he was on during the

State of the Union a year or so back. Okay. He was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whoa. You know, all the stuff he criticizes Biden for, he's living caddy. This karma is a bitch

caddy. Can I do an Anthony here and do three things I took away? Yeah, please. Total plagiarism. Please. From you. One is that Trump is better off when he's fighting against something. In other words, when he's in opposition. This is the kind of speech that he was, if he was in opposition running for office, it would kind of make sense. But the trouble is now he's in office and he hates accepting any kind of vulnerability. He hates saying anything is not great. So hence, you know, I've slashed your drug prices, the economy is a plus plus plus plus plus. He can't say, I know things

aren't going well, but they're going to get better. He can't do the Churchill thing, you know, we're going through hard times, but you know, it will get better if we stick the course. Second thing, he seems to believe that if I shout at you, you'll believe it, which is a little sort of professor, maybe ex-husbandy. I mean, it doesn't really work, I don't think. And the third thing that's really interesting is the number of times he mentions Joe Biden. Joe Biden is living rent-free in Donald Trump's head at the moment. The New York Times had

this great breakdown. Donald Trump, since the inauguration, has mentioned Joe Biden an average of six times a day.

Why? Why?

Because Joe Biden beat him in 2020 and-

Beat his ass. That's the answer.

Apparently he's not a Scorpio, but you have told me I'm a Scorpio. I don't forget things.

Maybe Donald Trump should be a Scorpio. You try to pretend you don't know the stars But you know the Scorpios are known to be good. You're getting me there you see I'm seeing a little bit of a Scorpio in him. This is why I have to always stay on your good side, Cady. But let me let me just say this to you because I think. Okay lie number one was cost of living. Yes, right huge lie Okay lie number two

Was largest tax cuts in history Okay, the tax foundation provided comparison last night not even close Okay, and then he said the border, this is the one that nobody can really prove and a lot of people probably believe him. The border releases are now at zero.

Okay. Not true, Cady. Even the border patrol is saying that. And so to me, it's, I'm coming to the American people. I'm gonna lie to you because my staff is telling me we're not doing well I've slipped below 36% in terms of my net approval rating. So that's okay. I'm coming to you to tell you that we are doing well

Okay, and that the the the beatings will continue until the morale improves

It's just the right midterm strategy. Look, I don't think it is the right. I mean, I think there is a speech that Donald Trump could plausibly have given. And it's interesting that Newt Gingrich, who was, of course, famously the Republican Speaker of the House, who ran successfully in the House elections against Bill Clinton in the 90s and has been a kind of big, still is a kind of big Republican thinker. He put out this morning that this was a speech worthy of Ronald Reagan. I think that's a hard sell because it lacked the charm and the humor and the kind of empathy of Ronald Reagan,

who would have managed to do this and express kind of concern for the American people. But he could have given a good speech last night. I mean, he could have taught the White House genuinely believes and I've spoken to economists who have who are kind of a skeptical, but they genuinely believe that the policies that Donald Trump has enacted so far, the combination of the tariffs, the investment from the big beautiful bill, the tax cuts will come back to show their worth around the end of the first quarter of next year and that the American people will feel the benefits of those policies

in the spring of next year. He could have given the speech that said, look, I know that prices haven't come down enough. We had this post-COVID spike. Western leaders all over the world are facing disgruntled voters who are telling them that that post-COVID spike in prices, inflation is down but the prices never came back down. And I feel that for you. I feel that you're paying too much enacted, my economists believe it, you know, stick with us. This is going to work for America. And the boom that we're seeing in the stock market will trickle down to you. Now, economists may dispute that and plenty of people will dispute that, but that is a speech he could plausibly have given, right? As opposed to

saying, as he did, by the way, in that was picked up by reporters just beforehand Susie Wiles has told me to give this speech as opposed to giving this kind of angry I don't want to be here I'm going to race through this because I've got a dinner engagement to get to and then shout at you and tell you everything is perfect speech. I mean there was something he could have done that would have helped Republicans before the midterms. I don't think Republicans look at that and think, wow, this is going to be great for me in Pennsylvania.

So let me give you my inside the Trump brain. Okay. And here you go. Ready? I'm in. Is this your Christmas gift for me? I'm going in through the ear. I got my miner's cap on. Wait, there's nothing in here. Oh, that little P over there. That's the brain. I'm running over to the brain. I got my miners cap on and let me tell you what's going on inside the brain.

You want to hear caddy? I'm going to kill every one of you. You cannot imagine the cursing that was happening in the Oval Office after the release of the Vanity Fair video. It sets up the speech. OK, so he's now he's crazy before he starts.

He's gone off like a bottle rocket. The last 72 hours have been horrific in the White House. People are running for cover. And, you know, humor is always said in jest. My job is safe. The rest of you, your jobs are not safe.

Who said that? JD Vance, because he was democratically elected. He can't get knocked off, he can't get fired by Trump. But they're going crazy in there. Then the second thing is they, the polling numbers are bad. They're telling them that only I can fix it. In that pea brain, it's the supremo narcissist, only I can fix it, get out of the way, write me the speech, I'm gonna take a crayon, because that's what I usually write with a crayon.

Remember that memo we sent to Erdogan? I mean, it was one of the craziest things he sent in the first term. He's got the crayon out, writing over what they were writing and putting in the lies. And then the third thing is I am very pissed off, I'm very angry, and I'm seething to the

point when I give the speech, I can't really contain or control my anger. And that's literally how it went down. Now, contemporaneous to that, you have to talk to me about the willing accomplices here, because he goes to his staff and says, you know, this wall of fame for the presidents isn't enough. I want to apply editorial content in plaques and these brass plaques.

You're talking about the walk outside the Oval Office that now has the photos in gold frames of all the previous presidents. Down the colonnade, down the. The colonnade, except for Joe Biden, where there's just a photograph of an auto pen.

Right. And so I'm now going to provide editorial content on everybody.

Well, he's a famous presidential historian, so I guess that makes sense.

And so he rips Clinton and Biden and Obama and he says that Reagan liked him, so he likes Reagan. And DJT is a fan of Ray. So so so caddy it is out of control in the White House right now. So that that adult figure the the Pro Max adult not there man and and and they're letting him do whatever he wants and then Monica Crowley who I do know and work with that Fox who's now I guess the liaison director and helps him get off the plane and sets the table for him when he meets with the head of state somewhere is retweeting it. She's retweeting the plaques proudly look at how we're owning the liberals, President Trump.

Okay, so this is certifiable madness.

Briefly, it's been, you had the deaths of the Hollywood director, Rob Reiner and his wife and Donald Trump putting out on Truth Social that he died because he had Trump derangement syndrome even though his son has now been charged. And everybody across the board was appalled by that. It's been a I think it from the beginning of the week through now a slew of polls. It's not just one poll but a slew of polls saying that Americans are worried about the economy and that Trump is being

blamed for the economy. And then through this the Vanity Fair article and now this we've only got to Thursday. God knows what's going to happen you know for the rest of the week. But this has been a bad week by any standards for the White House right? I mean there's no way you could claim this had been a good week and they retweeted the Rob Reiner Truth Social post as well. I mean they, they, Monica Crowley retweeted it. I guess they think you double down on the base you own the lips trump thinks this work for him before you ignore the polls that show that americans are worried about. Cost of rent in the cost of child care in the cost of groceries and you tell them that the economy is going great And that's the strategy. Well, well, the point is there is no strategy

Yeah, we're gonna do whatever Donald Trump wants us to do whenever he wants us to do it We don't want to lose our jobs I know we're gonna talk about the Vanity Fair thing in the in the next half But you have to think about the warp delusion They think they're getting from Vanity Fair the picture of the George Bush cabinet during the Gulf War 2003.

That's what they think they're getting and they made them look like ghouls in the picture and there were so many different things that they did which I'll discuss with you in the second half from an editorial point of view. But Cady, this is going off the cliff and there's nobody there to pull it back. And so, I'm going to predict something on this podcast.

These people are getting fired, many of them. He's going to wait, but he's going to fire them. And I think Jared's coming back in for the second half of this. I do believe that I think Trump is smart enough to recognize that he's got to get somebody that has some common sense and has some ability to fend off some of his nonsense because a lot of the stuff that's happening a Jared a Steve Mnuchin a Gary Cohen would have said, okay, we're not doing it. Well, Trump wants to put plaques up on the wall of France have said, okay, we're not doing it. Well, Trump wants to put plaques up on the wall of France. Well, okay, we're not doing that.

Let's see if they would stop him because for me, I mean, I think unless Stephen Miller is moved aside because this address had Stephen Miller's, like you say, he went straight for the culture stuff.

This had Stephen Miller's hands all over it. This sounds like this address everything everything in that White House is being written by Stephen Miller. If Jared could come in and contain

Stephen Miller then maybe they can get some of this back on track and focus on this is

going off the rails and Trump is smart enough to know he'll never which is why he was angry last night. He will never admit that it's going off the rails, but he's smart enough to know that it's going off the rails. He's going to be making changes. I know we have to go to a break.

Okay, we're going to take a break and come back and talk about that vanity fair piece. Big question for you. What kind of a Christmas shopper are you? Are you the kind of person that leaves it to the last minute or have you already got it done?

What do you think, Cady. Really not that busy, but I thought I would say that to make myself feel self-important.

If you are like Anthony and have left it to the last minute again this year, we have the perfect gift idea for you.

Make someone that you love a founding member, Cady.

Exactly. It is the perfect present for the less organized among us.

Mr. Scaramucci, you can schedule it now and it will land in their inbox on Christmas Day. And listen, the political obsessives, and you know you have them around your dinner table, you know, they're gonna love this. Okay, it's ad-free listening, members only, mini-series, bonus episodes, Q&As and exclusive weekly newsletters from me and Katty Kay. It's so good I'll probably be giving it to my whole family.

Your poor wife.

Listen, she loves the Rest is Politics US. Your friends and family will love the Rest is Politics US too. Just go to therestispoliticsus.com and click on gifts.

That Vanity Fair article, we're going to talk about that a bit more in this half. So on Tuesday, Washington woke up to a profile of Suzy Wiles that got the whole town talking. It was one of those moments where I literally walked the dog in the morning, Antony at seven in the morning, and I bumped into a couple of friends of mine who are political strategists who live locally and we were stuck, they're like two little fishwives on the corner, have you seen this article? So, the whole of Washington is talking about this article. It was written by Chris Whipple, who is a journalist,

but who has also written books about White House Chiefs of Staffs and is a renowned political reporter and he was invited in by Suzy Wiles who sat down for 11 separate interviews with Chris Whipple and Chris Whipple halfway through this process gets a call from Vanity Fair says I hear you're working on this piece about Suzy Wiles, the first female Chief of Staff, we'd love to take a piece about it. And then he releases this piece and there's all these splashy Vanity Fair photographs. And he goes

through a kind of tick tock of all the different days and what happens in the White House. But it is a doozy of an article because point after point, Suzy Wiles contests some of the policies of the White House. She goes through USAID, says she was aghast at first because she thought USAID did very good things when Elon Musk says he was going to cut USAID slash shut down USAID at the beginning. She talks about Venezuela. She says that Trump wants Maduro to cry uncle, in other words, that he wants her out. She talks about the campaign of retribution that they had a kind of loose agreement that after 90 days there

would be no more score settling. That doesn't seem to have happened. She says that the lawsuit against Letitia James might be a case of retribution. She talks about the tariffs and says there was a huge amount of disagreement within the White House about the tariff policy. There's almost no policy where she doesn't draw back the curtain and show how much disagreement there was within the White House. I think it's a fascinating look inside the workings of the White House and of a chief of staff who at the beginning seems to have tried really to pull Trump back and then now

seems to be at a position where she's just saying, okay, it's not even a fight worth having with him anymore. What did you make of the of the article? Well, listen, I mean

The first thing is she did it over a year Everything's recorded So when she puts out on X that this was a reframing and this that and the other thing the journalist is laughing whipples Laughing because none of that is true the second thing is That is a confessional. My buddy Rick Wilson said this. I do believe this. She is telling people I started out as a normal

Republican. I worked for guys like Romney and DeSantis and others. I'm now here with Trump. He's a madman and we've got children working for him that are immature and I can't control the den, okay? You know, I don't know, I'm probably not allowed to say this, you guys will probably edit it, but they call her in the White House Mrs. Doubtfire and people will be criticizing me because of the imagery of it, but that's not why they call her Mrs. Doubtfire. They call her Mrs. Doubtfire because she's a nanny overseeing children

that are working inside the White House and working inside the cabinet. And so what I found revelatory about the whole thing is she's telling you, Pam Bondi, not up for the job, mishandled the Epstein thing, the JD Vance guy. He switched over to Trump because he wanted to win the Senate. He actually hates Trump. He's, in addition to

being a conspiracy theorist, he's vacuous on policies and principles.

She said his conversion to Trump's side was sort of political.

Exactly. And she goes through these people with a hot butter knife. I told you months ago when the stuff about the ketamine and Elon urinating in his underwear, etc. I said that came from Suzy Wiles. Okay, because I knew it came from Suzy Wiles because she hates Elon. And now we've got the confirmation in the Vanity Fair article. Remember, she denied it at the time. But now we have a recording of her saying that he's a prolific user of ketamine, which by the way,

I'm not here to defend Elon Musk, but you know, he sent out a drug test, okay, that said, hey, I'm negative on all this stuff. I don't know what she's talking about. Now he has a corpy personality, but she doesn't like him. And she told people in the White House

that he treats me like a secretary. Okay, so he she really does not like him and does not like the sexism associated with that statement. So so to me, how about Russell Voight? He's a right wing absolute zealot. Okay, and of course for people that don't know who he is, Russell is the OMB director and he's one of the principal writers of Project 2025.

This was the whole game, Cady. We said this in July of 2024 when we analyzed Project 2025. These guys looked around and said, we've got one empty vessel. We have an orange maniac that can reascend to the presidency and we can ride that bus into the presidency with all of our right wing zealotry and we can transform the country and make it a ruder, cruder country fashioned in our rude, crude image if we can get on the Trump train. And Suzy's telling you that,

right? Then she goes after Bobby, right? She calls Bobby Kennedy, quirky Bobby. Okay, so how are you, how are you backing off this? How are you backing off this?

After the article came out, she put out a tweet, which is rare for her. I don't think she's done a personally authored tweet since September in which she said that this was a disingenuously framed hit piece. The narrative from the White House, and what was interesting is that one by one, the cabinet members put out truth social posts or put out social media posts defending Suzy Wiles as the best chief of staff ever saying that Donald Trump loves her. And they all circled

the wagons around her, which was interesting. Clearly, the message had gone out. And the message seems to be, and Caroline Leavitt was saying to reporters, the problem with this piece is that it omits all of the good things that Suzy Wiles said about President Trump and the agenda. But these people aren't dumb. I mean, I spoke to Chris Whipple shortly after the piece came out yesterday morning. And he said to me, they knew exactly what was happening. Initially, he went to the White House and says, I'm going to do a book because I've

done a book on Chiefs of Staff. I'm going to do another book. And they said, fine, come in. And he starts getting the access. interviewed her a couple of times, he says to Suzy Wiles, oh look, Vanity Fair wants to do an article on this. And Suzy's response is fantastic, congratulations. So she knew exactly that this was going to come out as a Vanity Fair article and later come out as a book. They're trying to

say in the White House that they didn't know and that they hadn't realized that she was going to be quoted so much. These people are long-term political operatives. They know if something is on the record, and there's a recorder right there, it's on the record. They also know that journalists are looking for the nugget that is news. They're not going to put in all the fluff about Suzy Wiles saying that Donald Trump is the best president ever. And by the way, the one person that Susie Wiles in this piece is not critical of is Donald Trump. She's actually very complimentary about Donald Trump. She's critical of everybody else,

but she's not about Donald Trump. I got to push back for a second. What about the alcoholics personality? That's a positive. So apparently the way she framed it in the sense that he thinks he can do anything. So he's got an alcoholic. She's not saying he's a drink. We know Donald Trump doesn't drink. He doesn't drink. But the way she's framed is Donald Trump has an alcoholic personality and He believes he can do anything. There is zero that he can't do is what she says I have heard today that actually he doesn't mind that The framing of that because he likes the idea that he thinks he can do anything that he's omnipotent

I've been through up for a second though, because I saw that differently I saw that as impulsivity Right sassiveness. That's what I see it as. Yeah, I move volatility

I read it the same that somebody who believes they could do anything and has nuclear codes is not necessarily The safest possible option. That's how I read it, but Trump apparently didn't read it like that. He did by the way We're gonna go into Trump in a second, but go ahead. So Suzy Wiles believes that Trump got a very bad hearing in the first term. And she felt that by giving Chris Whipple all of this access, she was going to get a fair hearing. She somehow believed that Chris Whipple was going to be the journalist who was going to write the story that she wanted him to write of this White House. And that's where she has taken umbrage. Now, in which case, I don't know

where these people have been because journalists don't go and do interviews and write stories based on trying to flatter their interviewee. They try to find the news. And Chris Whipple found a ton of news. And he did exactly what any responsible journalist would do. He reported the news. Chris Whipple found a ton of news and he did exactly what any responsible journalist would do. He reported the news. I mean, I don't know why they're being so naive about this. If she is genuinely surprised at this piece, I really don't know where she's been and she must have known all of those things that she said like Elon Musk on ketamine, there's a big debate about the

tariffs, you know, the USAID stuff. She was aghast. What did she think he was going to say? Anyway, so she that's that is why she went into it. She wanted this to set the record straight. I think it really blew up in their faces.

I'm in a nut house and I'm trying to act like not a nut, but I can't control the nuts in the nut house. Mrs. Doubtfire as the nanny overseeing children. Okay, but now let's go to Trump. Okay, so the one thing that Trump is absolutely furious about, Cady, the one thing, no picture of Donald Trump in the article.

Mind you, given those pictures are not very flattering, so I don't know if he'd want one.

Well, it doesn't matter because he's not pictured in the article. Who the hell are you? You have to understand how Trump thinks. I brought you in. I won the presidency. You didn't help me win the presidency.

I wanted Solomio, and who the hell are you guys to showcase yourselves? I am in a one- man show with one spotlight. So he's furious over the no picture. Okay. Number two, what did he like? He liked the chainsawing of the staff. He loves that. He wants everybody to hate each other so that he can come in there as the big gorilla savior. He likes that. Kellyanne Conway once said to me, he wants scorpions in a bottle. Scorpions in a bottle. Okay. So he liked that. Okay. The retribution thing he actually liked,

he doesn't like the fact that you can indict a ham sandwich with a grand jury, but unfortunately you can't indict a Letitia James. Okay. That was the joke in criminal procedure. You can indict a ham sandwich with a grand jury. But now the new joke is going to be you can indict anything but a Letitia James. Okay. And so the retribution is not going, but he, there's a tell in this story and we're going to go back to this, Gadi, trust me, because this is going to be the first quarter of 26. It's a tell in the story on Venezuela.

And what did she say? She said, and I quote, okay, we're gonna keep blowing up boats until he cries uncle, Nicolas Maduro cries uncle. Now, knowing Trump's personality, they're gonna say there are narco terrorists somewhere in Venezuela,

and they're gonna missile strike areas of Venezuela, and they're gonna say that we're blowing up drug factories or whatever, and guess where they're going to missile strike areas of Venezuela. And they're going to say that we're blowing up drug factories or whatever. And guess where they're going to be? They're going to be near military installations. So that the generals who are loyal to Maduro pick up the phone and say, hey buddy, it's now time to move to Turkey.

Okay? It's now time to move to Turkey. Okay? It's right there in the Vanity Fair article. What I'm telling you is right there in the Vanity Fair article.

His argument that this is just about the drugs and about immigration, I think she has revealed in Nicolas Maduro until President Nicolas Maduro cries uncle is a way of saying they want regime change in Venezuela, which is going to be a problem for them because Congress is not, at that point you have to go to Congress.

But why do they want regime change?

Why do they? I think that's still, unless it's just all about the oil. We spoke about this on Monday with Michael Steele when he was on the program, but I think it's all about the oil, right?

Yeah. And that was a great show, by the way. We missed you. I appreciate you lying to me and telling me that you missed me, but Michael Steele is a superstar, as are you. And that was a great show. I was actually at the Ford Motor Company, a big shout out to the Ford executives that invited me to Dearborn, Michigan. I was in the legendary Rouge assembly plant where they make the best selling pickup truck in America, the Ford 150.

They're making one car every 53 seconds. And it is a unbelievable achievement, by the way. And American manufacturing is revitalizing. And so if Donald Trump has helped that, I want to give him credit for it. But guys, there's so many easier ways to do this without the bellicosity, without the craziness, without the hardship on so many other people. But Cady, they're going into Venezuela for the money.

Okay? That's what they're going there for. Okay? And by the way, some of the Trump family members have written to me and said, Hey, Mooch, I'm not going to be involved with the oil permits. You got to walk that back. So I am walking that back. But it's, it's a more of a just stall thing, Cady. It's where did that tanker go? We captured the tanker. Where did the tanker go? We took the oil, Cady. Let's just be honest with people what the US is doing and why Trump is doing it

Okay, he announced this morning a merger of his media company with another media company valuing the company at six billion dollars Okay, the wall street journal's got a piece on the trump cash machine That has started on january 20th 2025 Okay, the ramping up of the multiple billions of dollars of profits for Donald Trump

Okay, and and when they were reporting it this morning on CNBC the look of derision on the Reporters face was like I don't understand how there's no check on this. There's no emoluments Check on this caddy But that's what's going on. And she's no emoluments check on this, Cady. But that's what's going on.

And she's telling you right here in the Vanity Fair article.

We are gonna leave it there.

I need more time, Cady. This is a therapy session for me, okay? You're cheaper than my therapist. That's it, we're done? I need more time.

I think Suzy Wiles needs a little bit of therapy too after her week. She's not had a great one. Susie hit the therapist this weekend

Susie I'm just letting you know the musical is Fantastic in the West End, but you got up you got a tone down You got a tone it down, but I think she's gone a couple these other guys are gone. This will be sort of Mid-tour in Washington. She's gone. Yeah. Yeah yeah. Yeah, this will be mid-year. He's not going to embarrass himself this moment. He learned that from the first term. Ultimately, a chief of

staff's job is to protect the president from themselves. And this week, she hasn't been able

to do that. And the big winner, he does like that, by the way. I'm just letting you know.

Well, as you mentioned, Anthony, Michael Steele, former RNC chairman, joined me for the program this week to talk about Venezuela. You'll be glad to hear that you also joined me for our Q&A for our founding members.

You can go to therestispoliticsus.com and sign up and be a founding member to learn You can go to therestispoliticsus.com and sign up and be a founding member to learn

more and listen more. Thank you. Thanks everybody. Thanks for listening.