Let's take a look. Because you're going to watch. What is an emotional reunion here? Emotional moment. An American citizen wrongly detained. This one is a citizen. My fault. By ice. Reunited with his mother last night in Leon County, Florida. [00:00:15] Before we get into the shocking details of this one, I guess what can the audience expect? And, you know, I stumbled off the top there because it seems like another day, another person without due process, another person with their rights violated. Here we have an actual American citizen. [00:00:31] Seems like he could have cleared this up very quickly. Birth certificate, social security card, something. And yet the feds wanted him to stay behind bars. Yeah. So first they came for, people with student visas. [00:00:47] Then they came for resident, aliens. That's, folks who are legal residents here have green cards. That's as close to citizen as it gets. And now they're coming for the citizens. So, look, I don't want people to panic, and, And it's really hurting [00:01:05] the mental health of the country, for all of us to be in a panic. But now that they have started detaining citizens, you should probably carry your passport around. And I would say mainly to minorities. [00:01:20] But a couple of white lawyers have also been told that they should leave the country. We've got updates on that as well. And, you know, this is. This is we're starting to enter worst case scenario territory. So let's give you the details. [00:01:37] Let's tell you why they did this in this particular case. And, and and talk through what might be next. All right. Well, Juan Carlos Lopez Gomez, born in Georgia but lived much of his life in Mexico. His first language is. I'm not sure how to pronounce this. [00:01:55] Tzotzil. It's a Mayan language. Correct me if I'm wrong. 20 year old has a US birth certificate and a Social security card. Nonetheless, he was arrested under a new state immigration law that has been temporarily blocked since early this month. [00:02:10] And here's more on it. The law makes it a misdemeanor for undocumented immigrants over age 18 to knowingly enter Florida after entering the United States by eluding or avoiding examination or inspection by immigration officers. Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, signed it into law February 14th, [00:02:28] but a US District Court judge blocked its enforcement on April 4th. And just today, the judge denied a state request to lift the block on the law. Nonetheless, Lopez Gomez was detained in a local Ice facility. Here is reporter Jackie Yanos explaining what happened before that. [00:02:46] He was on his way to work from Cairo, Georgia, where he lives and where he was born in, to Tallahassee. So that aspect of crossing the state line came into play, and a state trooper stopped the car in which he was a passenger. He was not the driver. [00:03:02] Sighting in the arrest report that the driver was going 78mph in a 65 mile per hour zone. So this eventually led to the trooper asking, the passengers in the car for their identifications. And, the arrest report states that, Juan Carlos Lopez Gomez stated that he was [00:03:21] in the country illegally, but he showed the trooper his state ID card, and he told me after his release that he had also showed him a copy of his Social Security card, and that he said that he was born in Georgia. So this is what I mean. So why would did this turn into, you know, days of detention? [00:03:40] Really? Well, Immigration and Customs Enforcement formally asked the jail to hold him for 48 hours. That's how yesterday, he had his first court appearance. After inspecting his birth certificate, the young county Judge LaShawn Riggins said during that hearing that this is indeed an authentic document, [00:03:59] that that she did not have jurisdiction beyond finding no probable cause for the charge. Last night, though, he was finally released, reunited with his mother, who now plans on suing over her son's arrest. Florida Phoenix said Juan Carlos appeared shell shocked, spoke quietly [00:04:18] about the experience in Spanish. This is what he said. I feel fine leaving that place. I felt bad in there. They didn't give us anything to eat all day yesterday. Unfortunately, he's not the only American citizen who's recently been targeted by immigration enforcement as of late. [00:04:35] Pennsylvania born woman recently received an email from immigration officials telling her to leave the country immediately. Lisa Anderson, physician from Cromwell, Connecticut, got a letter from the Department of Homeland Security that read, Said it is [00:04:52] time for you to leave the United States. Senior DHS official did not deny that they had sent the email. They said that the department has been issuing the notices to individuals who don't have lawful status to remain in the country, encouraging them to self deport. [00:05:09] The non-personal emails, such as an American citizen contact, was provided by the alien notices, may have been sent to unintended recipients. So another mistake. CBP monitoring communications will address any issues on a case by case basis. [00:05:27] Will they really, though? It seems like they're more than reckless. It's it's this. I mean, clearly not a shocker. It seems. Willful conduct here. The young man born in Georgia who crossed into Tallahassee in Florida. It's so easy to clear that up. Yet here you have the feds saying no. [00:05:47] Let's hold him. - Let's hold him. - So there's only two possibilities here. One is they're doing it on purpose to scare the living crap out of minorities. Anyone opposed to them? And and I'll get into why I say anyone opposed to them in a second [00:06:03] or it's deep incompetence. But there is no good answer for we're sending either letters to American citizens saying they must leave the country immediately, or literally detaining them overnight in prison or in jail. [00:06:20] Just because we want to and we want to send a message, don't don't mess with us. So if that's the case, that's the worst case scenario. That's why I'd say, you know, carry your passports around, because, I mean, they could just say, okay. Hey, Jake, you're. I don't know, that doesn't sound white, and you don't look white. [00:06:37] And so how do I know you're from here? Okay. That's it. You're going to prison and. And then. Look, once you give us your passport and your birth certificate, and, you know, if you're lucky enough to find all that information. Maybe we'll let you out then. Maybe we won't. But now you know. [00:06:52] Don't you know, don't dare oppose this authoritarian government. So, a lot of people will think that it's that category. I'm not sure which category it is. The second category is overwhelming incompetence and not caring about incompetence. [00:07:08] So, look, there's good evidence for both. So in the case of, Lopez Gomez, he's a US citizen. But they say that he made it onto an ice list because he also filed a form I-94 [00:07:25] while he was coming back into the country. And so they thought, well, if he's a US citizen, he didn't need to file a form I-94. So, put him on the list, but people filed that people sometimes use. [00:07:40] There's tons of dual citizens who use, different passports to go inside and outside the country. So are we going to round all of them up too? Because hey, well they didn't use the that the right passport. [00:07:56] And before if you're in the Trump administration or you're a Trump supporter before you answer yes of course, round them all up. Remember there's also Israeli and American dual citizens. So if you oh, you might accidentally round up an Israeli. So be super careful. So anyways, so, you know, if you're being enormously generous, you can say, well, [00:08:18] okay, that was deep incompetence, but I understand why they made that mistake. Okay. Well and I could I if it was isolated case I could see that. But then the three lawyers that I read about that got notices or were detained at an airport, one of them was the Pennsylvania lawyer, [00:08:36] who seems to be random. The other two just happened to be representing immigrant defendants, whether they were representing the the students who were being deported because they criticized Israel or they were representing other immigrants, [00:08:52] and they happen to get letters or get detained at an airport. That doesn't seem like a just incompetence. That seems like they're trying to bully and intimidate even lawyers who might help immigrants. So but there is no good answer here. [00:09:08] And and if I look, I often do shoe on the other foot. And what did you what if you were on the other side and blah, blah, blah blah blah. But is there a thing where if you're MAGA, you think, well, of course we should round up American citizens, you know, who cares? They dare to oppose, Trump, or they dare to be a lawyer for an immigrant, [00:09:27] or they dare to be Latino, or they dare to fill out a form. How dare they? Which they. Is that really does is even maybe some portion of MAGA will make that argument, but that the great majority of the country wants no part of that. And what's amazing, Brian, is if all Trump did was close down the border [00:09:47] like he he limited the number of people crossing the border dramatically, it would have been an enormous win for him politically. Right. Instead, he took that giant win and is somehow turning it into a loss. - Yes. - And this this is such a great point. [00:10:04] And it is. So much of Trump's playbook is that it's in the execution of these these kinds of ideas and the things, the things he ran on, the execution of them that are so extreme, that are so disproportionate [00:10:21] and just so poorly formed and defined. And I always think of that. I always think of what a hero he would be to like the middle of America if he could just cut down immigration, illegal immigration that's coming over the border, or cut down on the flow of drugs [00:10:40] that's coming from Canada. I mean, there are so many easy layup wins here. But, you know, to your point in, in trying to we always I feel like whether you're center or center left, you, you always aim for some sort of fairness. [00:10:58] And just in the spirit of argument, we always try to weigh and counterbalance the arguments. But I you know, I live in rural Georgia and I see who polices this area. And we have US marshals here. We have county sheriffs here. We have local small town city police here. [00:11:17] We have Georgia state troopers here. We have the Department of Public Safety. These are all people with jurisdiction that kind of has blurred lines, blurred lines, and they can all pull anyone over on any road there are at any one time. [00:11:33] Seriously, you can just find five different kinds of wings of arms of law enforcement. And I believe that this in this execution, we are charging perhaps incompetent law enforcement people to pull over cars. [00:11:49] And I'm wondering what the orders are within these departments to look for how to detain what papers they're looking for. Which brings me to this point of Jake. We are there. We're at the point where we are referencing these historical moments [00:12:04] where the Stasi, the SS, they come, they may not be in black cars, or they may not be wearing black leather coats. They're wearing bulletproof vests and baseball caps or flannel shirts. They're blending in and they are knocking on doors, and they are detaining people, [00:12:22] and they are putting them through a traumatic process that will screw up their lives forever. Just just being in jail overnight, being told you are out of here, man. You're done. [00:12:38] You're not an American when you're holding a Social security card and a birth certificate. Jake, did you ever think we would get here? Yeah. I mean, look. So that's a great question. And that actually has a complicated answer. So, I fought tooth and nail against Trump, [00:12:58] and I, you know, got the question often. Hey, but you're so against the establishment, so why would you vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016? Vote for Kamala Harris in 2024. Well, the brothers said he was going to terminate the Constitution. He said it. You could make any excuses you like. [00:13:14] But after he lost the 2020 election, he said, you know, in when there's a massive fraud like this, you have to terminate the Constitution. No, no, we're never going. We're not going to terminate the Constitution. And so MAGA and and there's two different groups that voted for Trump, right? [00:13:32] MAGA and independents. So MAGA hates the establishment so much that I think they're blinded by that rage, right? And so when we talk about how our side was blinded about Joe Biden's age and mental decline, etc., their side is blinded by their rage against the establishment, [00:13:49] so that the first huckster that walks in and goes, I hate the establishment. They're like, that's it. Whatever you say, I'm in, right? And we're going to make America great again. But this isn't making America great again. This is eroding the foundations of Western civilization. [00:14:05] Right. So. And why I was so mad at the Democrats was they seem to care more about protecting Joe Biden's ego than winning the election. I'm like, I guess you guys don't mean it, but I mean it. I'm super worried that Trump's going to be authoritarian, and he has done said it [00:14:22] so many times that he loves like being, you know, when he goes to visit a dictator and how everybody stands up and applauds and no one can criticize the dictator. ET cetera. ET cetera. He's done this. Said it so many times. He's tried to violate the Constitution before, and here he is doing it again. [00:14:40] So did I think that we might get here? Yes. That's why I was pulling all my hair out. When people are like, oh, let's run a guy in mental decline and cross our fingers, right? No, no, don't cross your fingers. Run your best candidate. Right. So but now to the independents. [00:14:57] So and and Brian we're going to find out and and and so this is, this is we're at one of the most critical junctures here in really in American history. Because my thesis was those independents didn't vote to round up, [00:15:13] you know, American citizens, and people that were legal residents here and didn't do anything wrong. They didn't vote to round them up based on freedom of speech or offending Trump or offending Israel or anything like that. They voted on inflation and immigration. Right. [00:15:30] And so inflation inflation being number one. And by immigration they largely meant close the border. Right. That's why we're fair. And we say, hey, listen, if you close the border and he didn't do these weirdo global nuclear tariffs that increased prices, [00:15:45] he actually could have been pretty popular because that is what the independents voted for, right. So now that they see with their own eyes. Oh, right. It turns out he does have an authoritarian, you know, desires and and [00:16:00] if we and but what is he doing here? Why bother going on constitutional. Why bother doing things that are unpopular? When he had it, he was popular in the beginning, especially after closing border, because he's testing it. He's constantly testing things and he's testing how much of the law can I violate? [00:16:19] How much of the Constitution can I violate before I get pushback? So this is when the independents that voted for him. And if there's good folks in the MAGA world who actually believe in our Constitution, and I believe there are some. Okay, not all, but some. [00:16:35] But all those voters have to because he already hates the left. He's not going to listen to us. And the more we are against it, the happier he is, right? But those Vote Trump voters have to say at some point. All right, look, it happens. I mean, it happens all the time. It happens to the left. [00:16:51] It happens to the right. It happens to Democrats, happens the Republicans. But we got duped. And this is not what we signed up for. We signed up for inflation and immigration. We didn't sign you up. Sign up for rounding up American citizens, taking away their rights. So hell no. And so if he gets that pushback, he hates being unpopular. [00:17:10] Then maybe he turns around. If he doesn't get that pushback, then he won't turn around. So that's that's the moment we're in right now. And that's why it's absolutely critical. Tell me, are you both struck by the complicity of the people who sit on the golden couch next to him, [00:17:28] Pam Bondi, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. These are people who history will look on as as complicit in this. [00:17:43] I mean, where are we going to be in two years? Where were all of those? The people who are enabling Trump. Look how proud he is of these initiatives and the way he defers. Pam Bondi can answer that for you. He's got these people owned lock, stock and barrel. [00:18:01] He's got them wrapped around his fingers. It's just, it's so offensive to watch them lie and they know they're lying. And so I just wonder where we're going to be in a year or two, because [00:18:16] this is such a young administration, and already the wheels have come off the clown car, and he's teasing these federal courts, and he's teasing the Supreme Court. I mean, I wonder what they talk about at their lunch time. [00:18:33] I mean, they've enabled this to I don't know where this is all headed, but it can't be good. Can't be good. So I have a theory on that, that I'll run by you guys. Look, I think that, this is going to go on layers, right? So he's testing how much he could violate the Constitution. [00:18:50] How how much he could abuse things. Right. So either he'll get huge pushback in the form of popularity, approval polls plummeting because he was above 50 at one point, which for him is a minor miracle. [00:19:05] He'd never been above 50. And in the beginning of this administration, again, we're a fair show. We tell you what's real. He was above 50, and he was really as popular as he's ever been. And so in two months since then, he's like battered those numbers. He's done almost everything he can to lower them. [00:19:22] And despite the closing of the border, which is very popular in America. He's going to now start heading down into the 40s and the 30s. And if he keeps going like this, he'll hit the 20s. So now, if if he pulls a classic trump, as he did with the tariffs. [00:19:42] Oh, yeah. This is all part of the deal. The art of the deal. Right. And part of my grand global strategy of you know, I first I arrest the Americans and take away their constitutional rights. And then later I give them back and I brag about how I gave you constitutional rights. Right. Okay, whatever, dude. Make any excuse you like. [00:19:58] Just turn around. Turn around. Right. If he does that, then Brian, all the Pam Bondi's and the J.D. Vance's and all the Republicans will pretend that it never happened. And every time we bring it up, they'll go, oh, no, you guys are overreacting. And Trump changed that, you know, four months in and well, well, right. [00:20:15] But if he doesn't turn around and he starts heading into the 30s and 20s and then there's an election coming up the midterms, right? Not right now, but there is in a year and a half. And so. The Republicans will get slaughtered in that election. [00:20:31] And so if at that point, are the Republican politicians going to panic and go, okay, now it has to quote Senator Kennedy, it's my ass on the line, right? And whenever it's their ass on the line, then all of a sudden they find a way to stand up to Trump, right? [00:20:48] So but if they go to realize that they're going to get slaughtered in the midterms and they they start talking about maybe not having midterms, okay, that's when if the Rogan's of the world and the bro sphere [00:21:05] and whoever and anyone who pretended to care about the Constitution, if they don't rise up at that point, then we're toast. Okay, but then. But then everyone who doesn't rise up is saying I'm cool with the dictatorship. And and so the red line, There's two red lines. [00:21:21] Him not listening to the courts. If he doesn't listen to the courts, he is completely out of bounds of the Constitution. So far he's tested the waters. Don't listen here. Don't listen for a short period of time, but then come back into the courts. If the Supreme Court rules no, bring back Abrego, Garcia or anything else. [00:21:40] And Trump says, no, I'm not bringing him back. I don't care what the Supreme Court says that is. That is the deepest of red lines. That means we're in an authoritarian government already. Okay. And the second red line is any talk of canceling the midterms or moving the midterms or anything. Another deep, deep red line. [00:21:57] If at that point, every show and every media figure and every politician isn't looking to throw out Donald Trump, that means they are literally signing up for a dictatorship. They're the bad guys. And you should never, ever, ever forgive them. [00:22:13] Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets its wings. Totally not true, but it does keep you updated on our live shows.