What the Media Are Getting Wrong About the Ilhan Omar Raid

Transcript

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

0:00:10 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments, this is Vapid Response Wednesday, number 47, I think it is one of my favorite number other than 45, two faves, I'm Thomas. That over there's real-life immigration attorney Matt Cameron, how you doing, Matt? Oh, boy.

0:00:23 Lydia: God. Oh.

0:00:26 Matt: Thomas, I've been reading Antonin Scalia's, I did it again, Samuel Little's book, I I have actually read a Scalia book or two too but uh, yeah, been reading Samuel Little's book and watching way too much Benny Johnson so you tell me, uh not great on a Tuesday.

0:00:31 Lydia: No. Oh.

0:00:40 Lydia: My God, I'm so sorry.

0:00:31 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I can't decide which is worse at

0:00:42 Lydia: Yeah.

0:00:43 Matt: The things I do for work, no

0:00:44 Lydia: Yeah.

0:00:45 Thomas: Least Benny Johnson is like, you expect him to be that, like you expect a Supreme Court Justice to not be what, what uh what's his name is now you're ruining me yeah.

0:00:52 Matt: And he is just as whiny as you might expect. I

0:00:55 Thomas: Alito.

0:00:55 Matt: Was actually considering, uh, doing Alito's book for Rapid Response because we could play clips from Spotify, but I don't think we need to put anybody through that

0:00:55 Lydia: Yeah.

0:00:55 Thomas: Nah. Got we got listeners, you're like, don't make me do it.

0:01:02 Matt: Yeah. Please.

0:01:04 Thomas: Was that one of the Patron names?

0:01:04 Matt: Don't yeah.

0:01:05 Thomas: It's like, don't make me read, yeah.

0:01:06 Matt: Don't make me wait for book club, I thought instead of book club, we could just, you know, spoon feed it to you, but even so, it's not a meal, it's not worth eating.

0:01:07 Thomas: Yeah. Boy. Okay, anyway, how's Lydia doing? Yeah?

0:01:17 Matt: Well.

0:01:16 Lydia: All feeling nauseous right now, because of all that, the idea of being spoon-fed Samuel Alito's book, gross. Um, otherwise good. From

0:01:18 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. We've ruined the show, we, to start over, yeah.

0:01:27 Lydia: The top.

0:01:27 Thomas: Now uh, of course, uh, we're going to be talking about some vapid stuff and responding to it, Matt, what do we got today? Yeah.

0:01:27 Lydia: Yeah.

0:01:34 Matt: Today we've got to look into the Ilhan Omar story, as of the time we're recording, she has just been searched, a search warrant this week on her house, I want to talk a little bit about what that is actually about because the media is really getting this one wrong, as you might expect, and of course nobody's getting it wrong more than conservative media, so we have some things to look at and respond to there, uh, but this is kind of a baffling case, well, it would be more baffling if it weren't Ilhan Omar and it weren't, you know, weeks away, way from midterms, um, and yeah.

0:01:37 Thomas: Oh. Really? I was gonna say I think I, I'm on the case, I solved it, yeah.

0:02:02 Matt: It's racism, the culprit is racism, yep, straight up, yeah.

0:02:04 Thomas: Yeah. And and trying to gain a partisan edge I guess, probably boy.

0:02:07 Lydia: And politics yeah. Yeah. They're

0:02:08 Matt: And and going after one of their favorite targets, and then just as a little palate cleanser, I have got a fun piece at the end where a conservative goes to Denmark and realizes it's fine, actually, that's, that's the whole point, yeah, it turns out scholarship

0:02:23 Thomas: You know, that's like the flat earthers that get on the plane and see the world is actually round. We We should do this. We've got to do a conservative send MAGA to San Francisco. I mean, some of the right parts of San Francisco.

0:02:27 Lydia: Like oh my God, wow, wow. It's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Not the Tenderloin.

0:02:36 Thomas: There is a lot of homelessness.

0:02:33 Matt: Right. But Copenhagen.

0:02:37 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:02:38 Thomas: It's not like, but it's, yeah.

0:02:38 Lydia: Oh.

0:02:38 Matt: Though. I mean, that's you know. It

0:02:40 Thomas: But there's so much of San Francisco. It's fine. You know, it's completely beautiful and amazing. Yeah, we've got to send them to all the places they think are like the, I think I saw someone post just a random post the other day that was like, my mom literally thinks Portland is like gone. Like it doesn't exist anymore.

0:02:56 Matt: Burned down.

0:02:56 Lydia: Like we lost Portland yeah. In the war.

0:02:57 Matt: Yeah. Yeah.

0:02:57 Thomas: Yeah. You're like oh boy, yeah, I don't know, I don't know if that's real or not, but I, that's it's yeah.

0:03:03 Lydia: Crazy. Yeah.

0:03:04 Thomas: It's plausible-ish, we'll see. Um, all right, that would be a fun exchange program though, and then they realize, and some of those flat earthers, like, some of them did change their minds, some of them just find a way, you know, they find, I love that documentary where the, where the last part of the experiment where they, the laser is like slightly off because it's like, well, the earth is curved, should be about here, it's like, huh, it just ends, oh, good times, it's like that. All right, well, that sounds fun, except, uh, I can't believe what's happening with Ilhan Omar, I really worry about that, and I don't know, maybe

0:03:05 Lydia: I

0:03:21 Matt: Yeah.

0:03:38 Lydia: Feel

0:03:38 Thomas: Matt will tell us how worried we should be, um, because it just seems like, I, I get that the courts are holding up somewhat when it comes to this stuff, but I just, would this complicate anything, is this, you know, what, to the extent this harassment is working, working, we'll, uh, we'll ask all those questions, but first we've got to take our first break and thank our patrons, our hall of famers, our all-time greats, patreon.com/law, we got a lot of Law'd Awful Movies we're recording very soon, can't wait to get that to you folks, uh, and these folks are the ones who make it happen most of all, so thank you to Help I'm Trapped In A Patreon, shout out Weyoun 13, My House Is A Mess But I Read A Lot Of Books, Griff, the Tired 2L, Matthew Cutler, twitch.tv/MTC_streams, Forgetting To Change My Patreon Name, I've had Crunchwraps More Supreme than this Court, unpronounceable nerd reference, Mountain court is now in session.

All highs, Aminah Donna Treadaway, Mother of Harridans, Still Rooting For The Hamburgers To Deliver More Timely Justice Than The Current System, wait, is that a return? I feel like that one hasn't, yeah.

0:04:42 Lydia: Like you haven't had to say hamburgers in a while. But yeah.

0:04:43 Thomas: Yeah. Nice, we do have one additional, so maybe that one, that person came back, nice, Mike Lapinsky, One eyed one horned Denver airport people mover, I don't know what that is, but I like it, it sounds like a band or something, like, was that the same, like, uh, syllables as, um, yeah, what am I thinking of, anyway, uh Sionitus, Mix of Midterm Hope and Anxiety, Grey Pouponderance of the Evidence, Last Train to Skanksville, Apprentice of Adventure, thanks so much to our first third of hall of famers, those who pledge five dollars and above at that, uh, at patreon.com/law, all right, we'll take a break and then we'll get to it, right, Matt, why am, am I looking at, I was about to say Albert Brooks, that'd be way better, it's not

0:04:45 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I don't know, awesome.

0:05:28 Thomas: Albert Brooks.

0:05:28 Matt: I would watch a lot more of Albert Brooks than David Brooks, who's, that's the person you are looking at, uh, so as always, we're gonna start off a little amuse-douche, just a little, uh, palette, uh, establisher, not cleanser, but something that just setting things up, uh so I always like to make sure we have a short clip of something up, up front, uh, this made some waves a few days ago, uh, so this is David Brooks commenting on John Ossoff's comments on his opponent. So let's start with the setup at the first clip here, second to 30.

0:05:29 Thomas: Yeah. Right.

0:05:38 Lydia: Establisher? Oh, that's so good.

0:05:40 Thomas: Yeah, uh, palette establisher. Okay.

0:05:58 Clip: Congressman Mike Collins of bigotry and racism. It's not just that you've hired half the Third Reich to staff your congressional office and you have promoted neo-Nazi content online. It's that you're robbing your constituents to subsidize your donors. If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club. I've condemned racism, anti-Semitism, hate. I don't care where the source is. And I tell him that, too. It's wrong. We have no place in this world for that. And in Maine, Republican Senator Susan Collins...

0:06:21 Matt: It's good stuff.

0:06:33 Matt: So that's the setup, and

0:06:35 Clip: But

0:06:35 Matt: I will just say before we continue that he does have a place in his family because his son-in-law, as you may have seen, pretty hardcore, wearing a hood and such. He's had multiple members of his campaign, but his son-in-law was, uh, looks like pretty strong ties to white nationalism, uh, but he's one of those people who's just sort of surrounded by Nazis or aspiring Nazis, um,

0:06:44 Thomas: I Didn't See That Wait, what? Well, You know, So who among us? It just sometimes happens.

0:06:59 Matt: Yeah, Not in Boston, but maybe in Georgia, I don't know, uh, so Let's see what David Brooks and his infinite wisdom has to say. He's also going to be commenting on the Susan Collins, apparently there's some statement about how she's a war profiteer because she has, of course, invested personally in, uh, that sort of thing. And, uh, he's also going to comment on another thing as well, and oh, excuse me, I'll say it, I'll say it, in Michigan, um, and the obvious case there that, you know, he's being called a terrorist because he's Muslim, obviously that's, that's an easy, that's a softball for David Bricks, but let's see how he handles the rest of these.

0:07:06 Lydia: Yeah,

0:07:34 Thomas: Yeah, I can't think of what the other reason would be, like, oh, He did do that one bombing, I guess, but other than that

0:07:34 Matt: Yeah, Three.

0:07:41 Clip: I think something has changed since 2006, which is we've had 10 years of political moral decay. And candidates used to be inhibited a bit by the sense that if I lie, if I'm a total sleazebag, it might hurt me. And now they realize it won't hurt me at all. And, in fact, my partisans may actually like it. And so I think in those three cases, all three of those things were sleazy behavior. Xavier. Troy Jackson, Susan Collins has some Boeing stock in her portfolio. And he calls her a war profiteer because that's ridiculous. The insinuations that al-Sayed is involved in terrorism because he's Muslim, ridiculous. John Ossoff, my advice to him is if you start calling your political opponents Nazis, maybe it's time to shut up. That's just not what we do here in this country. And the Bull Connor stuff. And, you know, a lot of these candidates have real weaknesses like I might

0:07:47 Thomas: Okay,

0:08:26 Matt: You go Uh

0:08:28 Thomas: Well, Matt, this sounds like classic both sides-y stuff. I haven't looked into this, but just from what he claimed. So I love when we do this both sides stuff, and I say we, I mean this exact guy, it's always this person, it's Uh, yeah, It's like, well, you know, you know, what's the same, if you say that, uh, Collins is a war profiteer because of her stock, I'm guessing he's alighting over something there, that's the same as calling a Muslim a terrorist just because he's Muslim, as though there's any comparison of those things, and it's such classic David Brooks to, well, I've picked a few things, including one that's going to be, you know, one or two that are going to be from the right, so it really makes me seem even-handed, but that you're doing the thing that got us here, man. Yeah.

0:08:40 Lydia: Atlantic. Holland's.

0:09:12 Matt: Yep, and, and she did, I mean, we, we already know from, we talked about this a couple weeks ago, but she is very interested in defense contractors, certainly very invested in them. I doubt it's more than just one Boeing stock. I think she has multiple stocks in defense companies, but we certainly know that she's willing to do business.

0:09:19 Thomas: Wait, So Was The The Controversy that we covered was that related to defense stuff then?

0:09:27 Matt: Yeah, that was a Navy contract. So, I mean, right there, I know, I know, I know.

0:09:29 Thomas: Why The Does He Not Know about That, or something? What's The date of this video, or Is It? Yeah.

0:09:35 Matt: Yeah, well, Yeah, she, I don't know if she personally profited because the money came to her campaign, but there's an allegation, obviously, that like if she's soliciting defense contractors for money, she's a war profiteer, that's Fine.

0:09:45 Thomas: This video is October 9th, that's after That got, oh,

0:09:46 Matt: Yeah, Yep, And also, I will point out, uh, immediately after, two more, uh, people associated with Collins's campaign came out as associated with the far-right group American Patriots USA, my Cons, yes.

0:09:59 Lydia: Not Susan Collins, right?

0:10:01 Matt: Very Important Two Collins's I Didn't even catch That, I think I'd catch, um, And, uh, yeah, so that was too, like, there's a long line at this point, as I think Asif is a solid joke that he was hiring half the Third Reich, because just a phenomenal number of people associated with pretty obviously Nazi causes, including his son-in-law, whose son-in-law was already added by CNN as somebody who's promoting the patriot front, which is about as bad as it gets.

0:09:59 Thomas: Oh, Are we We dealing with two Collinses? Oh, No, Wonder Wow. Yeah,

0:10:01 Lydia: Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All

0:10:15 Thomas: Look, Accidents Happen. Matt, okay, So why Do we have this worthless fool on this show? Like, this is the exact person we need, this, we don't need this anymore, this Is the, can this go extinct? We have some guy who's, I don't know how he got his job or why, but we always have to hear from him, he's on PBS NewsHour, which is a respectful show, why, what's the purpose of having somebody come on and just lie about what the accusations are to make a false equivalence, which is the thing that has gotten us here, what's The point of that? Can we be done? Let's

0:10:29 Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's

0:11:00 Thomas: Be done With that

0:11:00 Matt: Just shushing us for nothing. And it's always good to hear David Brooks talk about the moral decay of America when he left his wife for a research assistant half his age, but that's not my business.

0:11:06 Thomas: I Don't Even know That. Are you

0:11:12 Matt: Yeah, I'm very serious. Yeah, just worth mentioning every time he talks about morality. But, yeah. So, there's David Brooks. I'm sure he'll be returning to Vapid Response soon enough. He's had plenty of columns we could talk about. Although, honestly, he's so boring, it's barely worth it.

0:11:12 Thomas: Serious? Oh, My God, Dude, Yeah,

0:11:14 Lydia: Right. My guy.

0:11:23 Thomas: Yeah, He's pretty boring, I just want, just wake me up when he's gone, like, I don't mean he doesn't have to die or anything, but, like, what, what Are you doing What, what is the media doing? What is the point? There's other people, you know, it's like they have a Rolodex from 1997 and they're just going to keep going to the same people forever.

0:11:31 Lydia: Yeah. Retired. Yeah.

0:11:32 Matt: Yeah. Right.

0:11:47 Thomas: It's, it's do something different. God. Anyway.

0:11:44 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. Oh boy.

0:11:50 Matt: But, as you said, the moral equivalency of saying that calling calling al-Sayed a terrorist is the same as, you know, we shouldn't call people Nazis in this country. Well, if they're associating with Nazis, and he didn't call them Nazis. So that's it. That's the end of it. Easy stuff.

0:11:53 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. It's an, it's incredible. One is pure racism, like the most vile kind of like evil that you could do. And the other is like, yeah, yeah, there's evidence that she's profiting from, you know, she just was outed as, as having gotten away with a very illegal thing that she shouldn't have gotten away with. We talked about it on the show. Cry me a river, like, like calling her a war profiteer is anything like just the vile racism of just calling someone a terrorist for no reason other than their, their skin color, obviously, and their religion. It's, it's ridiculous. All right, Matt, we've got to get to more racism I think probably that's

0:12:05 Matt: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Plenty more.

0:12:39 Thomas: That's a safe guess even if I don't know what this we're talking about, yeah.

0:12:42 Matt: But given today's topic, you know, it's going to be. So yeah, we're going to just set this up here. We'll get into a little bit more about the allegations involving Ilhan Omar. And, you know, I don't think there's anything to them from what we can tell so far. I am baffled by this search warrant, I have to say, because you have cause of a crime and a judge signed off on the search warrant. I'll speculate a little bit more as we go forward as we look into this, um, but let's look first at a clip from Benny Johnson and JD Vance from a few months ago. It was back in May.

0:12:42 Lydia: Until

0:12:45 Thomas: Uh, Oh, good. Let's see what this couch fucker has to say. God, he looks like he just fucked a couch right now. You can see how messy he is.

0:13:15 Lydia: This guy. Can I just say before You press play? The kids asked me recently, they were like, "Who's the vice president?" Because they hate Trump and up a lot for whatever reason. And

0:13:26 Thomas: Did you say, like, ah, no, and they didn't fill it.

0:13:28 Lydia: My I I said, I, you know, said his name or whatever, and they're like, "Well, is he nice?" And I was like, "Oh no, no, he sucks." And they're like, "Oh my God." And I was like, "Yeah, I know, it sucks no matter what," like, so they're like even if Trump is gone and he dies, like, then then this guy would be president, I'm like, yeah, unfortunately that's what would happen and

0:13:30 Thomas: No.

0:13:39 Thomas: Yeah, God, that's such a... Man. Cool, we've gotten through the first...

0:13:48 Matt: Your children old enough to write about JD Vance, yeah

0:13:50 Thomas: Yeah, they're not old enough. Yeah, it's like the kids' books and schools thing. It's like, you can't talk to your kids about JD Vance. I don't want to get that book out of the library, I don't want my kids learning about JD Vance's fucking face, that's vile, yeah no and it's like, cool, we've, we've done the first two of nine billion disappointments for our kids, they've gotten as far as president and vice president, we'll go through the rest of the chain of command you have the chain of succession, uh, but anyway, way, all right, oh, couch fucker says what

0:13:48 Lydia: Yeah, I mean yeah exactly yeah yeah I know, it's bad, I know it's just not great going all the way down wait

0:14:22 Clip: So okay, uh, let's talk about Ilhan Omar, and obviously Ilhan Omar the president and the White House has been out saying that she married her brother, that there is, uh, immigration fraud going on here uh, these are deportable, uh, denaturalization offenses, I can give us an update on that, yeah so we actually think that Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud against the United States of America, and I talked to Steve Miller about this actually recently, we're trying to look at what the remedies are, that's the thing that we're trying to figure out is what are the legal remedies, now that we know that she's committed immigration fraud how do you go after

0:14:26 Thomas: This guy what marrying your brother what

0:14:39 Lydia: Yeah, what, some

0:14:54 Thomas: Now that we why do you the vice

0:14:57 Clip: Her, how do you investigate her, how do you actually do the thing, how do you build the case necessary to get some, some, some justice

0:14:57 Thomas: President just saying that sorry

0:14:59 Matt: Exactly how do you build a case

0:15:03 Thomas: How

0:15:03 Clip: For the American people

0:15:03 Matt: Yeah

0:15:04 Thomas: Do you build the case, you start with, she definitely committed fraud, now how do we build the case, what you have to do, the, to build the case first, you fucking Nazi liars look at this guy's Nazi haircut, he went to his yeah bobber

0:15:04 Lydia: Justice and how do you get to get justice yeah

0:15:14 Matt: This is months before the search warrant yep

0:15:19 Lydia: I was gonna say that too, he looks, he literally looks like, like a German from the '30s it looks like a truly Nazi haircut, I yeah also I'm so glad you paused this for his face to look like that oh, perfect perfect and punchable

0:15:23 Thomas: Give me the Nazi special yeah yeah it's intentional for sure intentional yeah yeah sorry, sorry Meg

0:15:24 Matt: Yeah this is of course, for yeah uh just want to point, this is Benny Johnson, of course, conservative commentator for those who don't have the pleasure of looking at the screen right now, um, and yeah uh in the next clip we're going to watch, uh, in a minute, Benny Johnson is going to keep talking about how he has a high up source, very, very high up, and it's you know, obviously yeah, I know, exactly, um he that is good friend, moving Stiller, of course, uh, yeah, so I think that Yeah, um, so that is the the weird thing that the vice president said. Now, I just want to break down a couple of things before we get into the rest of this. There's two different allegations in play here, and the conservative media is just very, very conspicuously confusing them. I don't think they care. I don't think it's reckless. I just don't think they care. So the one is this thing about how she married her brother. And the thing with her second marriage, it's a little weird.

It's not documented. We don't know. She's on her third marriage now, but her second marriage was to, and we'll hear Benny Johnson talking about this, but to somebody that for whatever reason, all these people say is her brother or was her brother, and that she brought him over here because it would, and it's true that if, as a citizen, it takes very, very, very long time, right, to get yourself a visa through your siblings, so it would be faster to do a marriage visa, but obviously that's, you know, insane to marry your brother, uh, to do it. She's pacifist denied this every time it's come up.

0:15:34 Thomas: And uh, Russian paid, uh, operative yeah

0:15:34 Lydia: Yeah even

0:15:49 Thomas: He's talking to the vice president what, like yeah

0:15:59 Lydia: Still God

0:16:49 Matt: Um, but this is the theory is, and the whole thing is based on one thread from a Somali local Facebook group or something, it's like there's a Somali forum on the online site, and this has since been deleted, I think, because it's really scandalous and bad, uh, but the conservative press ran with this. There's one person in the Somali community who says this is a thing that people know about her. And who knows? Who that person is, I think it was an anonymous post, so that's not anything. The other thing is that, and the thing that the search warrant allegedly was actually based on, which doesn't make a lot of sense, as I'll get into, is that her father may have filled out her form N-600 in such a way that he lied about her age at the time. Now, she would have had to sign that form, but she was a minor at the time.

0:17:34 Matt: She was either 17 or 18, depending on which version you believe. Her official birth date, as listed, is October 4th, 1982, a happy birthday. Just realizing they did it right around her birthday. But there is an allegation that she was previously listed 1981 as her birth date in other places. I don't know that. I don't think that's true. I don't have any proof that she has ever personally arranged for 1981 to be listed as a birthday. It would make a difference, because the thing that nobody seems to understand about this story is that there's a difference between naturalization by operation of law, where where you just automatically become a citizen if you meet certain conditions, and naturalization by application. And she would have clearly qualified if she just applied, but her father thought that she qualified by naturalization of law. And naturalization by application of law isn't even application. It's really just, here's everything. I'm going to lay out the factors. I think that I qualify to be a citizen without applying, because I was living with my parents. I was a permanent resident. One of my parents naturalized, and that's it. I'm automatic.

0:17:45 Lydia: Yeah. I

0:18:26 Thomas: You're thinking, you back up a second though, though, maybe we, but so I don't know anything about how she's a citizen at all or whatever, this is, so can you, can you back, so it sounds like you're saying, so she wasn't born here, right, so okay and so what's the immigration story, okay, oh

0:18:28 Matt: Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Right. Born in Somalia. And her family came as refugees. So her family came as refugees when she was a child and she naturalized it in 2000. Now, we don't know when her father naturalized. Her father is now deceased. He died of COVID in 2020. And so that's another reason that the search warrant is very strange. And she would have been a permanent resident after she came as a refugee and then eligible to go on to citizenship five years after the residency. But her father filed this application saying, saying, can you confirm that she was naturalized by operation of law? And based on the evidence before them, they gave her a naturalization certificate without having to go through the process, because that's how it works. If you're a minor, your parent naturalizes, you live with your parent, that's it. It's pretty simple.

0:19:21 Thomas: So it's like a way to bypass, but you're doing like a, hey, just making sure that this counted or something

0:19:25 Matt: Right. And it's not the same as applying and coming forward and taking the oath, right? And they keep talking about how she took the oath, which she didn't if she did it this way, which is fine. I mean, it's just how it works, but just a minor difference, right? So sure,

0:19:26 Thomas: Oh right oh okay so if you, if you made a mistake on the birth year of that one, which, come on, like, I, my kids were just born five minutes ago, and I could make a mistake about their birth year on a thing, Lydia's messed up their names many times yeah

0:19:47 Lydia: Got Remy's middle name wrong like for an international flight and they were like, we can't let you on the plane because that's not his name

0:19:50 Matt: Sure.

0:19:52 Thomas: Yeah mixed up Remy and Arlo's middle names

0:19:56 Matt: No,

0:19:55 Lydia: Yeah it was it was bad, they'd

0:19:56 Matt: It's important.

0:19:56 Thomas: Yeah and so is that what we're talking about here, there's a birth year on that where it's like, because the purpose of the the birth year in that would likely just be to confirm who you're talking about, right, oh

0:20:08 Matt: Well, it would matter if you're doing naturalization by operation of law because you have to have been under 18 when your parent naturalized. So their argument is that he was over 18.

0:20:17 Thomas: It's for that okay I thought I didn't you didn't say that, okay, so it's just, sorry, we need the whole picture of what's going on, so it's not merely the year is different for no reason, it's that it would have gotten her under this year limit and do we know that for sure, like, based on when the application wasn't all that well

0:20:19 Matt: Yeah, yeah, right, right, yeah. So we don't know because, again, if you assume that her birth date is the one she says it is, which I do, that it's under 1882, then yes, it looks like that would would have been fine, and as long as her father had actually naturalized before that point, which he would have been if he'd been applying, but we don't know her father's naturalization information, that's going to come up pretty big, uh, as we'll say, as we'll see, there's a, there's a another dodge they're using here to make it look like they know something, um, but let's pull up very quickly that.

0:20:57 Thomas: Who's they, because, like, what, doesn't, wouldn't immigration whatever have this information like what I don't understand this man, okay?

0:21:02 Lydia: Have those records right it's

0:20:57 Matt: Yeah. Um though That's why the search warrant makes no sense to me, because they have everything they need, or they should have everything they need in their own files, and they can get that, uh, I also want to point out it is no it's absolutely is, and I'm going to prove that, I don't think that there's any reason a judge should have signed off on this.

0:21:08 Thomas: Yeah okay

0:21:12 Lydia: For political theater. That's what I mean. Yeah.

0:21:18 Matt: We'll get there by the end. But the other important thing to note is that in Somalia, as of 1991, there are no birth certificates for a very long period of time. They destroyed whatever office had them, and then there was a period of chaos where there are no birth certificates. So she would not be able to distinctively prove, and it's also possible, I've met people that aren't even really sure what their birth year is. Refugees, it does happen. It does happen.

0:21:19 Thomas: Wait Yeah, and let me just clarify, what, this thing about the birth year, do we know that any of that happened, or we're just talking about what they've made up, or what they've decided, I'm, where's this information coming from, like why do we go ahead, okay sure

0:21:52 Matt: So I'm going from Best available evidence, and we should probably just hear Benny Johnson talk about it so I can explain why he's wrong let's make a quick stop at The Federalist, though, because we can't not read The Federalist for just a moment, we've got our very own Sean Fleetwood writing The Federalist one of our many young unqualified

0:21:57 Thomas: Sure sure Who's

0:22:05 Lydia: Sean Fleetwood. Yeah. We've talked about him before. Yeah. Yeah.

0:22:07 Thomas: That, yeah I could guess that I don't remember who that is, though oh

0:22:12 Matt: So we're not going to read the whole thing, but the headline really tells you what you need to know here about this piece

0:22:16 Thomas: We melted down, great, great headline. The

0:22:19 Lydia: Dems melt down over

0:22:19 Matt: I'm doing it right now

0:22:21 Thomas: News is that we melted down, and then it's like, here's what it was about, cool, good news

0:22:26 Lydia: Fed's Omar search after praising Biden's Mar-a-Lago raid.

0:22:31 Matt: The same thing so now that we've all reconstituted ourselves from melting down,

0:22:32 Lydia: Yeah. Predictably cast Monday's search on her estate as, quote, an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement, a talking point quickly adopted by Jeffries and fellow Democrats, but such rhetoric is a significant departure from Democrats' gleeful response to the Biden FBI's 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago, which came as part of Jack Smith's illegal classified documents lawfare against Trump

0:22:51 Thomas: It's not, I'm so tired of this, can we retire this, this as well, if

0:22:59 Lydia: Yeah this is very exhausting, I just that entire paragraph is so dumb

0:23:02 Matt: Know

0:23:04 Thomas: You don't like when I actually murder someone, then why did you like not like it when we said someone murdered someone who didn't murder someone I thought it's like what, uh, yeah

0:23:06 Lydia: I don't

0:23:14 Matt: Exactly, yep, and they're going to say this yep, same thing about Rokuhana in the next paragraph, you get the idea, you can go a little further, obviously there was extreme probable cause for the FBI to raid Mar-a-Lago, and we still don't know what this was about, this, um, discussing abuse of power, etc, etc, I just want to give you the idea, this is the only take that I could find from the right-wing media sphere that's in writing so far, they've got plenty of video takes, so I just wanted to point it out, yeah, that's right, nobody reads it anyway, we're all melting down, we're all hypocrites, and we should have supported, you know, the, uh, wrongfully accused Donald Trump, um

0:23:26 Thomas: They've stopped writing yeah and again, Trump was not, wasn't that the Mar-a-Lago one, wasn't that right after, like, like he wasn't running yet, was he? Yeah. He wasn't running, he wasn't, I mean, also it was real, so it was real, they actually recovered, look, if this turned out that they recovered, you know, 12 kilos of pure cocaine, I don't know, heroin, something, from Ilhan Omar's place, and then, okay, yeah, I guess it was a real crime, yeah but if it's fucking nothing like it probably is, and it, like, why now, yeah

0:23:55 Lydia: Think so, then we get it, yeah yeah I have Connor Harris going on a podcast cast afterwards and being like, we're really looking forward to building our case against

0:24:16 Matt: Yeah yeah

0:24:26 Thomas: Imagine yeah and imagine being like yeah, there's no proof of anything we know he did, we know Trump stole documents, we know he stole documents, but we gotta get, build the case, like, imagine if Kamala Harris had said that to the good comparison yeah before the raid exactly ridiculous

0:24:26 Lydia: Trump after we've seized everything from Mar-a-Lago yeah

0:24:27 Matt: Before

0:24:38 Lydia: Yeah yeah

0:24:39 Matt: The raid, I mean, in that, that case, right yeah even worse, uh, no, so just a little taste there for you of, uh, Sean Fleetwood, let's, uh, take a break and come back to, that's right, we should break and come back to Benny Johnson, unfortunately, sorry to do that I don't either, yeah

0:24:47 Lydia: We'll both sides this out for you, Sean Fleawood, we'll keep going we'll keep doing the comparison, see how you like it I don't wanna also

0:24:43 Thomas: Uh okay but we can, uh, feel better by thanking our second batch of patrons, thank you, too, probably a real person, Nick Fish, happier one, who is more awesome, AOC or Mom Donnie, that's happy, or true, but no

0:25:12 Lydia: New York you guys are so lucky, like god I

0:25:14 Thomas: Kidding I'm gonna, like, I love AOC, but I gotta say, Mom Donnie, it might be Mom Donnie yeah just like trending like trending awesome yeah, he's just killing it just killing it, uh but part of that was like, he's the mayor, he gets to do stuff like that, like one member of the house, like, she, for, in terms of what we got to get in sports statistics, you know, replace above replacement, you know, in terms of accomplishments relative to what she can do as one member of the house, she's done a lot, but it might be Ma'am Donnie, though, uh, A Negative Phenomenon, ADHDProgrammer wants to pursue paralegal, paralegal

0:25:21 Matt: If you're going by awesome points right now yeah, he's got more yeah just consistently yeah yeah all

0:25:25 Lydia: Know I know, yeah do

0:25:55 Thomas: Is that at the end, okay, nice, do it, (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Ex Parte), uh, Jaysank, VML sucks Patreon stating emphatically, did they get separated, or the next one is, guy, what, Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate, what I

0:25:56 Matt: Right yeah

0:26:07 Lydia: It, I feel like they didn't, maybe they got separated, I

0:26:18 Matt: Well That's an easy one. You guys don't remember The Secret of Monkey Island? The old Lucas game? You guys didn't play any of those old games?

0:26:23 Thomas: Don't know what's happening right now, Matt, no no

0:26:28 Matt: Oh, God of Brass 3 put. Okay, alright. I'll just keep

0:26:24 Lydia: Don't play games, no teeth

0:26:31 Thomas: All my games were the ones in, uh, Widow's Bay, that he gets in the hotel, uh, teeth and whatever

0:26:36 Matt: Patrons, you keep throwing them at me. I'll keep getting them. I'm here for it. Star Trek and video games all day. I can get them.

0:26:43 Thomas: God

0:26:39 Lydia: Oh god not did you watch Widow's Bay yet

0:26:44 Thomas: You gotta watch Widow's Bay, no yeah yeah I don't know, I said those were my, my games were the board games he finds in the in the hotel or dad's mad or whatever, like, so, so bad, god, that, that show ruled, uh let's see today's episode is brought to you by the letter nothing, David Sother, Thomas Freeman, Cajunkilla, Cavalry Fraud, Fishy Hates Everything, Chris Simpson, how do I get into the top third, Anonymous, Akila, and check out galena comic.com for a cool web comic, uh, that's it, thanks so much to our middle group of top patrons, and we'll take

0:26:45 Matt: Oh, it's great. Yeah, I loved it. Oh, yeah. All the games in that. Yeah. It's so good.

0:26:45 Lydia: Oh okay, yeah, yeah, we're just talking about the game, teeth, yeah and the hotel

0:26:59 Matt: So good.

0:27:00 Lydia: Yeah that's bad top third

0:27:20 Thomas: A break

0:27:20 Lydia: You're getting closer and closer, keep it up all

0:27:21 Thomas: Yeah they're getting closer and closer, all right, we'll take a break and get to back to douchebag, whichever one, I don't even remember, oh JD Vance Good freeze frame, uh, Matt, what does we're going now, uh, to the Russian news outlet to see what they have to say about all this, hey

0:27:28 Lydia: Of them yeah yes, we

0:27:33 Matt: Steel wow yeah so this is this week from Benny Johnson, pretty much on the heels of the raid, I just wanted to play a clip here so you can see how Benny does his research and how he puts the show together that millions of people apparently watch, I don't know, uh, it's pretty depressing, but he's going to explain his understanding of the facts and the legal issues in the Ilana Marquez.

0:27:58 Thomas: Matt, I know, uh, you were having a problem with a lot of tabs, but uh, are all of your tabs just X? Look at the tabs that he has open. Oh, you can't see it, oh no, okay here, let me show you this.

0:28:06 Lydia: Can't see because you're zoomed in, yeah Oh

0:28:10 Thomas: Look

0:28:09 Matt: He does show a lot of X-posts in this.

0:28:12 Thomas: At that literally all of the tabs are just X.

0:28:12 Matt: Okay, this whole thing,

0:28:14 Thomas: Oh boy

0:28:15 Lydia: Wow I would stress out so much about which tab to hit when

0:28:17 Matt: Wow.

0:28:16 Thomas: Boy, and then like like daily mail, I forget what that one is, Fox News, what's that, what's that one, do you remember, it's like a T, yeah but anyway, that, imagine if, you that imagine if that's what your tabs were open format instead of whatever you're doing, yeah that is this research, all right.

0:28:19 Lydia: Exactly yeah not sure, so

0:28:26 Matt: Yahoo. That's your research. Yep.

0:28:37 Clip: Entertaining, okay, fine, accuse us of being entertaining, but we ain't lying to you because we have done the legwork here more than I think any other show on earth, our show has gone out into the great wild and beyond and gotten the goods on Ilhan Omar, very quickly, very quick summary here is Mark Wayne Mullen last month telling us that Ilhan Omar married her brother, we, we know that she married her brother to try to bring him in the United States, whoa okay, here's JD Vance telling us this summer that Ilhan Omar committed immigration fraud, that could be marrying your brother, that could also

0:28:41 Matt: No.

0:28:46 Thomas: More Twitter tabs and oh

0:28:56 Matt: No.

0:29:10 Matt: Okay.

0:29:17 Clip: Mean other forms of immigration fraud we'll get to that in just one second, can you give us an update on that, yeah, so we actually think that Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud against the United States of America, okay and then he says, me and Steven Miller work on how to fix that, here's us with Tom Holman on stage, also this summer, and Tom Holman tells us uh Ilhan Omar is going to get it, action.

0:29:17 Thomas: So that was from this summer okay yeah

0:29:29 Matt: QED.

0:29:38 Matt: This is evidence. This is all evidence.

0:29:45 Clip: Can you fill us in? Do you know what's going to happen? Is the Trump administration going to go there? The floor is yours. The whole file is being reviewed. A lot of smart people are on it. Stay tuned.

0:29:40 Thomas: So

0:30:02 Clip: And then, of course, we have done numerous segments on this program, including Liz Collin, who will be joining us live in just one second, who talked about, and this shocked me because I hadn't heard it really explained this way, that Ilhan Omar may well not be an American citizen. Now, here's the backup for that, because we didn't have it ready for the last time that we talked with Liz.

0:30:01 Thomas: Not him, oh well thanks he, you, like my joke we're

0:30:24 Matt: Let's look at the backup.

0:30:25 Clip: You can see here that Ilhan Omar, according to the documentation before Ilhan Omar rabidly had it changed, he was listed as an 18-year-old, meaning she's an adult, when her war criminal father got naturalized. So she was able to slip in as a minor when she wasn't. She claimed to be 17 and she retroactively went back and changed her birth date in order to show that she was 17 when she was retroactively given citizenship under her war criminal father.

0:30:23 Thomas: Still okay Rapidly,

0:30:26 Matt: Let's

0:30:35 Thomas: Had it changed, war

0:31:00 Matt: Pause for just a sec. So first of all, Yeah, no, he's not a work criminal. There's no evidence of that whatsoever. He was in the Somali military in the 70s, um, but there's no evidence at all. And again, I want to point out that there's no way to know if the person, that their second husband was her brother, because again, no birth certificates, uh, and there's never been a DNA test, and there's just, again, this is an unfounded rumor that was posted in a Somali chat group, basically. So

0:31:02 Thomas: Criminal father but if, if it was to get him over here, wouldn't he be a citizen that we could go check?

0:31:31 Matt: He's back in the UK. It sounds like he's only here for a couple of years and I'm guessing they divorced or split up, that did not get him citizenship. So they split up because there would have been, in the two-year marriage period, right. And so if he went back, from what I saw, they married, I think, 2008, 2009. He went back to the UK in 2011.

0:31:32 Thomas: Oh so that didn't get him citizenship oh okay okay but I guess You're answering as though, like, yeah, this is like normal, like an ex, but like, if this is her brother, she was marrying him to get him here so he'd be here.

0:31:58 Matt: Right. Right. He Left because he just didn't like it I don't know a

0:31:58 Lydia: Then why wouldn't he be here, exactly? Yeah which

0:31:58 Thomas: Right. But what you're describing sounds like just an ex-husband, yeah. Okay just so we're all clear

0:32:04 Lydia: Is what happened that's

0:32:04 Matt: Marriage, exactly. That's right and they have a conspiracy theory about how he actually was still in Minnesota and not actually in the UK, and that they can prove it, but whatever yeah he's just down the street, right?

0:32:09 Lydia: A great point oh of course send Nick Shirley over there, he'll find him.

0:32:15 Matt: No, for

0:32:15 Lydia: Um,

0:32:11 Thomas: Yeah to your point I love that he's doing the research. Is like, here's all the times I talked to the fascists who said she did something wrong, that's

0:32:20 Lydia: Exactly exactly it's

0:32:16 Matt: Sure. Yep yep that's journalism, folks.

0:32:24 Lydia: Just because he wants to watch himself, that's it, yeah.

0:32:25 Matt: Yep yeah

0:32:25 Thomas: Just different times of you getting the lies from, like, from the administration, that's nothing man

0:32:30 Lydia: From people in the administration yeah interesting

0:32:31 Thomas: Yeah

0:32:32 Matt: So And I want to note what he's showing on the screen right now as evidence. On the left he's got, and again you can't really see very closely, but uh, there was some website that listed her birthday, and it was like an official legislative website and it listed it as 81.

0:32:41 Thomas: It looks like it's the, yeah, Minnesota legislative reference maybe Hmm.

0:32:45 Matt: It could have been a complete mistake. Then who knows if she put, put that information in. I doubt it, personally. And then this other thing, the certificate of a non-existence of a record from DHS, right? So that really doesn't tell us anything. They're relying hard on this. So basically, you can ask, yeah, non-existence.

0:32:50 Thomas: Oh certificate of non-existence of a record

0:33:00 Matt: You can get a certificate of non-existence. Isn't that funny? That's what we call it.

0:33:01 Thomas: Huh oh I love one of those.

0:33:04 Matt: Hey, do I not exist? So just if you can, because you can't get somebody else's naturalization records, you could get them to confirm whether or not there is a naturalization record for this person. So all this says is that the person that they're searching for, for her dad, doesn't have a naturalization record, but that's it. And then what they did is they searched under what they believe to be the name that he naturalized under, with what they believe to be his birthday, right. But if you don't have that information right, then if you don't do it exactly correct, then they're going to say there's no record under that name of birthday.

0:33:05 Thomas: Yeah for her dad, okay. Yeah so but this is again, these idiots, this is treating it like the administration is a podcaster, which I know it is but they have this stuff, right? Like that it would have been, oh, we went in and instantly found that her father wasn't ever naturalized. So, so the jig is up, right?

0:33:35 Lydia: Oh

0:33:41 Matt: Right, right. Yes, right.

0:33:54 Matt: Yeah. And the other issue here is the statute of limitations, and he's not going to talk about that, of course, because he doesn't know that. Two things.

0:34:02 Matt: Let's just assume that what they're saying is correct and that she did obtain her naturalization because her father cut some corners and put her as younger on there when she could have just applied herself. First of all, the statute of limitations on that is only five years for an actual crime. It's 10 years for denaturalization, so for criminal denaturalization. So there's both criminal and civil denaturalization. What I'm really wondering is why a judge signed off on this search warrant. And I guess we'll find out soon enough.

And it's very likely that maybe this had nothing to do with any of those things, and it's just some, you know, like a Letitia James or James Comey kind of nonsense, right, of like they just find something else, or they're going to say that there's some statement that she made recently in which she allegedly lied about being a citizen, or how she got it, or the fact that she ran for office knowing she wasn't a citizen was a crime, which certainly could be, those are my guesses, but even if that, she was last elected in 2019, so that's outside the five years, she's yeah, she

0:34:15 Lydia: Okay

0:34:18 Thomas: Yeah now if you run for office, it's one thing to say running knowing you're not a citizen, but she is a citizen, would but how would that legally be, like, again, just hypothetically for these assholes if there was this whatever paperwork thing that her dad, and not even her probably, did, and let's say it was wrong, she's still a citizen, so if she ran, ran, she ran as a citizen, right? Yeah.

0:34:59 Matt: Is, yeah. Playing it out right right that's Right, and she, there would have to be that you knew that you got it through fraud, and the whole time you've just been walking around telling people you're a citizen. And certainly, I mean, I have met at least one person who paid off an INS agent to get citizenship, it does happen. That guy's walking around knowing that he's not supposed to have a U.S. passport, um, again, that was in the 80s. It was a lot easier to do back then, um but you know, yeah.

0:35:22 Thomas: Wow yeah yeah so like everything he does is a crime, like, ah you crossed the street while thinking you're a citizen, geez.

0:35:40 Matt: Basically at this point yeah but Certainly

0:35:43 Lydia: You

0:35:43 Matt: Voting and everything else, right? So, um Now, just because you were a minor, and remember, I think we've talked about this before, the immigration system actually defines minors as under 21, not under 18, but for the purpose of this thing for naturalization by operation of law, you have to be able to prove that you were under 18 at the time when your parent naturalized. So that's the really important key point here. But it would have to be a willful representation, and her father prepared the thing, that that's what they're saying, is that he filled it out, and her father's now deceased, can't be a witness in this so

0:35:45 Thomas: All right, okay. Oh yeah you do it when the father naturalizes, I thought you said there was a time limit, or he does it whenever? He, right.

0:36:15 Matt: When he naturalizes if you're under 18 if you're and if you clear that, you know, you managed to do it before the child is 18, then they automatically become citizens and right you just have to prove it right by putting in this form and that'll do it, um a

0:36:24 Thomas: When you're natural, okay, I got you, that makes sense. Yeah well

0:36:29 Lydia: Said though, that she signed the paperwork though, so theoretically, I mean, if she were over 18 and then, like, she would still be responsible in that sense for having reviewed it and sign something that was inaccurate, yeah.

0:36:40 Matt: Court could consider yeah, there's no automatic exclusion just because you're a minor, but they could certainly consider her age and the fact that her father put this in front of her and said, "Just go ahead and sign this." So you can become a citizen, you know, maybe be

0:36:49 Lydia: That would

0:36:48 Thomas: But to Lydia's point she wouldn't have been a minor if they were lying, if

0:36:50 Lydia: Make her 18 at the time when

0:36:52 Matt: Uh she would have been a minor for immigration purposes, because you're under 21, but but you know for other purposes maybe the judge could still find that, but still, 18 is still, you know, you're living at home, you're still under your parents' roof, you know, um, and again, just assuming the statute of limitations hadn't run, which it has for criminal denaturalization, because they're obsessed with denaturalizing her Over this, you have to go to show beyond a reasonable doubt that she knowingly procured citizenship contrary to law. Now, here's the problem, she could have actually just done it a different way, and there's case law on this recently from the Supreme Court that, but I think it's, the name will come back to me in a minute, but it's

0:36:52 Lydia: She signed it, yeah. Uh right right okay okay yeah

0:36:53 Thomas: She was oh for immigration purposes, okay. Yeah yeah yeah yeah Hmm. Recent. Case law, and it's not terrible.

0:37:25 Matt: Not terrible. It's basically if you had some other way that you could have gotten citizenship, then it doesn't really matter. It has to be that this was how you did it, that this fraud was the only way that you could have possibly procured it, basically.

0:37:30 Thomas: Right, I like that, rule that makes sense. I mean, I could think of some weird things about that, but it's like, especially if we're talking about something that might be a mistake or close, close enough, you know, I guess if it's like super fraudulent, it would be weird. You'd be like, hey, you could have just done this other thing, it's weird that you did all this fraud.

0:37:37 Matt: Yeah, yeah, right.

0:37:51 Thomas: But, Okay, no harm, no foul. I don't know. Wow.

0:37:51 Lydia: Yeah. It's

0:37:51 Matt: And it's a shortcut, yeah, yeah. But, you know, it's just really important to remember, is when people are talking about this story that there's a difference between affirmatively applying for citizenship and confirming, this is firming versus confirming with the federal government, that you did get it by operation of law. And there are people, I've met them, they're walking around right now, they're full adults, 40s and 50s and older, that are actually citizens and didn't know it because they didn't realize this law applied to them. So, we can still work and get it. Yes.

0:38:14 Thomas: Yeah.

0:38:15 Lydia: It's almost like a recognition that the system is really complex, and for people to make mistakes, it's understandable because what we've built is complicated and unreasonable in a lot of ways.

0:38:20 Matt: Exactly. Right. Um, and you know, the other thing is, maybe if they could prove that the refugee status, that they lied to get refugee status, I don't really know how that would work when the parent is dead because you can't inform him of that, and she's the Sins of the Fathers literally at that point.

0:38:39 Thomas: That's there's that can't be anything. Yeah. So, what if, okay, so then putting your fascist hat on, Matt, so the, the great point you've made several times over the course of this is, what the fuck are they searching for? Uh, we're trying, trying to find if your dad's in there or something, or your brother, you know, but like, a judge did sign off. Now, we've known those judges aren't always like the most, I don't know, careful about that kind of thing, but is it more likely in your mind that this just has nothing to do with this, or, well, it is immigration because it was, I, and uh, it's

0:39:16 Matt: It was HSI, so the investigator part of ICE. That makes me wonder, but DOJ got the search warrant.

0:39:18 Thomas: Just, I yeah, that's right. But what so it's not

0:39:23 Matt: I don't know. I

0:39:17 Lydia: HSI. Yeah. Or

0:39:23 Thomas: So So it's definitely related to immigration, but is it, if you had to put your money on it, would it be your, your, all your immigration lawyer winnings, just your pile of gold from being an immigration attorney that you make, uh, would you bet on it being just an unrelated thing, or is there something you'd guess they'd be searching for related to these conspiracy theories?

0:39:46 Matt: Will say, just so we have this on the record, that Fox News was told by an anonymous source that this has to do with the naturalization thing. And my guess would be that they're doing it to harass her weeks before an election, and that they presented something that Looks like probable cause to the judge that she had somehow relied on this in a way, knowing that she'd willfully procured it illegally.

0:39:52 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. But so, yeah, I'm asking, what would that be? Like, what could you be searching for? No.

0:40:04 Matt: That would be we're running for office, like I said, anything else, or maybe, maybe there's emails where she's saying I'm just saying maybe there's communications where she says, haha, I know I was born in, you know, 1981, I got away with it, and I always will, um, you know, maybe there's, and maybe in the course of this, they're hoping to incidentally

0:40:08 Thomas: What could you be searching for? Okay. Yeah, you could just do that with a judge, hey judge, we're just, any guy, random person, we're searching because there might be an email that says haha I'm the Zodiac killer, or something like, was that, can you do that? You're not supposed to be able to, yeah.

0:40:18 Matt: Right, yeah, No, um, I

0:40:30 Lydia: Like a gallery wall of her brother husband, like, just you know feels

0:40:34 Thomas: And

0:40:33 Matt: Don't want to speculate too much more on what this could be, but it is very strange because the alternative, granted, the only way they can denaturalize her is through civil denaturalization proceedings, and that has no statute of limitations, but it still is a very high bar, and you still have to go in front of an actual judge, not an immigration judge, and you have to be able to show that it was procured, illegally procured, or by concealment of material fact, or by willful misrepresentation.

0:40:55 Thomas: It wouldn't involve a search warrant, would it, or could it, for a

0:40:58 Matt: No, it shouldn't.

0:40:58 Thomas: Civil, yeah. Yeah.

0:41:00 Matt: I was looking into that too, I can't see how a civil denaturalization proceeding would get you there, because it has to be probable cause of a crime, and I just, I, I'm going to reserve, I'm going to hold on this, but obviously I and well

0:41:06 Thomas: Yeah. I know. I'm just asking what kinds of things, and I guess, you know, to your, yeah, sure.

0:41:12 Matt: Sure, but one more point, I will say that this is a Minnesota federal judge, we know how they feel about ICE at this point, right? So we also know that ICE in Minnesota has a particular habit of lying in affidavits to judges, so who knows, who knows. I mean, we've caught them doing it quite a few times now.

0:41:15 Thomas: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just kind of too hard to know because there's too many variables there. Like some, who could be lying, who could be, you know, the judge could be shitty.

0:41:31 Matt: Right, and it's an anonymous source that told Fox this, right, so maybe it is something completely different, and they're investigating for election stuff or whatever. This is, within, I will point out, the 60 days when DOJ is not supposed to be moving against people, um, who are facing election, but she doesn't have a serious contender, as I understand it, but she still is up for, you know, uh, final election in November.

0:41:36 Thomas: Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So weird.

0:41:52 Matt: Yeah. It's very strange, that's why, I want to talk about it.

0:41:52 Thomas: Yeah. This is, I mean, isn't this criminal the other way? You can't just do this to people. I don't I'm is

0:42:00 Matt: It's really bad. And also, just to make the point, and just in case people have been keeping up, I thought this was obvious, but I want to be sure that everybody understands this, uh, this is part of the effort to associate Somalis with fraud, especially in Somalis in Minnesota, which is a massive Somali community, and you can hear Benny Johnson and others in these conversations are just openly talking about how all Somalis are fraudsters, and this just proves that, and she's sort of the queen of it. Uh, there's one more thing in the Benny Johnson thing, if you want to put it back on, I'm very sorry, for just a moment.

0:42:00 Lydia: Like It yeah,

0:42:24 Clip: Ilhan Omar isn't an American citizen then, legally.

0:42:29 Clip: So her entire existence in this country is fraudulent, not just the marriage to her brother.

0:42:35 Clip: Ladies and gentlemen, President Trump has also shared our commentary on Ilhan Omar. He shared our review of Ilhan Omar's finances. And we went deep into the rabbit hole of Ilhan Omar's businesses and found them all to be fraudulent. And President Trump shared saying, when will be the arrests, please? The arrests were today.

0:42:51 Thomas: You can't make shit like this up, the

0:42:58 Clip: The arrests were today. President Trump has said he wants to deport Ilhan Omar.

0:42:53 Matt: Ex rabbit hole, she

0:43:01 Thomas: Arrest no, no, was she arrested? What's

0:43:03 Clip: Wondering what this is all angling towards, okay. So

0:43:05 Matt: Was not arrested, so just want to point out, he's getting the facts, their stupid lies wrong, he's saying she came into the country by marrying her brother's, the other way around, allegedly, allegedly, um, and I just want to address that too, very quickly, that the statute of limitations on that would, as well as the long run, if you, even if you think that's a crime, and it would only be deportable, potentially, if she'd done it within five years, um, potentially, depending on how they charge it, of residency, sorry, um, so we're talking, we're way past that. So the brother thing they keep throwing out, I think, is a red herring, because I don't think there's any probable cause that could go toward an actual offense on that, um,

0:43:20 Thomas: Wrong with his nose? Yeah. Yeah, of

0:43:25 Lydia: And

0:43:40 Thomas: Now, or yeah, yeah,

0:43:51 Matt: That they can charge no, no, there's no, no, charge.

0:43:51 Lydia: She wasn't arrested, right. It was just this yeah,

0:43:54 Matt: No.

0:43:53 Thomas: He said the arrests have happened, like, like, what, oh, someone in, literally in his comments, she was not arrested, on the screen of this, uh, thing, yeah.

0:43:54 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, welcome.

0:43:55 Matt: No, and just A couple more things, just, just for another minute or so, I hate to keep watching this, but just this whole, I've never actually watched Benny Johnson before, I never want to again, but he's like cackling in like a really weird jokery way all the way through, yeah, I know, you have to watch it for work all the time, um, so

0:44:11 Lydia: To the, the club, Matt, yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting.

0:44:12 Thomas: I'm surprised he got viewers when the Russian data center was down, it's kind of interesting. Did you're saying there's more play, or are you gonna, okay.

0:44:22 Matt: Another few minutes here, sadly, a little more.

0:44:25 Thomas: Yeah, they're

0:44:21 Lydia: Yeah, engaging.

0:44:27 Clip: This is the angle for President Trump, and then Ilhan Omar's home raided by federal investigation agents for Homeland Security this morning in an immigration raid, absolutely criminal. Look at this, look at this, thank you, Klein.

0:44:31 Matt: Just looking at headlines to

0:44:44 Clip: This is a live shot. Klein just like Klein, of course, has carte blanche as a producer of this program to break in at any time. Let's look. It looks like the federal agents are actually engaging here, potentially making an arrest.

0:44:55 Matt: Show guys walking around they're

0:44:59 Lydia: What they're

0:45:00 Matt: Walking on the sidewalk, they're getting back in their cars amazing

0:45:02 Thomas: Just, they're literally like

0:45:02 Clip: Again, a live shot.

0:45:03 Lydia: Gonna go to lunch

0:45:04 Thomas: They're turning off their body cams

0:45:05 Clip: At least, what was that, like a dozen federal agents coming out of Ilhan Omar's house?

0:45:09 Thomas: One stepped on some dog shit and scraping it off on the curb

0:45:13 Lydia: Getting in their car and going away

0:45:13 Thomas: Wow

0:45:16 Clip: Incredible. Our

0:45:16 Thomas: They must be going to arrest her somewhere else, oh

0:45:18 Lydia: Oh

0:45:17 Clip: Best-in-class production team is live and ready to go. We won't miss a second of the raid.

0:45:21 Matt: I just want to point out his next source

0:45:22 Clip: Thank you for breaking in there on that interlude. I appreciate it. I do, sincerely. Like, if you see anything, if Ilhan Omar gets dragged out in cuffs, put that on screen!

0:45:23 Thomas: Sorry, how racist

0:45:32 Lydia: My God, this guy's crazy

0:45:33 Thomas: How racist do you have to be but

0:45:34 Lydia: Yeah

0:45:34 Matt: It's awful

0:45:34 Clip: All right. I want to get through here really quickly before jumping over to Liz.

0:45:35 Matt: Check out what he's doing this

0:45:38 Thomas: Oh that's AI, right? Oh Grok, yeah uh

0:45:40 Matt: Is Grok he's putting up Grok and he's just going to read from it, that's his next source is Grok, I just want to point that out, one of his many X tabs, um, then he's just going to like talk like he's talking, I don't think he even knows he has Grok up, I don't know because he's like reading from it directly, yeah it's clearly Grok, you can look up in the bar and you can see it, yeah

0:45:42 Lydia: Yeah

0:45:51 Thomas: You don't think he knows he has Grok, f, oh like this is his research here, yeah no it's definitely Grok but does, is that, is he fine with that, he's probably fine with it

0:46:04 Lydia: I bet you he's fine with it, honestly, considering his other source is himself you know and his interviews so though.

0:46:04 Matt: More than fine yeah yeah

0:46:08 Thomas: Yeah this is probably using him as it's a circle jerk like Grok is probably quoting him out of him yeah like

0:46:12 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. Yep. Yep. With

0:46:13 Matt: That's right, that's right, um so yeah we'll keep following this story, obviously, uh, I think there may be some surprises but they're not going to be like ground-shaking revelations, I think they're just going to be more of the James Camille, Letitia James type surprises that they're finding some way to lie about them, yes exactly

0:46:28 Thomas: Surprising that you could get a judge to do this hey, I got a new policy, wouldn't we take over, which is never, every single judge you signed off on a bullshit like this, you just know, no more judge, you don't, no more judge anymore, impeach them all, that if it's federal judges they could theoretically do that, right, if we had the numbers, we don't, but it's like this is the kind of thing that, like, if you are helping, if you're complicit it with the fascism of trying to arrest your opponents for no reason and trying to to mess with them, like, I wish, like, if we could get the numbers someday, it would be nice, that would be real justice, it won't happen yeah

0:46:32 Matt: Yeah yeah yeah right

0:47:03 Lydia: The exception if the government just lied, like straight applied to the judge, right? Within the affidavits.

0:47:06 Matt: Which is very possible and you know, again I just want to close this bare reminding everybody, this is a sitting representative who's facing reelection and the president appears to be orchestrating some sort of investigation to, you know, to discredit her weeks before, and I'm not aware of anything like this ever happening before, maybe it did maybe Nixon maybe LBJ did things like this, who knows, but uh, it is really bad so I thought we should spend some time on it at

0:47:06 Thomas: That's that's true, well I yeah totally no

0:47:07 Lydia: Yeah.

0:47:22 Thomas: No yeah if we ever get, what do you think we'll get, Matt, do you think we'll get the warrant or the whatever, the, you know, think we'll get any of that doesn't doesn't she have to get it, or no, yeah

0:47:36 Matt: Some point it's got to come out, I mean, if they, if they actually indict, uh yeah, I guess she should, and we'll see, we'll see um nothing's released yet, we're pretty, we're early into this story as we're recording, so I'll just have to wait a

0:47:42 Lydia: She should release it. Yeah.

0:47:44 Thomas: Hmm interesting okay oh boy, all right, well, we got to take that last break, uh, and thank our last group of amazing, our top patrons, the top of the top, here we go, Bob Loblaw's Law.... Podcast, Philly Basement Bar shops at Stan's Used Coffins, Elect Thomas Smith President, American Honkytonk Bar Association, Baltakatei, Philip Kizer, Griff, the Tired 2L, Jaysank, a string of unpronounceable characters, Malaika Chandler, David in Brooklyn, RhondaTheDork.com, Milo Meadsong, Griff's, the plural form of footnote, kind of like Attorney's General, should be notes feetsies, Chris Waltrip, Big Easy Blasphemy, Mark Schultz, hors d'oeuvres in the court before we report, Sam Donow, Classic libtard, FRED R GROOTHUIS, and Mitchell, thanks so much, you're the best, top patrons, last break, and then we've got, what, Matt? That, a last bit of vapidity to God, vapidness,

0:48:37 Matt: Quick read from The American Conservative I think you'll enjoy

0:48:43 Lydia: Denmark ain't so bad.

0:48:43 Matt: Right, I

0:48:44 Thomas: All right, all right, here we go. "The American Conservative: America Can Learn from Denmark on Good Government." Wait, sorry, what, what's happening right now, Matt? This just in conservatives we just discovered there are other countries, countries, huge news yeah who's Peter van Buren, sorry, good yeah

0:48:56 Matt: This was accidentally published in The American Conservative and that do things well uh so I keep uh he's a pretty straight up and down conservative commentator, as you have to be to write in The American Conservative, uh so let's just read a bit of this, I'll give you a little sample, uh let's start at the beginning, yep

0:49:11 Thomas: What

0:49:13 Lydia: Okay I was sitting in a coffee shop in Copenhagen, Denmark, ruining my vacation for about the hundredth time, I found myself calculating how much the trip was costing and whether, as a retiree, I had saved enough not to outlive my money. At the end of life, I was likely to face tens of thousands of nursing home expenses with years of increasing medical expenses on the way down. Then there was inflation and the tottering Social Security and Medicare situations to worry about. My expensive coffee was getting cold, I looked around the Room.

0:49:20 Thomas: What sorry hold on, I just need to check, I know that I make this joke a lot, but were you visited by three ghosts, what what, how did this get published, like, you basically, the start of this is boy, you know, how every aspect of American life under Trump and capitalism fucking sucks, anyway I'm a conservative

0:49:41 Lydia: Yeah

0:49:56 Matt: Yeah

0:49:56 Lydia: And it's continuous stress for the rest of my life as a result I

0:49:58 Thomas: Okay why can't I X out of that advertisement, the X does nothing, okay, go ahead, I

0:50:05 Lydia: Looked around the room full of Danes and realized something, no matter what else, not a single one of them could be worrying about anything close to what I was thinking about. Every Dane gets free universal health care, free public schools and universities, pensions, generous unemployment insurance, and more or less cost-free elder care. Huh.

0:50:21 Thomas: Don't know if anyone's ever made this meme, but uh, perhaps you two will appreciate, you know, in the Labyrinth, when the uh muppets are all waiting for her to say the right phrase so that so that David Bowie can take the baby or whatever, and they're like that's that's us waiting for like this conservative, like, are you gonna say that, maybe universal health care is the way to go and some other stuff, yeah

0:50:29 Lydia: Yeah yeah yeah yes yeah yeah and just like Sarah in the Labyrinth, he'll fumble it for a second, probably. I'm sure, uh, the mom looking at pastries enjoys heavily subsidized child care, the things that shadowed my life, such as paying for child care and then trying to figure out how to pay for my kids' college without leaving them burdened with lifelong student loans, were not a factor here. Was I going to doom myself to tax hell by withdrawing from the Roth IRA and traditional IRA in the wrong order? Do I have to pay someone to advise me on how to access my own money saved over a lifetime, decades in which I denied myself and my family so there would be something left over at the end? I was not a happy guy. I approached the mom for someone to talk to, she was curious to meet a tourist and, like most people I met, friendly and open, the presumptions that govern a stranger approaching you in a big American city did not apply, I asked her

0:50:45 Thomas: I'll just look that up yeah

0:51:11 Matt: Yes

0:51:32 Lydia: If she was happy and she replied that indeed she and most Danes were, I looked it up later, four of the five happiest nations right Four of the five happiest nations on earth are Nordic countries, with Denmark at number two. The U.S. is down at 24th, with Afghanistan understandably ranking globally as the unhappiest place. I wanted to know why Danes might be so happy. I turned the topic to one of my biggest worries, health care, attracting the attention of an older man nearby. Of course, everyone spoke English. Denmark consistently ranks among the best, the world's best non-native English-speaking countries, the product of an excellent public school system that starts foreign language training in first grade. I practically had them in tears laughing as I tried to explain how health care works in America, with its HMOs,

0:51:37 Thomas: For example she wasn't carrying four guns we

0:52:15 Lydia: PPOs,

0:52:15 Thomas: Just Need every conservative to take one trip Abroad, one trip Abroad, please. Isn't

0:52:19 Matt: Yeah.

0:52:18 Lydia: Obamacare, Medicare, co-pays, deductibles, in and out of network, and more. I told them that after paying Medicare taxes all my working life, I still had to pay several hundred dollars more each month in retirement, plus a new form of income tax called IRMAA, for a health insurance system that covers most Americans so incompletely that those who can't afford it have to buy private supplemental insurance, as well as paying co-pays for most doctor visits. And this is after you figure out the Medicare system itself, a complex mess that requires you to choose among parts A through D, and if you don't sign up for Medicare, quote, on time, you will have a penalty attached to your premiums for the rest of your life. Then I tried to explain Retirement It

0:52:59 Thomas: It a great System

0:53:00 Matt: The best best at all.

0:53:03 Thomas: Wow.

0:53:04 Lydia: Starts with choosing when to start collecting your Social Security. In America, if you take it at age 62, you get less money each month for more months, versus age 70, when you get more money but for fewer months because you die. The cutoff age to to balance the choices is somewhere around 80-something, so you have to make an irrevocable decision estimating your own death. There was a similar ghoulish calculation for my meager pension. I agreed to take less money each month, betting I'll die before my wife, leaving some for her as a widow.

0:53:25 Thomas: Fingers Crossed Yeah. Yeah.

0:53:34 Matt: This is very well said, I have to say. One

0:53:35 Thomas: I know, this Should just be published in a Real thing because This Is, yeah.

0:53:38 Matt: Of the better pieces we've read. Yeah,

0:53:41 Lydia: In Denmark, every person gets health care. They usually pay nothing. Some do buy supplemental insurance for faster access to specialists, but it is generally through a non-profit organization. Organization. Old age pensions are supported by a combination of taxes and mandatory occupational pension contributions. Together, the entire multi-level retirement system typically replaces over 70% of former wages. In the U.S., the average worker sees roughly 40% replaced by social security, higher lifetime earners much lower. There are low rates of elderly poverty in Denmark. Significant retirement income comes from pre-funded government-held occupational pensions that you pay directly while working, alleviating the burden on future taxpayers. This is wholly unlike the American system, which may soon run out of money or reduce benefits to stay solvent. We pivoted to the big question of taxes. I'd read that if the U.S. tax code

0:53:48 Thomas: Perfect Fine I'd Read

0:54:33 Lydia: Were Made into an audiobook, it would take roughly 19 days of continuous listening to finish. The entire code and associated regulations is over 4 million words long. Americans spend hours doing their taxes themselves, usually with the aid of expensive software, or spend hundreds of dollars or more paying CPAs and tax professionals to do the task for them. For Danes, the tax agency prepares an annual tax assessment using the information it has already received from banks, mortgage companies, investment firms, and the like. Taxpayers log into the government's online system and review the return, approving it electronically or, in rare cases, making changes. For most, the process takes only a few minutes and is stress-free. People, my table mates told me, tend to trust their government, perhaps the most shocking thing I learned this day. Americans often don't appreciate that trust itself can be an economic asset.

0:54:33 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:55:22 Thomas: I, this part, Kind of bothers me, I mean, I, I think that there could be something thing done along this, but when you think of the things that are annoying and tax time, there's stuff that isn't solved by that. If you're just, a if you have a very simple tax situation where you're just filing the things that companies prepare for, because we have all the same info, like, companies prepare all That info, send it to the government. It's just like one step different, I guess, which would be nice. They should still do that step, Don't get me Wrong, but I Do Think it really, you would have to change a lot about how our tax system works, and a lot of it is the process of trying to tax people and them getting around it, and then having to write, okay, well, no, not that, and then do, like, maybe There Is a way Yeah I'm sure that maybe uh, maybe Fred Can comment, because he's an expert on all this, Fred Groothuis, but uh, maybe there's...

There's, I'm sure there's ways to overhaul it, but it's one of those things where this, this strikes me as a little too Elon Musk-esque, to be like, why don't we just go in, just, the whole, look at all these words, it's four, just, whatever, yeah, this is the only talking point that I'm slightly hesitant, I'm sure there's good ways to do it, but like, I feel like a lot of people have wanted to fix this problem, and I think maybe we just need a totally different outlook on how taxes should work, but I don't know, a lot of this is like a little bit pie in the sky, but that's okay, yeah.

0:55:23 Lydia: Right.

0:55:40 Lydia: Stop.

0:55:46 Matt: Yeah, this should happen.

0:56:00 Lydia: It Stop Trying To run away. Yeah. Like Most Americans, I assumed the taxes must be crushing. I had to look up later how much Danes pay in taxes and try to compare it to the U.S. It is a complex question, but to try and bring some clarity to all this, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development calculations set the the average tax wedge Americans pay at about 30%. For Denmark, the same OECD study shows a single worker earning an average wage faces a tax wedge of 36%. But in return, Danes receive all the benefits mentioned above and more. By contrast, Americans pay for all of those things after taxes, in addition to the anxiety of not knowing if things will work out. Most Danes also get five or more weeks of paid vacation per year. I think the Danes are getting a better deal, and that helps make them happy. Yeah, obviously. I was left angry about our system, our way of life actually, which places so much emphasis in the private sphere on

0:57:19 Thomas: You Think I Quit My Job, I'm No longer conservative, I'm Jumping Off a bridge and or becoming a hippie. Yeah.

0:57:32 Lydia: Making

0:57:29 Matt: Yeah, it seems like he's live quitting for the American conservative here. Yeah, exactly.

0:57:35 Thomas: Is This a resignation nation letter to the American expert, yeah.

0:57:38 Matt: It seems like it.

0:57:40 Thomas: Yeah.

0:57:44 Lydia: The right choices or personally suffering the consequences, and In the public sphere, on paying much for the comparatively little that we get. It is easy to see why Americans carry such a high psychological burden, especially financial stress right until our deaths relieve us. God, so true, most every financial decision seems to come with the possibility of ruining my future That simply does not exist in the same way in Places like Denmark,

0:57:47 Thomas: Man.

0:58:04 Thomas: Can You Please talk To a single other conservative, like your Friends, family, just spread the word, man, nobody's Reading this, so put This in A place where, yeah,

0:58:07 Lydia: Yeah, Take Them there, I Know, Or The other Scandinavian countries, or to a lesser degree even Canada or Japan, as our informal coffee club broke up. I wondered, why can't we Americans live, live this way? Walking Back through rainy Copenhagen, I realized something. I hadn't spent the afternoon envying Denmark's architecture or museums or bicycle culture, all quite lovely. I envied something much simpler, the absence of constant financial fear. And one more thing, as I insisted on paying for my own coffee, I learned that tipping isn't expected in Denmark. What a way to live. April,

0:58:24 Thomas: Man.

0:58:45 Matt: So there you go. I read this whole thing waiting for the twist, waiting for him to be like, but America's still better, obviously. Our conservative values are still better

0:58:46 Thomas: Yeah, Where's The, is It, oh, It's April 4th, Is it April 4th? No, April April 4th, April 1st, yeah, sorry, my Brain, it's April 1st, Yeah, why I say, who's It

0:58:52 Matt: Yeah it's pretty close Yeah. So

0:58:54 Lydia: 1st. Thomas Doesn't Do holidays Or Pranks. So April 1st misses on both accounts? No, It's not, yeah.

0:59:07 Matt: Peter.

0:59:09 Lydia: September 14th, 2026.

0:59:06 Thomas: It's April 1st? No, I'm Just, yeah, I'm, like, just I'm going through, I'm trying to find something where they hacked, is There anything? No, yeah.

0:59:15 Lydia: Yeah, Rickroll at the bottom, yeah. I Wonder

0:59:17 Matt: Van Buren, welcome To the resistance. That's all I can say. I don't know, I mean, he's clearly like

0:59:19 Thomas: Just Everybody Do this, can we, speaking Of um, taxpayer-funded programs, can we fund sending every single conservative to Denmark? Over time, no,

0:59:20 Matt: Right. The

0:59:30 Lydia: Though, is this like part of the natural progression of people, like, like, you know, they always say, like, as you age, You know, that, no, no, no, but like, like when you are more conservative versus when you were like more progressive or liberal or whatever, like, you kind of see the change based on your age, and like, as people get older, they tend to like be be like When they're old, old, oh,

0:59:35 Thomas: Get More Conservative Yeah, Let's Say, well, that's historically how it's known, It's like you're young And You're liberal And Like Maybe This will flip this over

0:59:51 Lydia: Okay, okay, I Was just Thinking Like Like His points About Yeah, Like elderly Care, like that being so expensive, especially if you've alienated your kids, and They're not going to want to help at All, And You're on your Own, yeah.

0:59:56 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah, No, That's When you Triple Down And you decide, I'm going to vote for Trump even Harder Than I used to, just To, yeah.

1:00:06 Lydia: I guess So I Guess so.

1:00:10 Matt: Realization That you're getting virtually nothing personally for your taxes, While Danes are paying just a little bit more and getting everything, uh, It's Got to be worth something. I just really wonder why they even published this. I mean, It doesn't have anything to say to a conservative. Yeah.

1:00:16 Lydia: Yeah, Yeah. Okay.

1:00:10 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't understand this. I'm like baffled. Is the American conservative actually a conservative? Like what's their other stuff? I'm just, yeah, crazy.

1:00:24 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. No. It's It's Not not like MAGA conservative. But it's conservative, it's you know, um, yeah, no.

1:00:33 Thomas: Roy Cohn, friend and American. Hmm. Federal agents. I'm just looking at the other stuff. How, how Israel conquered the Latin American right. I don't know what that is exactly. What angle that that is. Yeah, I'm trying to. Oh, the Tories still do not want to address immigration. Okay, that sounds more like what I would think. Open borders.

1:00:33 Matt: So, uh, Yeah. Oh,

1:00:37 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. I was yeah wondering also if part of this angle would be like immigration is bad, you know, Like, like, yeah.

1:00:56 Thomas: Do not fund schools is another headline, you know, yeah.

1:00:59 Lydia: Yeah. I wonder, like, because the emphasis on how happy the Nordic countries are and stuff, and they also, like, traditionally are pretty crappy on immigration.

1:01:00 Thomas: Oh. Wait, we've got a competing article Matt Vance is right about socialism. So, maybe we, yeah, someday, we could, yeah.

1:01:09 Matt: Yeah. They're ahead on socialism. I mean, they really I searched for the word socialism on their pay, on their page, and it's all like that kind of thing.

1:01:13 Thomas: Yeah. But That's the thing. We just read, that was socialism, some amount of democratic socialism, right? Well, anyway, what a, what a delight, I will have to follow that person, see if they're fired if they ever write again. That's, uh, that's, it's so true. We could spend all of all of media could spend time talking about how little we get and how much the freedom we think we have is a lie, and uh, American, the best place to live out the American dream has not been America for a long, long time. That's like officially like

1:01:17 Matt: Right. Yeah. Good.

1:01:24 Lydia: Man. In

1:01:29 Matt: Work Peter Van Buren. Good.

1:01:43 Lydia: Every aspect too. Like, it's not just, oh, like, this one area we like really could get better on. It's literally every single aspect of our country is done better in other countries.

1:01:44 Thomas: Yeah, yep. Boy. All Right, well, thanks Matt, uh, so much for the breakdown, thanks Lydia, and thanks listeners, as always, we will see you on Friday.

1:02:02 Matt: Night, yeah.

1:02:05 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/law. Contact us through Patreon or openarguments@gmail.com. Make sure to follow our blue sky, at OpenArgs. But most of all, please share the show. Thanks for listening.