"Defiance as a weapon”

Now, at McDonald's, wake up to a $4 breakfast meal deal. Wake up to a sausage macbuffin or a sausage biscuit to hash browns and wake up to a hot coffee. Get your $4 breakfast meal deal. Limit time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher for delivery. Watch Disclosure Day at home now with exclusive bonus features. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you? Would that frighten you? While now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Kep starring Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required, also in theaters. You know how sometimes you wake up in the morning and the first lady puts out a statement demanding you be fired from your job? We've all been there, right? I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. I do, and I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it because...

Hi again, everybody. It's now 5 o'clock in New Yorker Defiant Jimmy Kimmel last night after both Donald and Melania Trump called for the comedian to be fired over a joke he made on his show days before the White House correspondent's dinner, a joke that was about... as he more than Donald Trump's age and the strength, perhaps, of his relationship. The Trump's, however, attempted to blame that joke told on Thursday by Jimmy Kimmel for the violence that erupted at the dinner Saturday, something which Kimmel flatly rejects. Watch. It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he's almost 80 and she's younger than I am. It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination. And they know that. I've been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence in particular. It is, though, the second time that the comedian has been forced to defend himself and stand up against the efforts by Donald Trump to have him fired from his job. Because Donald Trump's worst fear seems to be someone who uses humor to show just how small-minded he can be. Well, this type of defiance is newsworthy because it is rare. It's also a powerful tool when deployed against a bully like Donald Trump. especially during the second term as president. It's something only a few individuals have been brave enough to deploy as a tactic, and that's why we cover them here. We saw it in the people, the people of Minnesota, of Minneapolis, when they took to the streets to stand up against Donald Trump, even after two of their own citizens were killed by ICE. We've seen it from a handful of leaders. We can literally count them on one hand. people like Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. Here he is during Trump's attempt to send the National Guard into Chicago during Operation Midway Blitz. Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidents, and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is, a dangerous power grab. Mr. President, do not come to Chicago.

You are neither wanted here nor needed here. Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy. Most alarming, you seem to lack any appropriate concern as our commander-in-chief for the members of the military that you would so callously deploy as pawns in your ever... more alarming grabs for power. We showed that live when it happened because these acts of defiance, as we said, they're rare. But more often than not, they work. And they serve as a counter to the country and they're projected around the world to counter Donald Trump. It's where we begin the hour with Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. Today, importantly, was the final hearing by the Illinois Accountability Commission, which has been dedicated to uncovering and investigating the violence by Donald Trump's ICE agents during that Operation Midway Blitz. Do you want to sort of take us through what an after-action kind of report and investigation filled in that wasn't sort of highlighted by you in real time? Thank you, Nicole. And yeah, you just saw the video of the beginning. And, of course, they attacked our city. They brought ICE and CBP in. They attempted to bring National Guard in. We beat them in court to keep them out. We sort of made the playbook that I think that other cities used to push back. And now, as you know, I created the Illinois Accountability Commission to make sure that we were capturing. evidence that can be used against the people who were breaking the law. You know, we had 16 at very deep investigations that were undertaken here. There were literally 250 videos used as evidence, 100 hours of ICE and CBP video that was obtained and used in these hearings. And we had 60 eyewitnesses, some very, very powerful testimony that was given. all of which is with the purpose of keeping the record so that, number one, we could take them to court now as we have to limit their ability to attack our cities and our people, U.S. citizens, legal residents, even undocumented people who've never broken the law, by the way, and to hold them accountable later when there might be a new administration or a new Congress that can, in fact, hold them accountable. We want them to know now. that their actions now will be kept as evidence and that one day, even if it's not today or this week or this year, they will be held responsible for their actions. I remember when I interviewed you for my podcast. You talked about how you were asking people to take videos with their phone and submit them, and you were going to keep all this content to use as evidence in future efforts to hold them accountable. When you see Todd Blanche today announcing the indictment of former FBI director James Comey, the third.

alleged crime they've sought to charge him with. What are your thoughts about accountability for these individuals in charge right now? Yeah, well, let's start with what Donald Trump is really after here, weaponizing the DOJ to go after his political enemies. As you know, this indictment is not the first indictment that they've gone after James Comey with. It's not the first indictment of going after a political enemy of Donald Trump's or that he views as a political enemy. Letitia James is one. He threatened to jail me even though he has. no particular evidence of any crime or anything. He just announced that he wants to jail me. He said the same thing. I think about the California governor. He said the same thing about the mayor of Chicago. He thinks that he can use the power of the federal government to go after people that he doesn't like. This is wrong. And ironically, in the wake of the White House Correspondence Dinner, which is all about upholding the First Amendment, he is literally trying to prosecute somebody who is guilty of one thing, it seems, and that is putting out his First Amendment views. The picture of 86 47. That was the, what they're using as the evidence that James Comey is threatening the life of the president. 86.47. He posted it, even pulled it down because he thought it might be rude or improper to put it up. And not because he thought it was an indictment, I mean a threat against the president. But here they're just using that, that alone to go after the man. And now he's going to be engaged. This lawfare is going to now keep James Comey occupied for, God knows, a year perhaps, where he's pushing back, having to go to court. And finally, to prove his innocence, the case is going to be thrown out. I can almost guarantee you. We're talking about seashells on a beach. That's what that picture is that James Comey posted. Remember, this is the president who threatened the death penalty for General Mark Millie, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This is the same guy who told crowds at his rallies that, oh, that protester, punch him, take him down. This president is guilty of inciting violence, and now he's using the First Amendment. He's going after people for exercising their First Amendment rights and claiming that they're the ones who are attacking people. I mean, he just, he applauded the death of Robert Mueller, who is a patriot.

So, I mean, I'm disgusted by what this administration is doing, what the DOJ is doing. Todd Blanche seems to be doing more of what Pam Bondi was doing. This whole administration seems full of people who are just following whatever this demented president tells them to do. Are you ever afraid for your own? For the consequences of your own strength in standing up to him and calling him out, does it ever give you any, you know, fear or concerns that they'll target you for being an effective critic and an effective bulwark for your city and state? What I can say is that standing up for the Constitution and the law, that's something I believe in wholeheartedly. I remember I come from a family of patriots. My great-grandfather emigrated to this country with nothing. He was protected by this country. It would have been killed in Ukraine by the Russian Empire had he not been able to come here. And every generation of my family has done public service. My grandfather served in the Navy as an officer. My father as an officer. My uncle is an officer in the Navy. And my sister as the Commerce Secretary for President Obama, I'm serving as governor of the state of Illinois. We believe in this country and in this Constitution. So, you know, I think as an elected official, you know, wearing a crown. a title, that's not why you do this job. You do this job to stand up in the very difficult moments, even when you're being threatened by the President of the United States to do the right thing. So that's what I believe I'm doing right now. And you were one of the first. I mean, that we've been covering you for a long time. I wanted play some of the testimony. You talked about, I mean, you talked, I think almost a year ago about asking people to save these things. These are firsthand accounts of people who were victims of violence telling their stories. Let me play some of that for you. These are your constituents. Honestly, I panicked. I was just scared because prior to that, back in September, Silberio Villegas, I don't know if you heard about his case, well, he got killed back in September. And that's the first thing I thought. I was like, I mean, thank you.

We lost that. We'll try to get that worked out. Just tell me what it's like to put together this sort of compendium that obviously in real time, we all covered it day to day, but to sort of go back, do you have this feeling of like I cannot believe that happened in my state in America in 2025 and 26? Well, we don't want anybody to forget what's happened here. And, you know, I was so pleased that we have a federal judge and a senior state judge that are leading this commission, members of the commission, too, who've stood up and helped us to put together testimony from people to take that testimony. The woman who you just saw, and I know it got cut short, that's Miramar Martinez. She was shot five times. You know what she was doing? Honking her horn and yelling out her window of her car because she saw ICE and CBP. Well, doing things that she couldn't imagine why they were doing it. She was peacefully protesting with her horn. She got shot five times. She almost died. She went to the hospital. I mean, thank God she survived. But you know what? Silvio Villegas Gonzalez, he was killed by ICE and CBP in Chicago. Before they ever got to Minneapolis and the killing of Renee Good there, you know, there was the shootings that occurred in Chicago. And again, I'm so proud of the people of Illinois who really wrote the playbook. They're the ones who went out and bought whistles and people in neighborhoods all across the state, because it wasn't just Chicago they attacked. All across the state, people came out of their homes when they saw these unmarked vehicles, these masked men jumping out of cars, attacking people. They didn't even know if they were U.S. citizens or if they were undocumented. They just grabbed anybody that looked like they were brown or black, spoke with an accent, demanded proof of citizenship. I don't know about you, but I don't have proof of citizenship on me. I don't carry it. around every day. And most people in the United States don't. But, you know, what bothers me about all of this is that it was done under the pretext of they're going after the worst of the worst. They're going to take those people off our streets. Please take the worst of the worst off the streets. I don't want people who've committed violent crimes on the streets of Illinois. And we work every day, by the way, with DEA and FBI ATF to do exactly that. But now under Trump.

What he's done is used ICE and CBP as an excuse to go after people when it has nothing to do with crime. Nothing. 81% by their own admission, ICE and CBP, 81% of the people they detained were not people who had committed any crimes. And it just it disturbs me to no end that we have seen this happen in the United States of America. It's become like a banana republic when you've got this kind of attack going on in American cities. And thank God, our attorney general sued to keep National Guard off the streets because you'd be seeing that now. We had a Republican, the head of the Republican caucus in Illinois. spoke at the commission about the danger of this Republican administration now using troops to affect the election in November, using ICBP or National Guard to affect the November elections. That's what I'm most worried about, and that is what we all should be thinking about going forward. Well, let me ask you to pull the thread forward as well while we sort of reflect back today. I mean, the pattern in covering Trump for 10 years is that when he is humiliated. As he has been, every election that's been had has been a defeat. The California sort of response to the Republican gerrymander, AIDS Democrats in a political climate that history and Trump's plunging approval ratings suggest will aid Democrats, he seems to sort of regroup and then lash out more viciously. What is your strategy for protecting the vote around the midterms in November? Well, first, I think we all need to recognize we cannot capitulate. Every day that you let an authoritarian have their way is another day that we're losing rights. And the more rights we lose, the less likely it is we're ever going to restore our democracy, our republic, the way that it was before Donald Trump took his second term. So that's the first part. How are we going to protect the vote? And I've talked to a number of governors. I have an organization that I started with Governor Jared Polis called Governors Safeguarding Democracy that's at the beginning of this administration. And we've been talking with other governors about how are we going to protect the vote? Well, one of the ways that we are looking at doing that is making sure that. first of all, that we're taking them to court ahead of time to keep those troops, those ICE and CBP agents away from the voting booth. Second, we've got to communicate to the public about their rights. You have every right to go vote, even if you see somebody wearing a uniform and an automatic weapon with a, you know, with a mask on, those people cannot prevent you from voting. And I know it's scary. But this moment...

is the moment in which you need to get over your fear and go into the ballot box and show America that we are going to restore our democracy. We need everybody to go vote. That communication needs to happen. And then finally, you know, many of us have talked about organizing to have people at the polling places. to escort people in, to make sure they don't feel intimidated by these people who have no right to be there. Their only purpose, ICE and CBP and National Guard, their only purpose will be to scare people away. And we don't want that. And by the way, all we want is for eligible voters, U.S. citizens who are eligible voters, to go in and vote. And we just don't want people to be afraid to go vote. So the more communication we can have, the more escorts that we can have, And the more we can keep National Guard off our streets and away from these polling places, the better off we are. But there are a lot of strategies that are going to be employed. I don't want to give away what everybody's thinking about how they would do it. It'll be state by state individually decided by those governors. I mean, I guess two last thoughts. One, it's insane that in the year of 2026 in America, you know, I'm sort of old enough and came out of the Republican Party when in between elections, we used to go help emerging democracies have fair elections. So to hear you talk about protecting people's rights to vote in 2026 is bonkers. But on that public education piece, we invite you back anytime with any of your fellow governors to communicate with the public about how. this year the most sort of courageous and patriotic thing you might do is vote. So I hope that's a conversation we can continue to have. And I thank you for joining us today. Happy to be here with you, Nicole. Thank you. When we come back in the same way, someone might eagerly anticipate having a root canal. Republicans are right now preparing for the verdict of the American people in the midterms, coming to grips, some of them at least, with how politically painful. Those midterms could be. We'll talk about the bleak picture Republicans are facing. Also ahead for us, the last-stitch effort by Republicans, to rig the midterms by forcing redistricting down the throats of some voters. Today, all eyes are on Florida on that front, where Governor Ron DeSantis is pushing a new map, a gerrymander of his previous gerrymander to help stave off Republican defeats in November. Voting rights attorney Democracy defender Mark Elias will be our guest later in the hour on how Democrats are fighting back. Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.

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In case you were wondering, 27 is the answer. Weeks left until the midterm elections in November. On that, the New York Times reports this, quote, in private Republican political strategists are grimly trading synonyms to describe the darkening environment. Sour, ugly, bad, bleak. They note that much can change before November, holding out hope that the days of $4 gas and the war in Iran pass before the election. But crossing one's fingers and toes isn't exactly a political strategy, not even for MAGA. Indeed, just today, AAA revealed a new high watermark for gas prices in America since Donald Trump began the war in Iran. Nearly $4.18 a gallon, the highest average since 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, and it's not over. this forecast from Politico, quote, supply of oil, especially in Europe and Asia, is dwindling, and a price shock is coming. That's according to Dan Pickering, Chief Investment Officer at Pickering Energy Partners. He said that when the summer driving season begins, there will be another gas price shock that, quote, hits people in the face. There's a day of reckoning coming, he said. And I understand this, gas prices are but a single thread in a much larger economic... Calamity where Americans appear to feel more squeezed than at any point in decades. Gallup's annual economy and personal finance survey released today paints an historically bad picture. The share of Americans who say their financial situation is getting worse now stands at 55%, the highest figure. in 25 years. I want to bring into our coverage, Democratic pollster and political analyst, Cornell Belcher, also joining us, political analyst, the host of the Bullwork podcast, Tim Miller's here. I'm Cornell. How do you see this moment? It is a unique moment on a number of fronts, right, where I'm struck by that Gallup, that Gallup number, right? It's the worst number than we've seen in the last 25 years. And Nicole, that caught, you know, that, that, counts into recessions when we were literally in recessions. So you have the Americans feeling more anxious and stressed out economically. You also have a lot of pulling out there around sort of how they're feeling more eggs and stressed out about the war. And at the same time, you look at inside the polling and the Fox poll that came out the other day. And again, it's some numbers that I don't see very often because Democrats now have taken advantage on dealing with the economy, something that historically Republicans have baffles me. Why? But Republicans have historically had an advantage of with Americans, and Democrats have an advantage now of dealing with inflation and the economy. And then you just opposed that, Nicole, with what I was watching earlier today when Senator Graham was announcing that, you know, they're going to roll out how they're going to spend $400 million on the president's ballroom. And you look at the James Comey stuff you've just been covering. And you wonder why Americans are.

are upset and you wonder why Republicans are worried about the midterm elections. Because Nicole, they're not focusing on anything having to do with the economic stress and angst of the vast majority of Americans. All of their policies and all of their politics right now seem to be. to make happy or play to the vanity and the narcissism of one individual and not the American people. We've been talking a lot about, you know, superpower suicide over the last couple of, you know, days with historians talking about super power political side, suicide. Nicole, I'm watching Republicans commit political party suicide by following him down this rabbit hole. Yeah, I mean, Tim, I'm struck by... how they are still doing what has worked for them, right? And so they have man, I mean, I guess we're to think it's a coincidence that today on the day that a federal judge allowed Maureen James Comey to sue DOJ, DOJ indicted James Comey, and it might be, I don't know, not the coincidence arbiter in America, but I can see two dots and then say they're next to each other. But the three things that have permeated the electorate's mind, right? Epstein. There were lies told by Donald Trump and Kash Patel and Pam Bondi. And the Epstein class is viewed to still be unknown and unrevealed. The Iran War, both the idea of a forever war and the impact on the economy that we're talking about. And the collapse, whether you internalized who Viktor Orban was or not, if you're in MAGA. He was daddy, right? He was big daddy. And Tucker Carlson went and kissed his shoes. And Matt Schlapp went and kissed his shoes eight hours before he lost. And he fell on his face. And so whether you're telling pollsters you're going to vote for or not, there are these three seismic things, which are a lot more enduring and a lot more visceral than any of the freneticism that they seem to be pushing through the information pipeline. And I wonder what you make. He's really in a very stable. a stable place with the public, and it sucks. He's in the low 30s. Yeah, a stable and kind of a slow decline, kind of like the green slope on a ski slope. But I think that that's right, Nicole. And think about what they've tried to do. And you mentioned the James Comey indictment, which is just so laughable and so ridiculous. Like we can't say 8647 in the country anymore. The president's going to indict us over that. It's absolutely preposterous. And I know that James Comey will fight it and succeed. But the other story.

lately that I think is really telling about his political standing as this ballroom. nonsense, right? That after the horrible events at the White House Correspondence dinner, you know, everybody gets on this message point of, oh, Trump needs a new ballroom because he's, you know, he's under attack and we need this for him to honor him and to be safe. And they did something very successfully. They've done very successfully in the past, which is Marshall, the entire echo chamber. You know, if you turned on Fox at all today, they were talking about the ballroom. If you looked at a Republican politician. politicians, social media feed, they're talking about the ballroom. You know, if you were on Twitter and following a right-wing account, they talked about the ballroom. And, like, this is what they're good at. They're good at, like, getting everybody on message and creating these stories out of nonsense. The other thing that they're good at is attacking their foes and smearing them, people like James Comey. And you can see, like, the machine operating right now. But it's not... getting them anything like they're not gaining any ground like that machine works very well when the other side is in charge right and you can and you and you you know gin everybody up to to smear them and tear them down it works decently well if everybody's feeling good about what you're doing And you're just now giving them this shiny object to pay attention to, to distract them from whatever little problems they have in their life. Like, the machine doesn't work if everybody's pissed at you. All right. If people are like, why are we in this war? And you showed the gas prices at the beginning of this. I just saw a report, I think in the Upper Midwest in particular, gas prices are about to go up a bunch in the next week or two because of issues at the refineries and shortages. And we're going to keep seeing this all the way through the summer. It's going to be $5 gas this summer. And it already is that in some states on the coast. If things are getting worse for people, and if they're not responding to the things that they cared about, whether that be Epstein or the gas prices or whatever, this whole machine is just, it's a little masturbatory, right? It's just like, okay, it's who's it for? It's for the people that are, you know, the remaining 33% that are still on board. It's not getting, it's not, you know, doing anything for them. It's not making any progress. I also, like, can we put the picture up of Trump holding his gold ballroom? Like, I think every Democrat should make this their Twitter profile. Like, this is a guy whose population and citizenry, no, no, the one with all the gold. Trump hold it there. This should be the picture that every day, this is your president at a time when 13 U.S. service members have lost their lives in a war. He started with Iran. in a meeting in which his entire national security cabinet did not support going to that war. This is your president at a time when gas hits a record that it hasn't hit in a quarter century. This is what your president is doing at a time when the grift is undeniable, even to MAGA. This is what Donald Trump is doing when he loses two of the biggest mouthpieces in the MAGA media movement. He is holding.

A little tiny picture of a big gold ballroom. This is where, and I literally, I think we should go with this. And I think if he did a press conference about his news conference, it would be the one Trump event. I'd be tempted to take life because this is what he cares about. He does not give a rat's ass about a single person who voted for him to make their life better. Cornell, what do we do with this? I think you're right. I think it's sort of self-explanatory. I mean, you show that image, you know, up against the image of struggling, you know, people at the gas pump paying out, you know, these crazy prices for gas and struggling to put food on their table. And it kind of makes, you know, it kind of speaks for itself, right? And again, I am just baffled. You know, I've been in Washington politics for a long time, but I'm just baffled at the disconnect here and how all the Republicans are following him right down this rabbit hole, this pathway. It's remarkable to me. It's not a padded gold room. I mean, I just, I just, it's like let them all go in there. And, you know, for the ones that need the padding, we'll pat it. I mean, I'll buy the donuts. Like, this is their plan. Why would you be holding press conferences talking about giving this man $400 million for a ballroom? Americans are struggling at the pump and at the grocery store. Look, Democrats should have a very good year. And again, I was not bullish on the ideal of Democrats taking the Senate. I am growing more bullish on the ideal that even the Senate is in play now than I was two or three months ago. Yeah, I mean, and I think if he keeps carrying that little picture around. Bullish might be the right word. Cordell, thank you for joining us on all this today. Tim sticks around. When we come back, it is because of all this. Donald Trump's terrible, and as Tim said, slowly declining poll numbers and Republicans' real fears about the midterms being career-ending for many of them that Republicans in Florida are swooping in to try to help to help clean up the political mess Trump started. in his cynical bid to cling to power. We'll get to that reporting and what Democrats can do about it with our good friend Mark Elias next.

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that governors like Ron DeSantis have learned that they should do preposterously illegal things or preposterous things that won't work simply so that Donald Trump is pleased for a day. Tim, I saw you nodding. The intent is also to send a very clear signal, even if all of these attempts... to seek out retribution fail legally, that the other impact will be to scare others from speaking out, as James Comey did against a politicized Department of Justice, as Letitia James did through her fraud suit against Trump org, as law firms who used to help Mark Elias have done by capitulating to Donald Trump and signing the executive orders. It seems that in other ways they succeed even when they fail. Yeah, I've... Mixed views on that. I was not agreed with basically everything that Mark said, except for when he mentioned the Trump third term, which was triggering. And I kind of blacked out for a couple seconds after that. My brain. You know, yeah, the chilling effect is part of it. And I think that the key insight here is these things are all going to fail and they're doing them to please Donald Trump. And that was Mark's point. And I think that is exactly right. And I think that we should mock them and they should feel humiliated by it. And it's not really that different to the Iran war. Honestly, either you could add that one to the list of things that these guys thought that they were going to go in and do. And they're going to get revenge on their enemies. And they're going to get regime change in Iran. And they were going to rig the midterms with redistricting. And it's just been L after L after L for many months now. I think that your point that the environment around this creates a chilling effect, I think is true. I think it was more true in 2025 than it is now. But there's no doubt that after watching this thing with James Comey. People don't want to be indicted. They don't want to deal with the hassle. And there are people out there that would think to themselves, maybe I shouldn't post this meme criticizing Trump. It's not worth it. You know, and we certainly see this at the CEO level. We're seeing it even at the media level. I mean, you know, before the Corstan's dinner was interrupted by this kind of horrible attempt at a shooting. Yeah, I was kind of struggling by how many of these people were showing up, actually, even, you know, and we're going to allow him, and we might have another one in a month, who knows, are going to allow him to roast them when he is engaging in a direct assault on free speech, when they're going after ABC and Disney today over some, you know, completely fabricated nonsense about DEI or whatever. They're trying to get rid of their licenses for a few local stations. So, I mean, he's engaging in an assault on free speech. They're failing. the courts, thanks a lot into what Mark is doing, but also others. They're starting to fail in public opinion. You're right. They're still succeeding in other areas where people are afraid to push back on them. But you're seeing kind of limits of that bullying.

Yeah. No, I think you're right. I just didn't get a break, but I want to press both of you on sort of the hinge point that we might be in in this moment, because you do see responses and reactions that you probably wouldn't have seen a year ago. We'll have that conversation on the other side of a very short break with Mark and Tim. Don't go anywhere. We're back with our fan favorites, Mark Elias and Tim Miller. Mark, we are lucky that you trust us on days when Donald Trump names checks you standing inside the Department of Justice. And today is perhaps a triggering day for all of your fans among our viewers. James Comey has just released a video saying, quote, I'm still innocent. I'm still unafraid. Let's go. And making some of the points we've all made over the last 15 months about this not being who we are. This is not the rule of law. You know, the kaleidoscope, you shake up and look at it a different way. And Todd Blanche and James Comey are not too many, you know, genomes away in terms of their career paths. But they fall on totally different sides of the moral compass. And I wonder what you think is possible for yourself after watching Todd Blanche's performance today. Oh, I think anything is possible. I mean, look, the Department of Justice is going after all of Donald Trump's political opponents. And Kash Patel, before he was the FBI director, you know, posted several times that I was guilty, you know, of crimes and that I was an enemy of the Republicans, the President of United States, as you point out, when he came back into power, he went to the Department of Justice and called me... you know, terrible. I think he called me a communist. I was a bad person. And so, look, like, we all need to be realistic and recognize that if they will go after someone for taking a photo of seashells on the beach, like, we're not talking about indicting a ham sandwich. We're literally talking about indicting over seashells of, like, on the beach. You've got to be careful there, you know, Nicole, you're putting that, you're putting that up. Who knows what's going to happen? Who knows who they'll go after next? But in all seriousness, like, you know, there's nothing that is beneath what they'll do. And the only thing I disagree with James Comey about in the video that he just recorded is, he said, as you said, as you just pointed out, this is not who we are. No, no, this is exactly who we are. This is exactly what the Department of Justice is. And, you know, I had this. I was on for two hours with you. the day of the indictment of, I think it was Letitia James in Virginia. And I had this debate then, and I've had it since. Like, we need to stop saying that this is not the Department of Justice. This is the Department of Justice. These are the rules of the Department of Justice. What people like James Comey are referring to is a Department of Justice that no longer exists. We are never going back to it. It is never being restored. We are never going to have another Merrick Garland run Department of Justice. Now, that doesn't mean Democrats will weaponize in the way that Republicans are.

If we do not get over the nostalgia and think that we are going backwards in time and that somehow this is an aberration, we're going to have a very long two years. It's going to be a long two years anyway, but it's going to be worse if we do not accept that this is the reality in which we live. Mark Elias and Tim Miller, they watch the things you guys say, and so it's not nothing that you're here today with us. I appreciate both of you. Thank you. Quick break for us. We'll be right back. James Comey has released his first public statement since being indicted. Here it is. Well, they're back. This time about a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach a year ago. And this won't be the end of it. But nothing has changed with me. I'm still innocent. I'm still not afraid. And I still believe in the independent federal judiciary. So let's go. But it's really important that all of us remember this is not who we are as a country. This is not how the Department of Justice is supposed to be. And the good news is we get closer every day to restoring those values. Keep the faith. A defiant and unafraid James Comey in his first public comments since the news of his indictment broke this afternoon. One more break for us. We'll be right back.

My guest this week on The Best People podcast is New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill. She's a veteran from a congresswoman. She is a mom of four kids. She has lots to say about how all those experiences inform how she governs the state of New Jersey. You can listen to our conversation right now on YouTube to scan the QR code on your screen or download the Best People wherever you get your podcast. Be sure to let me know what you think of this one on Instagram. or blue sky. We want to thank you for letting us into your homes today. We are grateful. Watch Disclosure Day at Home Now with exclusive bonus features. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you? Would that frighten you? Well, now the truth belongs to seven billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Kep starring Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required, also in theaters.