Congressman Brendan Boyle to discuss Trump's first State of the Union address. Pre-order our new book, join our Patreon Cult, and more by clicking here: https://linktr.ee/ivehaditpodcast.
Chapter 1: How is Trump’s State of the Union address being received?
The State of the Union is tonight, and of course, convicted felon Donald Trump is promising something big, and he's the biggest liar on the planet. Let's talk to one of our favorite congressmen, Brendan Boyle, to see what the Democratic response to this first State of the Union and Trump's second term is going to be. Congressman.
Yeah, great to be back with you.
Hi, how's work?
Oh, everything's going just well in the capital. We have made America great again. The economy's doing phenomenally. It's not like prices have spiked in the last six weeks. The market's doing just really well. I mean, except for being down five to 10%. And we've never been more popular with our allies. Although on the other hand, Vladimir Putin now likes us.
But besides that, things are going great.
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Chapter 2: Why are Democratic alliances under threat?
So how, I mean, how is it when you see these Republican Congress people that you work with and knowing that they want to completely realign 80 years of blood, sweat and tears in building democratic alliances, they want to throw it all away for a weakly positioned Vladimir Putin. His economy's in tatters. His military is completely depleted. Why on earth?
Are we going to partner with him over the European Union, Canada, Australia, Japan, and others?
Yeah, last week was unfortunately a humiliating couple moments as Americans. The first at the UN when we voted alongside Russia. North Korea and Iran, and against every single Democratic ally. Followed a couple of days later by Friday and that disgraceful performance by Trump and his vice president, J.D.
Chapter 3: What are the implications of recent UN votes?
Vance, who as we know now says 180 degrees different what he used to say just because he wanted to become vice president and Donald Trump's chief lackey. Truly humiliating moments. but ones that have actually real ramifications in the world. As you pointed out, 80 years from 1945 to 2025, this is the world that we've lived in.
The reason why this has been the most peaceful time in the history of the continent of Europe is because of the United States. In the 20th century, we lost millions and millions of American soldiers on European soil. From 45 on, that didn't take place. All of those deaths were in the first half of the 20th century.
Trump is now doing permanent damage to the transatlantic alliance to the point where I was talking to a good friend of mine who's a member of the German Bundestag. And he said, you know, moving forward, we just have to assume the United States is either a neutral or aligned with Russia. as they move forward and determine kind of their foreign policy and their decisions.
So this is not just humiliating, but incredibly dangerous moving forward.
Chapter 4: How should Democrats respond to Republican strategies?
So what are you guys going to do? Because I feel like we're playing two different games here. I feel like the Republicans and MAGA, they've gone into the government. They're not going through Congress and legislating. It's executive order after executive order. They're losing in court, but are they going to honor these court rulings?
And then is Pam Bondi's federal marshals, are they going to go out and enforce these orders? I feel like they're heading into a complete autocracy and the Democrats are still playing like business as usual. And so I have this fantasy. that like tonight, none of y'all show up. Nobody shows up because you're like, we are not going to be apart.
Every single MAGA voter is a traitor and we're not going to waltz in here and act like this is normal. What we're going to do is we're going to get a building across the street and we're going to get all the MAGA dick overs.
everybody who's been dicked over by donald trump in seven weeks that's lost their job that has lost their benefits has lost their health insurance farmers etc also elon musk can't pay taxes because the thing is we can afford all this congressman we can afford
every single bit of it if these billionaires would pay their goddamn taxes and quit being leeches off of working class americans it just sickens me it sickens me and i feel like we're playing two different games here and i feel like sometimes you guys not you personally but the democrats as a party are going to the table like this as politics as usual and out here in in what maga calls real america outside the beltway
Everybody, even people I know that didn't hate Trump, maybe voted for him, one out of three are like, where are the Democrats? What the fuck is happening? We're dying out here.
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Chapter 5: Why is Elon Musk a point of concern?
Listen, I hear you. And I remember when the honor and pleasure of joining you the first time, we kind of talked about My frustration, which I know you share that sometimes Democrats don't fight back as hard as we should. I shared with you my theory and coming from Philly, it's probably not a surprise.
I think that if you're hit, you get back up and you hit the other person 10 times harder and you do it immediately. You respond to everything. That's always been my philosophy when it comes to campaigning. One thing I'll say about the State of the Union tonight, though, why I think it would be a mistake if all of us decided not to show up.
What Speaker Johnson would simply do is fill the seats with sycophantic Republican staffers, which he has the ability to do any empty seat. gets filled by staffers at the direction of the speaker, including former Republican members.
So then the State of the Union that would be covered and that 50 million people would watch would be Trump speaking to a chamber that's entirely cheering and whooping and supporting him. So I don't think that's the visual that we really want. Now, a lot of Democratic members are, we are bringing actually people who have been screwed over by the Doge bags.
So that actually is going to be happening and we're going to be highlighting them. I will say this though, I believe we as Democrats have to use every point of leverage. And that begins literally next week. We're facing a government shutdown in approximately 10 days. Republicans want our votes. I don't know why for me or any Democratic member, we could possibly vote
for what they call a continuing resolution, while right now Elon Musk is showing up just randomly at different agencies they want to shut down, even though by law they can't do that. By law, we already have appropriated funding for those agencies like USAID or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, et cetera, et cetera.
How could I vote for something next Friday to fund it when then the very next day on Saturday, Elon Musk and the doge bags show up and shut down the agency. So that's our point of leverage. We will have other points of leverage. And then finally, on the litigation front, we're potentially facing a very scary moment.
We've had JD Vance and some other Republicans talk about this administration becoming the first in American history to just ignore court rulings. So far, they haven't done that. They didn't do it in the first term and they haven't done it so far, including in a recent Supreme Court 7-2 decision that didn't go their way. That would be a very frightening moment for the country.
I hope we don't reach it, but we need to be prepared in case we do.
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Chapter 6: What is the Democratic strategy for future elections?
We want to ask him about the investigations that are ongoing, about the contracts that he has awarded himself. And only will we help vote regarding the budget if Elon Musk comes in and is held to account. Is that a bargaining chip that you could have?
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. It's actually pretty similar to where my thinking has been and what I was talking about earlier that, all right, if you want our votes, we need to reverse all of this illegal shit that has already happened over the last, what, only six weeks.
So if we're talking about a continuing resolution, which is the parliamentary speak here for just keeping things on autopilot, Well, they haven't been on autopilot the last six weeks. They have, the White House and Musk, they have been violating the law.
So if we're gonna go back to actually following the law, then that's a situation that I could support, but I can't support continuing this reality, acting like it's normal when it clearly isn't. So in my view, this is a great moment for us. And if the last time I checked, Republicans can keep the budget can keep the government funded if they want to.
They control the House, the Senate, and the White House. If you want our votes, it's gotta be to end the illegal activity that has been going on over the last six weeks.
Okay, moving forward, Democratic messaging. There are reports and, you know, obviously after an election, everybody is, you know, Monday morning quarterbacking. And as you know, we live in a red state. We live in Oklahoma City. Not one county has gone blue in like the last five or six cycles. And you hear this a lot of Democrats say.
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Chapter 7: Will the United States have free and fair elections in the future?
have to turn away from identity politics and here's my perception from the middle of the bible belt like i mean it is maga dump truck where we are okay the only people that appear to be talking about identity politics ad nauseam is maga like where we live our governor our school superintendent they're so far up trump's ass they're never going to get their heads up
They talk about gender politics, trans, homosexuals and porn more than any Democrat or even any gay person I've ever met in my entire life. They are the ones that talk about this. I feel like as Democrats moving forward, our position needs to be Look, we're not going to vindicate and say, oh, we're running away from identity politics. Mag is the one that's obsessed with that.
Kamala didn't run on that. She started running to the center, running around with Liz Cheney, who's about as right wing as it gets. And I feel like for Democrats, if you saw Jeff Bezos, Amazon was all about DEI. He's at a human rights campaign accepting an award for being this big ally. Trump wins and then he's like, no more DEI, no more gay friendly shit for Amazon.
And everybody's like, you know what? You're an inauthentic Jeff Bezos. And I feel like that's what we're going to look like. And I'll tell you what I think gets moderates or even some MAGA people to vote
are people that are fucking tough that don't back down that say i'm not gonna bully gay people i'm not gonna bully trans people but let me tell you what they're doing to you they're scapegoating these marginalized people so that you don't see that musk and bezos don't have to pay taxes and they get you mad at this very small minority because they're dicks
I think that needs to be the democratic messaging because people in Oklahoma, in Texas and around, when you hear somebody fight for everybody and this inauthenticity, like, oh, we're going to run away from that. It just seems like such a wimpy, wimpy thing. I'm not saying that you wanted to do this, but we know we all read what the democratic messaging is going to be.
And I just think that this is a huge, huge mistake and it vindicates and validates what the right wing is saying about us. And I'm telling you, when you get to a deeply red state, the liberals aren't talking about this shit. It's the Republicans that are consumed with this.
Yeah, it is funny just how obsessed Republicans are with trans issues. It's weird. I mean, whatever's going on there, you know, I'll leave that to someone else to try to figure out that psychology. And by the way, the only time I've heard the word woke in the last two or three years is actually from someone who's on the MAGA right. Exactly. Talking about woke.
Here's my message, and this is actually why I'm incredibly optimistic about the next election in November of next year.
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