Bonus! These Are Not Serious People...

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:53 Thomas: And welcome to Opening Arguments. This is a bonus extra. This is a practice. This is a getting our reps in. So it's an extra. This is free post if you're a patron, not being charged for this. There's just so much to talk about that we did a lot of recordings and the it all went down, I actually didn't get to release this when I thought I would because there was so much going on.

So I feel like we've already improved since this one and Matt was actually sick. So his voice is even quieter than normal. And of course, I do everything I can all the time to make sure the audio is as good as it possibly can be. Was a really informative episode and I wanted to make make sure that you still got a chance to hear it because there's so much good stuff. Takes us through the impeachment articles against DHS Mayorkas. And they're not great.

Then he also talks about the border bill. Of curse, we learned a lot along the way. Anyway, so before we get to that, I just wanted to say a couple things. For one, thank you so much again for supporting, for listening. Please share. And there's one more thing I keep forgetting to say.

If maybe sometime in the past you gave this show a real bad review, just hypothetically, you could see it in your heart to go edit that review, maybe change it to reflect how you feel now, I would be infinitely grateful. That would be so nice. It would do wonders to repair that damage. Already seen some people do it. Thank you so much. And also a Q&A thread up on patreon.com/law. Can't wait to do the first Q&H with Matt. Lots of great questions there.

I'll tell you, I thought that episode with Casey was so good that we're going to do another one. So unless something crazy happens, Monday's Deep Dive is going to be another one with Casey, which is just so thrilling. That look forward to it. So while is a free post, it doesn't mean that non-patrons get out of the auto ads. I'm sorry, non-patrons, you're still going to hear an auto ad. For everybody else, let's get right on over to it!

0:02:51 Thomas: You doing, Matt?

0:02:51 Matt: Just hanging out in the bullpen, having a good time, making

0:02:53 Thomas: You wanted to talk about something from your life first though, right?

0:02:56 Matt: Yeah, I might as well tell you about my day. I think I do actually practice law all day, and it's fun to talk about. It is not always fun to talk about, though. I just want to tell you, just to give you a little sample of what I do all day. So I started my day off by having to tell a father of two U.S. citizen children that he'll never be able to get permanent legal status. That's a big part of my job, is just telling people they have terminal cancer, basically. Took me a while.

I didn't get trained for that. It took a while to get used to telling people things like that. I ended my day by trying to figure out how to keep somebody who's been dead for two years from getting deported. So that was a She was actually one of my favorite clients, and we really enjoyed her. She would always come in and give out $20 bills to the staff for lunch and stuff. She's really sweet. She has a COVID nurse.

And so we got to know her over the five five years when I was representing her, we were getting somewhere in her case, and she's a true hero. I mean, she passed during the height of COVID. And yeah,

0:02:58 Thomas: Sure.

0:03:43 Thomas: COVID or unrelated?

0:03:44 Matt: No, she died of COVID, yeah.

0:03:45 Thomas: Oh my gosh. Wow.

0:03:46 Matt: And I got to tell you, I have so many clients who've worked in ERs and on the floor right in the middle of the crisis who are undocumented or in the process of being deported. It's sick. It should be an instant visa. You should just get a visa if you did that.

0:04:00 Thomas: Doesn't that happen with the military as well?

0:04:02 Matt: Does, And we should see it the same way.

0:04:04 Thomas: Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, I'm anti-military as could be, but if under the current stupid system we're in somebody volunteers to put their life on the line for capitalism or whatever, uh, the very least the country should recognize, like, okay, well, you're in now. You're should be no negotiation on that. I don't even even understand. Jeez.

0:04:22 Matt: Just instant visa. And I was thinking that, I'm sure you were too, all the way down during the pandemic, these people that are going into these ERs every day when there's no vaccine, gearing up, having to wear protective equipment and making their faces hurt and everything all day. And a lot of them did not make it. And this is a really sad story. But it's system does constantly try to deport people, even if you say, hey, this person died, they're not with us anymore. They will deport them. They'll just end with an order of deportation. So I thought, you know, this person, and I always do this for my clients, we've had a number of people pass during, I mean, these cases can take 10 or 15 years, so it's not unexpected.

0:04:39 Thomas: Right. Oh.

0:04:58 Matt: And so the way I see it, it's kind of like burying somebody with dignity, right? You can close the case out with dignity so you have a nice clean end of the case. Because otherwise, if you don't do anything, if You don't show up to court, then it's just an automatic order of deportation. So I had to, but they won't just take your word for it, obviously, that someone died.

0:05:15 Matt: You do have to prove it. So I Had to try to get her death certificate from the family and go through all this, because we actually got noticed that she had a court date coming up, and we realized we hadn't closed her case out yet. We'd heard that she'd passed during the pandemic. Was kind of how I ended my day, was just putting that together and getting it out. So that's life in law firm. Never know what you're going to be doing.

0:05:14 Thomas: Yeah, that It sounds like the easy thing to do would be, all right, well, this person passed away. I don't, that's no longer something I'm working on. But it is really nice that you try to close it out in that way. And you handle it with dignity. Idea but that we be trying to deport someone who were alive, who was a COVID nurse who, I mean yeah, just insane. Surely, You to transition

0:05:51 Matt: It is. It Surely Congress is working. Joking.

0:05:57 Thomas: Yeah, surely we've got our best and brightest on that issue, right?

0:06:02 Matt: No, we got clowns is what we got once again. I got to tell you, Thomas, you know what I absolutely refuse to do in my life and I have not done for my entire adult life? I will not call these people the GOP. I just will not do it. There's nothing grand going on here. It's not even a party.

0:06:17 Matt: They're just old. It's the old. Yeah. Now it's the O.

0:06:16 Thomas: Nope, they're just old at this point. It's Oh.

0:06:21 Matt: And the words of the late Logan Roy, these are not serious people. This is a lot.

0:06:25 Thomas: Careful.

0:06:26 Matt: I mean, I mean, this is quite a week. I

0:06:28 Thomas: They're Going to try to deport Logan if you, if you keep that up.

0:06:32 Matt: True. Spoilers.

0:06:34 Thomas: Like he's dead and he's fictional. Don't care, we're Still Doing it.

0:06:36 Matt: He was Scottish, technically. So, you know, it could have happened.

0:06:39 Thomas: That's Right, yeah.

0:06:40 Matt: I'm just going to read you verbatim one one of our favorite New York Times headlines in a long time. I absolute kudos to the editor for this one. This is good work. Dateline Washington, Katie Edmondson reporting. Reporting, dysfunction reigns in Congress as GOP defeats Multiply. That's the headline. The subhead is absolute genius. A day of chaos in the Capitol, Republicans failed to impeach the Homeland Security Secretary, lost a vote to speed aid to Israel, and cheered the demise of a border bill they had demanded.

0:07:07 Matt: Let me read that again. In the day of Chaos in the Capital, Republicans failed to Impeach the Homeland Security secretary, lost to vote to Speed Aid to Israel and cheared the demise of a border deal they had demanded. Love it. You'll love to hear it.

0:07:10 Thomas: No, It's Worth it. It's Worth it. Yeah.

0:07:21 Clip: You are not serious figures.

0:07:24 Matt: So good. No, I love it. I mean, that really was the best season of any show ever. So good. Yeah, so well done. Very unserious people, you defeated yesterday, 216 to 214. They thought they had this one locked up. I'm going to tell tell you about my hero of the week, the guy that we can point to this week and say, this is the guy. This is a guy who did something unequivocally good. 74 -year -old Al Green of Texas, a representative, not the singer, but the representative.

0:07:28 Thomas: God, that show, it's Amazing. What's Oh.

0:07:48 Matt: And he had just had intestinal surgery and they wheeled him in from the hospital in a hospital gown. So good.

0:07:54 Thomas: I love That I Love when they

0:07:55 Matt: And they were counting on him being in the hospital. They'd done the votes, they'd done accounts, and they thought he was out. And Mike Johnson specifically said, we thought we knew how many people were going to be in the Capitol today. Day. So good. So absolute.

0:07:55 Thomas: Do that. That's Awesome. Yeah.

0:08:08 Matt: I mean, just gold star and a half to Representative Al Green. Love it. You'll love to see it.

0:08:11 Thomas: Mike Johnson has had, I like thing going, have you noticed that it's, it, like, he might be that he doesn't know any better or something, but he'll just be like, yeah, well, we were gonna do that and then Trump said not to, so we're Not Doing. You're like, you're just saying it, that's Weird. Are You supposed To Just Say It.

0:08:15 Matt: Yeah. Yeah, right. We thought this old guy was going to be in the hospital and then he wasn't. Literally.

0:08:29 Thomas: Oh, okay, that's refreshing, I guess. I don't know. At least, thanks for your honesty, bud.

0:08:32 Matt: You know, a couple months ago, Mike Johnson said that he was Moses chosen to lead the people through the Red Sea or whatever, but I think he might've forgotten that Moses also Got lost in the desert for 40 years. More the speed we're looking out here. He's, would be a good place to play the Al Green song, probably, but if a ram, because lyrics are perfect, but it's also got a groove. This is a, a good song.

0:08:34 Thomas: Oh. God. Now Funky.

0:08:59 Matt: Drive on until I get there. This one goes out to Al Green of Texas, 74 years old, Hero of the Week. Thank you very much.

0:09:04 Thomas: Love it.

0:09:05 Matt: Who were they impeaching and why were they doing it? That's what we're here to talk about. So Alejandro Mayorkas has been the secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, my least favorite federal department of all time. Been doing that since Biden appointed him. She's been through a lot of DHS secretaries. He's doing the stuff that everybody else does. I can't really remarkably say. I mean, there's been some differences, certainly, some policy differences, some enforcement differences. We're what doing right now is not that different than what Obama was doing, to be honest. So to keep in mind as we talk about why they're impeaching him. The last time that a cabinet-level official was impeached was 150 years ago. And was pretty legit when it did it was a guy who was given kickbacks for trading posts, that's how long ago it was, trading post rights, and was charged with criminally disregarding his duty and basically prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain. Fantastic.

0:09:52 Thomas: I've been a little busy. Catch me up on, so did this guy kill somebody? Did he rob a bank? What did this guys do that they're trying to get him for?

0:10:00 Matt: He's Bad at his job is the allegation, so that's that's a lot lot of people in America, but no, it's absolutely not in

0:10:03 Thomas: Oh. Is That an impeachable offense? Because uh bad news for literally everyone in government

0:10:10 Matt: Congress. Yeah. So the founders actually had a look at that in the constitutional convention. They specifically declined to add maladministration to be a reason for impeachment because they knew that everybody would get impeached. No, no point to that.

0:10:11 Thomas: Yeah.

0:10:22 Thomas: Plus that, and you know, usually voting is the remedy for that right, yeah

0:10:25 Matt: Yeah, that's and voting is usually supposed to be the remedy for most things that impeachment is trying to get to these days. But, you know, once in a while you do incite an insurrection and maybe we should do something about that. But, you voting is the way out. Know, impeachment, I will say it's always been a political process. This is nothing new. It's, it's not the law. It's basically just vibes, right? It's just, it's vibes. It's whatever you think it should be. S whoever's in power against whoever's not. But this is bad. And I wanted to talk about it tonight because I think that it's not being covered. I don't think anybody's talking about it, just how stupid it is. And it's so stupid that I almost hesitate to talk about it at all because this is like idiocracy stupid. We are really just going down the slide here. But I think we have to mark this moment.

0:10:44 Thomas: Impeachment What plants crave, is that what you're saying? Yeah.

0:11:08 Matt: On our way to having a professional wrestler as president. We kind of that's true. We did worse.

0:11:11 Thomas: Think we went below that already, I think, I think could aspire to have President Camacho at point from the GOP anyway, yeah yeah

0:11:17 Matt: We had president who was So, you know, even better. Went through these articles of impeachment and I want to take you through them just a bit, because we should never do this. This is really stupid. And I'm really concerned about this as a precedent. Like, generally supported the two Trump impeachments because he actually did stuff that I consider to be high crimes and misdemeanors. He tried to do some corruption from squeeze something out of a foreign leader. And he did kind of incite an insurrection in the Capitol. Those things are impeachable. I have no question about that. But all, let me take you through it, it's got two articles, they're both stupid. One, willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law. So sounds bad, what do you think you did? I was thinking actually, like, what do they want, because that really might be it, they might just want mass execution, I mean they do at this point but I mean that, because if you, if you think about what we're going to be talking about here, they don't present any solutions, they're just saying that he's not doing stuff.

0:11:52 Thomas: He not uh killing people trying to get across the border? Yeah.

0:12:08 Matt: But what they want is impossible, is actually impossible, as we'll talk about.

0:11:59 Thomas: Yeah yeah what they saying the law is, hmm hmm

0:12:13 Matt: Well, the law apparently should be enforced against everybody all the time, which is not really how democracies do law. Don't want your criminal justice system working that way. That's North Korea, right? You enforce every law all the time against everybody. For this one, that's what they want for immigration laws. I'm and I just have not really seen people talking about what's in these articles. Start at the beginning. In large part because of his unlawful conduct, millions unlawfully remaining in the United Sates.

0:12:26 Thomas: Okay

0:12:39 Matt: Just saying a lot of people are coming over the border. That's

0:12:39 Thomas: That's been happening for how many, you would know how many years is that exact, yeah, wow

0:12:45 Matt: Our whole lifetime. And the numbers are a little higher right now, but we saw these kinds of numbers in 2000 when the economy was really good. What happens. The current numbers are mostly due to the fact that trafficking organizations, unfortunately, have gotten wind of how easy it is to make a bunch of money sending people up here. And we also have economic collapse in Venezuela. You got criminal gangs in Central America and Colombia that I'm helping people escape. Got just of these people coming for different reasons. And these trafficking organizations are making billions of dollars doing this. Mayorkas isn't in charge of any of them.

0:13:12 Thomas: I, I, this definitionally, a "you base," in quotes, that is already not well off, like, how, how are they making so much money that

0:13:22 Matt: Will get whatever they possibly can together to pay $10,000, $15,000 or more to cross the border each. So you can imagine the numbers we're seeing right now.

0:13:30 Thomas: Is, I, I guess I'd never thought about that being that much money, and the hell is that going, where's that go, yeah of course, yeah

0:13:35 Matt: I mean, it's bad people. I'm not going to say it's good people that are bringing them over here. Cartels, there's organized crime of all kinds. Who's not organizing it is Alejandro Mayorkas. And saying pretty directly here that because of his unlawful conduct, millions of aliens are illegally entered the United States. And that's just absurd to suggest that one person is responsible for this somehow. Because he's basically being a DHS secretary, that's what they're saying. We move on to, Mayorkos has implemented a catch and release scheme. You heard that, that expression, catch and release? Yeah.

0:13:53 Thomas: Yeah I just hear it as Republican propaganda about the system.

0:14:04 Matt: Yeah, totally totally, but it was originally a fish thing, and always like to note these things when we see them, that there's like super dehumanizing language that we're using, and I really don't like this, but the other thing about catch and released is that it's been used my entire career, and I started under Bush, and I've been hearing this expression the whole time. Like, like, it didn't start last year. Every president in the entire time I've been doing this has been accused of catch and release. And nobody's been impeached over it until now. So

0:14:05 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:14:27 Thomas: The main problem just, well, I know there's a lot of problems, but, that we don't have enough resources in the system to process people as fast as they would need to? I mean, are, is there suggestions from the Republicans as to what could be done here to make this better?

0:14:42 Matt: You're officially smarter than Mark Green, the guy who filed this. Do Yeah. Not have the resources. We don't. I mean, and if Congress wants to give just incredible amounts of money, unbelievable amounts of money this would require, they could do that. Instead they're impeaching him for not doing the thing that he can't afford to do.

0:14:51 Thomas: That ought to do it, oh

0:14:57 Matt: Yeah. Just kick him out. No, that's exactly it. We don't have the capacity right now. We have bed space, I think, at CBP has something like 15, no, sorry, about 4,000. They were trying to hold about 15,000 just before the pandemic. I don't know if you saw the pictures, but there was just horrible conditions at some of these stations in these holding cells. Cells. So, you know, there's like 4,000 CBP beds and something like it. There used to be at the height of it, like 50,000 ice beds, And right? If you're talking about last, I guess in December, I think we hit a peak of something like 225,000 people came, right. You got 4,000 CBP bed. So we do the math. It's pretty bad.

0:15:11 Thomas: Yeah, so the, I mean, the fundamental thing here, though, this quote-unquote catch and release, is, I mean, that, as much as that there's major problems, and yes I would be fine with more resources, I don't, that isn't a particular problem to me, really, or am I wrong about that? Isn't that the process of, all right, um, violated such and such, such, uh, free to go, like anyone else, until your court date, kind of thing? Or what is it that, kind of think?

0:15:45 Matt: No, that's right. They're getting notices to appear. And for the the most part they show up because they know what happens if they don't. So yeah, but I guess now it is. Right. And again, Bush was doing this. This is not anything new. Trump was doing this to some extent because they can't hold everybody.

0:15:55 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. Well, that doesn't sound like too big of a problem. What's the problem part, Matt?

0:16:10 Thomas: I don't know what the alternative is. Yeah, we could make a massive prison industrial complex too, like a sequel to our current one at the border. That's probably what they will someday do, right?

0:16:21 Matt: That's what they want. That's going to take a lot of money and a lot infrastructure that we don't have. And I hope we never have. That's why Trump's been talking about building camps, like actual camps to put people in, presumably open air camps. I don't know. But I'm concerned about the future. We'll talk about this at the end of it.

0:16:32 Thomas: Yeah. At least we have a 50-50 chance of that not happening, Matt. So we can be very comforted by that fact.

0:16:39 Matt: Yeah. Think it's a little higher than 50-50.

0:16:43 Thomas: Organized vote, please, God.

0:16:45 Matt: Yeah, just Trump out and do not allow this to happen again, please. Let's move on to Mayorkas willfully failed to comply with the internal detention mandate. So it's pretty similar. Talking about out two different mandates here. Of them is the that requires them when they find people in this country. There are certain people they have to hold on to that are mandatory detention under Immigration and Nationality Act Section 236. And realistically, though, they can't do that. They can hold on people that have the most serious felony records, and they do. Very good at it.

If you have, I think at this point, I was just checking the numbers before we got on, about 20,000 beds now at this time. There were about 50,000 before the pandemic. Funding has been variable. Realistically, you think that you are going to be able to detain every single person, and again, mandatory detention can include somebody who has one cocaine possession conviction, for example, right? Destroyed the priority guidelines. So basically, it was fair game for everybody. There wasn't any kind of prioritization between the guy who had the single possession cocaine and the guy who was a rapist, a serial rapist.

0:17:36 Thomas: Hmm.

0:17:43 Matt: I mean, I mean, it's, you got to have some, again, if you're going to deport anybody, maybe let's start with the very worst people.

0:17:43 Thomas: That doesn't seem good. You would think even Republicans would agree with that. So was this the typical Trumpian, like, thinking that's some heart firmer stance of like, nobody should ever be a lot. And then what he does is messes it up and makes it even worse by their standards.

0:18:03 Matt: It Was literally, I don't want to be seen out in public saying that some people should be deported less than other people. And again, it'S totally counterintuitive to actually doing law enforcement, if that's what you want to do. I'D rather disband ice myself, but that's just me.

0:18:07 Thomas: Right. Right, yeah. Someday. Patreon goal, Matt.

0:18:16 Matt: Well, you know, I

0:18:17 Thomas: And Thomas, disband ICE. Get us there, put it up.

0:18:20 Matt: Realistically, though. What I understand, last I heard, ICE has the capacity, realistically, maybe, to deport about one in a hundred undocumented people in this country right now. And that's if they really worked at it. You And think about one in a hundred undocumented people and one in a hundred people generally, right?

0:18:35 Thomas: Something like one percent, right?

0:18:37 Matt: Exactly. And of most people in a group of people has a felony record and maybe has a serious one that would be under INA 236 required to be held. You can extrapolate the numbers out. It's just, they don't have the space. They don't have the detention capacity even for that. And Congress is yelling at DHS for not doing the stuff that it's not funding them to do,

0:18:42 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:55 Thomas: Well, you said Trump blew that thing up, is this something Biden could piece back together, you grab the pieces of paper in the wind and be like, all right, let's let's get back to doing the prioritizing, because that seems less bad than what is happening now.

0:19:07 Matt: Did. September 30th, 2021, we had a big memo come out that essentially restored something resembling the Obama priorities. Obama kind of invented in a real way the idea of putting on paper, here's the people we care about the most, here are the people that aren't as important. And that got really controversial because at the bottom of the pile were people with deportation orders with no criminal records that were more than, I think at the time it was five years old. So you can imagine the Fox News reaction to that, right? That we're not going to deport people with deportations orders. Again, if you don't have the capacity to deport every serious felon, then you can see how that works.

0:19:09 Thomas: Oh, okay. Yeah. It's, I mean, they're the party of complaining with no solutions. It's just, that's all it is. There's no solutions, they don't want anything better. They fundamentally want power first, and that involves complaining, complaining, complaining, just to get in power. And then, if we're lucky, they do not actually care about the issue. That's like the best case scenario, is that they do actually care, and they're just faking it. If we're unlucky, they are extremely motivated to do something evil.

0:20:03 Matt: We're just a little in -between lucky, they just can't do any of it, which is the stage we're at right now. So there is that.

0:20:09 Thomas: I must have misheard you. I thought you said they still were not being prioritized. But so under Biden, that's been restored at least.

0:20:15 Matt: No, I'm sorry. I meant under Trump. So, there was that time when it was completely open season, they just had to grab anybody. And that's one of their complaints, though, is they're saying that, you know, how dare you determine that some people are less deportable than others, when that is kind of what the law already sets up, even apart from the policy. Really fun thing about these of impeachment that I really enjoyed is that in several places, they cite Fifth Circuit cases that were completely overturned by the Supreme Court. They just cite them as a lie.

0:20:19 Thomas: Gotcha. Okay.

0:20:39 Thomas: This Supreme Court?

0:20:40 Matt: Even the Supreme court 8 -1 overturned Texas Texas v. U.S. in 2022, eight to one, finding that Texas didn't have authority to challenge these enforcement guidelines I'm talking about because they don't. They're federal enforcement guidelines. Assuming that Roberts are a little bit more of a holdout. I don't remember, but they

0:20:43 Thomas: Wow.

0:20:52 Thomas: Yeah. Who's the one? Did they let a raccoon get in there temporarily for this? Or no, we have somebody that absolutely effing crazy in the Supreme Court.

0:21:04 Matt: Just let Greg sit in for the day, you now, just find that Texas had authority.

0:21:06 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Spill the beans. Was it Thomas or Alita?

0:21:12 Matt: 100% one of those two people, you So,

0:21:14 Thomas: Unless maybe Gorsuch is also an asshole enough that there may be some like stupid reason. No, but this is, sounds like an Alito or Thomas. Yeah, it sounds like an Alita or Thomas let's put money drum roll, but I don't know everybody play along at home. Who is it? Sotomayor. No, just kidding. Real curveball. There?

0:21:30 Matt: Know, Kavanaugh wrote the majority decision. So good on him. It was Alito who dissented.

0:21:34 Thomas: You? Go? Hey.

0:21:36 Matt: So there you go.

0:21:37 Thomas: Yay! Who had Alito? Who can pat yourselves on the back? Yeah, congratulating Kavanaugh for writing that majority opinion is like, hey, good job doing the most basic part of your job, which is someone comes and says, "Can I do something completely blatantly unconstitutional?" And you're like, think real hard, and then you're like, no. Wow, hero.

0:21:47 Matt: Yeah, no, your name on the SAT. Good job. Yeah. So,

0:21:59 Thomas: By the way, Alito failed. There, Alito...

0:22:01 Matt: Yeah, I'm sure.

0:22:03 Thomas: Didn't get the credit for putting his name on the SAT. Alito. Ah, I messed it up again.

0:22:10 Matt: So I just wanted to point out that they're just wantonly, and this is not the only place, They're wantonly citing cases that the Supreme Court, their Supreme Court has overturned. And, you know, I hate to put it in terms of theirs or ours, but the that's reality right now, as we all know. It's true.

0:22:20 Thomas: No, it's theirs. They stole it. Yeah.

0:22:23 Matt: And just ignoring that. And the thing is that if I put that in a brief, I would get disciplined, rightfully, because I'm claiming it's good law. But when Congress does it, there's nobody to say they can't. So good times.

0:22:27 Thomas: Who will impeach the impeachers? Nobody. Yeah, I mean, they are such a shit show, isn't it, nice though to get a break from Dems and disarray, Dems and disaray demson I mean, there are still a few assholes who write those, they'll, they'll write about what Republicans are doing and then be like, and can you believe Democrats are letting this happen? And you're just like, truly there's no expectations on Republicans at all. Zero expectations. Democrats have to be the adults in the room and often get blamed for not only their failings, but Republicans' failings. But yeah, it's just so desperate because read that they, you know, the number of bills passed last session or whatever was the, the fewest ever or something like that. I

0:22:33 Matt: Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Voters are supposed to. I hope that some of these guys go, but who knows?

0:22:56 Matt: No, yeah. I mean,

0:23:17 Thomas: Mean, it was, they're passing nothing. It's crazy. Again,

0:23:18 Matt: I'm sure. No doubt. Yeah. No. And it makes Democrats look very good. Like you said, it's immense at convention over there compared to these people. I means, this is so bad. They're doing this impeachment, by the way, just because they said they would, really for no other reason. They know. They have to know. Mayorkas willfully exceeded his parole authority, once again, citing Texas v. Biden, a completely different Fifth Circuit case in 2022 that was overturned by the Supreme Court. Was a Roberts case.

0:23:41 Thomas: Wait, did they did it twice?

0:23:42 Matt: Yeah. Different case. In They're terms of the parole authority, I'll talk about that real quick. And I should say, we're going to do an episode on the border. We'll go deep on this stuff. We're going talk about some of the proposals and what's actually going on. We don't have time for that tonight. I just want to talk about this stuff. But parole is a way that immigration is allowed to let people into the country, and they generally have to do it, as we're talking about, when they don't space to hold you. So So it's what they would call catch and release, but I would would just call reasonably not holding somebody without food or water for indefinitely.

0:23:42 Thomas: Oh, my God. Of course. Sure.

0:24:07 Matt: President has every right to use these parole powers. He does it all the time. President that has ever done it for as long as it's existed, there's been like 126 instances of parole being used. But Biden did it in a way that really annoyed them extra. And And he did it, in a that was specifically supposed to keep more people from coming to to the border. Can argue that it has, because places like Venezuela, Colombia, Haiti, El Salvador, there are different parole programs that allow people to come if they have sponsors in this country and in certain circumstances. And there was one from Ukraine, obviously, for obvious reasons. And they want to cancel all these things. Saying They're somehow that these parole things are causing more chaos at the border when it's exactly the opposite. Don't know what to say about that. I mean, that's just it.

0:24:06 Thomas: Yeah, we need a better name for it, you know, so you're using parole in place of catch and release. Yeah, so it could just be, not violating human rights, essentially, is like kind of what it is, yeah.

0:24:57 Matt: Really don't like that, you he's, not, not doing that.

0:24:59 Thomas: I'm just saying, we need better term than the catch and release, you know. Like, uh, hard

0:25:02 Matt: Yeah, no, for sure. For sure. Um, people to come back to court.

0:25:04 Thomas: Yeah, following basic principles of decency. Nah, it's too long, you know. Yeah.

0:25:10 Matt: That'll never fly. Wants that.

0:25:11 Thomas: It wouldn't test well with Republicans.

0:25:13 Matt: Yeah, no. No, the dial like really cranks up the dislike dial. Is pretty much everything I just said is that's the end of the legal portion of this impeachment. And we're only into like page seven of 25 or something. From here, it's just vibes. It's just stuff. I

0:25:26 Thomas: Incredibly surprised they did that much writing, to be honest with you, like, that's another thing that's so funny about these flunkies, like, often it's like, all right, who, who remembers how anything works? Okay, you write a couple paragraphs and then that's all, what do they care? They don't, don't, it's fake. I don't even know why you're wasting 25 pages on it, Republicans.

0:25:44 Matt: Mean, people aren't going to read it. It is just assholes like us that are going to it.

0:25:46 Thomas: No, their people aren't reading it. And yeah, that's so true. Their people aren'T reading it and anyone who would ever read it would vote against it anyway and not support it. Who is this for? Crazy.

0:25:59 Matt: Who are going read it, including a lot of very conservative legal scholars, have all agreed this is really stupid and they shouldn't do it.

0:26:04 Thomas: And, Those scholars probably would all agree with me when I say it's the same as just writing, uh, screw him on a piece of paper and being like, okay, he's impeached, it's about the same, right? I

0:26:16 Matt: The Well, rest this impeachment document is essentially just letting Tucker Carlson write it, because it is just Fox News points, just hammering away at Fox News stuff. There is quite a lot about fentanyl, as if he is somehow responsible for bringing fentanyl into the country. As I'm sure you know, 90% of the fentanyls coming over the border is coming through ports of entry. So that has nothing to do with anything they're talking about. It's coming through trucks and getting smuggled in.

0:26:27 Thomas: Mean, of course, yeah. You mean people who are fleeing for their lives from desperate conditions who have given all their possessions to apparently a massive like of criminals that are making money off them, they're not also like, oh, but I have all this fentanyl, like, in my pockets, that I'll take over the border, that's not how it happens happens?

0:26:54 Matt: I mean, you got a backpack. It only needs one set of clothes, right? Many And clothes do you really need? The rest of it's fentanyL.

0:26:57 Thomas: Yeah. And fentanyl grows on trees down south of the border. I don't know what the, yeah, stupid.

0:27:03 Matt: It's so crass too, because the in impeachment hearings, when they're doing all this show, putting it together, they brought in this poor woman whose whose daughter died of an overdose. And she testified about how this was Mayorkas' fault. And I mean, again, I'm not, I hate this stuff because, you know, it's real. Her pain is real. And I really feel for her, but these people get used all the time for these kinds of things. And seeing their pain directed this way is hard to watch.

0:27:15 Thomas: God, brutal. Yeah, that is, wow.

0:27:26 Matt: Means, let alone that her daughter died within months of Mayorka's coming into office. I mean you can't say there's any a real connection. Mean, it's so sad. They're also annoyed that CBP agents are being taken off the border to help with processing. Apparently, that's impeachable that we're trying to orderly process these people in. And what really jumped out at me is they're mad about the air marshals being... Did you know that air marshalls are still a thing?

0:27:47 Thomas: What? No. What is an air marshal?

0:27:49 Matt: Remember air marshalls? They're literally guys who fly on planes. That's it. That'S their job. They just fly on commercial airliners in case something happens.

0:27:50 Thomas: No? Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. I remember now. Yeah. I was like, wow, I know that term. Is it just that after 9-11, that all kind of, well, no, I remember after 9/11, it was like we're putting five air marshals on every plane you're like that's stupid

0:28:02 Matt: Yeah. Right. And you won't know who who they are.

0:28:08 Thomas: Yeah that's not gonna work there's no way you have that many people I'm sorry it's not happening really

0:28:09 Matt: Yeah. No, I mean, an air marshal has never stopped a single thing. And as far as I've ever heard, I looked this up, and they've never been involved in any kind of law enforcement. They've just watched a lot of movies.

0:28:19 Thomas: Anything yeah It's so true because like, I mean, when did they set that up? Was it after after D.B. Cooper? They're like, all right, this one thing that happened one time, we're going to put an end to that massive federal budget to fly people on planes for some reason.

0:28:28 Matt: No. No yeah, this is Patriot era, I think. And

0:28:39 Thomas: Are you saying it only if they didn't even exist before the -11?

0:28:41 Matt: No air marshals are definitely a post 9-11.

0:28:43 Thomas: I didn't know that. Oh. Because I do remember there was a time when hijackings were actually kind of common, but they, you know, obviously they kind of did different things than 9-11 made famous

0:28:43 Matt: Yeah, Yeah, yeah, Oh, yeah. Wasn't around, but I'm pretty sure they weren't really checking people for guns. I think that was mostly the problem. So, you know, that'll happen. Must have been a nice time in the 70s when you could just bring a gun on a plane.

0:28:56 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, god, in a suit, you walk in, someone hands you a cigarette, you've got like your own recliner, Lazy Boy chair in the plane, held seven people, ah, better time.

0:29:10 Matt: That upstairs lounge with the piano player and the martinis, man. I've always wanted to get to on one of those. But no, air literally in the documents, in the impeachment articles, that they're taking CBPI agents off the border to do processing of all these migrants because they have to, and they're required to by law, and that they'RE taking air marshalls off the flights. Air nobody has thought about air marshallS probably since 2003.

0:29:13 Thomas: Oh, My God. Yeah.

0:29:29 Thomas: I Literally couldn't remember what they were, and then I felt dumb, but maybe I shouldn't feel dumb for that. Okay. They're

0:29:29 Matt: Yeah. Offense to any air marshalS listening. I hope you've got to watch a lot of great movies and have a good pension.

0:29:40 Thomas: Pulling out those little, like, plastic earbuds that they got handed out. I'm not listening to this program anymore, insult my line of work. Why don't you? Maybe

0:29:47 Matt: Somebody should make a podcast for air marshALs. That sounds like a, there's a gig.

0:29:51 Thomas: We are Patreon, go, okay, we're taking down ICE, we're making a podcast for air marshals. I don't know how big that market is, seems pretty small to me, but, no, you, bad ideas in a brainstorm, as they say, Matt. Uh, If

0:30:01 Matt: Sure. I support growing law enforcement generally, but more air marshals. Why the hell not? Let's do it.

0:30:06 Thomas: Could divert money from somewhere else, Evil, then sure.

0:30:08 Matt: Yeah. Take ICE and turn them into air marshalls. It'd be very funny, actually. Two, breach of public trust, which, uh, just right off the bat you might note is not in the list of impeachable offenses, neither a high crime nor a misdemeanor, breach of public trust, um,

0:30:12 Thomas: Yeah, Once again, seems like a run-of-the-mill, uh, Thing that you would

0:30:27 Matt: Just Like You, yeah, it's Not impeachable, yeah.

0:30:28 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. Make A campaign ad, assholes, so you don't, okay, yeah.

0:30:31 Matt: Yeah. No, all of this stuff is a campaign ad, I It's vibes.

0:30:36 Thomas: Fine. Yeah.

0:30:36 Matt: Because they're talking about, it's just a grab bag, it's kind of like a dog's breakfast, a bunch of claims, a bunch of stuff that they think they can just throw at him that they've heard wrote on Fox News, literally just Fox News talking points. They're saying that he perjured himself Congress when he said that the border was closed and no less secure than it was previously, which again, no border can be closed. That's completely impossible. And that's just a matter of opinion. Secure than it was previously doesn't mean anything. You can't prove that either way.

0:30:59 Thomas: You'd have to, like, is it 10 secure, or 12 secure? I guess you can't really, yeah, A number on that. I gotta say, Matt, I'm considering voting against this impeachment from what you're saying. I Don'tt Think I Don' T think they have my support. Yeah, is there more? Okay, uh,

0:31:01 Matt: Right, exactly. Yeah. Well, hear me out. There's a little more. And again, we're going to talk about this when we get to the border episode, but the migrant protection protocols, we used to call them the migrant persecution protocols. You might have heard about the MPP program.

0:31:19 Thomas: Don't remember. Okay.

0:31:19 Matt: We'll talk about it. But they're saying one of the things that they're mad about is that he terminated this program, which was a Trump program, and they're not mad about it at all. Which was really bad. And you want to guess what they cite in support of this proposition and that it was bad.

0:31:29 Thomas: Proposition that he terminated the program, That it was bad? Oh, oh, Tucker Carlson, a Fox News article? Oh, Well,

0:31:36 Matt: Actually worse. Again, No, this is our, I think, our third or fourth overturned Fifth Circuit case.

0:31:42 Thomas: Yeah, but if you're citing it for that, were they citing, like, oh, it's in the fact pattern somewhere that This Happened.

0:31:47 Matt: No, it was literally like a quote from the case that's like, this is bad. The Supreme Court agreed that Biden had every right to terminate the MPP program because it was a Trump program that he didn't like and it's an executive thing. Why not? But it was reversed on June 30th, 2022, and it said impeachment articles filed this week.

0:32:03 Thomas: Sort of like they were using, what is it, Nexus Lexus or some shit, but they, they forgot, got to hit the filter that's like, oh, but don't give me stuff that isn't laws anymore. Maybe they, maybe they did the opposite, and they're like doing all the research And they like accidentally had the toggle of like law that was overturned. That would be a, yeah.

0:32:15 Matt: Great. The opposite day. LexisNexis setting. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, as a lawyer and any lawyers listening, I understand how bad that is to cite something that's been overturned, like how sloppy and how the judge will yell at you.

0:32:30 Thomas: That's embarrassing. Yeah.

0:32:31 Matt: It's so bad. Not as bad as the AI thing where you're just making up cases, but it's pretty close. It's Congress. It'S not a judge. Nobody can sanction them. Nobody's going to get disciplined. They can say whatever they want in Congress. But it's just astonishing to me that they're just doing that. I mean it's the level of sloppiness we're at here. It actually is going to get more sloppy in just a second, because they charged that Mayorkas ended asylum cooperative agreements, which he didn't.

0:32:32 Thomas: Holy moly. Are those?

0:32:53 Matt: Are actually something that are controlled completely by the Department of State. So they have impeached the wrong secretary. Literally just threw this in. They have to have known that it was Anthony Blinken that signed these. I don't understand it, the sign that this, you know, this ending. These programs did not ever really get going. They were kind of a Trump thing that just didn't really take off. Ones the with Honduras and El Salvador never got started. They were never implemented at all. The Guatemalan was going a bit.

0:33:15 Thomas: Sorry. What aren't they? They're like agreements of some

0:33:18 Matt: To send people back to places that allegedly have functioning asylum systems, if asylum claim before they got here. And we're going to talk about this at length another time, but it's bad because you're sending somebody back to... If you're from El Salvador, they'll send you back to Honduras so you can do an asylum claim there when the people who are trying to get you might be the next country over or in your country. And where Honduras at one point maybe had seven asylum officers, they're and just deporting people there en masse. It's really bad. But again, we're reaching the end of it. This is like, you have to turn your homework in, it's three in the morning, we got to get this done. And let's just put in the thing about the asylum agreements and see if anybody notices that that's actually a State Department thing.

0:33:25 Thomas: Okay.

0:33:51 Thomas: Again, there's nobody making you do this homework, guys. This is like the teacher gave you an assignment that's like, look, literally, if you write one sentence justifying what you're doing, that's good enough. That's fine. And someone's like 20. How many pages? Let's get to 25. Doesn't matter. Who is this for?

0:33:55 Matt: Yeah, exactly.

0:34:08 Matt: And the assignment they gave of themselves was to pass a border bill. They couldn't do that either. That's the thing. Arguably, honestly, if they're concerned about all this stuff, there is law they can pass to do that, as we're going to talk about in a minute. And they just can't do it, or they don't want to do that for reasons we'll talk about. Just to mention it very quickly, they're saying he should be impeached because he terminated border wall funding, which is just a discretionary decision. Course, Trump actually violated the law by redirecting defense funds to the wall, but we're not going to talk about that, I guess. That was like an actual finding that violated the law by doing that.

0:34:38 Thomas: Well, that must have any problems to build the wall. So the wall is all good. Why would that? Why would the wall still need funding? Oh, is it upkeep on the wall? You know, it's just keeping keeping that amazing, perfect, beautiful wall, keeping it oiled up at

0:34:42 Matt: Oh, it's finished. Yeah. It's getting rusty. You said, I don't know who this is for because Fox News viewers are most likely not goingto read it. Sorry, Fox News readers, but you know it's true.

0:34:56 Thomas: If they did a segment on it, it would include like one thing. They're they're so overdoing this. Interesting. There must be. Is it staffers? Is it like Republican staffers that are like, "Well, this is a total embarrassment. But I do want to feel like I'm doing something in my life, or otherwise the the the void will call out to me too strongly. So to fill that noise, I'm going to just do work on this book report that is impeaching this guy for no reason.

0:35:00 Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:35:22 Matt: I mean, I think so, like the pages, you know, that program with the high school students, I think they brought some of those in, like, you now. Hey, Jimmy, you want to write an impeachment?

0:35:30 Thomas: At what point are they going to start using AI for this stuff? Not even joking like that. I could imagine it. We'll see.

0:35:35 Matt: Sure. I totally, I mean, honestly, this could have been, like, basically just feed it a bunch of Fox News and, you know, this is what you get.

0:35:42 Thomas: On. OK, just for fun. Ask chat GPT to write an impeachment for, yeah. I bet you it'll tell me it can't because it's like political or some crap. Doesn't it do that? Okay.

0:35:47 Matt: Articles of impeachment from Alejandro Mayorkas.

0:35:57 Thomas: You are a, well, we'll see.

0:35:56 Matt: You know what it probably won't do is give you overturned cases. Might make some up, but

0:36:00 Thomas: Let's See, you are a GOP member of the House, you need to find some way to justify your impeachment of DHS secretary, uh, generate articles of impeachment. Okay, here we go. See what he does. Okay, it's already done, way better. This is amazing. Wait, maybe this is how we bust them. It's going to do same thing, more than you had.

0:36:00 Matt: Yeah, it's a good idea.

0:36:29 Thomas: I love it.

0:36:28 Matt: Sure. I love to see what

0:36:30 Thomas: It gave it a guideline too. I could read the first paragraph. When generating articles of impeachment against a government official, it's important to base the accusations on specific actions or omissions that could be considered as high crimes and misdemeanors, abuse of power, dereliction of duty, or violations of federal law. The drafting of such articles is a serious and complex legal process, typically involving thorough investigations, evidence gathering. I think it missed the part where I said you are a GOP member of the house. I

0:36:30 Matt: It comes.

0:36:41 Matt: Well, there's your first mistake.

0:36:57 Matt: Was a great idea. There are no legal scholars who support this. Even Jonathan Turley, you might remember from such spectacles as, which Trump impeachment? I think maybe both of them. I don't know. But he was the guy they could bring in to say that Trump couldn't get get impeached, like the one guy. He wrote in the Daily Beast that being bad at your job is not an impeachable offense, even really bad. And he's right, of course. Don't even think that Alejandro Marquez is that bad at his job, but I like what he's doing more than I liked what Trump's people were doing. So I guess that's me.

0:37:22 Thomas: Low bar, but yeah.

0:37:23 Matt: Yeah, extremely low bar because this is, again, remember, this is an agency that includes CBP and ICE, our two worst federal law enforcement agencies. He still in charge of them.

0:37:31 Thomas: Like what's the best case for that guy? Is it like, right all when they get in next four years team building exercises, every single, every single employee of building. Out We're of the end of this four years. We'll be back. Have such a good team we're just other time wasting things is that the best case you think everyone

0:37:45 Matt: Hey, you guys like salted peanuts? You want to catch up on your movies?

0:37:50 Thomas: Okay. Go. Around the country, every single person in this agency introduce yourself for four years, yeah.

0:37:56 Matt: Just fly around and watch movies and eat salted peanuts and just hang out.

0:37:58 Thomas: And Tell us something about your stand-up, tell us, yeah. I've

0:38:04 Matt: I really like my air marshal program. I'm telling you, I want to put them on air as air marshals. That would be a better use.

0:38:08 Thomas: I've Loved this Idea of just doing Corporate time wasting, but for an entire higher administration, because we hate everything these agencies do, basically. Oh, God, it's so good. Also, we got some training. We got, I mean, sexual harassment trainings. Maybe they could watch a bunch of those for four years.

0:38:09 Matt: Yeah. Just rope stuff. Yeah, yeah. CBP could use that for sure,

0:38:24 Thomas: Probably.

0:38:25 Matt: From what I've heard. Yeah? Maybe see Justin Truss falls, do some ropes, get the thing. It's like, there's no good way to be a DHS secretary, don't I think. So, you

0:38:31 Thomas: Not until the one I just invented, Matt.

0:38:33 Matt: No, of course.

0:38:34 Thomas: Give

0:38:34 Matt: Yeah, no. A taxpayer, I fully support just this vote went down yesterday. Totally failed. And they're threatening to vote on it again today. I don't think that's happened as of 9:59 p.m. doubt they're going to try this again because they're so mad about Al Green getting out of his hospital bed. I wanted to close this part of it.

0:38:48 Thomas: That is so great.

0:38:49 Matt: It's awesome. And again, we've got to have our heroes these days. We just have so few. Hottest take of the week, though, from our good friend Marjorie Taylor Greene. Was asked directly about how Bablis went, and she said, I don't think it's a failure at all. I don't think it's a failure at all. That's if she says it. Yeah. The impeachment. And like I said, I have been a little surprised at how there I haven't been looking at the news enough. I've been really busy this week, but I haven't seen anybody just openly saying, here's what's in this thing, and here's why it's really stupid and baseless. Think we're just accepting at this point that that's what it's done.

0:39:01 Thomas: Oh, okay. By that standard.

0:39:22 Thomas: I'm glad we did the work. No one else. I say we, I am glad you did the work no one else did, Matt. Now kindly get up in front of everybody, introduce yourself, join my infinite team building, uh, of

0:39:26 Matt: I'm here for it. I had a good time. I know, actually we've got some detention facilities that would be great to hang out in. That's what they should do. They shouldn't just convert them all to training camps or something. And I've always thought they should have to spend a couple of nights in some of these places And the attorneys too, they should have to see, because I've been in these places many times.

0:39:39 Thomas: Yeah yeah for themselves. Oh hey, ICE camp yourself. Well, and and you've mentioned you have in a lot of of these cases, right?

0:39:55 Matt: Never actually spent the night, but I've spent months of my life in these places by this point, just visiting, Monopoly just, by law, you should have to spend some time in the place you're sending people to, and they don't have to do that. Should talk about the border bill just

0:40:06 Thomas: Yeah! The one that you off, where they cheered, it, and this has been a while, too, I feel like I've been hearing about this, where lot of bluff calling. I think we've been doing is my impression of it where Biden's like, all right, okay, want to get funding to a number of things. What is it? Ukraine, Israel, both.

0:40:11 Matt: Oh, yeah.

0:40:20 Matt: And Israel. Yeah. Yeah.

0:40:21 Thomas: And they're like, alright, fine. We are willing to compromise because of the position you're in or so it's is like, okay, cool. Cool. Or, see if we can find a compromise. They basically have, you if they pass the bill, it somebody said, if we pass this bill, It'll be better better, than anything we can get under Trump or something Trump was like, nah, don't do this because I need there to always be a problem them at the border. I don't want to solve anything, idiot. I want there always to be something to complain about. And then what's his face? The extremely not memorable speaker of the house. I just have a black where the memory of who about that guy is. He's so forgettable, except the porn app. That's the one thing I remember. He makes sure that his son doesn't look at porn.

0:40:36 Matt: Yeah.

0:40:59 Matt: With his son. Yeah. Yeah.

0:41:02 Thomas: Yeah. And vice versa, like any healthy father -son relationship. But anyway, and I referenced earlier, was like, oh, okay, never mind. And then you're saying it got to the point where they're cheering its demise.

0:41:14 Matt: Yep. Yep. Within hours of trying to pass it.

0:41:16 Thomas: All right. How did we get here?

0:41:18 Matt: These are supposed to be the responsible adults, right?

0:41:20 Thomas: Oh, I'm sorry. So, yeah, it wasn't even the house. Okay.

0:41:21 Matt: Yeah. I mean, the House ended up killing it, but the Senate was a mess, too. I mean they made it happen, but it took a very long time to get this done in the Senate agreement, which, you know, you'd know that's DOA from the beginning, if it's bipartisan, the House isn't going to take it. Of course, that's the only way to pass anything in the Senate. Seems like at this point with the way things are going. Real way that you know—and we're going to talk again, I keep saying this, but we're gonna have a border episode, and we're getting into some of these proposals and what this all means and how it works and doesn't work. But one way that, you it's not a great bill is if it has the full support of the CBP union, because those guys are really hard, right? They're hard MAGA.

0:41:40 Thomas: Without Jeez.

0:41:55 Matt: Matter what the Democrats are saying, I some bad stuff in here and it's, it's Not great for asylum for the future. And I was always very uncomfortable with the idea of trading away, asylum uh, rights for one -time funding of anything. Don't understand why we have to negotiate with these terrorists. I really don't because it's the future of asylum. Going to be a little cynical for a minute because I will say, with you on optimism and trying to make sure that we just do the right thing and keep Trump out at all costs at this point because it is bad. But Democrats and Republicans generally agree on immigration enforcement and border enforcement for the most part. It's been a bipartisan issue for a long time. And Biden desperately wants, for good reason. I understand why. He wants the border thing to go away because it is really hard right now. And is a solution in to a degree to at least diminish the numbers and make things a lot harder for everybody. And right now I think Biden really in an election year wants to try to get those numbers down because right now

0:42:09 Thomas: Yeah. Short Yeah.

0:42:44 Matt: They're Democratic governors and mayors pushing back and saying, we can't take these numbers. I think he was very happy to let the Republicans come up with the pretty hard right bill and have them signed off on it. And I get it. I understand politically. I'm not happy, but I get that.

0:42:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:42:56 Thomas: Say it's a bipartisan issue, but they haven't been able to agree on passing anything for decades, right? So Then It can't be that bipartisan, right?

0:43:01 Matt: No, because they, well, a lot of the core stuff is and always has been, but it's become, as this has started to define the party more, especially in 2015 when Trump really ran with it, are a couple of intractable issues with immigration that just can't be resolved between the parties. And the Democrats are very rightfully pushing for a pathway to citizenship for people who don't have one.

0:43:22 Thomas: Yeah.

0:43:22 Matt: Want to expand mass deportation. These are things that just can't be compromised or negotiated. Is unfortunate because the last major reform was the one that Biden got through. And Biden actually, for this bill, it's interesting because he really has been a player in immigration politics for a long time. Joe Biden said about this bill that it's the strongest immigration reform in decades.

And he would know because he was responsible for the one in '96 that I have a lot of issues with and a lot advocates do. And his basically apologized for that one. He's passing one potentially here that could be tougher in some ways. So, so that's where we're at. But again, I understand politically what's going on here.

We've been waiting, though, like you said, for weeks and weeks, ever since, you know, and obviously Ukraine's been on the hook, hoping that we can get this done so they don't lose a war, and Republicans are just sitting on their hands. It's a bad bill, always was, but I thought it was going to pass because it was bad enough. So what happens, of course, I have a clip here I sent you of Trump I wanted to play real quick because there's some weird messaging going on here.

0:44:12 Clip: It. They gave us 28,000 challenges, and we had the best border we ever had. To this day, I have the best we've ever had, now we have the worst border, probably, in the history of the world. I understand. I'm told that the Chinese are paying $35,000 a month, $50,000 per month to come to the southern border. They're paying the drug tax dollars this money. The number of Chinese nationals, and they are military -age men. You're right. At 1,100% year-over-year, are they being directed by the Communist Party to come? I believe so. I believe we're going to have a terrorist attack. 100%. 100%. During my time, I had no terrorist attacks. You know that, right? Before

0:44:52 Matt: We're going to have a terrorist attack 100%. So you would think maybe they might want to pass a border bill if they believe that. I'm just going to recap the messaging from this week, which is essentially, and this is all within the space of several days. Got terrorists are crossing the border.

0:44:56 Thomas: Sorry.

0:45:09 Matt: There this year because of Joe Biden's border policies. Only and Republicans can save us. And therefore, under absolutely no circumstances, will you ever pass that border bill until I'm president? The message. There's going to be a terrorist attack and we've got to fix the border as soon as possible, but then saying we've got to have as much chaos as possible so Trump can get elected and fix it. That's the message.

0:45:27 Thomas: Yeah, no, I think he's excited about the terror attack. I I think here the mistake you're making is maybe. No circle, a square, whatever. He's like, first off, Maria, I'm very excited. There's going to be a terror attack. That's awesome. Also, in my turn, there won't be a terror attack, that's it. That the whole end of Trump thought. I

0:45:47 Matt: Is. Actually, we should play the Lankford clip that I sent you, because that was appalling when you actually think about what he's saying. I want to really drill down on what the message is here.

0:45:57 Clip: Knew any of the contents of the bill, any of the content, nothing was out at that point. That told me flat out, if you try to move a bill that solves the border crisis during this presidential year, I will do whatever I can to destroy you because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election. By the way, they have been faithful to their promise and have done everything they can to destroyed me in the past several weeks.

0:46:19 Thomas: Cool. Wow.

0:46:24 Matt: That's Jim Lankford, the guy who got this over the line.

0:46:28 Thomas: Super cool. Super chill. Definitely great democracy stuff going on. Just just awesome general democracy stuff.

0:46:35 Matt: Is who these people are. Out there agitating about how there's going to be a terrorist attack and this is the worst border in the history of the world, but we're going to go ahead and build up as much chaos as possible. And we don't want Biden to take any credit for solving the border. That's the most important part of all of this. Now, of course, I don't believe it's going to be a terrorist attack because I know that people are coming over. I meet with them all the time. I've never met anybody who I would not want to live next door to.

0:46:56 Thomas: Well, Well, and not for nothing, there could be a terrorist attack and there were under Trump. There absolutely were terrorist attacks under Trump, yeah, yeah.

0:47:00 Matt: Yeah, sure, sure. Were, but none of them were people who crossed the southern border. That's a really important detail. You know, generally people who came in with visas. That's an inevitable consequence of having a visa system, that bad people will sometimes come in. You just can't do anything about that.

0:47:15 Thomas: Well, and somehow we don't count count the right wing terror of, you it be it, you whatever It is, the sort of white male in shooting type thing. For some reason, we don't really call that terrorism all the time, even though it very much is. And there's no reason that that's somehow fine. Whereas if someone were were to cross an imaginary line on a map and then do that, that's worse, even though again it's not happening.

0:47:23 Matt: Sure.

0:47:42 Matt: And it never did, never has. Yeah.

0:47:44 Thomas: But Bias inherent in that, like, like, oh well, you know, we're gonna have some level of shootings of that's inevitable, but like, if it was somebody I could say was from another place, then that's worse somehow.

0:47:54 Matt: But the Proud Boys, those are my guys, right? And generally speaking, I want to make sure we close these shows on optimism, on some hope, and I wantto do that. But I just have to say before I do that, that if you put this whole message together, this is terrifying. This really should terrify anybody who's capable of even understanding what this movement is about and what they're doing. Just really want to ring the alarm here because the fact that they want chaos on the border, the fact that we have a candidate who's openly talking about putting migrants into camps, that's not a word that we generally have used in this country this kind of thing. Fascism is built on backlash. That's how you do it. You get people are real mad, and then you give them something to respond to. And the fact that Trump stopped a bill that honestly could have actually, for the things they want to do, I didn't support it, but for the things they wanna do, it probably would have done a lot of them because he wanted more chaos. Think about what that means.

0:47:56 Thomas: Exactly. Yeah. Yep.

0:48:39 Thomas: Think it means that I will not be voting for one Donald J. Trump. I don't think he's going to be a good president, Matt. Is Yeah. This voter is skeptical.

0:48:45 Matt: You finally made your decision. Yeah. Say it. I mean, there is a real existential threat to so many things coming here, and there's just no other way to talk about it. And I understand the people on the left that are cynical right now. I understand it. I really do. I'm cynical on so many things, including immigration, often, but not to the point that I can allow this to happen. I just can't.

0:48:57 Thomas: Yeah?

0:49:10 Thomas: You understand the very basic logical, logical proposition that making things worse rather than better is worse? As easy as can be. If there were some long-term tangible plan, of which is, well, things will be temporarily bad now, but there'll be better later, I would listen to what that plan is. There isn't a plan. There's not a choice between who we would love to have at every position and who would be our favorite or not. It's, you are given a binary choice. And the way, before that binary choice, you are given a chance to have other choices. And as much as that didn't happen with Democrats this time, that's theoretically possible. But you're given a primary choice. That's just what it is. You can choose to make things better or worse, no way around that basic fact. And it drives me insane. And it doesn't require believing that Biden, Biden is like amazing or anything, or closing our ears to the realities that I'm sure you're going to teach us about over the coming episodes.

0:49:58 Matt: Can't know. And, I mean, 96, sure. And in the election of 96, you can say that was Coke versus Pepsi. I accept that. But this is Coke versus poison Coke. I mean this is really existential. And

0:50:11 Thomas: And we all want Diet Dr. Pepper and we're just never getting it. My favorite soda? It's nowhere. First, I don't know. I can't get Diet Dr Pepper anywhere, but it is probably my favorite soda. A good analogy to what we're dealing with here.

0:50:27 Matt: And and I do want to close again, though, with the thought that we can do something about this. It is actually possible to stop these people. Just stop electing them. And you know, I understand that maybe you don't live in a place, but you can help somebody else stop them.

0:50:35 Thomas: Yeah. That's That's the key. I love the message. Looking forward to learning more about this as depressing as it can be, but I'm also looking forward too, just the learning we're going to do in general. And thanks so much for taking us through that, Matt.

0:50:49 Matt: Good times. Keep it going.

0:50:50 Thomas: Let's watch Republicans pants themselves several more times and maybe we'll do more shows about it.

0:50:55 Matt: That whole house full of rakes. Yep all

0:50:57 Thomas: Yeah, thanks so mucho. For listening, everyone. And this may just be patrons. I'm not sure. But either way, thank you so much for listening and supporting the show. And see you next time.

0:51:05 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.

0:51:22 Matt: Just something really sad out about thinking about picking up a deportation order after you die, you know, and having that.

0:51:26 Thomas: Hearing a bunch of Does somebody, is there a bowl or something? What is that? I'm hearing a rattling of a, oh, hey, that's why we're practicing, man. You goes the show. To remember, here, I'll type that. You need to member that you are a GOC member and have absolutely no commitment commitment to the truth. Let's

0:51:29 Matt: Sorry. I was just stirring my tea. Sorry about that. We can cut that. There we go. You know, it was absolutely Serious. All right.