The Old Man and the Clemency
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Emmy Award winner Coleman Domingo returns to television in the Netflix limited series The Madness. Domingo portrays a media pundit, Muncie Daniels, caught in a deadly conspiracy. He must fight for his innocence and his life after he stumbles upon a murder deep in the woods of the Poconos Mountains and discovers he's the only witness to a crime. As the walls close in, Muncie strives to reconnect with his estranged family and his lost ideals in order to survive. Watch The Madness, November 28th, only on Netflix.

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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Donald Trump says he's going to replace FBI Director Chris Wray with Kash Patel, who said he wants to prosecute journalists and Trump critics. Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth faces newly reported allegations about what a shitty person he is, including from his mom.

And Bernie Sanders finally finds common cause with a billionaire. Even crazier, it's Elon Musk. Here's the question I had after reading the news today is who had a rougher Thanksgiving with the family? Joe Biden being buttonholed about pardoning his son or Pete Hegseth dealing with his mother's letter in the New York Times?

Well, the letter's from like 2018. I know, but it sort of came up this weekend. And the pardon was after Thanksgiving. Well, yeah, of course it was. You spent a weekend being fucking hammered by your whole family for a pardon. You'd do it Sunday night too. Just get off my goddamn back.

Anyway, so Bernie found common cause with billionaire Elon Musk. We'll talk about that. We'll get into all the do's and do's of collaborating with oligarchs to cut defense spending. I want you guys to know that Reid told me he wrote that line as a personal challenge to my dignity. That was tough. Oh, really? And I guess... Which is a challenge accepted. Who won that? That's just a challenge accepted. All right. That's for you, Reid. But first, I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. Why are you laughing? I don't know. It's just funny. It's just funny, the news.

Donald Trump commemorated the holiday by sending wishes to all of us radical left lunatics who worked so hard to destroy this country. Looks like we failed. He also posted an homage to National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, which we had mentioned is one of our favorite Christmas movies, certainly mine, where he pops out of a deep fake Joe Biden's turkey and dances to YMCA.

I think it's some of his best work. It was very funny. I don't think he makes them. I think they steal them from the internet. Yeah, no, you don't think. I don't think his campaign makes them either. I think you just rip them off of Reddit. Yeah, I think that's probably right. I found Trump's staff announcements less compelling. He said he'll appoint the fathers of two of his son-in-laws to big positions. Mossad Boulos, the Lebanese-born father of Tiffany Trump's husband Michael, will be senior advisor to the president on Arab affairs.

and Middle Eastern Affairs. He got a lot of expertise there, Tommy? Not that I can tell. I think he did run for parliament in Lebanon. He was a businessman in Lebanon, yeah. He lost. And Charles Kushner, the former real estate developer and convicted felon who's Jared's father, will be ambassador to France.

Yeah. A reminder that Charles Kushner is the guy who retaliated against his own sister for cooperating with federal investigators looking into his business practices by soliciting a prostitute to sleep with her husband, filming it and mailing her the tape. Honestly, yes, terrible. But also, I don't know, something you can kind of see Benjamin Franklin doing. Yeah.

Some straight up game. Creative. If he had the technology. I think they didn't want the brother-in-law to testify in a financial fraud case against him too. So there's a lot of depth to this. Trump pardoned him in 2020. And now he, if confirmed, is off to France. Not to be outdone in the special favors for family members category, Joe Biden made the biggest nepotism news of the weekend when he announced a pardon for his son Hunter, something he repeatedly said during the campaign he would not do.

Earlier this year, Hunter pled guilty to federal tax charges in Los Angeles and was found guilty in a federal court in Delaware for lying about his drug addiction on his application to buy a gun. The president released a long statement saying he'd come to the conclusion that Hunter's prosecution had been political the whole time and that, quote,

There has been an effort to break Hunter, who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they've tried to break me. And there's no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision.

All right. I got two Americans right here. Do you guys understand? What do you think? On a human level, obviously, I get it. It's not just a father pardoning his son. It's a dad who lost a baby girl as an infant. Beau Biden passed away recently. It's also probably true on the merits that Hunter got harsher treatment because of his last name. But...

It's also the fact that President Biden lied and repeatedly lied and said he wouldn't pardon Hunter or commute a sentence. He had his press secretary lie on his behalf. Biden's supporters held up Joe Biden's refusal to pardon Hunter as an example of his commitment to the rule of law in contrast with Trump. But NBC News reported that when they decided to put this out there and say that Biden wasn't going to pardon his son, actually Biden and his top aides knew that it was still an open question.

And so now everyone looks

Everyone looks like they're full of shit. And Republicans are going to use this to argue that it was politics as usual when Democrats warned about Trump's corruption or threat to the rule of law or the threat to democracy. And I think that's the piece of this I am most frustrated with, which is Joe Biden looking like a typical lying politician. And I think that leads to a cynical feeling that all politicians are bad and they're all the same and that this is just par for the course. Yeah.

And so I'm not really worried that this is going to make it easier for Trump to be corrupt or to ignore the rule of law himself. He was already going to do it. He'd already named Matt Gaetz to lead the Department of Justice. He campaigned on it. Already hinted at using the pardon power for January 6th. More than a hint. Right, right. Literally a campaign promise. Yeah, but also, I mean, Hunter's pardon is expansive here. It covers, goes back a decade. So the right wingers, I listened to Ben Shapiro this morning, like they're all saying what this shows is that

Joe Biden was in on the take the whole time that he was getting money from Hunter's business dealings because he pardoned this decade's worth of time. And now I think Joe Biden damaged his own reputation in service of doing something understandable on a human level for his son. And he also damaged the Democratic Party's reputation. And the question I have is, is Hunter the only one getting saved here?

What about like Dr. Fauci? What about Liz Cheney, who's getting told that she should be tried for treason? Can I make a point about that? Because this is the main thing that I've been thinking of, and I've been thinking about it even before the Hunter pardon was announced. If Joe Biden had come out either over the weekend or in several weeks, or maybe he'll do this before he leaves and says like, look, I take it seriously that Donald Trump campaigned on prosecuting people he doesn't

agree with and throwing them in jail and Kash Patel and Matt Gaetz and all these people show that he's going to carry through. And so I am issuing a full blanket pardon for all of these people who have been targets and who have been on Trump's enemies list. Like, first of all, I think if he does do that, it makes the Hunter pardon seem more acceptable to me. And if he doesn't do that, then I think it's even more infuriating that he saved his son and not a whole bunch of other people who were just government servants doing their job. Right.

Yeah, that's my that's my because we joked about it in the past. And I look whether or not Biden actually in his mind believed he was going to try to not do this or on some level he always knew he would do it. I don't know. But I thought he was going to do this. I like I felt like this was something that was coming. I don't know. Yeah. Well, I feel like a fucking fool. You know, that's what makes me mad about it. Well, like, but, you know.

There is sort of to me, I was just thinking about this specific pardon. And there have been like, I don't know, the presidential pardon is power is expansive and presidents have used it in different ways. Some more corrupt than others. Some just outright corrupt. Right. We've seen that. And sometimes presidents use it like President Obama used it, like President Biden used it right for for clemency and pardons for people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses, for people that were kicked out of the military for being gay. Then you have pardoners.

pardons that are kind of like, I don't know, they're not...

they are in service of an abuse of power. You have Trump's pardons of a bunch of people, uh, that were involved in crimes around him. You have George HW Bush's pardons around Iran Contra. Then you have these kind of like corrupt hand of God pardons that are just like, I'm just doing a favor. I'm saying, fuck it on my way out the door. You ever read the, uh, the Jimmy Carter ones? What are the Jimmy? They're incredible. Keep going. I'll tell you later. But like there's, there's, there's the Mark Rich pardon. There's the Roger Clinton pardon. Uh,

And then I put this pardon in that list, just like it's a fuck it, last out the door pardon. Actually, the Charles Kushner one is like that. For sure. Two, what's strange about this is A, it comes now. B, there's no acknowledgement in the statement that part of the rationale should be that Donald Trump is about to become president, right? The statement is very kind of like, I don't know, like kind of,

uh, uh, imperious. Or sympathy inducing. And it's like, oh, you like, he's been sober for a long time. There's a lot of people on whom like the gears of justice have like turned while they were trying desperately to maintain their sobriety and no pardons for them. Can I just point out too, on that point, the,

When Joe Biden decided to run in 2019, Hunter had already gone through a lot of these challenges. And so the time you could make a decision that would protect Hunter Biden from the kind of political glare and from Republican attacks was then. I mean, I'm sorry to say that. I think that

Joe Biden is a tragic figure. Like, and I think that there are many good parts of it. I mean, you talked about this back in the whole post debate. Is he going to drop out thing? The two Joe Biden's kind of thing. But I do think like he has shown incredible decency at times. And I really feel for what he's gone through and what his family has gone through. They've gone through hell. Like none of us can imagine what they've gone through. But like his ego again and again has like gotten in the way.

And when push comes to shove, it's like, well, I'm going to do what's good. I'm going to run for president again, even though it's fucking crazy to do that. And like, I shouldn't do it and blah, blah, blah. I'm just going to do it, you know, and now we're all here. And like this to me is like in that category. And it's also the timing. I do think the timing matters. Like if this did come on Christmas Eve or it did come in a couple of weeks after he'd done some kind of pardons or something around Christmas.

being afraid of Donald Trump abusing his office, it might have been different. Do you guys have a guess on the timing or have you read anything? I thought it was because of the sentencing. One of the sentencings is December 12th for the gun charges. The other is December 16th for tax evasion. So I figured...

He just didn't want to go to jail. He's going to sort it out now. I know. I saw that, too. But then I thought this is what's confusing about this, the full and unconditional pardon, because you could have imagined a scenario where Hunter gets sentenced and then Biden commutes the sentence or, you know, says that he's going to serve less or whatever else and waits for it.

But if you're going to do the full 10 years, full and unconditional pardon, we haven't really seen in this country since Ford pardoned Nixon. I was reading that even Trump's pardons were like pardoning all of his cronies and pals and family members for like specific crimes. And this was everything. It does make the argument that this was a

about Trump returning to power and going after Hunter like more salient, in which case you'd think, why don't a whole bunch of other people Trump's going to go after get the same thing? Exactly. And by the way, it also like Hunter pleaded guilty and was convicted on crimes that are ancillary to the kind of

core conservative critique, the core sleaziness of Hunter Biden, which is the Burisma stuff and some of the trading of influence, right? Which were not part of these charges. And now that slate is wiped clean. So of course, conservatives are going to say, see, Joe Biden is just protecting himself. Yeah. I think they assume that it was just going to be lawfare, but yeah, I agree. I mean, it

Joe Biden made it worse for himself, for his own reputation. I don't, I do not believe, I've never seen any evidence that suggests that Joe Biden was getting money from Hunter Biden's business dealings. The save some for the big guy email. None of it makes any sense. None of it has been squared with like financial records or other information that I think would have made, would have proved this case. Yeah. So that's why it's just like, so now he's done this.

OK, if in the next couple of weeks Joe Biden uses the pardon power again, it will always be in the context of this Hunter Biden pardon, the sort of strange decision to put this out on a Sunday night. And we'll also, by the way, also comes at a moment when we're about to have a debate about Kash Patel and about abuse of the Justice Department and abuse of the FBI now.

If anybody uses the Hunter Biden pardon as a justification for approving these fucking bozos, they always wanted that permission. And like, I don't care about that. They don't need it. They don't need it. So I'm not like, they're like, oh, you've just given them ammunition. I don't care about that. I don't care about it. I care about the internal credibility of the Democratic Party and people who fought for Joe Biden to be president. Can I ask you guys, because I...

It obviously bothers all three of us. I've had like friends, family members be like, who cares about this? Like if I was Biden, I'd do it too. And look, if like I would pardon my sons, probably if I was in that position, it's still wrong. Like, I mean, I hope I wouldn't. I hope I wouldn't be in that position. But like, I don't know. Do you think the political effect? I mean, Tommy, you raised the point that you're worried about the credibility of the Democratic Party.

We just went through an election where people decided, eh, don't really care much about norms and institutions and democracy as much as they care about inflation and other issues that affect their lives directly. Do you think, conversely, that this would actually piss people off? Yes, very much so. I think they care about people being full of shit. They care about corruption. They care about hypocrisy. My guess is that if you poll people right now,

The majority of people would understand it on a human level, but that support for this decision would kind of track Joe Biden's approval, but then you'd lose a bunch of Democrats, right? Because we, I think, believe in good government. And so I don't know. I just do not think this is going to wear well over time. I don't know that this will be...

One of the top five things that we talk about, but I do think it's a it's a tough way to go out. Yeah. When you're it's hard. It's hard to when you're at the bottom there. Do you know his approval rating right now? So Trump's approval rating when he left office after inciting an insurrection and trying to overturn the election was 38 percent. Joe Biden right now is sitting at 37 percent.

I guess for me, like, I do think that what happens in the next couple of weeks matters for what this pardon looks like in hindsight. If he doesn't, like, we have a short window for Joe Biden to use presidential authority to do everything he can to protect the country against abuses of power by Donald Trump and his cronies. And if he doesn't use the pardon power in the next couple of weeks and what we're left with is Hunter Biden

doesn't get to be subjected to kind of capricious right-wingers in the Department of Justice. But all these other people do, as you said, Liz Cheney, Fauci, Mark Milley, journalists, whoever it may be. That will be, I think, quite an indictment of this pardon. I am right now mostly frustrated by the timing of it and the kind of, I don't know, the...

The kind of the falseness of the statement, which doesn't acknowledge that this is like, I don't know what Joe Biden would have done if Kamala Harris won. Maybe he would have done this anyway, but I would have liked some acknowledgement that this is because he's worried about future abuses of power. And I would have wanted this to be in the context of all these other people that Donald Trump has threatened. You know what I was thinking? Should have done it during the campaign.

Boy, would it have given Kamala an opportunity to finally break from Biden. Yeah, that's a good call. Kamala the cop could have come down hard on that one. I will walk this back. That's right. That's right. Turn a bug into a feature. One more thing before we like the pardon power is crazy. Yeah. By the way. Yeah. And like, I think, first of all, I think upheld recently. One Supreme Court. Right. We have learned over the last eight years now, if something is a norm and it's important, maybe make it a law.

Right. Because the norms are the norms are gone. Trump doesn't abide by norms. No one seemed to care. He campaigned on not abiding by norms. No one seemed to care. No one seemed to care that he promised to pardon people who assaulted police officers on their way to overturn an election. That was fine. That didn't ruin Trump. This is what I mean by hinting. All right. He he he never said he would like.

basically not exactly describe who would get the party. We say the worst people wouldn't. One reporter at the National Association of Black Journalists said even the ones who assaulted police officers, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess that's true. So, but anyway, I do think, Representative Steve Cohen, a Democrat, tweeted that he has had a constitutional amendment to reform pardon power so that it bans pardons for the president's family, staff, crimes committed for their benefit. It's a constitutional amendment. We can't barely keep the government open, so...

whatever. But it did make me think I'm like, yeah, if he's like, I've also had no Republican co-sponsors in eight years on this proposal. He's like, if anyone wants to join. But I do think like I think the pardon power is is like so ripe for abuse. And yeah, I'd be for a constitutional amendment that would maybe rein it in a bit. If you go back and look, I mean, it's not just right. It's been abused.

It's so often abused if you go back in. So I was just reading about pardons and just for the fun of it and just reading what Nixon was saying about why he was pardoning Jimmy Hoffa. And by the way, it sort of probably ultimately was not to Jimmy Hoffa's benefit because where he go.

But, you know, it's like, yeah, you know, careful what you wish for. But he's just basically saying, like, we got to do this because because it's basically helping us in the 72 election. Wait, Tommy, before we move on, can you give us the Jimmy Carter ones? Well, I hope these are right because I just got them off of Twitter. But G. Gordon Libby, Peter Yarrow from Peter, Paul and Mary, who did something I don't know the details of with a 14 year old. The Vietnam War draft resistors, all of them blanket Jefferson Davis.

of the Confederacy when it got in my path. So a wild set of set there. I mean, look, yeah, big picture. I just, it's look, we had this fight over norms, institutions, trust in government. We lost, but I do think this erodes people's faith in the justice system. It erodes people's faith in the,

My belief that the prosecutions of Donald Trump were fair. Joe Biden has been championing the rules-based international order and norms and institutions, and then he jettisons them when his son needs a pardon. Or a party. That's a party. It's going to be quite a party for him tonight. Or when Bibi Netanyahu is the one getting prosecuted for war crimes and not Vladimir Putin. It's very situational. Yeah. He could have come out and pardoned.

Trump and Hunter at the same time on political prosecutions. That would have been actually hilarious. You couldn't, because... It's so mad. I'm so mad. This gets to your problem, Tommy, that like if you're going to argue that the Justice Department, by the way, Biden's Justice Department, unfairly targeted Trump

Hunter Biden and that Hunter Biden would never have been targeted were he not the president's son, then you can look at Alvin Bragg's case, of course, and think that like, yes, what Trump did was illegal. And it's good that he got convicted because he broke the law. But would he would someone like Trump have gotten targeted if he was not President Trump?

Yeah. I mean, I'm not I know I know I know I'm not arguing. That's why like, again, it's it's why like you don't have to you don't have to think like it has a political effect or gives the Republicans ammunition or anything else to just think like sometimes things are just wrong. If we believe in if we believe in laws and everything else is just wrong. This is why this is why, again, like, as I said, like weeks ago, I think I think Joe Biden gets one. Pardon your son. Fuck it. It's your fucking pardon. You know, you're you're everybody will understand. But the statement is what's

fucking killing me. And just to knowingly lie about it. Yeah. And to string a bunch of people along. And make your staff lie about it. Like, his press secretary, she lied about it all the time. So just say, like, I originally had not planned to do this. Donald Trump winning has made me nervous that they will try to use my son to get at me and score political points. It's a dangerous time. I'm going to pardon my son, Hunter. I'm also issuing pardons for anyone that Donald Trump or those who he's planning to put in positions of authority have been threatened with political prosecutions. We do not do political prosecutions in this country. With the major exception of

Pod Save America. Yeah. All right. Yeah. God, man. No one's going to say. Let me let me actually say I want to revise my opinion, which is to say I would like Joe Biden to issue some pardons in advance, but not so many that they go down the list far enough to get to us. Leave some big targets on there. Leave some leave some big fish above us.

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Speaking of people that I have a strange new admiration and respect for, let's talk about Kash Patel, the next FBI director. Handsome guy. I've always loved Kash Patel. Handsome guy. No, absolutely. Kash Patel.

Down with the deep state. This has long been rumored that Kash Patel was going to get this. Now it's apparently coming true, even though Chris Wray nominally has three years left in his 10-year term. If you haven't made it past the headlines, Patel is a former prosecutor who became a staffer on the House Intel Committee under Devin Nunes. Devin Nunes, that's talking about someone from season one. Yeah.

where he became a critic of the Russia investigation and became a Trump world rising star. Patel worked at various jobs in the White House and the executive branch and hung around with Trump after he left office. You may remember him getting wrapped up in the classified documents investigation. But Patel's biggest claim to fame is for being the purest and most outspoken warrior against the so-called deep state and its allies in the woke media.

Here he is in conversation with Steve Bannon a year ago. The deep state, the administrative state, the fourth branch of government never mentioned in the Constitution is going to be taken apart brick by brick. And the people that did these evil deeds will be held accountable and prosecuted criminal prosecutions. Do you believe that you can deliver the goods on this in a pretty short order the first couple of months so we can get rolling on prosecutions? We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but

in the media, yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come after you, whether it's criminally or civilly, we'll figure that out. But yeah, we're putting you all on notice. And Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we're tyrannical. This is why we're dictators.

Well, got that part right. Oh, boy. This is a very season one story. You dig an inch into this and you're getting back to Nellie Orr and Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele. The lovers. It's tough. It's terrible.

So there was some chatter in the cricket slack about whether Kash Patel is the new worst nominee now that Matt Gaetz withdrew. What do you guys think? How worried should we be about Kash Patel? I think very worried. I think this is now the worst one. I think if Matt Gaetz were still in contention, you might have a debate, but it's now intellectual exercise. So Patel gets to be the worst one. There was a great profile on The Atlantic of Kash Patel that people should read. But there was one line that jumped out at me from a...

an advisor to Trump who said that cash is the one you say to, hey, I'm not telling you to go break into the DNC, but dot, dot, dot. And that to me is what makes this so nerve wracking. You look at like

He doesn't seem to have a very strong ideology. But but then you you nothing is more. He was a DOJ under Obama. Right. And nothing is more, I think, disconcerting than anyone who has become a rising star in Trump world. And why is a why is he a rising Trump in in in Trump world? Because he is a lackey. He will say anything. You mentioned the classified documents investigation when he was interviewed by Breitbart.

And he said, oh, actually, Trump declassified all that stuff. Why is there no record of it? I don't know. He just said it to me, though. He said it. He declassified all that stuff with me. He is the guy that says what Trump needs him to say, who does what Trump needs him to do, which is why he wants him to be in charge of the FBI and what makes him so dangerous.

Yeah. I mean, look, me and Rhodes have been on the Cash Patel watch for a very long time. This guy is not remotely qualified to lead the FBI. He's never worked for the FBI. He barely worked in law enforcement. He has a limited experience. He was a public defender, which is a great job. Not one that qualifies you to lead the FBI. He's a congressional aide, and then he kind of bounced around the Trump administration. He says he was chief of staff at the Pentagon, but he was the chief of staff there for two months to the acting secretary of defense. So

His boss during the Trump administration, a guy named Charles Cooperman said, quote, he's absolutely unqualified for this job. He's untrustworthy. It's an absolute disgrace to American citizens to even consider an individual of this nature. A former Trump official, you say? That's a person who worked for the Trump administration.

Yeah. So like, what love to hear him at the confirmation here. I hope they call him. So love it. Summary of him is correct, which is he just, he tells Trump what he wants to hear. He feeds his paranoia about the deep state. There's no evidence that this guy's a reformer who has big ideas for how the FBI could be better.

What there is a lot of evidence of is that Kash Patel is someone who keeps an enemies list. In fact, he published it in his book. It includes people like Bill Barr and John Bolton, who worked for Trump, to John Brennan and Loretta Lynch, who were Obama aides to Hillary Clinton. Tim Miller tweeted out this full list. It includes Cassidy Hutchinson, who was an assistant to Mark Meadows. This is apparently like the leading lights of the deep state, just like random people who are mean to Donald Trump. Yeah.

Or that he just didn't like personally and had banned personal interaction. Right. Or was mean to Cash personally. But one of the most sort of disturbing allegations about Cash Patel is from his time working at the Pentagon. Long story short, Navy SEALs were preparing a rescue operation in Western Africa and Nigeria. They needed to get permission from the Nigerian government to fly a U.S. military plane into their airspace.

According to Mark Esper, the Secretary of Defense, Kash Patel just told everybody that they'd gotten this permission. He said he'd gotten the word from Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, and no one realized that he had just made it up. They were about to land, or about to go into Nigerian airspace, and figured out, wait, Kash Patel just made up that we had permission. So these guys circled and circled and circled. They almost had to call off a rescue operation.

And luckily, they got permission. They landed. They rescued this guy, and everything was okay. But the worst case scenario is you've got a plane full of Navy SEALs getting shot at by the Nigerian military. Or the hostage gets shot at because they had to abandon the mission. Yeah. So, you know, you could have had a bunch of people killed. So it's a very – it's a bizarre selection. It's someone who's just a Trump ass-kisser, acolyte, and not ready for this. But –

could i interest you in some cash wine he sells it for 233.99 for six boxes yeah yeah he's he's a real it's good stuff i didn't understand until i got into the atlantic piece what a grifter he is i mean i'm not surprised by that but he really goes after it a lot there's some so when you dig into this guy there's all the ways in which he is just sort of a trump crony who will abuse his power but the story tommy is telling is really just strange because even republicans

that were like kind of baffled that like otherwise defenders of Trump are like, why would you do this? Like why? Like it's not like a, there wasn't an ideological partisan. Well, the reason that some people speculate that he just wanted it to happen, wanted the operation to happen because it was almost the election. Right. Right. And they wanted a win.

Right, so that he was willing to lie, but like in such a kind of dangerous and unhinged way. In that Atlantic piece, there is a anecdote about basically this sort of shitty judge in Texas sort of upbraiding him for not wearing a tie. It's like a very specific story, but he's so agitated by it. He keeps coming back to his bosses over and over again. His grievance. Looking for someone to kind of take his side. And he's like, what do you want us to do, man? Like, we're not gonna make a, right? Like, there's just this sort of like,

This is someone you want in charge of the surveillance state and law enforcement. He's also an author. A kid's book? A kid's book. This is the description of the book. Hillary Quinton and her shifty knight, Adam Schiff, have spread lies that King Donald had cheated to become king. They claimed he was working with the Russianians. But how could that be? Joint cash to distinguish discoverer as he uncovers the plot against the king. And who was really behind all the lies? Weirdest thing about that is he just didn't... Why didn't he just use Russians?

Because it's a magical world filled with Russianians. You've got to have a dual meaning for the parents and the kids. And why would you make it Hillary Quinton? I do. What's chilling, back to what's scary and not what's absurd. The line that you mentioned, Lovett, from the Trump advisor, that he's the guy that says, you know, Trump says, hey, I'm not telling you to go break into the DNC.

He is the kind of person that would not necessarily just take orders from Trump to do things that are horrible and illegal, but just do them thinking that it would impress Trump. That's it. Right. And and also not seemingly be that competent about doing it.

as the Africa story suggests. Well, and also a guy who would run an organization that has all the authorities it needs to surveil, otherwise harass American citizens. Yeah, that's a, that's going to be a trend today too. These are not people who have engendered esteem from even right wingers around them, which hopefully will damn their nominations, but would also, I think ultimately, uh,

damn them if they were to attain these jobs. Chris Hayes said on his show once that Kash Patel at the FBI is what would happen if you crossed J. Edgar Hoover with Alex Jones. Okay, I like that. Yeah. That's chilling. Yeah.

That's right. One thing's for sure. Pete Hegseth is trying to give Kash Patel a run for his money. Trump's nominee to oversee the Defense Department's nearly three million employees and eight hundred and forty billion dollar budget is the subject of a new Jane Mayer investigation over at The New Yorker about Hegseth's tenure at two veterans organizations that he ran.

He apparently was forced out of Concerned Veterans for America for being drunk in the office and even drunker at official events, preying on female staffers, and allegedly chanting kill all Muslims at a bar while on work travel. Before that, he ran a group called Vets for Freedom where he reportedly racked up huge debt and once again instilled a culture permissive of sexual misconduct. Apparently,

Ooh.

Tough. The Times reporter says that Hegseth told her that she immediately sent her son a follow-up email apologizing and taking it back. Yeah, it's a tough one to take back. She said the things she wrote are not true and have never been true.

We've all gone through that with our moms. You meant the first one. You know what I mean? The walk back is what it is. You probably felt bad about the first one, but you meant the first one. Yeah. It was not true what I wrote. In excruciating detail. So the Times posted the email in full and then an article about the email. And the article says that basically she regretted it, wrote another email after, which I did not see. When I read the email first, all I had seen, I was like, holy fucking shit.

Like my mom and I got in a little argument because my fridge broke and the question was whether or not we could cook the turkey. Yeah.

You know, and it got heated, but not like this. I didn't see her reaction, Fran's reaction in the New York Times. How did the fridge prevent the cooking of the turkey? The fridge broke. And so the turkey had been at about 50 degrees overnight. Too warm. And it had, well, we didn't know when it became 50 degrees. I was a bit stubborn. Was this after it had been spatchcocked? It had, and I had to go run out and spatchcock a second fucking turkey. I spatchcocked two turkeys. Oh, lucky you. Yeah. What a weekend. Yeah. RFK over there. Anyway, Pete Hegseth.

I don't know. Does this change what we know about Hegseth in any meaningful ways? Certainly on the sexual abuser misconduct category, I think it just strengthens the case there. Yes. But the...

The mismanagement of an organization or two organizations. Multiple organizations. It feels like that's notable. The U.S. military has a huge problem with sexual assault and both preventing it and holding those accountable. Part of that problem was that the decisions being made about who to prosecute, whether or not to prosecute these guys was being made within the chain of command and not by independent prosecutors. Pete Hegseth would be at the top of that chain of command.

So I think that this is actually a uniquely serious problem in the US military if he were to be the leader of it. Joni Ernst, Republican Senator from Iowa, did a lot of work trying to reform the system. I would love to hear what she thinks about Pete Hexeth leading this organization. By the way, was also rumored to be on the shortlist for defense secretary and then was spotted last week at Mar-a-Lago with Trump. So maybe he's already having second thoughts. Who knows? No. Let's say that other allegation. Let's say it's not true. Okay.

Okay, what is not disputed is that Pete Hexeth is a serial adulterer, which in the U.S. military can get you a year in prison or dishonorable discharge, right? I'm not like...

I'm not here to scold people for personal failings or whatever, but I'm just saying if you go by the UCMJ, these are big deals. Also true for public intoxication and drunkenness. Clearly reading all these articles, Pete Hegseth has a pretty serious drinking problem, or at least did pretty recently. And so the last part that you were getting at, John, was the New Yorker story talks about his mismanagement of an organization that has between five and 10 people and a five and $10 million budget.

So now we're going to take this dude who can't run that organization, put him in charge of the Department of Defense, which employs nearly 3 million people and has a yearly budget of over $800 billion. And also like, again, similar to the people that have been behind the scenes saying they're worried about Kash Patel. Like this is concerned veterans for America is not like the VFW. They got pretty concerned. These are some concerned, concerned veterans. But, but.

But this is an Americans for Prosperity group. This is a Koch brothers group. These are conservatives inside of this organization. And one person said, I've seen him dragged away not a few times, but multiple times. To have him at the Pentagon would be scary. When those of us who worked at CVA heard he was being considered for sect death, it wasn't no, it was hell no. Like the people that have worked with him are like, are you out of your fucking minds? You guys remember when Trump's former defense secretary, Jim Mattis, said that he was

used to sleep in his clothes because he was so worried that in the middle of the night, he'd get a call that Trump might start a nuclear war with North Korea.

I mean, Pete Hegseth, just be drunk. The good news is he wouldn't wake up to get the call. That's what I'm saying. So we wouldn't have to worry about the war till the morning. Mr. President, could you just give me till morning, please? We got Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un, autocrats around the world, nuclear weapons, and Pete Hegseth just hammered, just walking around the Pentagon. But again, I mean, you wouldn't be able to get a security clearance or pass a background check with this rap sheet. And now this guy is going to be in the nuclear chain of command.

Seems bad. There was another passage from the Jane Mayer piece that I just thought was striking. It included the phrase, close down the bar at the Sheraton Suites Hotel. I thought that was a bad sign. This is all around the kill all Muslims part is what is all taking place during this section. The staffer letter cited a second incident in which Hegsett passed out in the back of a

party bus, then urinated in front of a hotel where CVA's team was staying. I'll tell you this because it's the truth. And I sincerely care about the mission of CVA. Now, just to give you a sense of like, these are conservatives. When that person, when Jane Mayer reached out for that person, that person said, if you print that, I will deny I wrote it. When he was reminded by Jane Mayer that it had been sent from the same personal email account that he still used, he said, I don't care. I'll just say it never happened.

Sounds like he might have peed at a Sheridan a few times, too. Listen, we've all peed outside of Sheridan Suites. Party bus, you know.

this guy's a top-notch liar though he'd be like listen on the record if you print my thing i'm gonna say it's a lie this is an incredible strategy so good so you know what his name wasn't printed so yeah win for that guy okay we're gonna take a quick break one thing before we do that on the latest episode of our subscriber exclusive show inside 2024 alissa mastermonaco and former white house social secretary disha dyer talk about white house holiday traditions that's

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Everybody should support the ACLU. Join the ACLU at ACLU.org today. All right. So we now have several all time most awful nominees lined up to run some of the most powerful agencies in government. We've got Hegseth at Defense, Patel at the FBI, Tulsi Gabbard in charge of the intelligence agencies. And don't forget, RFK Jr. in charge of public health.

Defeating any of these nominations would require four Republican senators to oppose them. So far, a few Republicans have made mildly critical or at least not fully supportive comments about Hegseth, Gabbard and RFK Jr. No real vocal opposition to Patel just yet. Democrats are obviously playing defense against a lot of horrible nominees. How do you guys think they should be thinking about the strategy here? Like, should Democrats be fighting back against Hegseth?

every unqualified dangerous nominee do we need to pick and choose there's the need to be an overall strategy to deal with all of them what do you think well first of all we've already picked it and choose because Linda McMahon is also on on on deck to be secretary of education these are just the four worst ones they'll also run through four different committees if we still live in a world where there are uh uh cabinet confirmation hearings but they'd be through uh judiciary intelligence

armed services and the help committee, right? Those are four groups of senators who will all have the ability to decide how they want to mount this argument with their fellow senators. So to me, it's just like,

We're sort of still waiting for what a group of Republicans who have their own specific issues and concerns, where they're going to have backbone, where they're going to be trying to back channel to have these nominations withdrawn so they don't have to go out and go up against Trump, where they're going to be willing to draw the line. Like, we just have no idea. And we were talking about this before time, but like Democrats aren't even really shotgun in this fight. We're just riding along. And so it's just like I.

None of these people should be in positions of authority and some might get through. We don't know, but we should fight as if they can all be defeated. I don't know what else we would do. It's a question of emphasis, right? I mean, because we don't have the power to block anybody. All we can do is get information into the public domain and make it politically damaging for Trump or the Republicans who vote for these nominees. And so,

I mean, I guess Republicans could try to sort of collapse the timeframe of the hearings, do them all at once, do certain things that make it harder to tell a story about all of these nominees or anyone individually. But I do think it's more about the framing because we just can't be like the norms and institutions party and the ones who are opposed to change. Exactly.

Except for the pardon. Whereas Trump's people are all like radical disruptors coming in to change the government that everyone just voted against because they hate it, right? I mean, that's where I'm concerned is just I worry about the Democrats in the U.S. Senate coming at like a bunch of traditionalists coming at these arguments in the most traditional kind of institution defending ways and not being remotely compelling. I think it's these are a bunch of grifting kooks who will put

our health and lives in danger and our security. Right. It's going to be about how it would affect people. Or if Cash Mattel is spending all his time going after Trump's enemies who is focused on combating ISIS or foreign espionage or human trafficking or all those fucking L.A. rich kids that said they were on the rowing team that got into great schools. That's what we need the FBI doing. Justice should be served. I don't mind. What's it called? Varsity Blues? Varsity Blues.

That's the name of the operation. It was Varsity Blues. Also a fantastic film that probably doesn't hold up if we saw it again from when we saw it as kids. It didn't for a while. Now it's back. Truck one, it's now good again. You didn't do the whipped cream bikini?

Yeah, but it's got to be about how this would affect people. That to me is always the number one. And to the extent that people aren't qualified, it's that their lack of qualifications is not something that's going to help them reform an agency to improve people's lives, but it's actually going to hurt them.

you by having them there. I guess that's right. That's the broader argument we need to be making, I suppose, to the country. Whether these people get confirmed or not, what is the story we're starting to tell about the Trump era? What is the argument that's going to persuade four Republicans on each of these people? I think that's separate. No, but it is. But that's important too, right? Because these are hearings for the country, but they are also hearings for Murkowski, for Collins, for Curtis, the guy that replaced Mitt Romney.

that seems to have suddenly discovered. Curtis, I don't even remember his name. Good for you. Romney, has some Romney vibes to him. Cassidy, these kinds of people. Well, that's what I do think making national security arguments is one way to potentially do that because you do have some, you do have a couple Republican senators who are a little more

old school Republican genuinely concerned about these institutions too. And like defending our country. Um, also I think Robert F. Kennedy jr. Could have a unique set of problems in that he is pro-choice and there's a bunch of pro-life Republicans who have expressed concern about the pick. I wonder if, you know, that could take them down. We'll see. Yeah.

Speaking of Democrats deciding whether to fight back, there have been a couple of notable instances lately of Democrats expressing modest support for some of Trump's nominees and initiatives. Colorado Governor Jared Polis tweeted a few weeks ago that he was, quote, excited by RFK Jr.'s appointment because of his stance against big pharma and corporate agriculture, even though he said he doesn't personally agree with his stance on vaccines. And on Sunday, Bernie Sanders tweeted, quote, Elon Musk is right when it comes to criticizing Pentagon spending and waste.

prompting favorable replies from Trump allies like Elon and Matt Gaetz and less favorable replies from several angry liberals on Twitter. Favorite kind. What do you guys think about how and whether Democrats should collaborate with the Trump administration on initiatives where they agree? Yo, RFK, let's collab. Let's hook up.

I think Jared Polo screwed up by just sounding too credulous. Yes, healthier food sounds great. Do we think that RFK is going to succeed at that when he's up against the broader Project 2025 deregulatory agenda where they're gutting environmental protections?

I don't think so. I also think RFK Jr. cares mostly about keeping vaccines out of our arms. So I think that's going to be the issue there. I think the criticism of Bernie, in my opinion, is very stupid. I think that Democrats have long wanted to cut the Pentagon budget, as they should. I think we all should want to cut waste and fraud and abuse, and we should be in support of the goal and then hold their feet to the fire based on whether they're successful or not.

Can I just say Bernie was doing something there that is substantively and politically smart and good per usual, right? Like I actually think the Democrats on this on this Doge thing like should beat Trump and Elon and all the rest of them to the punch on a reform agenda. And we should put forward a list of waste, fraud and abuse in government. It should include corporate subsidies, corporate tax breaks, no bid contracts.

any other kind of waste that we can find in government, and then present it to all them, see if they do it, and if they don't do it, oh, I thought you were a reformer. Why aren't you reforming the system? And then criticize Elon and Trump's moves based on who they'd hurt and who they'd rip off. Elon Musk said that we should delete the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has saved consumers

tens of millions of dollars over the last decade? They're very mad at the CFPB because Marc Andreessen, a crypto billionaire who's invested much, much more in crypto, has decided it's bad because I think some of the people he worked with were quote-unquote debanked. I'm not sure if that's even true because, I don't know, they were selling fraudulent or risky assets. I'm not sure what's going on there.

Yeah, they've always hated the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The reason it's called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and not the Consumer Financial Protection Agency is because Republicans prevented it from becoming an agency. It was originally supposed to be led by Elizabeth Warren, whose idea it was, but Republicans prevented her from leading the agency. She then ran for the Senate, so jokes on them because she stuck around. But they've always hated it. They've always lied about what it does, and what it does is protect consumers at the expense of

big banks, credit card companies, airlines, et cetera. And so they've always hated it. But yes, we cannot defend things just because Elon Musk or any of these people say that they're bad. We just can't. That just can't be what our politics are. Politics are not going to be defined. We have to have our own politics. And sometimes the fucking Doge people are going to be right. Now, the Polis thing bothers me because this idea that you should look past

what RFK Jr. says on vaccines because you have a problem with high fructose corn syrup or whatever is to like, I think, misunderstand the job. And like even, and Polos walked it back a bit, but even in his statement, he's like, I hope RFK Jr. doesn't withdraw vaccines. And it's like, well, if you're already at the place where you're hoping he doesn't do something that would be deadly and devastating, you've given away the game. There's like an easy edit to Polos' statement that would have been fine if he said like,

I don't like vaccine mandates, but RFK Jr.'s views on vaccines are dangerous and I would not have picked him if he is confirmed. I hope he'll follow through on his commitment to take on big pharma and corporate agriculture. Right. Like that would have been that would not have ruffled a bunch of feathers like he was bad pick. He shouldn't start with that bad pick. I don't like him. Vaccine views are crazy. He does have some views on other things that, you know, if we can't stop them, then great.

Right. Well, he and also back in back in August, Polis had said that RFK Jr.'s views on vaccines are dangerous and he would be dangerous if he was in charge of health and human services. So it was just it was just strange. I think he's dealing with some libertarian state politics and was opposed to vaccine mandates at some point. So anyway, but I think the challenge for.

the Doge folks is just that the majority of federal spending is mandatory. It's social security, it's Medicare, it's Medicaid. We pay about a trillion dollars worth of interest on our own debt. Then there's a flashback to 2011. Yeah. Then there's 850 billion in defense spending. So finding huge cuts like Elon Musk says, I think you wanted to cut 2 trillion a year. That's going to be incredibly difficult. Now,

Good luck trying. But once you, when you're talking about those levels of cuts, you're going to start really, really hurting people in service of extending the Trump tax cuts for the richest people in the country. And that's the story we have to tell. This is also like a very old game that Republicans have played for a long time, which is you find some ridiculous sounding spending in the federal government of which there's a lot and a line item somewhere that sounds fucking nuts or

or you point to employees who seem like they shouldn't be there. Elon Musk is like putting federal employees on blast, tweeting about them to try to fire them. But, you know, even if you eliminated every federal employee in the entire government, that's like a tiny percentage of the overall budget. It's not spent on staffers. It's spent on payments to people. It's a tiny portion of discretionary spending. Yes. There was...

The Republican study group, which is 170 members of the House and all the Republican leadership, they put out a budget earlier this year and it called for raising the Social Security retirement age, which is just a giant cut to Social Security because the age is really just a means of deciding how much money you get. There was a story just the other day that like if they're going to want to pay for all of these Trump tax cuts, what are they going to do to pay for it? Well, they want to they want to means test food stamps.

Joe Biden, who we're obviously in a bad mood with this week, he personally increased this weekend for many months. But like he didn't get a lot of credit for this, didn't get a lot of attention. But he basically there was a bipartisan bill that gave the president the authority to increase food stamps. And so he issued the largest increase in food stamps that any president has ever done permanently. And he increased them by thirty six dollars per month.

amounts of about $400 a year, not a lot of money. Republicans have already started talking about that in order to pay for the extension of the Trump tax cuts, they want to revoke the president's authority to increase food stamps by a few hundred dollars so that they can cut a person making $5 million a year, cut their taxes by 200 grand, right? That's what they want to do. And you'll have Vivek, you'll have Elon running around the country talking about expensive

office chairs, and silly-sounding science projects, but that's where the real cuts are going to be. They're going to start by going after food stamps and Medicaid because they start by going after poor people and the working poor and slowly work their way up to Social Security. This is John McCain's whole shtick.

Bridge to nowhere. Pork barrel spending. This isn't new. Yeah, and then that guy died in a plane crash. Follow the money. Not John McCain. No, I know. Ted Stevens. Ted Stevens. Yeah, you're just calling it Doge because it's a crypto joke. We're back at Simpson Bowls now. All right, before we go, remember Cheryl Hines? Yes. The first lady of HHS. Yep. So over the weekend, the wife of RFK Jr. posted this Instagram reel. Let's take a look.

You can't take a shower. I'm doing a video. No, no, no. I'm doing, you've got to give me a second. I'm doing a video for Heinz and Young. Honey, the 60% off.

Okay, for those of you who are just listening, go check this out on the YouTube version. This is a video of Cheryl Hines in her bathroom. She's holding up some of the lifestyle products she sells while Bobby showers behind her. Fully naked, but thank God, mostly obstructed by Hines' head. Among the wares, she's selling a $20 clean, eco-conscious soy wax maha candle. Ugh.

What is just... So she's getting in on the Make America Healthy Again rift. Horny again. Well, I'm horny. I'm horny watching that video, of course. Also just... She's getting her beak wet. Everyone's getting... Yeah, that's it. It's like, wow, Cheryl Hines, all those... Oh, wow, I wonder what Cheryl Hines thinks about all this. Turns out she's in. Everybody loves a winner. It's like the Melania stuff. Oh, maybe... I literally know verbatim this. Every time there is a horrible married guy in public life, there's this weird coping conversation. Like, oh, maybe...

Maybe Melania secretly hates it. Maybe it's a cry for help. Maybe she was replaced with a body double. Like, no, she's a horrible person. She married to Donald Trump. America's, like, scammy capitalist id is just unleashed in the second Trump administration here. It's like, they're selling this. Kash Patel's selling his wine. They're all making money. They're all getting rich. Well, the real piece of it, like, I mean,

Look, Jared Kushner already got his $2 billion kickback from the Saudis once he left government after the first Trump term. Now we've got Tiffany's, Trump's father-in-law, being the kind of envoy for Middle Eastern affairs. There was a report in the Wall Street Journal that one of the ways that business CEO types are trying to figure out how to suck up to Trump, one of the things they're doing is buying the Trump cryptocurrency. Oh my God.

to try to like grease their way in the, the, the avenues into this administration for corruption this time are so unbelievable. We haven't even talked about one of the biggest, which is tariffs, right? Because all these companies can apply to get exceptions on the tariffs, which they did in the first Trump administration. And how are they going to do that? Gee, I wonder what are they, what are they going to do for that? Susie Wiles, chief of staff. And one of the arguments that was made during the, uh, immunity, uh,

debate in which the Supreme Court decided that the presidents have this incredible immunity was how can you punish corruption if what bribery is is bribing someone to use their official powers? If you can't be held accountable for your use of official powers, how do you prove bribery?

I think that will become- - This is why maybe we can get our pardon from Joe Biden if we just, you know. - Don't think he likes us. - We're gonna cut a check, that's what I'm saying. - Yeah, whatever it takes. It's not the most important part of that video, but just like, I really hate the, "RFK Jr., why are you showering behind me? You're in full hair and makeup." - I know. - When did he was- - There was such bullshit. - He had to get, did he get into, did you?

How did he get into the fucking shower? We can see the full shower in the shower door. His whole body's wet too. He's been in there. You're the problem. You started shooting the video after he started fucking showering. What are you talking about? Thank God there's not another season of Curb because I don't know. Done. But I will watch back episodes. Oh, for sure. Because I have a locked in sort of

Okay. It's okay. It's okay. Yeah, that's fine. We're not going to get into a debate about it. Do you think Kash Patel was selling a supplement that promised to detoxify the COVID vaccine in your body? Yeah. It was like, it was like a D-vax and relax or something and mRNA and you'll be better in no time. It'll, you take a pill and it'll suck the COVID vaccine right out of you. I don't know. How much worse could it be than all the, half the Charlotte Tilbury shit I put on my face and all of its promises. What's that? Nothing. Nothing.

The one thing, when you listen to enough right-wing media, you realize how symbiotic their content and their products are. Like, it's a lot of stuff about how the economy is about to collapse, therefore you should flip your IRA and put it all in gold. It's absolutely horrible advice constantly all the time. It's apocalyptic. Yeah.

Well, it's a lot more successful than our Jack Smith bobblehead business. Yeah. And by the way, there's a Cyber Monday sale in the Crooked store. You go to crooked.com slash store. We've got incredible offerings there. Not joking. Probably a fire sale on 2024 merch. Do you think this is the pitch the marketing team wanted us to do? No, I think it's fine. There's a Christmas ornament that says hope on it you might like. Those are marked down. Check those guys out.

I dropped the Vote Saved America ornament for our tree on the ground. No, that was a good one. I know, and I said to someone, and they said, that story sounds a little Ruth Conda. I don't know. I don't think you really did that. I was like, I know it doesn't sound real, but it happened. It was Julia Wick who made that joke. That's a good one.

That's our show for today. We did it. We did it, guys. We got through. We'll be back with a new show on Wednesday. Bye, everyone. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free or get access to our subscriber Discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our Friends of the Pod community at crooked.com slash friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed. Also, be sure to follow Pod Save America on TikTok, Instagram,

Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for full episodes, bonus content, and more. And before you hit that next button, you can help boost this episode by leaving us a review and by sharing it with friends and family. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Reid Cherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer. Madeline Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kiril Pallaviv, and David Toles.

Emmy Award winner Coleman Domingo returns to television in the Netflix limited series The Madness. Domingo portrays a media pundit, Muncie Daniels, caught in a deadly conspiracy. He must fight for his innocence and his life after he stumbles upon a murder deep in the woods of the Poconos Mountains and discovers he's the only witness to a crime. As the walls close in, Muncie strives to reconnect with his estranged family and his lost ideals in order to survive. Watch The Madness, November 28th, only on Netflix.

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