The NYT's Biden border article could have been written by Steve Bannon. It is STUNNINGLY bad.

Transcript

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

0:00:10 Thomas: And welcome to Opening Arguments. This is the Wednesday show. We're not sure what to call it. It's not, it's not. It's Wildcard Wednesday. I think we'll go back to that. Wildcard Wednesday .I'm Thomas. That over there is real life immigration attorney, Matt Cameron. How are you doing?

0:00:23 Matt: Well, I'm happy to talk about my favorite subject, immigration policy, and how New York Times and The Federalist both got it wrong. Lots of wrongness to talk about.

0:00:31 Thomas: Boy, I don't, I can't start talking because I'll never stop shouting. So I'm going to just say hello to Lydia. How are you doing?

0:00:36 Lydia: Hi, I'm doing okay. I have two sick children at home.

0:00:40 Thomas: So about this daily article, no, I'm just kidding.

0:00:42 Lydia: Two sick kids at home, so I'm hoping I make it to the end of this. But if I mysteriously drop out, then now you all know why.

0:00:49 Thomas: That's, that's not Lydia announcing that we've not, we're not living together anymore.

0:00:53 Thomas: I also have two sick kids at home.

0:00:53 Lydia: We are. It's just I'm – yeah. Yeah.

0:00:55 Thomas: So really we have four when you think about it.

0:00:58 Lydia: The other the other pitch I had for this time slot was because it's WCW and I was like, oh, Woman Crush Wednesday. And so that's going to be our Wednesday slot, I think, for OA.

0:01:06 Thomas: Now, what is that?

0:01:09 Lydia: Where you post your your woman crush every Wednesday, like, you know, throwback.

0:01:09 Thomas: Explain to people who are old like me. Okay. Can you be my woman crush?

0:01:15 Lydia: Yeah, you could just post me every Wednesday. That's fine. But yeah.

0:01:16 Thomas: I'll post this. There we go. Posting this video and podcast is my woman crush Wednesday.

0:01:21 Matt: Well, my woman crushes the gray lady, the New York Times,

0:01:26 Thomas: So, yeah, I this is unbelievable. I know we we always talk about the daily, but this is this is not just about the Daily. This is about and we've been we've been talking a lot about these things. There's been an alternate version of history that's been written into the record books, apparently about many things. And one of them is this is Biden's open border that he apparently just threw open the border, let everybody in and et cetera, et cetera. And there's varying degrees of that. I mean, I think Republicans and I've heard Ben Shapiro, they just literally say that like his open border or whatever. There's I don't know if it's because it's working the refs, which is successful or if it's other biases, but the mainstream, like, Democrat version is, is not exactly like Biden had an open borders policy, but it's that Biden failed completely on the border. And there was a New York times article in daily episode about that. I it's blowing my mind. I listened to the daily episode, no joke, five times because

0:02:02 Matt: That wanted this. Yeah. Ouch.

0:02:31 Thomas: I can't get over However, there's something that just is uniquely disturbing to me about the underlying assumptions of this coverage that I just don't think, I don't know if the reporters are aware of it. Like, I can't tell if they're aware of the underlying assumption that they're making. And it's very important because the assumptions that they are making, sort of the unsaid assumptions, are really driving the whole story. Like there isn't really a story or it's drastically different if you just have different underlying assumptions. But this is supposed to be the news, the neutral news that shouldn't really be going on to this degree. And it's it's I am really upset about it. Like I said, I've listened to it a ton. I just can't I can't stop thinking about it and we have an immigration expert here in Lydia. So she's going to, no.

0:03:21 Lydia: Get ready. All right. Here we

0:03:23 Thomas: So it's great to have an actual expert in Matt who does this work day in, day out. It'd be great to get a breakdown from someone who actually knows what they're talking about.

0:03:23 Lydia: Go, folks.

0:03:31 Matt: I'm really glad to hear that this hit you the way that it hit me because as somebody who is actually an expert in border policy and has taught this stuff, I mean, I didn't really have to study that much for this episode, to be honest, because this is stuff I talk about and think about every day. And as soon as I saw the headline, my heart sank about what it was going to be about. And then I listened to it, and I read the story, and I just can't believe that they can't just try to scratch the surface about what was actually going on during the Biden term with immigration. It's so much more complicated than anything they're saying here. As you said, the fundamental framing of this is wrong. The way they talk about it is wrong, and not just because I don't agree with it, and not because I'm trying to defend Biden, because I actually think Biden was too hard, if anything, on immigration policy. But we'll get there. We'll get There.

0:04:09 Thomas: I can't, I just want to go through the entire episode. I just wanted to hit play, go through whole the daily episode. But it's what my heart wants to do. You.

0:04:16 Matt: Here for it. But we don't have that kind of time. Yeah.

0:04:18 Thomas: Yeah. Biden lost American's faith in immigration. So not just a segment of Americans, just all all Americans and the subheading there, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his top advisors rejected recommendations that could have eased the border crisis that helped return Donald J. Trump to the White House.

0:04:38 Matt: So many presumptions in those headlines. So many prescriptions.

0:04:41 Thomas: It's already off the bat. But I'm glad that we also have the amazingly named, And this is entirely Matt, an amuse-bouche, to up. We really need that, like, starter before we get going on this, because this is outrageous. First, we've got to thank our patrons. I'm so glad this is back. We get to get new and exciting and possibly counterfeit palindromes each and every week. So these are the amazing supporters at patreon.com/law who make this show happen. We thank our Hall of Famers. Those are the folks who pledge at that $5 level and above for at least a month. We Thank them each and every week here on wildcard Wednesday, or women crush Wednesday.

0:05:21 Thomas: And we'll do it in thirds here with our break. So we'll start with our first break. I want to thank veterinary for America 2028 one man one vote. Alec, unremarkable. Amina, Donna Treadway, mother of heritans. Protect trans kids, deep spaces. Nine was the best Star Trek. Mike Lapinsky. P's a sap. I like that because it's like it's it's it's so basic. It's like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven letters.

0:05:20 Lydia: Crush wednesday yes

0:05:46 Thomas: Sort of building up the palindrome starting from the basics. You know, yeah. Start small, you know, and then maybe develop different words that work.

0:05:44 Lydia: Yeah yeah um I I that it also gives you like action right like it feels like something like it's blocking that I could do on stage. Pause. Like, oh, okay.

0:06:01 Thomas: It's P -A apostrophe S, a sap because their paw is a sap, so it's very basic, but you know, I feel like it's a good start.

0:06:07 Lydia: Well then nevermind. Okay. Yes.

0:06:12 Thomas: Cyanitis, normalized bidirectional spooning, fourth circuit attorney reluctantly changing her font, Charlie Kelly, attorney at Bird Law, apprentice of adventure, probably a real person, Nick Fish, unfrozen caveman lawyer, and how many chunks would a chunk hunk thunk if a chunk honk could thunk chunks? You two can make us say ridiculous things and talk about, yeah, mainly me, and talk, and, talk about the, uh, the palindromes and the virtues thereof, uh. If you pledge at patreon .com slash law. So, we'll take our first break and then we'll get into it. Right. So the aforementioned amuse douche, give it to us, Matt.

0:06:29 Lydia: Yep. There you go. Make Thomas say ridiculous things.

0:06:49 Matt: This is a classic. This is an absolute stone-cold immediate classic. This is from Tina Peters' lawyer. You might remember Tina Peters was convicted in Colorado, and this is important, state court, for election-related violations because she got into some voting machines, did some stuff she wasn't supposed to do, because she was a true believer and remains a true believer, as I believe.

0:07:05 Thomas: This was the one that had the viral video of the judge just absolutely going after, right? Is it it that one

0:07:10 Matt: I would love to cover that trial. There's a lot of fun stuff at that trial I've been trying to get the recordings.

0:07:14 Lydia: Pinning that for gavel gavel. Yeah.

0:07:14 Thomas: I was gonna say do we need to find that clip yeah

0:07:16 Matt: It'd be a fun one. So this is an email from her attorney, because you might remember within the last few days, Donald Trump issued a full and unconditional pardon to Tina Peters, which we might as well. I think opening arguments could pardon her just as effectively because we have the same legal authority.

0:07:33 Lydia: That's basically the same thing, right? Yeah.

0:07:36 Matt: But we wouldn't do that because she is in fact guilty of election -related violations. But here's what her lawyer has to to say about how Colorado needs to honor that pardon. It is quite a letter. This should really just be, she

0:07:34 Thomas: Man

0:07:48 Lydia: Are you trying to find the video?

0:07:48 Thomas: I'm I I wanted to see if there's just a short version because

0:07:51 Lydia: Go

0:07:52 Clip: Judge chuckles at a defendant in court it's not funny my life is on the line here your honor this was the contentious exchange between judge matthew barrett and defendant former mesa county colorado clerk tina peters no you're the one who's making this allegation that one it's funny too that I know it's true you're saying saying that as if I believe you and I did not say that that is why I made the sound because it's insulting to me for you to just put that in a record in front of all of these people that I believe something to be true okay and I apologize for that a jury found Peters guilty of several charges including attempting to influence a public servant during the 2020 presidential race This is body cam video of her arrest in February of 2022.

0:08:40 Thomas: Seconds left oh man she hit the I didn't remember the arrest she

0:08:46 Clip: During the sentencing hearing, Peters cried addressing the judge. I'm not a criminal and I don't deserve to go into a prison where other people have committed heinous crimes.

0:08:46 Thomas: Hit the full karen

0:08:57 Clip: The only crime that I did and some people have said I'm not remorseful. Yes, I'm remorse. Yes sir. She was sentenced to nine years in prison. This is inside edition digital and

0:08:57 Thomas: Loving trump too much good she

0:09:07 Lydia: Nine

0:09:10 Matt: Hacked voting machines. She tampered with voting machines, the thing that they say that we've been doing throughout the country. Yes.

0:09:10 Lydia: Years yeah man I

0:09:13 Thomas: Tampered with voting machines wow yeah was that the one where she said she did it to like prove that they I robbed

0:09:21 Matt: It doesn't really matter why you did it, it turns out.

0:09:23 Thomas: The bank to prove that the The security was lax, which

0:09:24 Lydia: Want to point out before we move on to the the email itself that the youtube algorithm thought that the next video we would be interested in was like 14 of the wildest and strangest arrests caught on camera and someone was wearing like a chewbacca mask. So just, you know, folks on YouTube saw this, but I just thought it was so good. We have this email to Warden Stancil. And this is from Tina Peters' lawyer. Correct, Matt?

0:09:39 Thomas: Is way more dignified than Tina Peter's.

0:09:55 Matt: John Case.

0:09:55 Lydia: All right. Dear Warden Stancil, on December 5th, 2025, President Donald J. Trump issued a full and unconditional pardon to my client, Tina M. Peters. At approximately 5:55 p.m. on December 12th, 2025, I personally served a copy of the presidential pardon on armed DOC staff at the La Vista Correctional Facility and requested that they release Mrs.

0:10:16 Thomas: Are you serious?

0:10:17 Lydia: Peters.

0:10:18 Matt: Must have been so funny.

0:10:20 Thomas: I have this piece of paper that says, release a prisoner. Do it.

0:10:26 Lydia: Wait,

0:10:26 Matt: Signed by the president, you understand.

0:10:27 Lydia: Can we get, like, can I FOIA correctional facility, like video? Can I get this?

0:10:28 Thomas: What? Oh, my God.

0:10:33 Matt: Video. Yeah that'd be very funny. I do want to see this.

0:10:35 Thomas: I wish.

0:10:36 Matt: Yeah Yeah. I like how he mentions they're armed, like he was taking some sort of risk by blocking him.

0:10:40 Lydia: They're just going to shoot him on sight. Instead of releasing Mrs. Peters as required by federal law, DOC personnel stated that they would not comply with President Trump's pardon. Their refusal is categorically unlawful. A presidential pardon is self -executing and immediately terminates all legal authority for continued custody. Your refusal to release Mrs. is not a clerical delay. It is a willful deprivation of liberty under color of law in direct violation of 18 U .S .C. 242, subsection 242. If more than one DOC employee acted in concert to block her release, it further constitutes a conspiracy

0:10:45 Thomas: They laughed at me. Oh,

0:11:18 Lydia: To deprive rights under 18 U.S.C. subsection 240. I expect Mrs. Peters to be released immediately. If she is not, her attorneys will pursue all available civil and criminal remedies against every state officer or official who knowingly participated in obstructing and obstructing the enforcement of a presidential pardon please provide written confirmation without delay identifying the precise time mrs peters will be released in order to create a plan to safely receive her respectfully john case

0:11:44 Thomas: So, so this is someone who is a lawyer or used to be until they should be terminated from sort

0:11:50 Matt: Practices law. I did see that one of her lawyers got the idea that Trump could pardon her from the movie Lincoln. And they went looking to the Constitution and they found that the president can pardon crimes against the United States, which of course means the country. But they decided that means states. So they decided it should extend to the states, even though it has never been interpreted that way.

0:11:56 Lydia: Oh no weird

0:12:11 Matt: Yeah. Yeah, I don't know where that was in the movie v lincoln but um yeah

0:12:10 Lydia: Oh my gosh yeah

0:12:14 Thomas: Of like how the president of the United States is also like the president of California, you know?

0:12:18 Matt: Nebraska yeah of course yeah yeah everything he says goes loophole

0:12:20 Lydia: Like a weird like sovereign citizen sort of reverse reinterpretation.

0:12:24 Thomas: My God. That is, that is really funny. I don't, I think it's, it's funny. I think It's funny to try. I like the first try, like worth the try. Like if it was, if it was like my family, if I was a lawyer, no, that's embarrassing. You should not be doing anything anything like that.

0:12:25 Matt: It's quite a letter yeah swing for it yeah sure

0:12:37 Thomas: But if it was like a family member, I was like, you know, it's like worth the try. Uh, yeah. By, by the power vested in this piece of paper, uh, release her now forthwith.

0:12:40 Matt: 22 usc 242 sure that'll do it that'll do it yeah

0:12:49 Thomas: And then the guy's like, shoot, I Was okay with the two 42 violation, but, but a two 41 as well. Oh man. It's going to carry some serious time. I'm going to have to rest myself. I don't have to lock myself into this prison that I'm guarding.

0:12:54 Matt: Gotta think about that she

0:13:02 Lydia: Man, crazy. So she remains there to this day, I take it, Matt?

0:13:05 Matt: Has not been released despite the presidential pardon never state offense. Yeah, here we are. So I was going to say good luck, but not really.

0:13:10 Lydia: Amazing yeah yeah

0:13:12 Thomas: DOC. So yeah. DOC staff. So that's, yeah, that's state. It's not like I was trying to figure out like why they just don't understand.

0:13:19 Lydia: Man

0:13:22 Matt: No, it's just cuz. That's what he's saying. Because the president signed it, she should be out.

0:13:27 Thomas: Wow. That's a, yeah. That'S not how it works.

0:13:28 Lydia: That's crazy yeah

0:13:29 Matt: This really should be sent to the bar, honestly. I mean, you know this is frivolous. You have to know that.

0:13:35 Thomas: Well, what are the, what Are the options, Matt? You know, when you're lying or you're that bad of a lawyer that you shouldn't be practicing. If you don't Understand this particular thing, you should not be doing law.

0:13:41 Lydia: Very basic concept especially like in criminal law too like I feel like that's that's a big red flag like

0:13:52 Thomas: He signs off John case PC, I'm just hoping that that means personal computer, and this is AI.

0:13:58 Matt: He is a professional corporation in himself, I guess. I don't know. Yeah. Colorado Registration 2431?

0:14:00 Lydia: It

0:14:02 Thomas: That's what that means? Professional corporation? Is that what? Really?

0:14:04 Matt: Yeah, yeah. This came up the other week, too, the PC patron name. Yeah.

0:14:08 Lydia: Did yeah

0:14:10 Thomas: Oh, but I think we didn't know it then, and I don't remember.

0:14:13 Lydia: They chimed in on patreon uh explaining

0:14:15 Matt: It's not really how we do it here.

0:14:16 Lydia: Themselves so yeah interesting

0:14:18 Thomas: So it is like a normal lawyer thing somewhere?

0:14:20 Matt: Yeah, not usually after your name. It'd usually be like John Case and Associates, but I guess you can be a PC under yourself. Sure.

0:14:25 Thomas: That's, yeah, his email seems to be brief at John Case Law. So if it's John Case law, really funny. I love the entire, that whole thing. It continues to be a, let me speak to the manager forever. And it's so great that this person is one of the few people who faced consequences and didn't get pardoned for it. It's nice.

0:14:36 Matt: Had to share.

0:14:50 Thomas: Well, did get pardon, but couldn't get, get pardon.

0:14:44 Matt: And you heard what she said at the sentencing hearing. You're going to put me in with with criminals, with people who did crimes. I just hacked a voting machine and tried to convince people.

0:14:56 Thomas: Actual criminals, common common criminals, perjurers and thieves, knaves.

0:15:04 Lydia: Man

0:15:04 Thomas: I can't be among them. I'm a white lady. I can't do anything wrong. Yeah. It's, it's, you're a criminal, man. Nine years is a lot. That's a lot, but

0:15:10 Matt: That's Pretty much it is.

0:15:09 Lydia: I know I I was shocked when I heard that on the the clip nine years

0:15:16 Thomas: Part of it wasn't part of that. She's a piece of shit and wasn't remorseful. And like, I feel like, do you think she could have gotten a better result if she wasn't a piece of shit and had a better lawyer, maybe?

0:15:26 Matt: She took no responsibility and went down with the Trump ship. Yeah. So for

0:15:30 Thomas: Well, boy, and the lesson is Trump always remembers and you're fine now. You're going to be totally fine. He did a pardon, so you're fine. That's good. He remembers loyalty and he values it. And you're going to be A -OK in prison with the common thieves.

0:15:39 Lydia: Man

0:15:46 Thomas: Well good times. All right. Well that was a fun amuse douche and now I am ready for a whole lot of douche in this New York Times article. But first, I better quickly thank our frame of patrons. Going to thank a negative phenomenon, David Souther. AI, let's call, oh, wait, hold on. No, not AI. I'm so used to seeing AI. Al, let Della call Ed Stella.

0:15:46 Lydia: Yeah

0:15:46 Matt: Your service. All right.

0:16:13 Thomas: Okay, sure. These are getting, there's got to be better palindromes than this. Like, I'm sorry. Like there are some good ones, right? Are they just trying to to go off the beaten path. You got to fight for your right to ex parte. Jay Sank, council member elect vehicular man's laughter, not to be confused with New York penal code 125 .12. That's so awesome by the way that I'm still blown away that a this, patron who we've seen, we've hung out with, got elected to, uh to a council, like the city council or something. That, that's amazing. I'm still in disbelief that's awesome and all the vehicular murder he's committed before that didn't seem to affect him we live in a new era you don't

0:16:21 Lydia: Yeah maybe yeah yep so proud

0:16:43 Matt: Very cool.

0:16:52 Lydia: Man's

0:16:52 Thomas: Have to be ashamed of your vehicular yeah cavalry I am a palindrome mord me lapa my that's always a good joke they just like forced it even a blind squirrel can find these chunks today's episode is brought to you by the letter I think it's from the last one where we couldn't read the symbol or whatever.

0:16:55 Lydia: Laughter yeah oh no yeah

0:17:14 Thomas: I think they're effing with us now. Yeah, it's just something weird, but I like it. Thomas Freeman. Cajun Killer. Fraud Fishy Hates Everything. Chris Simpson. Gavelhead Chucking Away. E .T. and Mark Schultz. All right. Well, you know what? I'm going to say Mark Schulls. I had a high school teacher, and who's also the wrestling coach, who didn't have a T in his name like that, Mark Scholls. And the first day of class, he's like, if there's no T, t everyone says schultz there's no t it's schultze and uh it was it was he's he's nice guy he was

0:17:11 Lydia: Yeah it's object nice oh yeah yeah

0:17:44 Thomas: Kind of being goofy and he kind of made a big deal about he talked about like the the origin of his name was like okay and then like the phone rang and he goes jan schultZ like right just like totally oblivious like it wasn't intended like he just like said schultztz on the phone because he was so used to people calling him that it was like after he just gave us that so mark schultzz if that is your real name uh thank you for being a patron all right matt I where do where do we where do I begin should I just let you begin or yes

0:18:13 Matt: I'd like to say a few things as we get into this. So we're not going to read the whole article from the New York Times. Usually the deal when when we're doing these is we were responding to bad writing and bad writers. And you know, this is the New York Times. It is still quality writing and journalism. It's a bloated article. It's way too long. It'S not worth reading all of it. But the problem that we have here is with the framing and the setup. And I want to say upfront that this is not a defense of Joe Biden as an immigration attorney. AndI know that many of my colleagues agree. I actually think that Biden was in many ways too harsh on the border. I think that's going to sound a lot very strange to a lot of people who buy the framing here that the New YOrk Times is presenting and that has generally become sort of a gospel. And one of the only points I think they do make here is that they did try to play both sides in a way that didn't work for either side. That is true. And Obama tried to do the same thing. But I'm going to say up front that during his term, Joe Biden was faced with an impossible choice and just an impossible series of things, just a really unfortunate combination of circumstances that I don't think any president, no matter how determined or competent or humane or fascist, frankly, could have solved. There was no answer for this.

0:18:15 Thomas: Please well the article is written from the perspective that the answer was hard and he just didn't reach that fast enough yeah if he'd only done iron -fisted fascism faster that is the assumption of the the article.

0:19:20 Matt: If he'd only done fascism, right, right. And the assumption seems to be that the record numbers of people, which were not necessarily record for the entire term, there's a brief spike there, but that those people had something to do with his policies, which they demonstrably did not. So let's just start maybe with the headline and kind of work down. If you want to play some some of the Daily Peace, we could also set that up.

0:19:45 Thomas: So this was a longer article and a daily episode. The daily episode is an interview with the writer of the article, I actually, I'm so mad about this, I did both, I read the whole article, and it has additional annoying stuff in it that I might want to try to remember to get to, so yeah, maybe we'll hit play on this daily article. 1x blows my mind. I can't believe I have to to listen to stuff in 1X. It only happens when we play stuff on the show. And then, because if I did it on 1 .5, then the people listening to this fast, it would be like, you know, Matt, what would that be? 1. 5 times 1. No, I'm sorry. Matt hates math.

0:20:16 Lydia: When

0:20:17 Matt: I pity anybody who listens to me faster, but I

0:20:19 Thomas: That's me. That is me doing some workplace harassment. Sorry, Matt. All right. Here is the framing here.

0:20:23 Matt: Can tell you.

0:20:28 Thomas: Oh, my God. This is slow.

0:20:26 Clip: Trump's crackdown on immigration and try to win back voters with their own vision. We look back at why former President Biden let the border get so out of control in the first place and how he underestimated just how much the problem would come to define his presidency.

0:20:54 Clip: My colleague, Chris Flavell, takes us into his investigation of how Biden fumbled the issue of immigration and what his party can learn from his missteps. It's Monday, December 15th.

0:21:06 Thomas: The drummer isn't even that good on 1 speed. I thought the drummer was just killing it, but it's just like, I could play that. That's Ringo. Went from Black Sabbath to, should we

0:21:13 Lydia: He's 85. Yeah?

0:21:16 Clip: Chris, you've spent much of this fall taking a forensic look back at what many consider to be one of the Biden administration's biggest failures, its immigration policy.

0:21:21 Thomas: Keep going on this or should we, I think we should hear the, yeah, beginning of this. Oh, here

0:21:21 Lydia: Forensic. Yeah Wow.

0:21:27 Clip: Under Biden, Biden, immigration at the border surged to record numbers.

0:21:27 Thomas: We got the transcript up. Okay. We're right

0:21:31 Clip: Many say it costs Democrats the election in 2024 and set the stage for the immigration crackdown that we're in the middle of right now. I want to just start by asking, why look back on that policy in this moment, a year after Biden left office?

0:21:31 Thomas: There. All

0:21:47 Matt: Great question.

0:21:48 Clip: So this moment looks a whole lot like 2020, right? You've got President Trump in the the White House enacting really aggressive strategies in terms of arrests and deportations of migrants. You've got really, really strong anger from Democrats and others in response to those policies. And you've got Democrats as a party trying to figure out what position to take. That's exactly what was happening in 2020 as Joe Biden was first campaigning for the presidency and then deciding after winning what to do as president. He responded

0:22:24 Thomas: Right. I'll pause there. This is amazing and well -funded as the New York Times is. I can't have the transcript up and pause it. I have to close the transcript, lose my spot, hit pause. Cool. Anyway, I'll pause there, Matt.

0:22:37 Matt: I just, the whole setup of like, it's so, okay. She's asking, well, why are we talking about this now? And he comes up with this bullshit thing about how, well this is kind of like 2020 where they were cracking down. Now, of course, during the pandemic, President Trump, you know, to be clear, you can't close the American border. There is no giant lever in the basement of the White House that says border that you can throw. That's the way they talk about it, right? Just opening and closing, like shutting down the government, which we can't even shut down the department anymore, it turns out, because most of it's still open when we shut it down. But just a few facts before we begin here, because there's two different things this piece is talking about. They're talking about the politics of it, which are very different, and the reality of it. And they're misreporting the reality part. I think they're getting the politics more or less correct. I mean, it's true to say that the Biden administration did not have a clear message. Democrats generally don't have very clear messages on immigration. They can be kind of sclerotic and all over the place. But accepting the framing of the reality that the border was open or that there was an unprecedented surge because of anything that Biden did, let me just give you a couple of facts. These are just straight up facts that you can look up. Undocumented immigration crossing the border had already increased to a 21 -year high before Biden entered office. He immediately started increasing expulsions from his first day. He tripled interior detention 12 -fold, excuse me, interior detention and increased border detention by 12, increased air removal flights by 55 % over 2020 levels. He negotiated more expulsion deals with foreign countries than Trump did. He had to take people back. He got Mexico to crack down on illegal migration much more than Trump ever did. He expelled or removed 3 .3 million border crossers, three times as many as Trump, and as Trump's four years, which is pretty impressive given the numbers that increased, the way they increased. So framing from the beginning that people were just pouring across and Biden did nothing to start with is not true. And it's one thing that you've heard us complain about as advocates. And one thing we talked about last year when we talked the asylum policy is that Biden was finally forced to enact. But that's just in terms of the realities of how Biden responded. The realities of the people crossing the border are also very frustrating because Trump's policies were illegal. And at At no point does New York Times acknowledge that Trump did things that were actually legal when Biden was trying to follow the law. I would

0:24:45 Matt: Think that would be relevant.

0:24:45 Thomas: So you're talking Trump won, like leading.

0:24:47 Matt: Yeah, yeah. The stuff that set this up, and the pandemic also had a lot to do with all of this, huge factor, because you have not only Title 42, which was their excuse to close the border basically as a public health thing, the only place Republicans cared about public health when it came to COVID was closing the border, right? But then you also had the fact that these countries were suffering pretty badly, that all kinds of gang problems increased, crime increased, people lost their jobs. There was all the kind of economic stuff you'd expect. And I did meet, I will be honest, I met a lot of economic migrants during that time that came up in those couple of years. We didn't take those cases because they weren't asylum claims. But there were a lot more. I've never seen more economic migrants come than during those times. I have to be honest about that. But that's to be expected. There were a lockdowns that lifted that allowed people to come through these countries. And there were any number of other policy things we can talk about as well. But it was a a huge bucket of things, a combination of things that Biden walked into that had nothing to do with Joe Biden at all. And again, I'm not here to defend Joe Biden. None of us are. That's not the purpose of this. I want to tell you that this is just such a simplistic baby -brained view to say, well, how did he lose Americans' faith in immigration? And the only part of this I agree with is that he didn't do a very good job of explaining himself. We could

0:24:53 Thomas: That was a huge part of it, right? Yeah.

0:25:59 Matt: Pull up the article if you want to take a look at a little more granular here.

0:26:00 Thomas: Well, you want me to do the article or you want it to do either way?

0:26:03 Matt: Either way.

0:26:04 Thomas: Let's listen to how they set it up here.

0:26:06 Clip: Joe Biden was first campaigning for the presidency and then deciding after winning what to do as president. He responded to those same pressures by charting a really aggressively counter -campaign, being the anti -Trump. And we saw, with the benefit of hindsight, sight what the result was.

0:26:24 Thomas: Doing illegal things, for example,

0:26:26 Clip: Huge surge in border encounters, massive shift in public opinion against Democrats, and ultimately Donald Trump returning to the White House again on a campaign against migrants and an open border. So I think the question of why did things go so badly and what did Democrats learn is actually really relevant right now and it's very timely because Because that question of what does the party stand for and what do Americans want for the border and immigration remains fundamentally unresolved. So that's why I went back and spent months looking at this question of why did Biden and his close aides make the decisions they did? And what I found was, surprisingly, a lot of those mistakes and blowback was preordained and warned, and they did it anyway. Way. Preordained how? What do you mean by that? So let's go back to the summer of 2020. You're now approaching the height of the campaign. Joe Biden is seeking the presidency on a platform of being much more welcoming towards immigrants. As this is happening, I learned, some of his advisors began circulating a memo with a really important warning. This memo, which we got a copy of, said that combined with everything else that was going on, the pent -up demand for migration under Trump, the economic devastation from COVID, on top of that, Mr. Biden's own promises and his more welcoming tone, they warned, could produce a really serious surge in border crossings. And reading that language today, it's remarkable how on the nose it was. That memo said, quote, at the U .S. border, a potential surge could create chaos and a humanitarian crisis, overwhelm processing capacities, and imperil the agenda of the new administration. These warnings did not go over well with Biden's campaign team, but these advisors kept on raising this through the ranks of the organization until finally, after Biden had won election, he got a briefing from the people who worked on this memo. And I'm told during that briefing that the president -elect, and Kamala Harris, the vice president -elect, seemed to grasp that this was a problem, but they wound up ignoring those recommendations

0:28:50 Thomas: Little bit

0:28:50 Clip: To change course. Just so I make sure I understand this, you're saying that very early on, even before Biden won, there were advisors who wrote this memo, who eventually carried out this briefing, warning about the perils of immediately doing everything he said he would during the campaign. But Biden and Harris ignored them. Explain why. Yeah, look, the why is epic, right? The first part of the why is politics. It's worth remembering what the mood was in 2020. This was the height of Black Lives Matter. This Was a moment in American history when there's a real belief, especially among Democrats, that there was a racial reckoning underway. And it seems as though the political calculus was they couldn't turn their back on that. They couldn't, in that atmosphere, sphere, decide they would get a little more aggressive on border enforcement. That's the external why. The internal why, the staffing choices in the Biden administration early on reflected this idea that it was politically

0:28:50 Thomas: Longer here. All right. I can't handle them talking that slowly. Um, I don't know how anyone could ever do it. So that's it. Let's contrast that with what Matt said. They paint the picture and they go on. I could almost, I could also maybe pull some some quotes here and just, uh, speak them here, but the way they set it up a listener of that podcast, I get the idea that they were warned that all this border stuff could happen. And they said, eh, don't really care. Not going to do anything about it.

0:29:57 Matt: Kind of.

0:30:20 Lydia: Like didn't even say anything ignored is the word that they use over and over.

0:30:21 Thomas: Didn't really do anything. Nevermind that whoever these sources are, um, like they would have their reasons for saying, yeah, I warned him. I was right about everything. And he didn't listen. And whoever his sources are, he's not talking to Biden. He's knows how well they're representing that. But the point is that was done. And then there was this like open border essentially is the impression you're given.

0:30:42 Matt: And he's really focused on this memo and this idea that he ignored and doesn't really even say what the memo was telling him to do. It was just saying this is going to be a problem. And this isn't like George W. Bush ignoring, you know, Al Qaeda determined to strike in the United States. Like everybody knew that there was going to be a surge in migration after the pandemic had ceased, after things had basically calmed down. Everybody knew that when you lifted the illegal remain in Mexico policy, which is a big part of this, when you listed the Title 42 extension, which had been going on and on, and the Title 42 continued to be extended because Republican attorneys general demanded it and got the court to continue to extend it even when it wasn't necessary. And I want to talk just legally for a moment about both those things, because that's basically what they're warning in this memo is these two policies are going to start to change the way that everything happens. I'm going to send you a couple of graphics here that might help to illustrate this a little better. So here's, first of all, let's start with the first one I just sent you on border encounters. Now, the reporter uses the word encounter several times. There's a big difference between encounters and apprehensions and what they call gotaways. These are all different things. But encounters includes recidivists, includes people that reenter. And it was very easy to reenter with the Title 42 because basically they would just toss you back across the border without registering it as deportation, which meant that you would not be prosecuted the way that you would be now under Trump or even under Biden because you could actually become a prosecuted criminal for reentering but basically you got a freebie when you came back in so I just wanted to show you first of all a couple of graphics and some of this is taken from Cato, some of it was taken from the National Immigration Council of these institutes are very good on these things so much missing, there is so much context missing from this story, because they're accepting the framing of the idea that Biden opened the border. Okay, so we'll check out overall apprehensions in the lighter blue, and then recidivism adjusted for the unique apprehensions. So there's at least something like a 25 % difference there, because that's the recidivas, right? So even that spike in 2021. Now, again, that spike in 2021 was also caused not just by the end of COVID, of course, or at least by COVID reducing, producing and a lot of people leaving their countries after lockdowns ended or when it was safe, when it was able to come in or because they lost their jobs or their economies fell apart or whatever it was. So there's all kinds of extrinsic factors there. Mexico also, with the Remain in Mexico program, Joe Biden was determined to end it because it was definitely illegal. A

0:32:57 Matt: Court wouldn't let him end it. And this is the policy that required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while they process their claims, which is very dangerous. I went down there during that period and I saw the effects of it. I met a lot of people that were suffering from it because they were targets for gang violence because they're waiting there on the border and everybody knew that they were not Mexican. Then also the fact that Mexico refused, once we entered into Mexico, they refused to reinstate their cooperation agreement with us to actually even take people back. So even once a court, again, Matthew Kaczmarek of Mefapristown fame found that remaining in Mexico was legal, but he couldn't reinstate it because the Mexican government wouldn't agree to it. So even if the court had ordered it reinstated, they knew they couldn't do anything because it requires bilateral agreement. So this program that had kept a lot of people over the border and from coming in has ended. Title 42 has ended, and this policy of just tossing people back over the border and then not counting them as reentries when they come back and encountering the recidivism. Now, again, this allowed for all kinds of lying with statistics because you

0:33:55 Matt: Heard these numbers about 10 million people entered during Biden. That's just not true. There was a lot of reentries, maybe at least 25 % of that was reentry. There were unprecedented numbers, but there are a lot of different reasons for that. And it wasn't because they were getting here and getting free stuff or being treated much differently than they had been. And also, Biden, let's look at another number here. We can look at the next chart down as Title 42 expulsions. Can just see the numbers here until the program ended. Again, this is a unique program that had never been done in American history, where we closed the border essentially. I mean, again, you can't close the border, but we shut down asylum claims and basically justified it as a public health emergency and tossed people back in record numbers all through this time. And then when that program ended, there was a big concern there'd be another spike, but for various reasons there was not because a lot of the people were going to come and come anyway. There was also, at that time, unfortunately, there were a lot of people making a lot of money off of human trafficking who were putting out a lot of information about what would happen if you got here and how easy it was. And there was unprecedented access to the internet and to TikTok and to things that were telling people. Unfortunately, there's a lot of misinformation going around as well. Let's look at another one. The next chart I sent you, and I think this is also from Cato, which really, Cato has its own issues, but is really good at immigration because they are actually libertarians, to their credit. They are open border libertarians. Was expelling people in record numbers. I mean, this is really, people do not understand the degree to which the Biden administration was carrying out border enforcement.

0:35:18 Matt: There's another issue as well, which is that a lot of the people that were coming during that time were from Venezuela and from Cuba, places that will not take their people back. And Border Patrol acknowledged this, even when they're complaining about Biden, they said that there's nothing they can do about the fact and we can't hold them indefinitely. Title 42 expulsions under the PIPACAL thing. And then there's a dark blue at the bottom there, which is the Remain in Mexico, which is actually pretty minimal compared to these massive Title 42 two expulsions. And then the lighter color there is just regular deportations at the border.

0:35:50 Matt: So massive numbers. So more people were expelled in any given month than were ever in the Remain in Mexico program that Trump had used to try to control things.

0:35:57 Thomas: That's what I find confusing. And they even say it at some point in the podcast where they're like, well, but if you look at the numbers, there was a record number of expulsions. I'm like, well, what, sorry, what isn't that the thing that you're supposed, like they're wanting you to do? Like the, the assumption is that he didn't do enough enough and it's an open border. And the evidence of that is look at all these people we expelled. How is that? My mind. I almost maybe need to get to it in the podcast because it's like the podcast goes on to kind of talk about how, you know, oh, he was physically uncomfortable talking about it, biggest criticism. And I think like you said, some of this is right. You know, there wasn't a coherent thing. But OK, just to just to make sure I have the actual facts based on what you're saying. And this makes a lot of sense to me. Trump was doing illegal fascist things. And some people predicted, hey, once the horrible fascist who is out of office and someone who's not that is in office, more people could try to come. And they didn't. And maybe they anticipated with COVID, too. I don't know. But one way or the other, they're saying, hey. Hey, there's going to be a surge at the border. And it seems like, sure, there was a surge at the border that, you know, yeah, there are record numbers, as you say. Your point, what was he supposed to do about that? Like, the implication is he needed to do the fascism. That really is like in the end, if

0:36:10 Lydia: So what's the issue? Yeah. Right, well,

0:37:19 Thomas: You listen to this whole thing, if you read the whole article, it's about it took Biden too long to do the fascism that is what the thing is.

0:37:20 Matt: It is. That's the point they make. Yeah. And

0:37:28 Thomas: And And he was too welcoming.

0:37:28 Matt: He was too welcoming. He was too welcome. Said nice things.

0:37:31 Lydia: And I think you can tell that at the very beginning of the article, because the way that it leads off in the full piece is Mr. Biden had pledged to treat unauthorized immigrants more humanely than President Donald J. Trump. So like he's saying from the beginning, the issue Biden's mistake was that he was pledging to be too compassionate that's the issue so it makes sense that the the final result of the article in the podcast is that he didn't do enough fascism quickly enough illegal

0:38:00 Thomas: Go to this part here. I am going to do a little bit of a transition here. I am gonna start back on the podcast. I skipped ahead a bit.

0:38:04 Clip: Fascinating. Like he was physically uncomfortable talking about it. But it sounds like to the extent that he was thinking about the issue, he does have sympathy with the side that believes there's a moral imperative to reversing the signature pieces of Trump's immigration crackdown. And we know that once in office, that's exactly what Biden does. So describe that. Describe what happened. Yeah. Joe Biden, the first day he was in the White House, made good on what he had promised to do during the campaign.

0:38:37 Clip: He reversed almost all of Trump's signature policies. He said he would stop building the wall. He dramatically reduced the scope of arrests inside the country

0:38:42 Lydia: Policies and

0:38:48 Thomas: I just want to note something. We talk about how the border led to Trump and the blah, blah, blah, what about the fact that he won election on these promises and then did them like, why, why is that not part of it? He wins elect. They just, that's an aside. So he, uh, you know, he won elections and he promised to do idiot. He promised to be a president. Not fascism like a dork. And then he followed through on his promises that won in the election. When Trump wins, even when he loses the popular vote, when he wins, he has a giant mandate and he should do whatever the fuck he wants. When, when our side wins, when Democrats win, it's, it's only by the skin of their teeth. And it's like, well, they barely got through it and everyone hates them, but I guess we'll let them do stuff. And then everything they do is wrong. But you could just as easily say Biden was responding to a, a, he won the election, He won the election knowing and the public knew that Trump was doing illegal fascist stuff about immigration and Biden promised to do not that. And he won. So you could take this New York Times bullshit, fake, objective thing and you could say you present it that way. So the voters wanted this and they elected Biden and he did what they wanted. But then what happened? You know, you could present it from that angle in just as a quote unquote objective away as this is. But they don't do that. Because the whole underlying thing is the fascism. It was the right way to do it.

0:39:10 Lydia: People voted for him yeah right

0:40:14 Matt: That's what they wanted.

0:40:15 Clip: Stopped sending kids

0:40:16 Thomas: Let's go back just to make sure we get that.

0:40:16 Clip: Inside the country for Trump's signature policies. He said he would stop building the wall. He dramatically reduced the scope of arrests inside the country for migrants. He ended or tried to end what they call the remain in Mexico policy, forcing migrants to wait while their cases were heard. He stopped setting kids back over the border under the public health rules for COVID. And he announced that he would put a halt on deportations for 100 days.

0:40:45 Thomas: That all sounds great.

0:40:46 Clip: Right. And what followed from signaling a more welcoming stance toward migrants was, in fact, a huge surge at the border.

0:40:47 Thomas: Promises made, promises kept. Okay.

0:40:55 Clip: Yeah, it was a disaster almost immediately.

0:40:49 Lydia: I think those people already planning on coming anyway the

0:40:59 Thomas: Yeah. How much do you get a sense, Matt, general these folks, you actually interact with people, with migrants. That there is definitely a disincentive effect by the fascism, for sure, and a little bit of an incentive from learning that not a fascist is going to be in control. How much of that, though, do you think is really motivating these decisions? Because it It feels like if you're somebody who's going to take the extreme risk of crossing the border, the deadly thing, potential human trafficking, I mean, it's just, right? I mean it's really dangerous to do any of that. That feels like the kind of decision that, to Lydia's point, is kind of already made more or less. Like how much on the margin is that decision?

0:41:41 Matt: Yeah like I said, I think there was some misinformation just from having talked to a lot of my clients that they were going to have an easy time when they got here when Biden came in. That because Trump was over that... And again, Again, that had nothing to do with anything that Biden was even saying, right?

0:41:51 Thomas: Yeah.

0:41:52 Matt: That's just like big traffickers and like TikTok videos and people putting this stuff out there that like, you know, just give us money and get us, we'll get to the border and you can get yourself in. And, you Know, because again, with title 42 ending and remaining Mexico ending, and I should point out too, that the things that they're mentioning here, I mean, the law really doesn't come up in the daily story or in this extremely long New York times story. I did want to read one sentence here just to give you an idea of the way they talk about the law, which, I mean, this is like the Fox News take. The whole thing is the Fox News take this is, I just, not that I expect that much from the New York times, but

0:42:22 Thomas: That's been the, the Fox News take is the record now. The victors, right, the history, whatever thing.

0:42:26 Matt: That's, that's the framing. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Uh,

0:42:29 Thomas: The red lady.

0:42:27 Lydia: Gray lady fox news is the gray lady yeah and the red lady

0:42:30 Matt: AIDS stressed that the Biden administration faced a steep challenge addressing a border crisis while adhering to outdated immigration laws.

0:42:40 Matt: Man, it's so hard to follow the law. But like, it doesn't matter that you think they're outdated. They're the law and the, the main thing that we were complaining about with Trump is he just wasn't following the law And he was finding ways around it and finding ways to abuse people and to destroy due process. And Biden ended up being pushed into a situation where he had to do some of the same stuff. And I should also point out, the courts did not let him end Remain in Mexico for quite a while.

0:43:01 Matt: The courts actually stopped that 100-day deportation pause, which again, the deportation clause was to review the way that we're deporting people and why, and to make sure that we are not continuing to do a lot of the Trump stuff, including the very worst of what we are seeing right now, of deporting people with no records overwhelmingly, like people who have absolutely no reason to give a chance here, but that deportation pause even was shut down by a court. He wasn't allowed, which is, I think, its own problem because the executive should have that kind of authority to decide they can put a halt on things.

0:43:29 Thomas: Well, it's unitary executive when it's Republicans, but not when it's Democrats.

0:43:32 Lydia: Of course of course this

0:43:33 Matt: But there's no Democrat, you need a chair executive, exactly. Just so many different factors here, including, again, just the way that Title 42 and Remain in Mexico had the interplay. But I sent you another thing here. Let's talk a little bit about what he actually did because that barely gets acknowledged here. They brush off all the different solutions, and they did come up with quite a few pretty novel solutions, things that had not been tried before. This is a very effective graphic, I think, for showing how well this actually worked.

0:43:59 Thomas: Parole policies immediately led to a reduction in border apprehensions, U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions and arriving paroled individuals for Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans by month. So there is a subsection. Oh, but that's because that's who qualified for this, right?

0:44:04 Matt: Are the numbers. Yes. Yeah. So yeah, this is not including Venezuelans. It's interesting. But this is helpful because Haiti was a big part of this. And a lot of the attention was on the Haitian surge. There were a lot of people who were living in Haiti in other places in South and Central America who faced a lot more discrimination and problems during COVID when the economy went down, because Haitians are discriminated against everywhere. And I've met a lot of those people that had already had gang violence and problems in Haiti, could not live there, ended up living in other countries, and then could not live comfortably there, were subject to all kinds of hate crimes and discrimination and problems, and then came up here after the pandemic. So this was a real issue with a lot of Haitians coming at once. So this parole program was a novel thing. It had never been tried before, but basically people could come and seek asylum and do it through an orderly parole process if they had a sponsor in the United States. And this is what people think this process already is.

0:44:14 Lydia: Isn't including Venezuelans though yeah mm -hmm yeah

0:44:59 Matt: This doesn't exist before, but people ask me all the time, like, can't I just sponsor an immigrant in another country and bring them here? No, of course you can't. That's not how it works.

0:45:05 Thomas: So Biden makes something happen that has not been the case that people think is the the case. And so that's a perfect recipe for not getting any credit whatsoever. Cool.

0:45:16 Matt: And then same with the CBP One app, which had its own problems and we complained about it a lot, but But it did require people who were coming here to register with this app, to register for an appointment, to do it in an orderly fashion so they're not just crashing the border, and then come over and have a chance to seek asylum. And this is all in the understanding that these people were going to cross the border no matter what. So you might as well give them a chance. And this stuff demonstrably did reduce the rates.

0:45:37 Thomas: Yeah. I want to make sure we have listeners. So can you describe what, what you're, you're showing with the graphics and maybe, maybe what the overall picture of the last two or three graphs we've done is.

0:45:47 Matt: Yeah, this is – so, yeah, overall, we're looking at sort of Border Patrol encounters. And as I was saying, encounters kind of being – including both re -apprehensions and apprehensions. Line there is apprehensions, and the yellow line is people who were paroled illegally, right? So you have a massive drop from December 2022, as the program's getting going, into 2023, like into January 2023. You see that purple line of apprehensions goes way down a

0:46:11 Thomas: It goes from 80,000 to zero pretty much like,

0:46:14 Matt: Month.

0:46:14 Lydia: Over the course of two months yeah yeah

0:46:16 Matt: Yeah. And then the parole is like a pretty moderate sort of 20-ish, right, so you've got people that have a better option. People don't want to have to cross the border if they have a better option, who are able to come in that way, what people might call the right way, because it is through an orderly process. Yeah, it

0:46:29 Lydia: I have a this might be too much of a math question for you Matt but I am curious um because the the the difference here between apprehensions and then paroled doesn't look like it's a one -to -one. So is it that apprehensions are, is that like the recidivism that we talked about earlier? Is that multiple, you know, folks multiple times and they're counting that and paroled would be an individual person? Or is it if some people have the option of parole, they just aren't bothering? Ring.

0:46:34 Matt: Could be.

0:47:01 Thomas: Or they're still in being processed, right? Or they, yeah.

0:47:01 Matt: Yeah. I think they're still being processed because it did take a while. So yeah, I think you've got a lot of people.

0:47:04 Thomas: So, so this is apprehensions was the, yeah, yeah

0:47:07 Lydia: So so this is this is like the the idea of flattening the curve right like when we're talking about like COVID and stuff where it's like instead of everything happening all at once it's we're gonna get to you over time we're going to spread that time period right?

0:47:19 Matt: And there are a lot of people that wouldn't qualify, but that might give it a chance and would try to come through the parole process. And again, you're not going to eliminate it to zero, but you're going to severely reduce and get those terrible pictures out of the media. Remember the Haitians being whipped on horseback because there's this giant group coming through. So it's a much more humane way to do it. And I should say too, when Ukrainians started coming here, and again, I have no problem with this obviously, but when Ukrainians were coming to escape the Russian invasion, we immediately began a program and basically gave them the red carpet immediately across the border without having to have any of those problems, which is fine. But it didn't look great and it's not a good look when you've got basically white Europeans being treated with the red carpet and Haitians in

0:47:59 Lydia: Differently

0:47:53 Thomas: Good. Yeah. Everybody should get that. Yeah.

0:48:00 Lydia: Than people of color yeah yeah yeah

0:48:03 Thomas: That's what, yeah have so many thoughts. Were there more things you wanted to say that Biden did?

0:48:02 Matt: Some from that business. The parole programs I think were really important.

0:48:11 Thomas: A sane world would look at that graph and say, well, we should just do that for effing everybody. It took, it took for, Because that graph, just so, again, listeners and even viewers might not have noticed, it was a graph of just just specifically Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans, and it went from 80,000 apprehensions within a period of two months to near zero. So, like, you would think a sane world would look at that and say, oh, just do that, but for everybody, essentially.

0:48:14 Matt: That seems to work per month. And

0:48:39 Lydia: If people have another option, they're going to pursue that other option.

0:48:43 Matt: Those countries are especially important, I should point out, I just want to mention very quickly, sorry. They're especially important not just because they were in real turmoil and they had a lot of people coming, but because those are countries we can't return people to. So once they're here, they're there.

0:48:44 Thomas: And no part. Good. Yep. That's important, too. And no part of this reporting, no part of this reporting is what's happening to these human beings. What do they need? And what are the actual facts of what's going on here?

0:49:09 Matt: Yep.

0:49:09 Thomas: It's only presented in horse race. It's entirely horse race.

0:49:09 Matt: Why they're coming? Mm -hmm. Mm-huh.

0:49:13 Thomas: And it's something that I harp on a lot. But the big issue here is I feel like this is a New York Times brain thing that happens where their obligation is to report only what they can defend as facts. So you don't say the border is a problem, although I think they do actually say that you're not supposed to say like the border problem. You're supposed to stay and critics said the border's a problem. You know why? Because critics did say that. So that's fact. You can always say that's a fact. And so everything is presented in this way. Well, this didn't fix the problem because people still complained. Critics were saying this, and it's always presented in that. But that loses the point of journalism. I don't need professionals with millions of dollars in resources and the best reporters in the world to look on Twitter and tell me what people are saying. I don'T need reporting on like, well, the critics over here said this and the critics over here. Look into the fucking border and tell me what's going on there and what would fix it and tell Me how it's broken, who could actually do something about it. And, and, and how we could possibly get out of this. Give me, give me actual fucking facts. Nowhere

0:50:23 Thomas: In this is the, because you could reframe this entire thing, this entire thing, and I don't know when to get to all this because there's so many thoughts. You could reframe the entire thing as, oh, the Senate failed on immigration.

0:50:34 Matt: And oh, yeah, yeah.

0:50:35 Thomas: Why is it on Biden? He had to follow laws that don't, that like, you know, he's because the law, as you point out, man, you gotta follow the law or whatever.

0:50:42 Matt: Outdated laws.

0:50:43 Thomas: Okay. Why is the law outdated?

0:50:44 Matt: Right, Right.

0:50:46 Thomas: Hit play here, I think we can get just a sequence of just banger after banger. Noting that we talked about the way they framed it, they framed Biden following through on his promises, not being a fascist, trying to follow the law like Trump wasn't, they framed that as these failures that he's done. Like this is coming right back into that.

0:51:06 Clip: A halt on deportations

0:51:06 Matt: Also, specifically trying not to deport children. Big on that.

0:51:08 Clip: For 100 days. Right. And what followed from signaling a more welcoming stance toward migrants was, in fact, a huge surge at the border. Yeah, it was a disaster almost immediately.

0:51:19 Matt: Not cause and effect.

0:51:21 Thomas: It was a disaster almost immediately. So before I hit unpause, now I want the next phase of this for me is I need someone to tell me, and I have a hard time when I ask these rhetorical questions because I'm not asking for the misinformation. I'm não estou pedindo para a mentira. Eu estou tentando to point out the error in the way they're framing this. Someone tell me what the problem is, trademark. They will refer to the problem over and over and I want to know what it is because I have a version of the problem. The version I have is family separation, migrants needing help, people being mistreated by, and talking about then, I guess in 2020, a lot of people needing needing help. A lot of people suffering. The United States having an abundance of wealth and resources and plenty of room that we could easily handle and help people in the world. That's my problem. I get that that doesn't exist. Nobody cares about that. What is another problem? Is it the overcrowding? Is that the two of the of the, you know, facilities? Is it too many people in custody? Because if you want to frame, sometimes they use that as the problem, like overwhelmed, overwhelmed, you

0:52:32 Thomas: Know, processing centers. Yeah. But I don't believe that's the problem trademark. The people who are angry about immigration aren't like, yeah, and immigration's bad because the people, the migrants are crowded that they don't care about that.

0:52:32 Lydia: Infrastructure yeah it's

0:52:47 Thomas: They don't care about the migrants.

0:52:47 Lydia: Too cramped yeah yeah yeah yeah

0:52:49 Thomas: The problem trademark is that there are Brown people coming into the country. That, that is the problem. But the New York times can't say that they have to say it was a problem almost immediately. It was a disaster almost immediately, they never fucking say what that is. They just keep using this term. And we all know what that is, or I don't even know if they're aware of themselves doing that, but they just refer to the problem. And at various times it will be different things because for a lot of the article, the problem is that politically it's unpopular that a bunch of people have lied about what Biden is doing. And that's the problem, but what the fuck do you do about that.

0:52:55 Matt: Who don't speak English. Right. Yep. Yeah! Yes. Right!

0:53:23 Thomas: Does that have anything to do with policy?

0:53:23 Lydia: It

0:53:25 Matt: As if Trump was not going to run on, they're all criminals and they're dirty. Of course, he's going to run on that no matter what the situation was. But I just want to introduce a little bit of nuance before we go on. I sent you two more things. Check out this last chart here that I've just sent you, because I think this is also part of the problem, except it's a very good problem to have. Biden, in one way, was actually a victim of his own success. To the extent that the president has anything to do with the economy, Biden actually did a pretty good job of restarting the American economy after COVID, and Congress did too. But check out job openings in America.

0:53:57 Matt: Obviously, huge spike throughout Biden's administration. The US economy picked up much faster than the rest of the world's and the word got around that there's good jobs in America in a way there hadn't been before. And that was a part of it too. And it's true. I mean, certainly I've seen that they were having trouble filling a lot of these jobs that my clients were taking. So that's part of it. And let's also look at the Congressional Budget Office, which is not a partisan institution. This is not like the House Democrats or House Republicans. This is just the Congressional Budget Office, which attempts to project what different policies and different circumstances in America are going to do for the Congressional budget potentially.

0:54:35 Thomas: I don't have another chart if you, oh,

0:54:37 Lydia: The link above it

0:54:37 Matt: That's the link just above. It's a PDF. And I just wanted to show you because this did not get covered. If the New York Times had actually covered this, if the media had actually covered this information, I'm willing to believe this could have made a difference. If they'd given us these pieces of information about the jobs and about the projected economic benefits of this unprecedented kind of migration. And I'm not saying it was all good, but I'm saying that this should have been covered this way. Because when you continue, as you're saying, Thomas, you talk about it as a problem, as an unqualified disaster, as something that we have to address and do something about rather than looking at the potential benefits. Because we do have unprecedented low birth rates. We do need more people in this country. It's just that these aren't the kinds of people that The New York Times wants. So if you go down uh there in this report cbo describes a second paragraph um effects oh yeah sorry but yeah read the budgetary effects part that's the important part and

0:55:27 Thomas: Have Lydia read it.

0:55:30 Lydia: The increase in immigration boosts federal revenues as well as mandatory spending and interest on the debt in CBO's baseline projections lowering deficits on net by .9 trillion dollars over the 2024 to 2034 period period. Some of the effects on the budget result from the increase in the number of people paying taxes and collecting federal benefits. Other budgetary effects stem from changes in the economy over that period that are brought on by the surge, including increases in interest rates and in the productivity of workers who are not part of the surge.

0:56:02 Matt: Check out the chart on the next part increases in revenues increases now again they're looking at federal to to be completely fair, and they're very clear about this.

0:56:07 Thomas: So yeah, let's see.

0:56:08 Matt: They're looking at federal end of revenues.

0:56:08 Thomas: Estimated effects of... Yeah, I just want to make sure for the listeners that... So it's the table, estimated effects of the immigration surge on deficits. Okay? And sorry, when was this prepared again?

0:56:18 Matt: So increases. This is late 2024 or July 2024, mid -2024.

0:56:21 Lydia: July 2024 is when it came out.

0:56:23 Thomas: So it is like sort

0:56:24 Matt: Pretty recent.

0:56:24 Thomas: Of getting toward the end kind of getting like okay and what are the uh numbers you want to pick out from this to illustrate for the listeners sorry

0:56:30 Matt: So the decreases in the deficit, net effects. And then as you go down, there's also more about what they're contributing to the economy in terms of payroll and payroll taxes. Again, I'm not a numbers guy, but these are pretty good numbers. There's nothing catastrophic about this, I wouldn't call this a disaster, but you're talking about decreases to the deficit over time. And this is accounting for federal programs for spending. Here we go. Here's the first paragraph.

0:56:49 Lydia: And some of that's also related to the like social security taxes that they end up paying even when they take social security numbers, you know, from like deceased folks or whatever. Like they're still contributing to the economy in significant ways, like billions and billions of dollars.

0:57:08 Thomas: Who's taking social security numbers from deceased folks they're

0:57:10 Lydia: Like if they're if they have like fraudulent

0:57:12 Thomas: Not doing that what do you mean yeah

0:57:12 Matt: That does happen. So if you can't match as social with a known person, then it just goes into this fund that ends up paying for Social Security. That also happens with ITINs, though, if they get a legal ITIN number, or if they just make up a number, which does happen sometimes. But But check out the first paragraph here.

0:57:13 Lydia: Well it does happen yeah estimates that the immigration surge will add 1 .2 trillion dollars in federal revenues over the 2024 2034 period the annual increase in revenues grows over time and reaches 167 billion or 2 .2 percent of total revenues in 2034 in the agency's projections individual income taxes and payroll taxes paid by immigrants who are part of the surge are responsible for most of the effects on revenues. In addition, the surge is projected to boost economic activity and, in turn, tax tax revenues.

0:57:56 Matt: This is not a partisan document. This is just attempting to look at the overall economic consequences of allowing a bunch of new people in and giving them work permits at a time when we desperately need workers. That's all it is. And we'll link to this document, people can pick it apart for themselves. But I was, I mean, I guess I wasn't shocked, but I was not happy with how much this was not reported at the time. That we have hard numbers here, that we're not going into an economic spiral. It's very much the opposite. And again, whether or not you agree that these people should have come in, this is the effect. This is what it is. And this is accounting for the cost and federal spending as well. The states can and have complained. And some of that state stuff can be paid for by the federal government as well,

0:58:17 Thomas: I've never heard of this is so I paused uh we paused when it was saying um was a disaster almost immediately. And I started to say the problem. I want to know what the problem is. So let's listen to a few paragraphs here. And just, I just want everybody to imagine what the program is that they're saying, that they never say what it is. Get some music first, of course, make it more dramatic.

0:58:58 Clip: Could look at this as the first of a series of major miscalculations that the Biden team made on immigration, failing to anticipate the scale of the numbers of the people who were coming.

0:59:10 Lydia: But they didn' t because they

0:59:11 Clip: During the campaign and the transition, as they prepared for these scenarios, they said, let's plan around the idea that the number of people crossing the border once Biden is in office will equal the worst year or the worst month under Trump and then just stay there. And the reaction to that proposal was, well, it could never get that bad. And sure enough, by March of Biden's first year in office, they had blown past the worst of

0:59:11 Lydia: Had that memo, so.

0:59:28 Thomas: Worst. I just wanted to highlight the dehumanizing language of that. The worst. It's a problem. The worse, the worst of the worst, the worse. Well, Well, that's weird because Matt points out, now maybe in time they didn't have this report, but when this guy is doing this reporting, they have this rapport, Matt, that you just highlighted. I'm really glad you pointed that out first. This is good for the economy. So this is good für die Ökonomie. It's good that if we are able to help people who need help, it's good dass wir die, dass people who are fleeing potentially violence, murder, awful stuff, cartels, awful stuff, it is good if those human beings are not being killed in horrible ways or dying of in the desert trying to cross or whatever it is, you know, the dangerous areas being human traffic. That's all good. What's the problem? What's The Problem in quotes? What? It's so bad. It's So Bad. Oh, it's that there's brown people like what what else is the problem. And they just say it with the assumption. Sorry, go ahead.

1:00:33 Matt: Oh no, I want to point out that it's exactly on what you're saying, that advocates really try not to use the word surge for exactly the same reason, because oceans surge, right? Like pandemic surge, people don't surge. That's just a faceless mass of brown people like you're talking about. You're exactly right on.

1:00:46 Thomas: It's really, really dehumanizing, shocking stuff when you actually when you step back from what is apparently a universal shared assumption that that migrants equal bad. Why? I don't know.

1:00:59 Lydia: Well, you know, what's interesting is Chris Flavel, the author for this, is an immigrant from Canada.

1:01:00 Thomas: Economically, they're good. I don't know. Like, so what is it? It must be something else, huh?

1:01:09 Lydia: So just a white guy, though.

1:01:11 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

1:01:12 Matt: Of course.

1:01:12 Thomas: A little bit different. So I'll let it keep going here for a minute.

1:01:15 Clip: The first Trump administration. And then not only did it stay at those levels, it kept on rising. So even the people whose job was to think, well how bad could it be, turned out to be incredibly mistaken. They just didn't imagine the geographic and numerical scale of migrants who would try to reach the border.

1:01:24 Thomas: How bad could it be?

1:01:33 Clip: And when it becomes

1:01:33 Thomas: Now, I think people

1:01:34 Lydia: I have a hard time believing that I was just gonna say I have a hard time believing that like there's a lot of very very smart people who get involved in administrations and to say like that they were that off like I I don't know I just have a very hard time believing that that like they're gonna be doing statistical modeling and stuff they're going to be looking at a variety of things I I don't buy that rhetoric there yeah

1:01:34 Thomas: Might say, yeah, good. Also, I just don't Know how much it matters. Like they don't have options. The The president isn't the person who's supposed to do stuff on this. That's Congress, who is so far absent from this. They're going to talk about it later, but Congress is supposed to pass the laws that affect this. We as a country, I get that the country is kind of fucked and we don't, but like the New York Times should be, rather than constantly staying almost one step ahead in supporting the fascists, they should be trying to remind us of how the system should work and how the appropriate response is, Congress does stuff. They should pass a law they are way behind congress is the one not doing stuff what could if if the reports told biden that a billion people were coming what the fuck is he going to do about it of

1:02:38 Lydia: Well Well, the quote from the article itself, too, that Flavel wrote was, and he, meaning Biden, failed to convince Congress to change immigration laws.

1:02:46 Thomas: Course yeah it's his fault he failed to convince congress that's later but um I feel like I have this this issue where I have a lot things in my head that I don't always communicate some people might respond to that question that I ask about the problem of oh well it's really inhumane to have have a bunch of people at the border and in these facilities and the way they're processed. I know that. It is, that is bad. That is a problem. That's not what they're talking about because the problem that is presented is that people don't like this, that Americans, that white people, that voters don't Like this. They don't give a fuck about the wellbeing of the migrants. So I know that you and I are thinking, well, it is a program because we can't process them quickly enough to like help them. And it's the facilities that they get stuck in are bad like Like, yes, that's a problem. That can't be, definitionally can't be the problem that they're talking about in this article

1:02:46 Matt: We'll get there. We will get there, yeah.

1:03:34 Thomas: Because they don't give a fuck about that. The voters don't give a f**k about that, the problem is the migrants themselves, they are a problem they're not humans, they're a problem

1:03:41 Lydia: Well, and again, just to underscore that, the proof is in the pudding, right? Like, within the article himself, he writes, the perception of chaos began to erode the pro -immigrant sentiment. The perception of Chaos.

1:03:55 Thomas: Perception of chaos, yeah that just happened, just happened we'll get to that, that'S why I want to keep playing it because it gets amazing on that

1:04:02 Lydia: I know.

1:04:02 Clip: Clear just how bad it is, what's Biden's response to the chaos? Biden and his team were focused on responding to the immediate crisis of children who were stuck in border patrol stations that were not designed for them. And so their emphasis, their goal in the moment was to find something to do with these children, to move them somewhere safe that made sense for them, It was a real situation of trying to react to events and just sort of mitigate the damage. But there was no overarching vision of, well, what should the U .S. do on the border and securing the border?

1:04:05 Thomas: Just how listen to this, wow, that sounds great, yeah Yeah.

1:04:25 Lydia: Sounds like a priority.

1:04:37 Thomas: Are you fucking kidding me? It's insane. You could present that in an entirely different way, which is, well, Biden being a human being and not a fascist was like, shit, let's try to do what we can in response to this event that we are not supposed to, the Congress is supposed to pass a bill. That's what's supposed to happen, if anything. Go ahead, man.

1:04:54 Matt: And let's start with the most vulnerable people, the kids. Let's try to help children, which apparently was his big mistake. And also I want to point out, I really don't have time to get into this, but Mexico changed its policy on how it processed families coming back, and it stuck us with people that otherwise we would have been able to return, we weren't going to be able to turn. And there's another whole issue there. And they're treating this as a unilateral American policy as if this is not the Western Hemisphere working together here.

1:04:59 Lydia: Save the children. Right?

1:05:20 Matt: Biden did eventually, one thing to his credit, honestly, to mitigate this. Again, I don't even really support this, but he put a lot of pressure on Central American governments, especially Mexico, to enforce their own borders more and to send more people back. And that's part of how we ended up with record numbers of low crossings by the time Biden, and Biden gets no credit for that. But by the end of his term, he had numbers we hadn't seen since the 70s for low crossers because of a number of different policies.

1:05:43 Thomas: Don't mention it, but they'll say, well the damage was done, is what they'll they'll say. Paragraph goes on in the same fashion here, and it gets even worse.

1:05:50 Clip: Describing a sort of paralysis from the White House, no real policymaking.

1:05:52 Thomas: Paralysis, that's not what he, hold on, he just said a bunch of stuff they did. Am I crazy?

1:05:57 Clip: The damage, but there was not overarching vision. Vision of well what you're

1:05:59 Matt: It was also,

1:05:59 Thomas: He just said, well, he tried to save the children, essentially, find something to do with these children, move them somewhere safe that made sense for them. Were focused on responding to the immediate crisis of children. So you're describing paralysis. What? What are you talking about? How is that paralysis?

1:06:15 Lydia: Yeah.

1:06:16 Thomas: It's just because he puts that sentence at the end. There was no overarching vision. So they didn't have a vision of fascism on how to end people wanting to come here or how to dissuade people from coming here. Right? What other assumption could be in his mind other than he didn't do the fascism? He didn't Have an overarching anti -migrant fascism that made people stop coming here? That's what it is, right?

1:06:34 Matt: That is the framing. But I also want to point out as somebody who was there and doing this the whole time that they rededicated all of their interior resources. One reason that interior deportations were weighed down, not just because he was only focused on the most serious people, they redirected a lot of ICE and a lot of the asylum office to the border to try to do as much as they could and the National Guard and JEGS and everybody else to try and process asylum claims as much they possibly could they were using the resources they had Congress did not give them more resources as you're saying a lot comes down to allocation and what the law is it's just this framing I'm glad you see it Thomas, I really am it's very encouraging

1:07:13 Thomas: This is why I listen to it a hundred times. I get more mad each and every time. Apologies, but it's just fucking racism. Sorry. It just is. It's racism and they're not even doing the thing of report. This is Why It's So Bad right now. It is not just that they are reporting in a neutral way about how a lot of people are racist. That would be one thing. If you are like, well, you got the racist on this side and they are racist and you got the non -racist, that would be a thing. It would still be like a both sides thing that I don't like. We've gotten to the point now where the racism is just ingrained. The racism is part of the reporting.

1:07:21 Matt: Straight up

1:07:45 Thomas: It's an assumption. It is just an assumption from which they write the article. Never addressed.

1:07:45 Lydia: And then and then always leaving out the context of how media is perpetuating misinformation related to the border and immigrants and everything like that's never brought up ever.

1:07:59 Matt: The chaos Yep.

1:08:01 Lydia: Ever but

1:08:01 Thomas: The chaos. So, I think we can skip quite a bit because it's about how no one was driving the bus, nobody had anything, nobody knew anything. And yeah, obviously, the million -year -old guy wasn't the best president in terms of communication. And part of that, though, is also, again, it's always on Biden. The overall framing number 12 that I want people to look at is the amount that they write this article from the perspective that the asshole fascists doing misinformation and basically human trafficking, which we'll get to in busing migrants, they're just going to do it. They're just doing it because they're doing it. It's on the responsibility of Biden to be the adult and figure out how to deal with that. There's

1:08:09 Matt: There's something to that. Mm -hmm.

1:08:40 Thomas: No no criticism of them. It's almost written. They almost write about that in positive terms. We got actually, let's get to that. Sorry. Go ahead, hon.

1:08:41 Lydia: Also but I was just gonna say um but also like like don't break the law but break the law like there's no right answer for biden there from from this perspective of this article

1:08:58 Thomas: Absolutely. Let me find the good place here. Uh, let'S see.

1:09:02 Matt: We're not in the good place, Thomas.

1:09:04 Thomas: Let ME find, cause they lead you on, they lead to a cliffhanger for the, uh, for that commercial break. That is just, it's, oh, it'S fucking amazing. So let ME, let ME find the right place to go to start that. So we're gonna get the end of a bit of a thing here more dehumanizing stuff about the surge getting worse regular

1:09:21 Clip: And they hoped the same would happen again, but they were wrong. These numbers did not fade. Instead, the surge kept on getting worse and worse. Okay, so the White House wants to be silent on this. They don't want to touch the issue. Remind us, what's the reaction among Americans, among regular people, to the waves of migrants that are now coming in? Yeah, the polling data shows a real shift, and that shift goes in the opposite

1:09:40 Thomas: People what's the reaction among regular people the people who count the people whom we consider people the regular people What's their reaction to the, it's like so fucking racist.

1:09:55 Clip: Direction. It it shows that more Americans are becoming worried about illegal immigration and the support for migrants is falling, seemingly in response to this perception of chaos at the border.

1:10:05 Thomas: Seemingly. Listen to that. Perception.

1:10:08 Clip: And now, you would think

1:10:09 Lydia: Who's responsible

1:10:10 Thomas: You, you, you pointed that out, right? Yeah.

1:10:10 Lydia: For the perception yeah who'S responsible for for the perception. They don't tell us. They don't tells us. It was the media.

1:10:15 Thomas: That is a great sentence. Where was that? We got to, we got to highlight that again, just like you did. They, it shows that more Americans are becoming worried about illegal immigration and the support for migrants is falling seemingly in response to this perception. It's not even, they don't even have the guts to say seemingly in response to this border situation. No, seemingly in response to this perception of chaos at the border.

1:10:37 Thomas: Why is there a perception of chaos of the border? Who did it?

1:10:37 Lydia: Which is, yeah, it's peddled by Fox News, peddled by right -wing media, pedaled by right wing politicians when they're saying, oh my god, I've never seen it like this down here. I went down to a visit for the border and I was just blown away by how many millions of people were just standing there banging on to like the wall to get in. It's crazy. That was just lies. Complete lies. So then you have people consuming that and thinking that it's true that they can trust the media that they're consuming that they can trust their politicians and they shouldn't be because it's a lie it's fake right

1:11:10 Thomas: Yeah. And it gets it gets worse here. So polling shows a real shift. Gosh, it's hard not to just play this part. I'll try to skip through a little bit. But, you know, support is falling, as we said. And then it says it And now you would think that polling data would be a red flag, but it wasn'T because of a still, because of still more political miscalculations.

1:11:27 Matt: Political miscalculations.

1:11:29 Thomas: So there's, there's no, no responsibility. There's no expectation of decency anywhere for the people doing the misinformation. What has to, what, what we instead expect is we expect a, who's a Democrat to do a fucking impossible thing, which is to contend with the reality and to somehow somehow, whatever you're doing with that, make it also change the unreality that people are being told.

1:11:53 Thomas: You can't do all of those things. You Can't have a sensible policy. By the way, as a president, you fuck again, it's Congress. Congress is supposed to do it. Oh, why doesn't he just convince them to do it? Yeah. Fucking jack off motion. Yeah. Why doesn't he? I love that. Everybody, the far left does that sometimes too. Wow. He's, he's got to work with it. He's got to convince them. Fuck off. We know that doesn't exist anymore.

1:12:05 Lydia: I know yeah the year is 2025 we're

1:12:14 Thomas: It doesn't fucking exist. Um, anyway, he didn't do that. He couldn't convince him. Um, and there's, the responsibility is for him to somehow do something in a way that would change this perception, this mysterious perception. And that's just not possible. And it's just miscalculation after miscalculus. What the fuck is he supposed to do?

1:12:14 Lydia: Not idiots yeah

1:12:34 Matt: The media is doing is running video of people at the border, as Lydia is saying, standing there. Instead of talking about the context, instead of talking all the ways that Trump was violating the law and how they're just trying to restore literally the rule of law at the boarder, that's what Biden was trying to do, and all the way through in this paragraph and all the way through this piece they're saying well if only biden had done the trump stuff just like you're saying the fast stuff that yeah

1:12:51 Thomas: That is absolutely it. Let's play this. Cause going into this commercial break is where I really, I've just really blown away.

1:12:57 Clip: That that polling data would be a red flag, but it wasn't because of still more political miscalculations. The administration, the people around Biden, were worried that if they got more aggressive on the border, on enforcement, they risked alienating Latino voters, who were an important part of the coalition that brought Biden to the White House. And beyond that, they figured that other American voters just wouldn't care that much. They thought that unless you live in a border state, this wouldn't be a real priority for you.

1:13:05 Matt: The only thing that matters

1:13:28 Thomas: Yeah. Cause why the fuck would it?

1:13:30 Clip: And sure enough, that situation didn't last because eventually Texas found a way to make it a problem for the rest of the country.

1:13:32 Thomas: Here we go. Listen to this. This

1:13:39 Clip: In April of 2022, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas figures out how to blow up this idea that Biden could ignore the border by starting a campaign to actually bus migrants from Texas to Washington, D .C., and effectively say to Biden and the Democrats, you cannot ignore this. We won't let you.

1:13:38 Lydia: Human trafficking is clever yeah it is yeah

1:13:39 Thomas: Is downright heroic talk unbelievable unbelievable that's glowing like a glowing review now that's how you do politics that's How You Don't Do Political Miscalculations can

1:14:08 Matt: For the political

1:14:14 Lydia: What a clever Greg Abbott.

1:14:15 Matt: Genius greg out of it yeah well

1:14:16 Thomas: You remind us wasn't that fucking illegal like what Matt how did he even do that was he allowed to do that but it seems like he got away with it

1:14:23 Matt: The desantis thing to martha's vineyard was like you might remember when he flew a bunch but that was straight up illegal because they lied to them on where they were going um but there are a lot of people who were going other places who had friends and family to stay with or they just handed them a bus ticket and just told them to get on this, or just threw them on a bus, who knows what. And we don't have to play this next part, but he talks about it. There's Venezuelans, Cubans, and Nicaragans, I think, that are on the first busload. Again, people that admittedly, that border patrols admit that we can't send back to their home countries. So we have to find something to do when they're here seeking asylum, especially Venezuelians at this point. I mean, come on, and Cubans. Are these not countries that we want to help people from? Yeah, no, the idea that uncritically, we're just reporting on how this was the thing that broke the camel's back, and And this was what forced Biden to do something and to do the Trump stuff. Like as if, yeah, no, it's,

1:14:26 Lydia: DeSantis. Yeah, and

1:15:10 Matt: It says, yeah.

1:15:11 Thomas: Just imagine again all in the name of journalism, there could be another way you present this that is still just as true, which is how one evil asshole's campaign to make people hate migrants worked.

1:15:23 Matt: Worked. Yeah. Yeah. And how simple it was to just a few buses.

1:15:23 Lydia: Everyone

1:15:26 Thomas: It's incredible. It is incredible.

1:15:28 Lydia: Fell for it. Yeah right.

1:15:29 Thomas: Yeah, we get, yeah.

1:15:29 Matt: And these are people, again, who are coming legally, who are coming through a process, who are actually following a process and getting work permits and can work here and take jobs that are badly needed at this point. It is spike in, historic spike in hiring.

1:15:39 Lydia: Well and I didn't get to mention this point earlier but another problem problem in quotes right that people bring up with immigrants is they're going to be taking housing from you know citizens who live here. Well the issue is the supply and so you have immigrants coming in and actually filling construction jobs which is going to help the supply you know like that they're not a problem they're part of the solution yeah

1:15:59 Thomas: But they don't have to report on the actual fucking facts of what goes on. They only have to rapport on the perceptions, and they can't even talk about out where those come from it's just background information it's just fucking killing me I gotta play this this part when he goes through it it's it's insane I can't even believe it

1:16:04 Matt: Perception. A

1:16:08 Lydia: It's irresponsible describe

1:16:15 Clip: Describe this campaign, Chris, led by Governor Abbott, to bring this problem directly to Democrats' doorsteps and, as you said, make it impossible to ignore. Remind us how that all played out.

1:16:24 Lydia: This potentially illegal campaign yeah

1:16:27 Clip: The campaign started with one bus.

1:16:25 Thomas: What problem what problem hold what what problem genuinely I'm I'm like I'm flabbergasted right now because already the like that's how they they get away with it, they shift what the problem is because the problem was perception, right? A second ago it was perception.

1:16:31 Lydia: It is people the people are the problem yeah yeah the

1:16:43 Thomas: But now he's bringing the migrants there so that you can't ignore the problem. But wait, no, that is the problem, like the problem is the perception, he's doing the perception. Now you're buying into their framing that there is a problem, and you're saying all this innocent, brilliant political strategist Abbott is doing is making them aware, making them unable to ignore the problem.

1:16:46 Lydia: Human Human beings. Yeah.

1:17:05 Thomas: Just that one phrase, really, they just pack so much into it. And it's so disgusting. Where's my mouse? I'm trying to click play and I can't even find it. There it is. That's how mad I am.

1:17:16 Clip: In April of 2022, there was a bus that arrived from Texas to Washington, D .C. It pulled up near the U .S. Capitol, and we know from data we got from a public records request that that bus was carrying 12 Venezuelans, four Colombians, four Cubans, and four Nicaraguans. And it was the start of what became tens of thousands of migrants from Texas moved by bus over months and years to New York and Washington, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, eventually Denver. And the result was really remarkable.

1:17:35 Thomas: That is 24 people. That' s impossible to manage. Tens of thousands. Wow.

1:17:37 Matt: Problem.

1:17:56 Thomas: Okay.

1:17:57 Clip: You had Cuba,

1:17:58 Thomas: Tens -of -thousands. I didn't know it was that much. Matt, have you checked on that? Okay.

1:18:03 Matt: And Florida was doing the same thing too, so I don't know what it comes out to.

1:18:05 Thomas: We'll take it for granted that it's tens -of thousands. It's not hundreds, he says tens, to New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and eventually Denver. What would you guess is the sum total population of those fucking cities?

1:18:08 Matt: Well, they're in ruins now, so who can know?

1:18:23 Thomas: It's 11 billion people. The amount of people that tens of thousands is negligible. That's fucking nothing. But then he goes on to say, I'll try to get through it here without playing it. Oh, it's really remarkable. Now, even governors in democratically held areas are saying, whoa, whoa, this is a problem. This is a problem financially. We've got to pay to find hotel rooms. Look, the best they do here is that one Democratic mayor, I don't know if you wanted to talk about this, but it's like, what is it, a Colorado guy or something?

1:18:25 Lydia: New York City. Yeah Denver's mayor.

1:18:52 Thomas: Denver's mayor is like, well, we, there was a lot, we had to put a lot of people in school. We had to put all the kids in school, right? Okay. But they only had to do that because of the busing, right.

1:18:52 Lydia: Johnston.

1:19:04 Thomas: I mean, I don't, what would have happened to them without the busing. Is it?

1:19:04 Matt: Most people have a plan when they are coming here. And another part that I'm really not reporting on is how much of this was Western hemisphere migration. There were so many people that did not come to the United States in the course of these migration patterns. People end up in places like Mexico and Costa Rica and other Central Central American countries, you know, where they would be more welcome and speak Spanish and have jobs ready for them. But you're disrupting badly, disrupting people's migration patterns when you're just like, here, have a bus ticket and try out DC instead of maybe you're going to go sleep on your third cousin's couch for a while and try to figure things out. But well, there must be something waiting for me in DC if they're going send me there, right? Or there must be an opportunity. I've heard of New York City, I'll go there instead, right. But it's, you know, and there were during this period, there were people that were coming without a plan. I certainly didn't meet some of them, but that's unusual. Most people, when they migrate here, have somebody waiting for them.

1:19:34 Lydia: Isn't there also like like not necessarily tons of federal money but border states do receive federal assistance because of their exposure like on the border and stuff and the influx of people that that might be dependent on their needs, on their infrastructure. So, I mean, that's something.

1:20:07 Matt: And there is very well -established welcoming infrastructure and communities and immigrant enclaves that are better prepared to take them than Denver might be.

1:20:15 Thomas: It's an artificial problem, right? I mean, I really, one thing I tried to ask you guys beforehand and I asked the audience now is, is there someplace where this really was an issue? And maybe there was, like maybe there's someplace that got hit with a bunch of people coming into the city or town or whatever at the same time. Maybe that would cause a problem. I'm not even a hundred percent convinced that that does cause much of of a problem that isn't out eventually by the fact that you know the same people who come perhaps needing assistance will then be taking jobs like working and contributing taking jobs that no one else wants like there's job openings that we can't fill at this time um I'm not even convinced that it is a problem maybe I'd be open to the fact and this is something that I would fucking love a reporter from the new york fucking times to tell me what was actually a problem tell me that I'm open to it I'm opened to like yeah there's this one one town got hit with so many people. Okay, let's solve that.

1:20:17 Matt: That was the point. Yeah.

1:21:07 Thomas: How did that need to happen? What was the solution? Was the solution fascism and separating families? Or was it, hey, direct a few dollars to that town to figure it out? I don't know. Like, I actually, that's something I would love this reporting to be on. But no, it's all about perception and politics and who said what and who is maybe critiquing stuff. We can skip ahead a bit, but I do want to hit this part part. And I'll try to find it here.

1:21:32 Thomas: I think I can move quite a bit.

1:21:32 Clip: Nicaragua, Venezuela that had made up a big share. There's none of the nuclear

1:21:37 Thomas: Oh, so, so Matt, then he goes on to the part where he does talk about like a bunch of the stuff that Biden did. And it's kind of hand wavy.

1:21:44 Matt: But it wasn't enough. Right? Yeah.

1:21:46 Thomas: It's like, well, he did do all this stuff and it made a huge difference, but, but still, right. I mean, that's kind of, yeah, I'm

1:21:50 Matt: But people kept coming. Right, but nothing was going to go to zero. Nobody ever thought this this is going to go to zero. That was not the point.

1:21:56 Thomas: Let's listen to how they frame this here.

1:21:58 Clip: Those numbers had fallen, but not nearly enough. They were still facing much higher crossings than when Biden first came into office. And this is Where the pressure gets even more intense, because in February of 2024, that border bill that was moving through the Senate collapses When President Trump, then candidate Trump, tells Republicans to vote against it. So all of a sudden, Biden faces a real dilemma.

1:22:14 Thomas: Why'd it collapse? Whoa, weird. Hold on,

1:22:22 Clip: And the election, that's

1:22:22 Lydia: Why aren't we talking about that then,

1:22:22 Thomas: Hold on, yeah, yeah.

1:22:23 Lydia: Chris?

1:22:24 Thomas: Wait, this entire problem was was Biden's failure. Biden's failure.

1:22:25 Clip: When they begin looking at

1:22:29 Thomas: 100%. Oh, oh, there's this reform bill. The thing you actually have to do. The law. And, you know, that collapsed when President Trump then -candidate Trump tells Republicans to vote against it. That's not... So, that's fine. That'S just a given.

1:22:42 Lydia: Well, listen, according to the lead Republican negotiator, this is in the article itself dragging his feet on biden dragging his feet on a crucial senate border deal who said the effort might have otherwise succeeded yeah

1:22:47 Thomas: They say that later. Oh, my God. Yeah. That was in the article. You're right. That was the article, not the podcast, because it's so fucking dumb. I don't think... They're like, well, they do all this to -be -sure stuff. That''s my favorite.

1:22:54 Matt: They could have snuck it past. Trump would have noticed. Yeah, yeah,

1:22:58 Lydia: It's insane yeah and an unnamed lead republican negotiator too yeah

1:23:08 Thomas: To be The Republican guy says, okay, yeah, Trump killed it. They essentially do. They, this is, it's insane. That's the one part I did want to get to from the article. I'm so glad you brought it up. They literally do. Sure. Yeah, Trump did kill. He actually was the assassin who single -handedly ended the reform bill that is needed to fix the problem.

1:23:26 Thomas: But it's actually Biden's fault because he didn't try to make them do it sooner. And if he had a Republican, a source, a Republican says, well, maybe we would have gotten it done because if it was sooner, then Trump wouldn't have won a few primaries and he wouldn't been as popular at that point. He wouldn't had the power to do it.

1:23:47 Thomas: Are you fucking kidding me? How many ways do you have to backflip to make this Biden's default and not the thing that happened, which is Trump killed it.

1:23:45 Lydia: The clear candidate yeah Yeah. Yeah.

1:23:50 Matt: And as you and I discussed

1:23:57 Thomas: And And sorry, Matt, and one more thing, Trump killing it and the Republican senators going along with it.

1:23:57 Matt: A couple... Sorry. Yeah.

1:24:02 Thomas: It's also their fucking fault. Do they have no culpability for just, sorry, what's that? Citizen who's not an official of any kind who's indicted right now is going through a trial.

1:24:11 Lydia: Not my constituent and not my

1:24:13 Thomas: A fucking criminal, Donald Trump, kill the bill. Oh, we're killing it. No responsibility there, huh? It's all Biden. If only he'd encouraged them a little more. That's the problem. Go ahead, Matt. Sorry.

1:24:13 Lydia: Constituent. Yeah, yep,

1:24:19 Matt: Let's not forget why, because as we discussed a a couple of hundred years ago last summer, you and I, about opening arguments, Donald Trump killed it so that he could make sure that there would be more perception of chaos. He knew that that bill might actually go some distance to changing the law. Now, again, I actually opposed that bill. I thought it was bad. But I do understand why people thought it would do some of those things. And Biden tried to illegally do these things through executive order later, arguably made it maybe slow things down, but things were slowing down anyway, just because of extraneous factors and the way that Mexico is now enforcing, and also because the economy is improving in those other countries and too. I mean, again, the situation actually got a lot better in places like El Salvador. This idea though that somehow they could have just snuck it past Trump if only Biden had allowed the bill to pass a couple of months earlier or whatever. And when Biden was specifically trying not to push it. Yeah, no. No, exactly.

1:25:04 Thomas: I just, the lengths you have to go to make, yeah, to make that Biden's fault.

1:25:12 Lydia: Crazy.

1:25:12 Thomas: It's incredible. It's incredibly. And that's where I said, okay, so the fascists are going to fascist. And the New York times is like, yeah. That's going to happen. But the one person who should have done differently is this one guy who doesn't even really have the power to do much because we want to hate Democrats. It's anti -Democrat. That's the main thing. I don't necessarily think that the people doing this, the reporters doing it. I don't think they're like Republicans. They just have an anti -left, anti -Democrat bias. And I do think they are anti -immigrant. I think that largely the stance seems to be, again, I think you can't write an article where the unsaid assumption is that migrants are bad without thinking migrants are mad. I don't think you can do that. I think that if there was any of us in there, they'd be like, wait, sorry, what's the problem? What's problem part? You should establish that at least in your article, like what the problem is. So there' s that. But like Like, the idea that this is all, the Republicans in this article are the heroes of it. They really are. The fascists are the person who human trafficked migrants to different parts of the country that they didn't even necessarily want to be. That's the hero.

1:25:59 Lydia: Greg Abbott. Nuts.

1:26:17 Matt: He's the smartest guy in the room in this article.

1:26:19 Thomas: He's the one doing the good stuff.

1:26:20 Lydia: He found the loophole and we should celebrate that.

1:26:23 Thomas: Unbelievable.

1:26:23 Matt: One weird trick.

1:26:25 Thomas: Un -fucking -believable.

1:26:27 Clip: What you think of as the nuclear option, which is finally using the power that Biden had unilaterally of his own authority to effectively close the border to asylum applications, which he did in June of that year. And the thing that was amazing was it basically worked.

1:26:38 Thomas: Here we go. Finally do the fascism. Oh,

1:26:45 Clip: The numbers plummeted almost right away. And so from a policy perspective, he had basically solved the problem.

1:26:46 Thomas: It worked.

1:26:53 Clip: Yeah.

1:26:53 Thomas: Well, oh, okay.

1:26:54 Clip: Chris, help me understand this. I had this question at the time. I have this question now. Why did it take him so long to use executive action to do this?

1:26:59 Matt: Bracing for an aneurysm here because

1:27:03 Clip: You ask

1:27:03 Thomas: Let's pause there. There. Why the aneurysm? Explain the aneurysm to folks.

1:27:07 Matt: They're about to say why he should have ignored the law earlier. Because we talked at the time in Open Arguments about how concerning this executive action was to basically end asylum, to, as they say, close the border to asylum applications, as if that's something that we should or want to be doing. But yeah, I think let's just let him say it. I can't even paraphrase.

1:27:25 Thomas: I wanted to make sure to explain. So this is, people don't know this. Like, so I think you got to explain the lawyer thing. So he shouldn't be doing this, right? Like what's the specific thing they're talking about in the executive action and is it illegal?

1:27:30 Matt: Under international law. Sure. Sure, yeah. Yeah, so under international law and under, for what it's worth, our national law, you are allowed to seek asylum if you're in the United States, if you are within our borders. That's how it works. But they restricted asylum in and of itself to people who came through the CBP1 app or who entered through a port of entry. And that is flatly illegal. They They did allow other forms of potential relief to people. But that's something that he didn't want to do.

1:27:59 Thomas: So Biden eventually did, to clarify, a flatly illegal thing.

1:28:04 Matt: I believe so. And a lot of other people did too.

1:28:06 Thomas: And now the question that these astute journalists are asking is why did it take him so long to do that? Why do you take them so long?

1:28:12 Matt: And he's even about to say it. I mean, he's about to stay out loud.

1:28:15 Thomas: Here we go. Here we go, yeah.

1:28:16 Clip: 20 people, you get 20 answers, right? One answer that I got was they just didn't believe it was right. This was not in keeping with Democrats principles about, you know, respecting the dignity of migrants. They want to respect the law. They couldn't do it and wouldn't until they felt they had to. Another argument is with

1:28:23 Matt: Here it comes. Here it goes. Here's the best part. They wanted to respect the law.

1:28:33 Thomas: Yeah, so that's one argument, and just, and here's

1:28:34 Matt: Democrats. That's a factor.

1:28:37 Lydia: They weren't going to break the law until they had to. OK.

1:28:42 Thomas: Another main way, and I'll try to be quick as Matt is arrested. Another way that this kind of reporting kills me is that, yes, it is true that I think that taking a cynical view of politicians and figuring they're mostly doing what they are doing because they want to get elected. I get it. I get it but when you do this kind of reporting that's the only thing you're allowed to do. So you can list it among the reasons. You can be like well one reason is like maybe they didn't think they should break the law and blah blah blah you know like maybe migrants are humans or some shit. Other things and then they go on to emphasize that's a quick aside. The quick aside is this is flatly illegal and migrants are human.

1:29:19 Thomas: That's a quick one. Just get that one out of the way. What's next? Let's see. What are the other reasons? Yeah, principal. Invincible they want to respect the law another

1:29:22 Clip: Democrats' principles about respecting the dignity of migrants. They want respect the law. They couldn't do it and wouldn' until they felt they had to another argument is they wanted to give Congress every possible chance to do do this on their own. And only when it was crystal clear, Congress wouldn't do it. Only then would Biden do this himself. Whatever it was, I think in hindsight, what's

1:29:32 Thomas: Argument whatever it was could have been either of those it

1:29:46 Clip: Clear is it didn't work. They waited too long to get any meaningful benefit from doing this. Explain that. Where are voters on this? Why didn't it work? Why did it convince people that they were on the right track?

1:29:51 Thomas: It didn't work shoot can we avoid this maybe I can uh because he says it's just too basically the calendar blah blah I know we've gone on at length so um that last part was fucking incredible that was fucking incredible he did a thing that was illegal it solved the problem problem but also it was bad because it didn't solve the problem they

1:30:12 Matt: They wanted to respect the law.

1:30:18 Lydia: I do want to highlight one thing he says here. We're not going to play. He says voters, to the extent they've been paying attention, have lived through three and a half years almost of border crisis. Was what? No. Again, that's the media and right wing politicians creating this perception of border crisis. They are living through a concocted reality that is not truth. It belongs in their mind, basically. That wasn't reality.

1:30:43 Thomas: Have yeah you're

1:30:52 Matt: I was going to say they're also living through an unprecedented economic recovery, but sure.

1:30:53 Thomas: So right oh good yeah yeah youre so right because it says I and and then they get back to the careful perception language so that idea that perception that biden and democrats favor open borders is cemented by that point what passive language what passive voice so but note that they said to your point, it's great to point this out. He, he attributes causality there, causation. He says they, to the extent they've been paying attention, to extent they're paying attention as though it is a real problem only if you pay attention to it.

1:31:29 Lydia: Being an informed voter, yeah,

1:31:31 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, no, the, yeah, the reality is you shouldn't be fucking paying attention to that. There's a million other issues that are way more important. And if you should be paying attention and it should be to the human side of it and actually solving the problem. No, no. They've lived through three and a half years of almost of a border crisis. So he's making a causal link there. So he is actually making a biased claim there that the problem of the border crisis is what causes this perception that Biden and Democrats favor open borders, which by the way, this whole fucking time, none of this has been

1:31:31 Matt: Paying attention to us.

1:32:05 Thomas: Open borders. This has all been about like apprehensions being higher. There's all like, and yet they're just going to say, they're going to be like, they're all just going to say well, the perception that's open borders is cemented. Nothing we can do. Nothing we journalists can do about this perception.

1:32:09 Matt: Expulsions. Yep.

1:32:15 Lydia: Well, and you can tell that he's absorbed some of that, too, because the lived through like that phrase like like we're in a war zone because of a border crisis living through a border crisis yeah yeah

1:32:21 Thomas: Fuck. Yeah. Unbelievable.

1:32:27 Matt: You know what we're living through right now is all kinds of economic turmoil because we're just rounding people up, workers, and deporting them in massive numbers. What is is that doing to our economy versus what the new set of workers meeting an unprecedented demand and meeting an economic boom like we've never seen? I think something like 50 years, like that first year of Biden. Again, he gets some of the credit because he's coming back after COVID and we had a big downturn and whatever. But again, that it was an unprecedented disaster or that somehow that the nation was falling apart when it was very much the opposite economically.

1:33:00 Lydia: I think you can tell because of like how much um like when you pull in stuff on this how severely it shifts from one side to the other for um voter sentiment regarding immigration that like we are really we the broad we are really, really susceptible to how this stuff is portrayed in the media because we are flipping every single time.

1:33:21 Thomas: And perhaps it's not a logical response. We have to get to the final, the finale, the amazing. This is, I can't, and this is, by the way, this is narrator voice asking this. So this will be narrator voice. So this is God voice. This isn't the reporter. This isn't some opinion columnist this is narrator voice let me find the right spot oh that's that was the spot here we go I don't even have to cut here

1:33:29 Lydia: Piece of resistance.

1:33:41 Clip: Foundational skittishness remained. I want to just talk about everything you've told us. It is really hard to overstate the significance of it, the significance of the fallout of Biden's miscalculations on immigration. Obviously, it led to Trump's return to office in part, and that has totally transformed the country. But there is this potentially deeper, longer lasting impact that you you point to in your reporting, which is that it actually helped lead to this rightward shift in the American public's views of immigration.

1:33:48 Thomas: We got yeah are you ready for this yep sure fuck you fuck you

1:34:18 Lydia: We're just now

1:34:19 Clip: Can you describe that for me and just help me understand how durable you

1:34:19 Lydia: Stepping into the right word shift yeah

1:34:20 Thomas: Unbelievable the only person with agency in the world is joe Biden. He's the only human being who has agency, who we can expect stuff of. Fuck you. I can't believe it. I'm dying over here. Now he's to blame for the rightward shift, guys. It's not that there was a concerted effort by billionaires and fucking racists to make there be a rightward shift. It is not that Trump killed the reform bill.

1:34:49 Thomas: Literally, they say he killed the reform bill, but it's not. No, it's Biden's miscalculations that also are now to blame for this rightward shift. Fuck you. God.

1:34:47 Lydia: And technocrats yeah yeah

1:34:59 Matt: And in the New York Times story, they have a picture of Trump speaking in front of one one of those big signs about criminal migrants, like doing his criminal migrants. And they quote him talking about poisoning the blood and all the other racist stuff they were talking about, which they would have done no matter what Biden had ever done.

1:35:13 Matt: Even if Biden had done all of the same trunk policies, they would've said it was a disaster. They would've Said whatever they were going to say.

1:35:13 Lydia: Matter what yeah

1:35:11 Thomas: It's Biden's fault. Yeah, no, it's Biden's fault. Unbelievable. I can't, I can'T get over this. This is unbelievable. Fuck. Was there anything else here? Anecdotally, you know, the unease has softened a bit and those numbers have receded to your point. Um, he put, he's like, well, you now it's already, the sentiment's already better her again.

1:35:23 Lydia: Horrible yeah

1:35:40 Thomas: Weird. I wonder why that is.

1:35:34 Lydia: Yeah yeah because maybe we couldn't can't trust the sentiment of americans when it comes to this particular issue because

1:35:46 Thomas: Actually, yeah, we need to listen to this answer. It's short. It's sure. I promise. But listen to us.

1:35:50 Clip: Think that shift is? The honest answer, of course, is no one knows how durable that shift. There is polling data that has come in since Donald Trump came back to the White House showing that some of the intense unease about immigration that really spiked by the end of the Biden years, that unease has softened a bit and those numbers have receded to sort of the pre -Biden levels. But what that doesn't account for is anecdotally and based on conversations with people who work on this, there seems to be a real sense of lingering lingering anger among American voters, Democrats, Republicans, the sense that people remain collectively a little bit scarred by what they saw when Biden was president. The

1:35:52 Thomas: She asks how durable. Wow. Fuck

1:36:18 Matt: Anecdotally, the

1:36:34 Clip: Question you're pushing on is.

1:36:35 Lydia: Nuts

1:36:36 Thomas: You. Fuck you.

1:36:37 Matt: PTSD of it all.

1:36:38 Thomas: Look, the numbers say go ahead.

1:36:39 Lydia: It's it's I was just going to say it's really interesting because before he stepped into covering Trump more broadly, he was on the climate beat and like like won awards related to like environmental journalism and stuff. And and so sometimes that intersects, of course, and like he had some really important reporting during the Texas floods and the out the the fall of FEMA. Right. And all of that kind of stuff. But now he's moving into this broader Trump administration. And I just feel like it's like too big for his britches kind of thing yeah

1:37:08 Thomas: I yeah, I don't know how to account for this. Honestly. What do you think, Matt? Do you think it's just bias or what? Yeah,

1:37:12 Matt: I think the New York Times is really intent on giving Donald Trump the narrative that he wants about Biden. I Think that's really a big part of it. I think there's an audience of one factor here that they're trying to keep him happy. They're trying to get the administration happy the best they can. And this is exactly the story that Trump wants.

1:37:23 Thomas: Man. I you know, No, I don't want to start a big debate at the two -hour mark, essentially, but I actually think they truly believe this. I actually think their point of view is just my theory. I could be wrong. But I really think the main problem they suffer from is a feeling that Democrats are the only ones with agency who need to do everything right. Otherwise, the fascists get to control the country, and it's Democrats' fault. And they're not trying to change the the the right's behavior they're not doing an article about how the right fucked this up they're just talking about democrats and it's a way to look neutral like that's why democrats have it so fucking hard is because the right hates them and the left hates them the center gets to hate them everybody everybody's incentivized to hate on democrats it just there's no incentive to do otherwise There's no incentive to defend Democrats at all, anywhere in the political spectrum, except maybe like some centrists or something. And it's just, it's a way for them to present this all as them reporting about perceptions and reporting about just things people say. And what this doesn't account for is anecdotally based on conversations with people who work on this. What do you mean people who works in this? Because we're talking about the public. What about people who worked in this, what does that even mean? So he's talking about political operatives.

1:37:31 Lydia: Get sued yeah policy

1:38:53 Thomas: Yeah. And it's their theory. And by the way, all this is the funny thing about this is wasn't the number one issue of the economy. Was it even this? I mean, I know this is part of it. I'm not saying the border wasn't part of the like it's another big leap to be like this was the singular issue that Trump went on. Right. Right. I mean, inflation, I think, was really the problem. And you could.

1:38:53 Lydia: Folks yeah yeah the affordability crisis right yeah

1:39:16 Thomas: Yeah. Like, I mean. I've looked at the polling and I mean it's sure the border is part of it, but it's not I don't think it's that much of it because the people.

1:39:25 Lydia: It's probably top five though don't you think

1:39:26 Thomas: Well, yes, but but if number one is 80 percent or something, then, you know, I'm not sure. Like I think inflation and when you look at the voters who actually change their minds potentially either by switching votes or staying home, home, I think the key is going to be the fact that inflation, you know, like stuff costs a lot. They don't pay attention to the news and gas prices were X and sandwich prices were X and it was high. And that like the depressing analysis seems to be that like that honestly kind of just does it like incumbents, as we've said a million times, suffered all around the world. And Biden, Harris, I guess, or Harris had better numbers than incumbents worldwide. Wide. And it's just, so, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because we get to rewrite this history as Biden's fuck up on the border. It's just fucking incredible. 10 out of 10.

1:40:16 Matt: I mean, and but the editorial staff at the New York Times has to bear the responsibility because I mean I can imagine the meeting right where they're sitting around like, hey, we haven't talked about the Biden border crisis in a year. Let's go back and take a look at that. When you know, there's another story as you've as we've been saying all the way through and we've all been talking about how the other story that could have been covered here about how, hey, let's look back and see what the real causes of what people, what that perception was, right? What that chaos was. Or actually, hey. Let's look at the economic effects of having let all those people in because those are right there for you, too. Democrats did a terrible job of telling that story, no doubt. But, you know, or also even better, let'S look atthe economic effectsof yanking the work permits and parole from all these people that we just brought here because we're effectively now removing their ability to work legally. We're going to put them in desperate situations from Haiti, Venezuela, and everywhere else. We're gonna remove the work permits. We're going to deport all these workers. Don't see anybody talking about that. We're just hung up on what Biden did wrong.

1:41:06 Matt: So yeah, no, I'm with you. I made a bit of it, but there's so many other ways to tell this story. And I just hope that maybe some responsible journalists at some point might be motivated to get into those questions.

1:41:15 Thomas: Yeah. You could tell it from the state point of view of the Senate and of the failing institution there. That is there. We're, we're criticizing a guy whose job it isn't to do this. To your point, the ultimate thing that they want him to do was an illegal executive order they shouldn't have done. And the part where Congress just abdicated, well, that's in the background. Why, why isn't, why Isn't their failure responsible for the fascism? Nope. It's only Biden's failure.

1:41:40 Matt: And it was not just illegal, but it was one of the Trump policies, exactly basically a copy of the 2017, 2018 Trump policy on non -asylum that stuck through that administration that he was trying to get away from because he knew it wasn't right. But yeah, perceptions.

1:41:51 Thomas: And they have a chance at the end. They have a Chance because they say, well that's weird. Cause you say it solved the problem entirely and things were great. And she literally asked like, so then why didn't, what are we doing here? Why didn't why didn'T that work? Well, it's too late in the day. It'S like, well why, why, isn'T that you have one more chance to be like, yeah. Isn'T it weird that reality didn't affect how voters feel? Because that's the main fucking problem of all of this that I say over and over.

1:42:17 Thomas: Voters are not connected to reality. That's the problem. Too many voters, too many people are not connecting to reality, so we do all this stuff where we're trying to change reality. We're trying to actually work in the real world and do stuff in the real world, and then we're like, why isn't this working? I don't understand. And then we make up shit that isn't it. They can't just say, yeah, well, the problem is there's the misinformation network fueled by billionaires, fueled by Elon fucking Musk, who campaigned on illegals voting. He went on the Joe Rogan show right before the election and said, you won't have a country anymore if Trump doesn't get elected. Because why isn't it about him? Why isn't he responsible for the fascism? Nope, no responsibility. It's just Biden for not doing things that he eventually did do, actually, that he shouldn't have done anyway. Fuck off. God. What fucking world do we live in? Okay. How do we get out of this? It's too

1:43:04 Lydia: Need

1:43:04 Thomas: Long. Sorry I'm

1:43:05 Lydia: We need to close out with patrons and I have a baby here. So I literally have Remy here right now. So yeah.

1:43:07 Thomas: Gonna angrily yell at the patrons for thanking us for for feeling us and we're gonna we're going to have to get out of here um we'll

1:43:14 Matt: We'll have to save the federal space for another time. Yeah.

1:43:15 Thomas: Save it yeah yeah let's

1:43:17 Matt: It's good stuff, but

1:43:17 Thomas: Thank our final batch of patrons the Cincinnati kid we had two sick kids at home trying to trying to navigate that it's amazing that they did this well for this long um sorry about that I the edit will work but Cincinnati Kid blah blah blah podcast Philly basement bar is busy Busy Organizing, Elec Thomas Smith, President, American Honky Tonk Bar Association, Baltica Tay, Philip Kaiser, There's Nothing Worse Than Having a Cranberry Song Stuck in Your Head, in your head. That's awesome.

1:43:41 Thomas: I'm glad that I got to read this so I could do that. Corin Land, A String of Unpronounceable Characters, Malekia Chandler, Milo Mead Song is Fighting Petty Tyrants, RhondaTheDork.com, Orders in the Court Before a Report, Big Easy Blasphemy, Chris Waltrip, Fred Grotheus, Classic Libtard, and Mitchell. Thank you so much, patrons. That cheered me up already. They make the show happen patreon.com/law if you want to support people who are not fucking enabling fascism with their fucking journalism from their billion dollar companies and they're like making all kinds of money and using resources for the shittiest reporting imaginable um maybe pledge on patreon well

1:43:41 Lydia: That's a good one. Yeah.

1:44:16 Thomas: Thanks so much matt and lydia and uh listeners

1:44:18 Lydia: Yeah, of course.

1:44:20 Matt: And thank you guys for your righteous anger. I do appreciate it. It fuels me too.

1:44:24 Thomas: As matt is someone who uh due to congenital defect is not able to display anger So, or math.

1:44:25 Lydia: Of course.

1:44:32 Thomas: Those are the two. He doesn't have the math gene or the anger gene. We're here to provide both.

1:44:31 Matt: Translating very well for me.

1:44:41 Clip: This has been Opening Arguments, produced by Thomas and Lydia Smith, with editing help from Peter Baird. The intro is by Thomas Smith. This outro is by Matt Cameron. Support the show at patreon .com slash law. Contact us through Patreon or openarguments at gmail .com. Make sure to follow our blue sky at OpenArgs. But most of all, please share the show. Thanks for listening.

1:45:12 Thomas: Is that here again

1:45:12 Lydia: Co -it is that how you say it no it's not but it's like my fear now that it's gonna show up randomly and I'm still gonna get it wrong

1:45:17 Matt: You got it. You got it? You got.