Trump's FBI Director Kash Patel picks a Deputy Director even less qualified than he is: MAGA podcaster Dan Bongino. Trump and Pete Hegseth purge the Pentagon's leadership and lawyers. Elon Musk replies all to the federal government asking what staff have accomplished lately. And, on the three-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Trump declines to call Vladimir Putin a dictator. Jon, Jon, and Tommy discuss the potential for full-blown autocracy at home, Ukraine's predicament, and the latest swing of Musk's bureaucratic chainsaw. Then, Jon talks with NOTUS congressional reporter Daniella Diaz about Trump's legislative agenda, squirmy Republicans, and mounting public anger at Trump's budget cuts. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected] and include the name of the podcast.
Chapter 1: What are the potential consequences of appointing Dan Bongino as Deputy Director of the FBI?
I'm Tommy Vitor.
On today's show, Dan Bongino, a MAGA podcaster who says his life is all about owning the libs, is now the deputy director of the FBI. We'll talk about why we've always been big fans of his. And we'll cover Trump's Pentagon purge of top generals and military lawyers who he viewed as insufficiently MAGA, I guess.
We'll also get into Elon Musk's mass email to every single human employed by the federal government demanding to know what they did last week or else risk getting fired. And later, I'll talk to our friend Daniela Diaz, now a congressional reporter at notice about whether Trump's legislative agenda is running into trouble with Republicans. But first...
Donald Trump held a press conference Monday afternoon with French President Emmanuel Macron on the three-year anniversary of Russia invading Ukraine, which, to be fair, was asking for it.
According to our new administration, Trump refused to call Putin a dictator, telling a reporter that's a word he doesn't take lightly, also a word he's now used multiple times to describe the democratically elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who said over the weekend that he'd step down if it meant peace for Ukraine. Doesn't really sound like something a dictator would do. The U.S.
also joined North Korea and other pro-Russian countries, our new gang, in voting against a U.N. resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine and calling for all of its territory to be returned. Not even China or Iran voted against the resolution. They at least abstained. I miss the old days when we only used to do that for the death penalty. At the U.N.? Yeah.
Okay. Okay.
Trump was asked about this and other topics and appearances with Macron on Monday. Let's listen.
Can you explain the rationale in having the U.S. vote against the U.N. resolution that Ukraine proposed and also the U.S. proposed?
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Chapter 2: How is Trump influencing the Pentagon leadership?
Trump posted on Truth Social that he thinks Elon is doing a great job, but that he wants him to, quote, get more aggressive. Musk then tweeted a screenshot of that post with the message, Will do, Mr. President.
Three hours later, Elon tweeted that all federal employees, all two million of them, would be getting an email asking them to explain what they, quote, got done last week, and that if they didn't respond, it would be considered a resignation. By Saturday evening, that email had gone out, giving people until midnight on Monday night to respond with five bullets about their accomplishments.
But almost immediately, the heads of some major government agencies, including the Defense Department, the State Department, the Justice Department, and Kash Patel, started telling employees that they didn't need to respond, or at least not yet. NBC News reported that Elon's plan is to feed the responses into an AI system to determine which jobs should be eliminated.
But right before we recorded, the White House Office of Personnel Management notified all agencies that actually responding to the email is voluntary and employees won't be fired if they refuse to answer. What do we think happened here?
I mean, I'm no AI expert, but the idea that you can just put a five-paragraph, like, what I did at camp this week letter into the machine, and it can just tell you if your job has value seems... Like it's the machine that checks whether kids are good or evil in Willy Wonka.
It's going to look at the five bullets and be like, I saw a D, I saw an E, and I saw an I. You're out. Have you guys ever heard of something called Roko's Basilisk? No.
Of course I have, yes. Love the basilisk.
So Rogo's Basilisk was a post on a web forum, and the post said the following. If at some point in a distant future, there is a super intelligent AI that is ultimately benevolent and wants the best for us, it will also believe that the sooner it is invented, the better. But it can't go back in time and make us invent this AI faster.
But what it can do is if in this future, it can see who helped bring it about and who didn't. And the people who brought it about will be rewarded. The people who didn't bring it about will be punished. You can introduce that into the past by having someone like me at this table explain this.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of the UN resolution on Ukraine?
I'm wearing jeans and a t-shirt at four o'clock. You're wearing a suit at 4.30 in the morning. Who's winning?
Jesse Waters looks like he's in a coffin.
Yeah.
All that makeup.
Gutfeld's in a long-sleeve tee every goddamn day. Gutfeld has the most hilarious wardrobe and posture on all of television. The Five has been on a lot.
They have fucking makeup artists at Fox and morticians.
Jesus Christ. Makeup artists are very nice. Jesse's like this. Jesse's like this. And then Gutfeld is just basically like... Fucking woke bitches. Not that we watch it.
All right.
All right. We're going to take a quick break. But a reminder before we do that, if you're in L.A., come see Love It or Leave It live.
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